Amazon Makes Moves, While Hogwarts Legacy Stirs the Pot… Again (TWIG 17)

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And welcome back to the Lambancy show. I am Lambency, joined by our this Week in Gaming host of Vex Electronica. Vex, how are you doing today? I'm sleepy, fuck. How about you?

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I second that motion. To the fifth power. To the fifth power. Oh, we're getting into math now. Let me wake right up.

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Hold on. I got our jazz music playing in the back ground, so let me do that. I do. I really like that waiting music. I approve.

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Vex. Definitely approved. Here we go. Boom. But, yeah, no, we got some new music, as you guys can clearly see.

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Not only that, but we have gotten a new transition. We've put a lot of effort into some things in the background, and we got some things working in the background. Vex and I are currently working on that we're not ready to announce yet and stuff, but Vex, you know what I'm referring to. Do you think it's big or not? Like, two inches?

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I don't think it's that big. It's not what I'm referring to, what we were talking about last night. All right. Besides, that's not what we said last night when you told me you needed to take the place of sharper. Okay, I just want to tell you what you want to hear in the moment.

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Listen, I'm a shower. I'm not a shower. Okay. You didn't grow that much either. Yeah, you kind of lay there like a dead fish, so I won't be talking.

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You're right, though. We do have plans. We won't announce them, I guess, till the new year. But, yeah, there's some big things going on in the background for this weekend game. That it is.

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Welcome in, Canola Sasquatch. Hopefully you enjoy the show and don't rather enjoy living. Why would he murder us? No, I feel like he'd be the type to murder. I don't know why I feel like he has it in for us.

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You think Canole will murder us, but you willingly made a podcast with Noon. He is a legendary creature. Although he's not quite as hairy as you would expect a Sasquatch to be. Anyways, fresh reminder. And we are going to be bringing it up later as well because the guy has returns.

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I'm pretty sure we got something in there for us, Vex. But in our store, we currently have the Clinton ring merch still available for sale. I'm thinking by New Year's, I'm going to end this line. So you have until the New Year's to place an order for your Clinton Ring merch before it's gone forever. I just ordered mine finally yesterday.

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The website is really picky if you don't live in the US. Just a heads up. I don't know what the hell I clicked, but what I did work. So mine is supposed to arrive between January 4 and 6th. Yeah, mine was supposed to arrive Thursday, and it's been sitting in my city at the local Ups office for three fucking days.

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And they're like, oh yeah, it's going to be delivered today. No, it is. So we'll see what happens. Fresh reminder. We have a new review on our website from the one and only of X Electronica for High on Life, which I'll be honest, I read your review and I've been watching some of that gameplay, and that game looks like it is a blast.

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A lot of fun. I haven't beat it yet. Usually with all the reviews I post, I try to beat the game first before I post the review because I find these early reviewers, they get like three to 4 hours of the game and then they write a review. And I find sometimes halfway through the game, either the pacing or the tone changes or the ending of the game just ruins everything that you've done so far. So that's why whenever I write these reviews, I try to complete it.

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But in all honesty, there was just so much, and I felt this game was really consistent, that I was like, I'm going to put that review. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. I encountered one bug so far. My game crashed once.

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That's it. But other than that, I mean, the comedy is hit or miss for people. I can totally understand that. If you're not a Rick and Morty fan, then definitely you won't like the humor. I think, even though it's the same guy compared to Rick and Morty, I find this humor is a lot more satirical and more I find more pop culture references and gaming references in this compared to Rick and Morty, which I already know is full of pop culture references.

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But I like this humor a little bit better, especially when they start taking jabs at Celebrities and Kotaku and IGN. So I really enjoyed that. There are a few instances, though, where you're just like, oh, they're trying a little bit too hard to make this funny. Which, I mean, it was bound to happen when you've got actually five talking weapons on your roster. So it is what it is.

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But it's definitely a refreshing addition to the FPS genre, I will give it that. Especially in a genre that is starting to feel pretty stale when everything is trying to adapt to what Call of Duty is, right? So for that reason, I enjoy it a lot. I give it a nine out of ten for that. I think in terms of innovation, it's doing something new, right?

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It's doing something fresh. It's doing something needed, and I'm happy about that. That always gets me going. So on a golden shower scale, I would say that this is almost a full spray. I like it.

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Almost full spray. Yeah. Fresh reminder. We also have a fan page where you can leave a review for us as well as you can leave us messages that we could play on our podcast. We have three of them two from John and one from Greg.

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So feel free to leave messages for us, review our show. Every little bit helps. And we appreciate so much all the support we've been getting as we've been watching the support grow ever since we moved over to Rumble. We went on rumble. We were talking about Rumble for what, like a month before we finally said, whatever, let's just do it and see what happens.

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We were talking about it for a couple of months, actually. A couple of months we were talking about Rumble and then one day we just said, fuck it, let's do it. Actually, no, one day you said, fuck it, let's do it. I was like, yeah, we're not on Twitch tonight, Victor. We're actually on rumble.

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Wait, literally, it was like 20 minutes before we went live. I found out that we were going to be on Rumble. I was like, oh, I guess we're going to meet then. I guess, yeah. But we haven't looked back since we feel that the growth on Rumble has been far more than we expected.

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I also could do with the fact that with Twitch being so oversaturated and us having to be hindered watching what we say. Now, mind you, we're still going to watch what we say per se, but we're not going to go out and actually attack people, all that other stuff. But we're not afraid to state any facts or opinions we have here that would get us canceled anywhere else. No, you're very right. I didn't like how much I would have to watch what I said on Twitch.

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And I remember I'd even brought that up a couple of times when there were stories that I would want to COVID I'm like, can we even talk about this without saying X and Y words? Because we're going to get flagged on Twitch. Let's be real, bex we bring this up because there is a section we're covering today that would not fly on Twitch. Yeah, no, even then I'm going to be very clinical about it and just state all the facts because I think there's a lot of misrepresentation about it and misinformation. So even then I'm going to give you all the facts first so you can kind of understand.

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So on tonight's show, I guess we'll jump into it. We got a lot to COVID We got Amazon news, we got lots of Microsoft news outside of the Activision Blizzard requirement. We got some great announcements for upcoming Sony projects. And then we've got Spicy take on Hogwarts legacy and the JK. Rowling controversy.

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So forewarning how much of a spice I'm planning on bringing for that. I know you bring in the spice, but I've already got something lined up off of the top of my dome. I don't even have to write it down because it's something I've been thinking ever since Hogwarts legacy has been announced. Got you. Okay, so let's just jump right into it.

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Let's start off with the good news because Amazon made some serious, serious moves this week. So earlier this week they announced that they are going to be partnering with Crystal Dynamics to help develop the fourth entry into the Tomb Raider franchise. It will be built alongside Amazon from development all the way to publishing. According to the press release, this new entry will also be a single player narrative driven adventure, as the previous three were. In a statement actually, in a statement, Christopher Hartman, who's the VP of Amazon Games said quote it will include all the elements that have made Tomb Raider one of the most revered franchises in gaming giving players control of the confident and multidimensional hero Lara Croft in an environment that requires that rewards exploration and creative pathfinding with mind bidding, puzzles to solve and a wide variety of enemies to face and overcome.

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He also said that Tomb Raider is one of the most beloved IPS in the entertainment industry. Amazon Games is committed to bringing players games of the highest quality from the best developers across all variety of platforms and genres. And we're honored by the opportunity to work with this story developer and franchise. Our team is incredibly excited about collaborating with the talented and visionary Crystal Dynamics team to bring the next chapter of Laura Kraft saga to players around the world. Scott Amos, who is the head at Crystal Dynamics, also put out a statement and he also was very happy, especially since this is a big opportunity given that Crystal Dynamics was sold to The Lambency Show, that massive Swedish conglomerate, earlier this year.

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Right. So this is quite another big move for them so far. We've had a little bit of teases as to what to expect in the fourth entry. It was officially announced just earlier this year at the beginning of the summer and there were some rumors staying unsubstantiated, unsubstantiated. Thank you.

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Rumors that this plot would have basically Laura at her peak, where she would be leading and training other potential Tomb Raiders. So possible story leak there for you guys. But honestly, that's not even the biggest Amazon news. I think that happened this week. So if you guys have been following just anything on social media or in pop culture and movie, then you know that there's been a lot going on at Warner Brothers on the movie and TV side.

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Specifically, there's been a lot going on with Henry Cavill, who is just delicious.

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I don't get how every female I hear from says that he's delicious. I hate to break it to you, because he ain't no Ryan Reynolds. No, he's better than Ryan Reynolds. No, because we would turn gay for Ryan Reynolds. We wouldn't do it for Henry Cavill.

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Okay. I think a fair amount would for Henry Cavill as well. I'm going to be honest. No. Okay.

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We admire what he could do, but Ryan Reynolds is just he's man chocolate. He's man candy? No. Henry. Cavill.

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Chocolate. Oh, goodness. He's Canadian chocolate. He's maple syrup there you go and stuff. But hey, I'm all for it.

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Agree to disagree, but no. He's been in the news a lot in the last couple of weeks just because he left the Witcher series over at Netflix and a lot of people were disappointed. Then he announced his return to WB as Superman. Then James Gunn came in and took over as head of development over there. And now Henry Cavill is no longer Superman.

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And then literally the next day, it was announced by Games Workshop that they had reached an agreement with Amazon to create a Warhammer 40K cinematic universe. So Cavill is actually a very notable Warhammer fan. He has not shied away about talking about his admiration for the series and his hobby with the little figurine building and painting. So he's actually set to star as well as serve as one of the executive producers. He put out a statement as well on his instagram, just saying.

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Quote, for 30 years, I've dreamt of seeing a Warhammer universe in live action. Now after 22 years of experience in the industry, I finally feel that I have the skill set and experience to guide a Warhammer cinematic universe to life. I've loved Warhammer since I was a boy, making this moment truly special for me. The opportunity to shepherd the cinematic universe from its inception is quite the honor and the responsibility. You can find the full statement on his Instagram, but basically it just sounds like he is over the moon about this.

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Game's Workshop also said, quote, he is bringing his lore expertise to the mantle of executive producer and his sword arm to the star and role, which I thought was a cute little statement there. But it looks like his girlfriend really helped make this dream happen because she is actually a producer I might get that wrong over at Legendary Pictures. And she really was integral and kind of helping this deal come together. And she's even tagged in that original announcement. So throughout all that news, that sad news of Henry leaving Witcher and Superman, there's something good to come out of it.

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And honestly, if Amazon fucks this up, there's no way you can. You have a gold mine at your fingertips. Now, Amazon, don't fuck this up like you did The Lord of Ring up. I'm going to tell you exactly what Amazon is going to do. They're going to take a page straight out of what they did with the Lord of the Rings series and all the bad reviews they're going to hide, and then they're going to advertise it as the number one show.

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On Amazon and then in a great the best reviewed show of all time, like they did with The Lord of the Rings, which was hilarious because anyone who even saw clips, you don't even have to watch the show. You could just watch clips and realize it's not just vote. The action, the fighting, it's all terrible. It's off. All of it's off.

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So awful. It's the worst looking film I've ever seen. So that's why it's really nice to see that there is, like, a genuine fan who's helping produce this. Again, this can really work to their favor if Amazon is willing to take the back seat in this. Right.

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I think a prime example is that Chris Pratt series, the Terminal List, I think that's one of the best things that Amazon has made. It was wonderful. It didn't feel like there was an agenda or a message behind it. All the action sequences were wonderfully executed. The character development was great.

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I'm not even a huge action fan, per se, and I really fell in love with that series. I watched it all in one sitting. My husband came home from work. He's like, you're still watching that? Yeah, it's good, right?

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So that's one of the few things I can really think of where Amazon did not seem to have a direct hand in things, and it worked out really well. But oddly enough, they didn't advertise that as much as they should have, which we're diverting a little bit. But if you know Hollywood and you know what they've been doing, then you know why they wouldn't advertise that, right? So, very good news coming out of Amazon for gamers, and Henry Cavill stands alike. So are we good to move along to the next one, Lambassy?

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That way you don't have to say about that. Yeah. Okay. All right. Got you.

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So I got some Warcraft Three footage playing in the background. By the way, we're going to have a lot of retro footage playing in the background today. You'll see it later. But I figure it's a nice change of pace. Instead of just looking at these beautiful cinematic gems that we often get in modern gaming.

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Real quick, I did put in our comments and stuff. Who's hotter henry Cavill or Ryan Reynolds? So if you're watching on Rumble, go way in. We have to make our point. Okay, go ahead and continue.

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To which I would just say, henry cavill in the witcher. Yeah. I just say? Ryan Reynolds in deadpool bro. He looks like an avocado in Deadpool.

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What are you talking about? We don't care. It's his personality for us. You definitely be that. You don't like a long haired man with a sword just saying fuck in your ear.

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Come on. No, not at all. He gives you their mix. I haven't seen my husband in a while. Henry Cavill with that long hair.

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Seems like in this scenario, like he would be the girl in the relationship. All right. I need someone to take advantage. Brian Reynolds seems like he'd be the Mariner. I'm sorry, have you seen Henry Cavill handle a sword?

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That's all I need to say. Okay. He got it going anyway. I do know how to handle swords. I just got queasy, man.

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No, I'm dead serious. I actually do know how to handle sorts. That's impressive. Then color me impressed. It's been a while, but I've handled quite a few.

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Got you. All right, so Microsoft microsoft was big in the news for reasons that weren't related to the Activision Blizzard acquirement, but we also have some lengthy follow ups to that story as well. So the first big news back on the 12th, which was Monday. Monday it was announced that Microsoft bought a 4% stake in the London Stock Exchange group called LSEG. I'm just going to say Liceg for the rest of this one, which is expected to produce at least £100 million throughout 2023 to 2025.

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The new long term partnership is architect to Laseg's data infrastructure using Microsoft Cloud and to jointly develop new products and services for data and analytics. The partnership will build on the good progress made by Laseg on the integration of, refinitiv and enhance its position as a world leading financials market infrastructure and data provider. With the Microsoft Cloud and its AI capabilities, the deal significantly advances Lesg's strategy of building an efficient and scalable platform for its data and analytics business to deliver next generation services for a range of customers across the financial markets. Financial markets value change through improved workflow and greater flexibility. Now, under the arrangements with Microsoft, laseg will use Azure Purview and Azure Synapse to create its cloud based data architecture that consolidates Laseg data sets onto one flexible infrastructure that is simple, responsive and efficient and built with security, privacy and compliance.

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The program accelerates Lisg's cloud migration plans and LISG customers will be able to access data faster when and wherever they need it, enabling resilience and adaptability as capital markets continue to evolve. So Azure is actually the platform that helps host the Microsoft Cloud gaming services. And that's why I thought this was pretty relevant to bring up because as we've mentioned before, microsoft is really pushing the cloud gaming thing on the Xbox side. And in all honesty, I never expected the cloud thing to stick just to the gaming, given that they are a tank company that has much bigger agreements and holdings with other sectors. Right.

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So it's really no surprise that they're partnering with a stock exchange over in London to kind of push cloud gaming outside of cloud servers and services outside of just Xbox cloud gaming. Cloud gaming is going to be huge. We already said okay, all right. No, I wasn't sure if you were going to add onto that. That's why I highlighted it in pink.

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There no I know you highlighted I've got nothing to say. This because I haven't had a chance I'll be honest. There are certain things I have things to say on, but I haven't really had I told you the remainder of this month I'm booked. I'm a toy store manager, so I would weigh in on it. But I am a firm believer that it's better to let people think you're an idiot than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

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I'm not going to talk about things if I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. As a matter of fact, a lot of the things I talk about are based on even if I don't know the entire story, I give my take on how the retail world works because that is my expertise, if you ever notice. A lot of my takes have to do with the fundamentals of retail and things and how I think things may play out. But I will occasionally, when I do know what I'm talking about and stuff, talk about more than just that. But this is one of those scenarios.

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This is news to me. I'm not willing to weigh in on something that I haven't had a chance to review. Just smart. I appreciate that. Actually, there's no shame in just admitting, hey, I don't know anything about this, so I can't have an opinion, which is something that is really lost in the public sphere these days.

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This is true, by the way. I just jogging things. But in this warcraft, three footage that's playing in the background, if you look carefully, you might see my name get revealed because my name is actually in two of the locations in the warcraft universe. That's how I used to introduce myself to people, but not only one person ever got it.

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This is why it's only two inches, man. That's exactly why.

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Now, this wasn't the only big tech move that Microsoft made this past week as well. So it was announced. I believe this one was on Wednesday or Thursday. You sent this one to me, Lambda. I have something to weigh in on stuff, because you remember I wrote a whole article.

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Exactly. So I'm just going to read out the quotes from the actual article and let you guys kind of make your decision on it, all right? Whether it's trolling, racism, sexes and doxing, or just general harassment, the Internet has been a bad behavior problem. Researchers from Caltech and Activision Publishing, a video game publisher, are working together to bring their combined expertise to address this behavior in video games. Sponsored research agreement involves anema Adnan Kumar, the Brent Professor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, who has trained AI to fly drones and study the coronavirus.

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Michael Alvara is professor of Political and Computational Social Science who has used machine learning tools to study political trends in social media and Activision's data engineers who will provide insight into player engagement and game driven data. Elveras and Nnand Kumar have already worked together on training AI to detect trolling in social media. Their project with the team that works on the Call of Duty video games will allow them to develop similar technology for potential use in gaming. Quote over the past few years, our collaboration with Anema and NAND Kumar's group has been very productive. We have learned a great deal about how to use large data and deep learning to identify toxic conversation and behavior.

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This new direction with our colleagues at Activision gives us an opportunity to apply what we have learned to study what we have learned to study toxic behavior in a new and important area gaming. For Nant Kumar, the important questions this research will answer are how do we enable AI that is transparent beneficial to society and free of biases, as well as how do we ensure a safe gaming environment for everyone? So there's a direct quotes from the article there. You want to weigh in before I weigh in? I mean, for me, this is no surprise.

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We already knew that they've been trying to do all this shit just with regular social media. Like, we know Facebook has been doing it. Instagram has been doing it. Even Twitter was doing it before Musk kind of took over there as an Xbox based player as well. In the last couple of years, they've made it kind of abundantly clear, if you subscribe to any of their services, or even just like the Xbox Insider program, that they are collecting your game data.

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And they are also not only monitoring your messages, but they've openly admitted that there are now more restrictions as to what you're allowed to do and say on public games. Right. So this is really no surprise to me that it's taking this next step. So here's my problem with this, all right, before I get into my article. Where was that list?

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All right, so trolling. Here's the thing. Trolling based on who? Who's saying who's trolling? Because that's only been gone one way racism.

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Here's a funny thing. There's been people who have been racist the opposite way around because they can't be racist. It's not called racist sexism, really, because let's be real. Sexism is only sexism when it's against women. Whenever it's against a man, you could say, kill all men.

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Men are useless. You guys don't give a crap. Doxing, really, because that only happens when the left gets stocks, because as soon as someone on the right or in the middle or someone that they assume is on the right gets stocks, it's perfectly fine. Or general harassment, which is funny because what they consider harassment is oftentimes just questions, but when someone actually gets harassed, they completely ignore it. All right, I bring this up because I wrote an article, as you can see, october 23, 2022.

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So this is a few months back, and it's even stayed today, all right, because, like, I got all this information and stuff. The federal federal government has given 699,763 grant to study radicalization and gaming community. And what I basically talked about is how they gave a bunch of colleges grant money to create programs like this. But even in this article so I took what they were saying, and then I wrote my own opinions. Once I get over here, I'm like, this is at least what they're saying.

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In reality, it's not difficult to believe that this is more of the same from the US. Government, which has a history of interfering with people's personal lives and bribing big tech companies to censor anyone who disagrees with them or questions their motives. Twitter, facebook, YouTube, and et cetera. They claim when an extremist or even terroristic ideas target video game communities that they affect some of the most vulnerable members of these communities. People are known to be enraged by video games, which makes them more susceptible to extremist influence, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

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And then I go on to say that's what they're claiming, and I go on to state that. But what constitutes and falls under the government's definition of extremist or even terroristic ideas today? Well, to begin with, anyone who believes in limited government, individual freedom, free markets, human dignity, and personal accountability is often considered an extremist by today's government. So again, I ask you, when you hear about trolling, racism, sexism, doxing, or general harassment AI programs that are supposed to keep the community safe, who is it really keeping safe? Is it keeping safe the actual community?

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Or is it keeping safe the idea of what they want you to think? We know that they use schools as a factory to teach you how to think. Not how to think for yourself, but how they want you to think. Now they're going to bring it into the video games. All right?

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I even go on this article. I'm not going to go completely through this article, but I even stated in the article, this is beating a dead horse. All right? For as long as I've been alive, people have always been saying video games causes violence with no actual correlation to violence being caused. What this really constitutes is the US.

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Government overstepping their bounds yet again trying to violate free speech. And let's be real, hate speech is still free, whether you like it or not, because a lot of the times what you consider hate speech is just general speech that you don't like. And it's not even hateful. You just assume it is because you're soft. So I do not agree with any of this at all.

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I think they should have been keeping out of it. But if you remember vex, when we were talking about this, after I had released the article, I had forgot and you had reminded me that xbox has government contracts, to which I responded, I would not be surprised if they do it on xbox first. Then I had also brought that back up when this whole we're going to buy call of duty thing came on. I'm like, watch it be call of duty. Watch it be xbox.

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Lo and behold, this is exactly what's going on. It's almost like it's entirely predictable. It's not that hard to see what. They're doing. They've been doing this for many, many years.

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And for those who are like, oh, the government would never harm us. Oh, yeah, because you've never heard of Operation Sea Spray Project MKUltra or anything along those lines. The government has been using their own citizens as test dummies for as long as it's been a lot oh, what is it? Just yesterday or Friday, the FDA finally admitted that the coupe shots are linked to blood clotting. Finally admitted to it, if you think your government is guilt free, you're a fucking idiot.

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There's no nice way to put it. Governments can do a lot of good things and a lot of bad things, but if you have just a blind faith in them, you really need to reevaluate your belief system and your morals, because government has always had a tyrannical backside. Just saying. And the funny thing is, for those who are being like, well, people who think like Lambati does is a threat to our democracy, I want you to pledge the allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic. We are not a democracy.

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We are a republic. I know the Democrats like to think we are a democracy, because if we are under a democracy, they can get away with what they're trying to get away with, and they're only currently doing it because of the virus that shall not be named, that there is plenty of evidence that this was all planned. They needed something as a catalyst to continue their agenda. We are a republic, not a democracy. And in a republic, we still have our own freedom of speech.

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There's a reason we have freedom of speech. There's a reason we have the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms and to protect ourselves from all forms of tyranny, including our own government. So keep this in mind. I was actually having this conversation with Canole and the gang, the Mischief Mayhem movie gang earlier today because they weren't as aware of all the things that went on in Canada during those early COVID days. Right.

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So just what I told them. All those things are just like, this is why we have the Second Amendment. I'm just like, yeah, that's exactly why you have it. Look at all the shit that we just kind of sat back and allowed to happen, right, or willingly participated in. But we're digressing a little bit here.

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Digressing a little bit back to the original point, though. Yeah. This isn't something that should be surprising. It's very easy to pick up on the patterns and we're going to end up coming back to this because I also called something else that we're going to discuss many weeks in advance. But it's very easy to see where things are going.

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You just have to have literally, like 10% of your brain aware that's it. That's absolutely it. I wrote that article in October. I wasn't wrong. Did I miss it all about you weren't no you didn't.

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You really didn't. Like, I told them off screen, I'm like, this is exactly what's going to happen and they're going to use a catalyst like Call of Duty to do it and that's exactly what they're doing. I'm telling you, we are foreseeing things for you guys all the more recent to listen to us each week, okay? Now that we've got the big tech stuff out of the way. Now it wouldn't be a podcast or gaming podcast without talking about this gosh darn Activision Blizzard requirements, right?

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So we did have some updates on that this past week. There was a really good article actually that came out surprisingly from the Wall Street Journal that kind of summarized a lot of the big talking points. Now I'm not going to go over those. Like I know I put it in the dock here by the way, Lambda, but I'm not going to go over all of that. If you want all those details you can go listen to the last three episodes we've had because I don't want to repeat myself, right, but do just want to rub in your faces because I don't do this very often.

[00:31:43]
Quote okay, I'm just going to read this whole section and then you'll understand. Microsoft is one of the largest big tech companies with a market cap second only to Apple Incorporated and annual revenue now exceeding $200 billion USD. Those put this deal squarely in the sights of regulators who want to curb text dominance. But that same heft might also work in Microsoft's favor as the company has framed mobile video gaming as the biggest opportunity driving its pursuit of Activision. The vast bulk of mobile video gaming occurs on the iOS and Android platforms and Microsoft has been outspoken about its desire to shake up the business and the controversial 30% commissions charged by platform owners Apple and Google parent Alphabet Incorporated.

[00:32:29]
Phil Spencer told the Wall Street Journal's Tech Live conference in late October, we have to break the dwombly of two storefronts controlling the mobile market. Microsoft has little mobile video gaming revenue now, but buying Activision would make it a major player, giving it control of the Marquee mobile only franchises such as Candy Crush, plus popular mobile versions of Call of Duty and Diablo Immortal. It is also one of the few companies with the resources to truly challenge companies such as Apple and Google. Everyone's upset about Call of Duty. It's all about the fucking mobile games now.

[00:33:06]
I remember when you had brought this up and when you had told me who King was and then I realized immediately I knew what was going on. I knew that Call of Duty was going to be the catalyst for some things, but I also knew it was going to be the thing that people paid the mobile attention to because name recognition. But I just find it really ironic that not only have we predicted that this was what was going to happen, but the fact of the matter is they're sitting there talking about, oh, the 30% commissions charged by platform owners. Microsoft does that too, as does PlayStation. Yeah.

[00:33:38]
The only reason they're saying this is because they, even though they charge 30% on their platforms for other people to use it, do not want to pay 30% on another platform. And this goes back to what I was talking about before, vex about like, if Microsoft gets that exclusivity, PlayStation is never going to get an exclusive for Call of Duty again due to the fact that they'd have to pay them more. In this follow up story, I actually have a couple of things because I know you've brought this up before, and you've also challenged the minecraft point I've made before, and somebody who we still haven't figured out who it is, came to Microsoft rescue this past week when a statement that they had given to the CMA back in October was finally released. So we're going to just label this person as market participant A. We have no idea who this is.

[00:34:34]
Okay, so they issued without naming who they are, they issued this letter to the CMA. It's a ten page document. You can find it online. It's not very hard to so I'm just going to read some of the excerpts out of that because these are things that not only we've discussed here on the podcast before, but even you and I, lamb and see, we've had some disagreeing opinions on it. Right.

[00:34:57]
This is from a market participant's point of view on this transaction, what I'm about to read. So in this document, there's basically five main arguments that this market participant has outlined. I'm not going to go through all of those again. You can read the whole thing if you want. So one of the points was increased digitization of the video gaming industry moving forwards is inherently positive.

[00:35:22]
Point one given the CMA's role in champion consumer benefits, it should use this transaction as an opportunity towards facilitating the transition towards cloud gaming, which is where the future of video games is headed. The CMA should ensure it is focused on seeking the best outcome for its consumers and not act as an impediment to greater choice, nor to the furtherment of innovation. In developing markets such as cloud gaming, we feel that the direction of travel is inevitable. Therefore, the CMA should be at the forefront of this development to help set the agenda in a pro consumer manner and not be an impediment to positive developments in this space which ultimately provide greater choice. While concerns .2 while concerns have been raised by Sony in particular, ultimately the CMA's priority is in protecting consumers and not to preserve the status quo of competitors.

[00:36:15]
This industry is far from static and one that frequently has new entrants that have the ability to quickly capture market share such as what happened with Fortnite. It is understandable that Sony is seeking to maintain its position, given it has invested a lot of capital, time and energy towards creating this. However, the landscape is changing given the wide adoption of subscription based services and cloud based platforms in other industries. These have reduced the barriers to entry and such innovation has allowed consumers to have new methods to pay for content along with having access to a wider range of content without sacrificing quality. Any comments there lambancy?

[00:36:56]
Before I move on no, go ahead and move on. And so because I'm taking the whole thing into the equation. All right, got you. So they also noticed increased competition promotes innovation and greater content quality for consumers. So, point number one we believe Microsoft is seeking to propagate innovation and embrace the move towards subscription services and cloud gaming.

[00:37:17]
It's unsurprising that a technology company can see where the direction of travel is headed. By contrast, it seems that Sony may be looking at this transaction through the lens of a hardware company and not with the future development of the industry in mind. There is no evidence to suggest that this deal would inhibit Sony or any other rivals ability to compete in the multigame subscription or cloud gaming markets. The barrier to entry are low. Sorry?

[00:37:42]
The barriers to entry are low, the market is extraordinarily dynamic, and new competition can arise through innovation and original content, all of which would be positive for consumers. Ultimately, the CMA should continue its focused work in protecting consumers and not be dissuaded from facilitating the adoption towards subscription and cloud place based platforms in lieu of preserving the status quo that market leaders have sought to maintain. Their third point now wider choice for consumers at a lower cost. So, point number one absent this transaction, consumers would only be able to play new releases of Call of Duty by purchasing it outright for 59 99. This is in pounds, right?

[00:38:25]
This is the CMA, they're in the UK. However, following it, consumers would still have this option available, while also having the alternative option of accessing it through game pass or through cloud gaming, each at the cost of an inexpensive subscription. As seen in other industries already mentioned, such as television, subscription models are pro consumer as it lowers the cost for access to high quality and wider raging content than the alternative purchasing of hardware. Lower cost to access such popular titles is also an inherent positive to the consumers. I'm not going to read this next one because this one's about console and simply they outline that they believe that consoles will be phased out in the very near future, which again, from just 10% of your brain being open, you can see that coming as well, given the direction every other piece of technology is going.

[00:39:15]
Right. The last point that I'm going to highlight here is actually I have two more sorry, the fourth point now, no incentive for Microsoft to pursue input foreclosure strategies. So this is something you and I have debated on Lambancy. So point number one with respect to Call of Duty, its key attraction is the strength of its community, with the game having a longstanding relationship with PlayStation. Denying the ability for PlayStation consumers to have access to Call of Duty, given its history and prevalence, would risk deenfranchising, disrupting and diminishing its consumers.

[00:39:51]
This is something Microsoft has shown its values as seen through its most comparable transaction, the acquisition of Mojang, where Microsoft continue to keep Minecraft available to all console platforms. There is even a clear lack of incentive for Microsoft to make Call of Duty exclusive to Xbox. Even if Microsoft were to do so, the evidence submitted in the public domain suggests that PlayStation would still have a greater number of users in Xbox, even if in the unlikely scenario, the majority of Call of Duty players switched from PlayStation to Xbox. Therefore, the effect of Minecraft Microsoft pursuing an input foreclosure strategy with respect to Call of Duty is one that would not result in Sony's ability to compete being substantially limited. And then point number two here, this point is underlined by Microsoft's understanding of this key attraction and pillar of Call of Duty, as demonstrated by Xbox Studios head Matt Booty.

[00:40:45]
Booty if we acquire a game that comes with a big community across a number of platforms, last thing we want to do is take something away. If anything, we feel it's our job to be caretakers, to be shepherds, to continue to build and nurture that community, not to cut it up into pieces and try to take some of it away. The last point, which I won't bother going over because we briefly touched over it before, is that this will again be able to give Microsoft a leg up to destroy that duopoly that is currently lying between Apple and Google when it comes to mobile gaming. Your thoughts? Lambancy give them all to me.

[00:41:22]
There are two in particular that are complete lies. Okay, so the first one is the game path versus title releases model. All right? See, the whole reason Microsoft and Microsoft fans really think that this is a good deal is because for them, yes, it is a good deal. However, Xbox has typically never really had that many great standalone titles.

[00:41:45]
Agreed. PlayStation, on the other hand, is known for this. So for them, with them receiving all the releases they do with the amount of money they make off of their releases, I'll give you a perfect example. God of War ragnarok just came out. They made a kill, all right?

[00:42:00]
This is what they're known to do. It would take away the bulk of the money from PlayStation to do that. First of all, when you consider the fact that if you look at the market cap, microsoft is much more than just a gaming company. They are a huge tech corporation, which we have spoken on before. Second of all, by taking Call of Duty, the biggest third party publisher, well, Activision Blizzard King, the biggest third party developer out there, you're taking away one of the developers that PlayStation itself does not own, who is also a heavy hitter.

[00:42:30]
So you're already taken away from them, especially if you're going to put it on the Game Pass. So I could see that point, but to sit here and say that it makes more sense to do this no, because you're not taking into account the way Sony operates. Sony does not own computers and everything else that Microsoft is, does. This is a huge win for Microsoft. They get it because Microsoft already owns everything else to go along with it.

[00:42:55]
Two, as far as the Xbox small monthly fee to keep it in the PlayStation ecosystem, it's not a small monthly fee because even if it is a small monthly fee, you forget they still charge 30% for everything else. So not only would they be charging per month for it to be there, not only would the game still have to be bought on the PlayStation store and Xbox have it in, the game pass itself, but then on top of that, they're going to have to give 30% of all the profits on top of that over to Xbox as well. So to sit there and say that's a small monthly fee is a flat out live from a retail perspective, because when you look at the long run, it's not. Oh, for a small monthly fee, we'll let you have it on your store, it's we'll let you have it on your store. But we're still going to charge for every transaction.

[00:43:43]
Hold on, hold on. I don't read out anything that implied that they were going to charge Sony a fee. They mentioned that it would be a small fee for bro, I don't even know where I haven't read that yet. I might have gotten a little bit ahead, but you get that I would have read that yet, bro. But the thing is, I had to bring it in because this is something that is an argument, you know what I mean?

[00:44:10]
Okay, so just to preface, since you put that point out there, I was going to I just read the screenshots I had even gotten, because they made deals with Steam and Nintendo last week, right, saying that they had ten year deals to keep Call of Duty on both of those interfaces. It came out this week, according to Bloomberg, that Microsoft did in fact offer the same deal to PlayStation, but Sony has yet to accept that deal and actually continue to fight against the merger instead. And in this agreement that Microsoft offered, it would be offering Sony basically the Activision library for a small monthly fee in order to be not only available on PlayStation, but also possibly be on PlayStation. PlayStation plus service and all that stuff. So that is what The Lambency Show is alluding to.

[00:45:09]
I'm sitting here thinking like, why is he talking about this? I just mentioned it. For consumers, it's a great thing. And then here's the other thing. As you were talking about crap, now I forgot where I was.

[00:45:20]
What was the other thing? You know what, it will come back to me. Okay, got you. So again, this was all a statement, aside from that last bit I just explained, this was all a statement from an unknown market participant. So this wasn't Microsoft, it was about the cloud gaming and Microsoft being visionaries.

[00:45:38]
Yes, Microsoft is far and away above everyone else right now. PlayStation still has a lot to go, but to sit there and say that, oh, it's going to breed competition, all right. PlayStation has already seen what's going on. They're trying to compete, they haven't figured it out. However, I think I see where PlayStation is trying to go and what they're trying to do.

[00:45:59]
At least this is what I've been getting, is what they're trying to do is yes, you're still going to pay for new release. That's one of the biggest business models because that's where they make the bulk of their money. But any previous releases that have been out for a couple of years and stuff get Shelved into their libraries. I think that's what they're trying to do. They get Shelved into their massive libraries so as they figure out the kinks and everything, if they already have their own cloud based kind of thing, they just haven't mastered it yet.

[00:46:25]
So to sit here and say that Microsoft is going to breed competition if this deal goes through, because people are going to see that the future is in the cloud gaming, that's a lie. People already saw that. They just haven't gotten to the level that Microsoft is at. And having something like this just furthers the gap, if that makes any sense. No, I agree with some of that point.

[00:46:46]
In terms of other platforms have the cloud gaming, like I've mentioned this before, again, Microsoft has been doing this for more than a decade. It's been in plain sight that they were working on this right above and everything else. Because I've been doing it exactly before. I think it was that last podcast or the one before where you said that the Xbox One was an epic failure, but it was setting up for the Xbox series. I think that was last week.

[00:47:14]
Yeah, no, just like yes, you could see it, but everyone decided to hop onto it when it was too late in the game, so to speak. Right, because now at the point, like Sony, for instance, with how they're hopping into it this year with moving their library to PC and stuff, that's really late in the game compared to Microsoft, who's been doing that for 2018 or 2019 is when Game Pass launched and it's been developing very quickly. So it seems like as much as people recognize it's been there, people seem to be late in realizing, like, holy shit, this is where things are going. Right. The point that you're discussing, though, with the cloud gaming, I can understand kind of where this market participant is coming from when they think that this will help set the standard for cloud gaming innovation and the rules and parameters moving forward.

[00:48:11]
I just don't think you need to do something as big as an activision requirement in order to do that. That's my opinion, at least. Like I also said, people already seen that it has nothing to do with this transaction, is going to read that innovation. No, people are already seeing it. They're just late to the game.

[00:48:30]
Basically what I'm getting at is when I am listening to what this guy is saying, he says a lot of he or she says a lot of fluff. It just sounds like I'm trying to make it sound fancy, like I really know what I'm talking about, but without actually looking at the full picture. And this is what I believe. But you're not looking at the full picture. And I know this because I work retail.

[00:48:53]
I've been a fan of Xbox and PlayStation. I look at everything. I don't look at just one shot. And I'm going to tell you that I don't know everything. I don't claim that I know everything.

[00:49:04]
However, I don't either. Clueless, though, again, this is just one market participant's view of the deal. And when I say market participant, it's not just some random person, right? This is someone that's already in the gaming industry. So this isn't a random person just weighing in on this?

[00:49:24]
No, this is a company that's already in gaming that is weighing in and submitting this. So just keep that in mind. To be fair, they're probably already in bed, the way this is written. Who knows? Who knows, right?

[00:49:35]
But I mean, given all the pushback there's been against this deal, all of them seem to be in bed with Sony, right? There doesn't seem to be any non bias when it comes to looking at it completely transparent. I don't agree with a lot of the things coming out from the Sony camp. That's what I mean. I don't agree with a lot of the things Xbox is doing.

[00:49:55]
Right. This is where the sweet spot is here, right, is that we have no implicit bias or reason to be biased. And what bias we do have, we could put aside for the sake of looking at this through an unbiased lens. I feel like I've said that word too much now, but this is what we do. The thing is, as soon as you let your bias into it, I get it, all right?

[00:50:21]
I get the people who are big fans of one company over the other. I get it, I do. But at the same time, when you're that blinded, that's when things go wrong. Because you don't look at the red flags. And that's exactly I mean, to bring it all full circle, that's exactly what the US government is doing.

[00:50:38]
Pretty much, yeah. It's one thing you don't want to look at no red flags just to bring it full circle. Even more so high on life, which is an Xbox exclusive. Right now, someone who is a PlayStation fanboy wrote a review of that game. He marked it extremely low.

[00:50:55]
And the last thing this guy had ever said about Xbox was about Xbox. Xbox, which is like the insult online, just being a bunch of losers, essentially. So also, implicit bias in game reviewing. Just saying it all comes fully implicit bias and bought review. This is why we exist, VIX.

[00:51:17]
This is why we exist. Which also, I don't know if you guys noticed, even though in all of my reviews, I put, like Xbox Series S in the bracket, just so people know, first of all, which console I'm reviewing it on. I never go hardcore and just chill for Microsoft at all. I actively avoid doing that because even though I prefer Xbox, it's never been like, oh, Xbox is the best thing ever. Oh, God, Xbox is so good.

[00:51:45]
It's never been like that. It's just I have something that I like that I can play with my friends on. All my friends are on it. The games I want to play are there. I'm just going to reprieve the game for the game.

[00:51:56]
I don't even care what platform it's on. I care about the substance. I like, canola he says that guy, and I'm assuming he's referring to that PlayStation guy is stupid. And I am a PS Five fan and want to play that game. And here's the thing.

[00:52:08]
I plan on playing that game because I have the Series S and the PS Five. I don't care what platform I play. I really don't. Both of them have good games, but I have to have a PlayStation because they have exclusives that I particularly like, Final Fantasy. And I can't play that on Xbox.

[00:52:24]
So that's why I have fun. But yeah, no, I've watched a lot of clips for that game. And mind you, I'd never watch Rick and Morty and stuff. I could clearly hear the voice similarities because I've seen some trailers and stuff. But from the humor I'm seeing, I'm like I like this.

[00:52:40]
This looks funny. This looks like a blast, by the way. Okay, there's a clip circling around it's near the beginning of the game, right? But you go into the slum area of the main city and there's a kid one. Yeah, the shoot the kid, then he's like, oh, fresh meat.

[00:52:58]
What are you going to do? That is fresh meat. And then you shoot him and it unlocks an achievement. And the achievements called like Fallout doesn't let you do this. So someone went online and was just like, oh, it's all fun and games when he decides to talk about pedophilia and child murdering, but it's a joke.

[00:53:14]
And I'm like, dude, did you even play the fucking game? Did you just watch this clip and make that assumption? Because you find his mother literally 10 seconds later and she's like, I knew some psycho would murder him over his fresh meat comments one day. He's actually 35, but that's very young for our species. I'm like, he's not even a child.

[00:53:36]
People just want to get upset for the sake of being upset. Like, no context whatsoever. Now is the best time to get it. They're like, only $250 right now, you can get a series. As for like 250 speaking actually, no, it's dropped.

[00:53:50]
It's permanently dropped down to $200 until December 24. Well, there you go. Now is the best time to buy it. If you need me to generate a link for you and stuff, just let me know, my friend. I can generate a link for you.

[00:54:02]
Yeah, that's true. Yeah, that's true. All right, so, yeah, no, it's just like, people are really silly and I said it in The Commons just now to Canole, but I've noticed there is an insane amount of bias towards Sony games this year in particular compared to some of the Microsoft exclusives that they have. And again, this is not me shilling for one or the other, but I just noticed that because Microsoft has been excelling more the indie developments as opposed to the triple A titles, which is where Sony has instead been excelling. So every one of these small indie titles that Microsoft has had come out since the fall actually just gets review bombed by Sony fans simply because it is something that's outside of the norm.

[00:54:44]
Scorn sentiment, high on life, these are all things that do not adhere to the formula that many mainstream gamers have gotten used to. And for some, I'm not condoning what they're doing at all. Scratch that thought from your heads. I don't condone those actions whatsoever. I don't like when people review bomb anything.

[00:55:06]
Yes, to be fair, from someone who's been a lifelong PlayStation fan who also plays Xbox and other systems and everything, the status quo has always been that while PlayStation has a couple of big hitters like Square, Enix and a couple of others as well. The company that I can't remember the company name right now, which is embarrassing, but got a war as well. While they've always had big hitters like that, they have always excelled in the indies. Santa Monica Studios. Santa Monica Studios.

[00:55:36]
Okay, thank you. But they have always excelled in the end, whereas Xbox has just fallen flat over the years, time and time again when it comes to their own indie title. Agreed. So it's a pleasant surprise for me, as someone who plays both systems, it is a pleasant surprise that Xbox, I'll be. Honest, they've been on point this year when it comes to indie developers.

[00:55:58]
These games coming out are exactly what I expect to come out of PlayStation Studio, not Xbox Studios. Xbox Studios I look at as like cash grabs. This is what we're going to be and it's going to be nothing like it. And that's something I agree with you. As an Xbox gamer, I agree with you on that sentiment 100%.

[00:56:18]
I get where they're coming from. Like, what the hell? PlayStation is all of a sudden struggling in this and Xbox is selling what happened? But at the same time, that doesn't mean you could go out and go review bomb. Like, come on.

[00:56:30]
That's what I mean, right? Because you don't see as much of the same happening towards big Sony releases, which again, this might be controversial, but it seems like God of War ragnarok is just God of Mid ragnarok. Because the Witcher Three, which came out five years ago now yeah. Has already outsold it for 2022, which is like really insane when you consider the amount of promotion, the amount of shilling people were doing for that game, and the amount of awards it picked up at the Game Awards last week. I was very critical about God of War and not deserving any awards.

[00:57:06]
But I also said before the awards even began, if you remember I don't remember which episode it was, but I basically said there's going to come a time where it's going to do really well and upon its release. But then after a couple of weeks, it's going to die because people are going to realize it's a God of War game by title. Oh, they're not doing as well as they used to. Like, they know you're just going to buy it and it's just terrible. Sure.

[00:57:32]
Okay. Lots of positive Sony news. Lots of positive Sony news. I think the biggest thing that was announced actually this was via deadline earlier this week, quote, hot on the heels of announcing Death Stranding too at the Game Awards, gaming otar Hideo Kojima's Kojima Productions has partnered with Barbarian Exclusive Productions. Alex Lebovic's Hammerstone Studios develop and produce a film adaptation of the former's hit video game Death Stranding.

[00:58:01]
I mean, no surprise here. Sony has also been very transparent in diving into film and television with a lot of their exclusive IPS. So Hammerstone has quietly been amassing a string of buzzy films as of late, including the critically acclaimed horror Barbarian, which took over $45 million in the worldwide box office, as well as Bill and Ted Face the Music, which was the third installment of that beloved series featuring Keanu Reeves. They also went into wrapped up production sorry. On a Dystopian fever dream called Boy Kills World.

[00:58:36]
My Good I Can't Talk Today, which was produced with the likes of Sam Raimi So this is a company that has a lot of good buzz under their belt. So it looks like things will be pretty good for this death Stranding adaptation. Everyone involved is very happy about this partnership right now. There's no plot, casting, or writing details yet. This is literally just the original announcement.

[00:59:01]
My thinking was like, wasn't Death Stranding basically already a movie? Doesn't it need a movie adaptation?

[00:59:09]
Hear me out. Here's an idea for a death stranding casting choice for the movie. Ready? Okay. Norman Reedus.

[00:59:16]
I don't know. I don't think he's right. I don't know. You're right. He might not fit.

[00:59:21]
He looks like the guy. It sounds like the guy, but I don't think he's all right. Yeah, he's not the right fit. No, we're going to have to go with Tom Holland. Yeah, I think Tom Holland is a perfect fit.

[00:59:35]
Absolutely perfect fit. Hot off the heels of that uncharted adaptation, too. Like, Sony needs to lock him in. Oh, I know, right? Maybe we can read this plays like a minor role or so for those that aren't understanding the reference.

[00:59:48]
Norman Reedus is the main character in the Dust Red Games and the sequel that was announced last week. So, yeah, that's pretty good news. So we'll see how that turns out. Hopefully we'll get more details in the new year about the specifics as well. What movie I would like to see, though, in all honesty.

[01:00:06]
You mean what game you'd like to see in a movie? Like, what game I would like to see moved. It made him do a movie adaptation if they could do it properly. Okay, I'm glad you like the bureau back music canole if they could do it properly. Piano reeves starring in a cyberpunk 2077.

[01:00:24]
I think he's just a little too old, that's all. They'd have to really CGI his looks for that, because as he stands now, yes, he looks fantastic for his age, but he looks too age to be a robot. Even though I think they could do that. And if they did cyberpunk 2077, I'm not talking about Cyberpunk Edge Runners. That's an anniversary.

[01:00:43]
But like an actual adaptation. There's two games that I think off of that you could literally just take that have perfect capabilities of becoming actual move. All right. You have Cyberpunk 2077 because, I mean, come on, you got sex, you got drugs, you got alcohol, you got everything. You got violence, fighting.

[01:01:00]
Guess what also had. Grand theft yana? Reefs. Grand theft auto. And we've talked about Grand Theft Auto before being made into a movie.

[01:01:08]
Like, if it ever was, it would be perfect. But those are things that usually excel in Hollywood, not none of this Hollywood woke bullshit. Were you joking with the Keanu Reefs thing or you were serious? I was saying Keanu Reeves in Cyberpunk 2077 because he's actually in cyberpunk 27. Gotcha.

[01:01:25]
Gotcha. Okay, just like just like Norman Reedus is in destroying keanu Reeves is in cyberpunk 2077 as Johnny Silver. Yes. No, now that you well, no, they are planning to make more cyberpunk like adaptations anyway. So who knows?

[01:01:43]
A live action might be in the works, especially since they're also planning to expand that franchise out of just that first game. Right? So it very well could be a possibility. Very well. But moving along, more good news for PlayStation fans.

[01:01:56]
So Gorilla Studios, which is the studio behind those Horizon games, confirmed that it is working on a multiplayer set in the Horizon universe and that it will feature a brand new cast of characters as well as a new art style. An advertisement posted on Twitter back on December 16, the studio revealed that a new internal team is developing a separate online project set in the Horizon universe. They also provided job listings, actually. So there's a narrative designer, a game writer, as well as a combat designer, all of which they're looking for, which will give you more details as to what the game is on. So if we have any game designers listening to us, you might be able to get a job working on that hot tick, hot take.

[01:02:42]
Yes. Okay. I personally think Horizon was just complete. It's a good game. I don't think it's great, like, both of them, or just the second one, or the first one, the whole series.

[01:02:52]
Then again, that's not to say anything against anyone who actually, like, personally, for me, it was completely mediocre. It was a good game, but it wasn't a great game. See, here's the thing. I haven't seen a lot of the footage for either of those games, so my opinion is it means nothing here, right? But from what I've seen of people that have played both the games is they have the exact same opinion you do.

[01:03:15]
It's like, they're not terrible games, but they're not as great as everyone hyped them up to be. Only hyped because of the graphics. And it's a female lead. That's what I was about to say, is people just really love how it looks and they love the female lead, and that's about it. There's really nothing else positive they have aside from that.

[01:03:32]
And like I said, it's not to say it's a bad game. It's not a bad game. It's just so over hype. It's average, you could say, at best. I hate saying it, but it's mid.

[01:03:42]
Well, this is what I mean about the Sony getting all of this praise and all this hype and all this stuff. For every gem they produce. It seems like now they're on a fine line where it's just, oh, we have this captive audience now. As long as we just put out something that looks nice, we'll continue to get all of that good publicity that we want to hang on to. It doesn't really matter about the substance, right?

[01:04:06]
And it really fucking reminds me of if I'm being honest, it really reminds me of, like they're trying to take a page out of Tomb Raider, but failing epic. They want a strong female protagonist. They want someone that's going to be memorable, all that other stuff, but they just fail. That's what it kind of looks like to me, is that they just tried to take a page out of, hey, we need a strong female lead. Hey, let's use Laura Croft as an example.

[01:04:30]
But we'll switch things up. You know what? We're going to take some elements from this game, this game, this game, this game, and this game. And we're going to call it our own. In reality, it just to me, when I played it, it literally felt like I was playing five different games in one.

[01:04:44]
Like, you were talking about what was it callisto protocol? Feeling too much like it took off too much off of its inspirations. Oh, that's what this game felt like. It literally felt like I was playing five different games at once. No, it was evil, west.

[01:04:59]
Evil west was a copy and paste of several games. You know what I'm referring to. That's exactly how it felt playing to me personally. Maybe you should put a Horizon Zero Dawn review on the website. Maybe I don't feel like got you.

[01:05:14]
It was a mid experience. I don't feel like doing a mid review. All right. As well, earlier this week on December 15, revealed in a PlayStation blog post the long awaited sequel to 2018 spiderman was teased and promised for 2023. I mean, this is kind of already leaked as well just because it had been featured at the end of a PlayStation Five console commercial that came out last week.

[01:05:41]
So this is no surprise. We knew this one was coming as well. Resident Evil Village's upcoming VR mode will be available at the launch of the PlayStation VR Two on the 22 February and will serve as a free DLC for all editions of the game, so you won't have to pay for Resident Evil Village DLC. Pretty noise. Pretty nice.

[01:06:02]
Is lamency back yet? Yeah, I'm back. Okay, so before we get into this, I would like to preface I'm going to just present our listeners with a lot of information about Wards legacy, the JK. Rowling stuff. Okay?

[01:06:18]
So yes, just to preface, what I'm going to read out is just all of the information so you can understand where all of the public outrage is coming from as well. A lot of people don't seem to know where because a lot of people I see are just like, why is everyone mad at JK. Rowling? And they pick out one tweet out of context, but they don't know how it all started. So I'm just going to do a bit of a deep dive there, and then we'll kind of lambie, and I will discuss afterwards where we stand on it.

[01:06:47]
All right? Yeah, let's get it. I got to brace myself. There's a lot. Okay, so earlier this week on Twitter, the Hogwarts Legacy Twitter account confirmed.

[01:06:58]
First of all, that the games will in fact be coming out. Hogwarts Legacy will be, in fact, be coming out on February 10 for the Xbox series XS, PlayStation Five, and PC. They also finally confirmed the release dates for the previous gen, which will be April 4, 2023, and then July 25, 2023 for The Lambency Show. Now every time there is new news about Hogwarts legacy, there seems to be a new revival in the hate for JK. Rowling and what her personal views are unrelated to the Harry Potter universe.

[01:07:31]
My personal favorite, I've got to say, got to be if you plan on playing Harry Potter or you're a fan of Harry Potter and stuff to leap. Like the one I saw is if you play Hogwarts Legacy, you're transphobic. I saw that one today. Sounds about right. So in response to this new wave of kind of anger and whatnot, there was someone who tweeted out on December 17.

[01:07:54]
I'm not going to say her name because I don't want anyone to go and troll her or anything like that, but she said, I will not begrudge anyone their love of past works or things they already own that they take comfort in. I own the first nine movies in all seven books myself, but any support of something like Hogwarts Legacy as harmful in response to this, J. K. Rowling tweeted out, and she said, deeply disappointed, blank doesn't realize pure think is incompatible with owning anything connected with me in any form. The truly righteous wouldn't just burn their books and movies, but the local library, anything with an owl on it and their own pet dogs.

[01:08:32]
And as for this, I'm appalled this individual actually advocates reading the books because nobody needs to know all the fine. And until you get drunk and accidentally quote one Sonny, I never did it in public. It won't save you when the police see your Hufflepuff socks in response to someone else saying that if you have the DVDs and books live your best life, they've been already bought and paid for. You can read it on your own time. Nobody needs to know.

[01:08:58]
So where did all of this JK. Rowling hate come from? How did this all happen? On June 6, 2020, JK. Rowling retweeted an op ed piece that discussed people who menstruate apparently taking issue with the fact that the story did not use the word women.

[01:09:14]
People who menstruate. I'm sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone helped me out. Woman Wimpund Woman'she wrote on Twitter. The initial tweet garnered a lot of backlash for the Harry Potter author did not relent and wrote about her views in more detail.

[01:09:29]
Quote if sex isn't real, there's no same sex attraction. If sex isn't real, the lived the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many meaningfully to discuss their lives. It isn't hate speech to speak the truth. The idea that women like me, who've been empathetic to trans people for decades, feel kinship because they're vulnerable in the same way as women, I e to male violence, hate trans people because they think sex is real and has lived consequences is nonsense.

[01:10:03]
I respect every trans person's right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them. I'd march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans. At the same time, my life has been shaped by being female. I do not believe that's. Hateful to say so.

[01:10:19]
Then a couple of days later, on June 10, she posted a very lengthy blog post which I genuinely encourage people to read. You can find it on her personal website. It's quite long. I've just taken out some excerpts of it so you can get some context, but it's a great read. It starts off quote for people who don't know.

[01:10:38]
Last December, referring to December 2019, I tweeted my support for Meyer for Stator, a tax specialist who'd lost her job for what were deemed transphobic tweets. She took her case to an employment tribunal, asking the judge to rule on whether a philosophical belief that sex is determined by by biology is protected in law. Judge Taylor ruled that it wasn't. My interest in trans issues predated Maya's case by almost two years, during which I followed the debate around the concept of gender identity closely. I've met trans people and read Sundry books, blogs and articles by trans people, gender specialists, intersex people, psychologists, safeguarding experts, social workers and doctors, and follow the discourse online and in traditional media.

[01:11:22]
On one level, my interest in this issue has been professional, because I'm writing a crime series set in present day, and my fictional female detective is of an age to be interested in and affected by these issues herself. But on another, it's intensely personal, as I'm about to explain. All the time I've been researching and learning, accusations and threats from trans activists have been bubbling in my Twitter timeline. This was initially triggered by a like when I started taking an interest in gender identity and transgender matters. I began screenshotting comments that interested me as a way of reminding myself what I might want to research later.

[01:11:58]
On one occasion, absent mindedly liked instead of screenshotting, that single like was deemed evidence of wrong think, and a persistent low level of harassment began. Months later, I compounded my accidental like crime by falling Magdalene Burns on Twitter. Magdalene was an immensely brave young feminist and lesbian who was dying of an aggressive brain tumor. I followed her because I wanted to contact her directly, which I succeeded in doing. However, as Magdalene was a great believer in the importance of biological sex and didn't believe lesbians should be called bigots for not dating transmit women with penis edits dots were joined in the heads of Twitter activists and the level of social media abuse increased.

[01:12:38]
Now, she goes on that's just the introductory paragraphs, just to kind of set the tone for you, but she goes on to list several issues that she finds alarming in modern day trends activism, including the target age ranges and groups for transitioning and how it affects women's rights overall. Now, she has not shied away ever since. She has been very outspoken about her beliefs. She's also been very clear about what she believes, what she supports, and she constantly retweets and shares articles that she feels are relevant to the public sphere. As a result, a lot of people in the public sphere, celebrities most notably, have come out against her.

[01:13:20]
I think the most notable ones are Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grinch, who are Harry Hermione and Ron in the Harry Potter movies. They have been extremely outspoken and vocal about basically condemning JK. Rowling. Ironically, even though she's the one that basically is the reason they have careers at all, many other celebrities as well have come out. Now, this stuff had gotten so bad that WB.

[01:13:46]
Warner Bros who actually has the rights for the Harry Potter series and distributes all the movies and television and all that stuff. They released a statement back in 2021 saying that they acknowledge that they bear some responsibility for her beliefs but that they will continue to foster and promote diverse and exclusive spaces in their company and their productions. Now, in relation to Hogwarts legacy, pretty early on in the production, both WB and Port Key Games, which is the development studio behind Hogwarts Legacy, have been saying that nonstop rolling is not involved with the making of this game whatsoever. However, she will still receive royalties because it is a Harry Potter thing distributed by WB. I think I previously had a conversation with someone where I misspoke she is getting royalties.

[01:14:38]
I thought she wasn't originally. So with this again, everyone is just kind of losing their minds over Hogwarts legacy and back in I think it was like August or September when some of the preorders launched for this game, the preorders for the Special Editions actually sold out in hours. Despite all of this controversy, I don't think JK. Rowling's views are out of the realm. I think what she believes in is, first of all, she has a right to believe with what she wants to believe.

[01:15:07]
I don't think anything she said is particularly harmful. In fact, most of the stuff that she retweets or writes about on her blog are very level headed and there are some issues that, as a woman, I agree with on her. I do agree with the fact that trans rights or this kind of radical trans movement is infringing on a lot of female rights and female spaces. I think the easiest one for us to see, the easiest one to see is sports, right? When you have things like Leah Thompson and how she had won all these medals.

[01:15:40]
And then even Woman of the Year is taken by trans men now, and Dylan Mulvaney, which is dylan Mulvaney is a weird one because his team is almost perverted in a way that he a lot of the people that she's speaking out against are people exactly like Dylan Waldani who take the most extreme circumstances of women, which is not all woman at all. Just they over sexualize certain things, and they act like this is how all women act. And that is not the case. As a matter of fact, it's a mockery. If you're sitting here saying we can't do blackface and they shouldn't be allowed to do basically pretend to be woman and do it in the matter that they are doing.

[01:16:21]
If you claim that you are trans and that you're a trans woman, that's fine, but don't make a mockery of woman in the process of doing. Mulvaney doesn't even say he's a woman. He says that he's a girl. He says girlhood, not womanhood in all of his things. This is why it feels perverted to me.

[01:16:38]
It's like he keeps referring to this little girls thing when I don't even want to get started on that. Because Dylan Mulvaney is just a can of worms in himself, right? I genuinely think that guy is a pervert. I really do. He is.

[01:16:51]
The way he refers to women well, let me rephrase it. I don't want to be disrespectful. No, that's a man. That's a man. There's no denying it.

[01:17:00]
I know. Well, here's what I'm going to say, all right? Remember I said I have a spicy take? Yes. So here's my spicy take about this.

[01:17:07]
Do I need milk this for you? You might.

[01:17:12]
This one's going to hurt them right in their sacrificial balls. Okay. All right. I am so tired of the trans community right now. I am not against trans people.

[01:17:21]
Matter of fact, I have several trans friends, but they are also not throwing their agenda their way. Now, I have trans women friends and trans men friends. I have quite a few of them. It's not like I go out of my way and find them. They transitioned after I knew, all right?

[01:17:36]
I call them pride, their preferred pronouns. That is perfectly fine because a guy turned into a girl wants to be referred to as a girl. Okay, fine. Okay, whatever. But here's my issue.

[01:17:45]
When you start telling people what is right and wrong, that goes right back to the whole free speech thing. It's really who's in power and all these other things. But the funny thing about it is, you saw what happened at JK. Rowling. She didn't say anything that controversial.

[01:18:01]
Everything got taken out of context. She got attacked by that community. You want to be treated fairly, yet you treat people unfairly who don't have the same opinion as you. But here's the kicker, all right? You guys and girls want to be treated as equals.

[01:18:16]
You want to be respected, and you want to be seen and heard of. Heard of. You know, you want people to treat you equally and believe in you. But here's the thing, all right? You want people to see you the way you see yourself and accept you for who you are, and you couldn't even accept yourself for who you are.

[01:18:35]
Think about this. You want people to accept you for your new identity when you couldn't even accept your old identity. Now, I'm not saying that you didn't accept your old identity. That's fine. But don't sit here and try to tell us how we could think when you yourself didn't know what to think of yourself, all right?

[01:18:55]
Don't sit here and tell me that I'm transphobic because I don't want to date a biological man. Don't sit here and tell my female friends that they are transphobic because they don't want to date a biological woman. Everyone has their preferences, except for when it comes to your community. And that is really sickening to me about how you could twist everything that's said about you or to you or anything. And there's been numerous examples of grooming.

[01:19:21]
There's been trans women who are performing sexually provocative acts in front of children and all these other things. And we're supposed to accept that? No. The trans people that I respect are those who don't push their agenda upon if they want to be referred to as male or female. I don't care.

[01:19:42]
What I care about is when you push your agenda onto the children and onto the way people think and onto the way people feel. And if they don't agree with you, all of a sudden, oh, you're transphobic. No. Go look up what phobic means. It means I have a fear.

[01:19:55]
I don't fear anyone. Just on a side note, I think my video froze on your end. Yeah, probably. Okay. No, I agree with some of the sentiments you have.

[01:20:04]
Honestly, I'm the same way. I have no issue with transgender people, gay people. I don't care what you are or what you identify as. I care about the type of person you are. I care about your moral values.

[01:20:17]
I care about your personal beliefs. Right, exactly. So what you look like or what you identify as at the end of the day has no huge bearing on me. My cat is chewing on my computer corner right now. That sounds about right.

[01:20:33]
But I do also recognize at the same time that there seems to be a really radicalized agenda that is trying to force women out of women only spaces, and I don't like that at all. For instance, I think it was Tampax a few weeks ago. They put out a tweet about how something about bleeding for everyone or whatever. It was supposed to be inclusive language, but even if you have the genital reassignment surgery and all that stuff, you don't have a functioning uterus that bleeds or ovulates. So I'm just logically speaking, as much as you want to imagine something, you can't imagine just menstruating once a month.

[01:21:18]
That's not how it works. Like, where are you putting in a tampon? Right. That's really weird to me that you would just kind of completely erase the fact that there are biological people that actually believe. On top of that, there's the whole woman's sports thing as well, in which biologically, again, like it's been said time and time again, they do have a physical advantage just based on their DNA.

[01:21:43]
Right. They have testosteroned. Do you know what title nine is? No. What's title?

[01:21:48]
Nine. Okay, so title nine happened in the US. Basically, what happened a long time ago. I don't remember the exact dates, nor do I remember what schools were involved, but there is some females in one of those colleges. It might have been one of the high schools.

[01:22:01]
Basically what happened is they're complaining because they didn't get fair equipment like the men did or anything else like that. So Title Nine basically allows everyone to have fair access to sports teams, all that other stuff, and their own league. So that's why we have all the women's leagues. We do. And as you were saying, there is a biological difference.

[01:22:21]
If there wasn't a difference between men and women, there would not be an MBA and a WNBA. It would just be the there wouldn't be a woman's soccer and a men's soccer. It would just be soccer or any other there is a biological difference, which is why every single time you see it's funny, leah Thomas I'm I'm glad you brought this person up. Leah Thomas wasn't even in the top ten in her own school. Transitions to a female.

[01:22:46]
Like, she she, when she was a male, literally was, like, top 200 in the world as a male, transitions to a female and wins a national title. And then there was a documentary where some of her teammates actually spoke out against her about how they weren't allowed to say certain things or they couldn't bring up certain things for the coach, even if it made them feel uncomfortable. And a lot of people tried to basically segregate them from classes and stuff because they felt uncomfortable by this man being around them. Here's the thing. If we have a Special Olympics, let's just create an Olympics for trans people, all right?

[01:23:25]
You want to even play? I agree. Just do something like that, all right? Because there's not going to be enough trans people in the world and stuff to do, like individual sports and colleges and all that other stuff. I get that.

[01:23:37]
However, if you want a sporting event and you want to represent the opposite of what you were born on, you need to do it in one of these, because biologically, especially if it's a man who transitions to a woman, you have such an unfair. Advantage if you went through puberty as a male. Unless you're getting into, like, gymnastics, then it's the opposite way around, right? That's why a lot of people seem to be, oh, you're transphobic, or you're supporting trans hate by buying Hogwarts legacy or retweeting things about it, or supporting the game, or if you even like Harry Potter. If we're applying the same logic to everything, then by all means, none of us should be Disney fans, right?

[01:24:19]
Given not only what Disney has historical ties to, but what they've been doing in recent years with their support of Chinese genocide against the Yogurt Muslims. We shouldn't be supporting Disney at all, right? If we're talking Apple, we shouldn't be using Apple products anymore because they support child slavery and labor to harvest all of the metals for their electronics. Like we said, for every fucking company. The double slave.

[01:24:46]
That's what I'm saying. And hypocrisy astounds and it's like, even I noticed just because we both originally found each other on Twitch, right? And we are from that community originally, like Twitch people are the worst for this. You guys are willingly putting all of your time and effort into a platform not only owned by a multibillionaire, but by a platform that supports destroying small individual businesses that is totally fine with stomping all over workers rights and fair wages and all this stuff. And suddenly you want to try and take the high ground and think that, oh no, they need to do better to support me as a content creator on their platform?

[01:25:27]
Are you fucking I know I've said it again, but just to no ends every day, I'm reminded that 95% of Twitch users and streamers are the absolute dumbest people in the world.

[01:25:44]
If there was just literally a place where you could put all of the people that didn't get special education training in school as adults, it would be Twitch. I'm not going to say names because I don't want people targeting this person, but I would say it again. You remember the female I interviewed that one time and stuff constantly makes posts about how she doesn't want to be sexualized or anything else, but then post a photo of her in, like, a bra. There was a full on nude that you posted one day. Yeah, a full on nude, by the way.

[01:26:18]
Here's a nude, here's a nude every single day to keep my engagement up. But God forbid you sexualize me. No, we're not going to say names, white beard, because we don't like people being targeted and stuff. But let's just say before I restarted up the creator spotlight, I had interviewed this person. And that interview, while it was my longest interview, several times I had to save the interview because they didn't like what I had to say.

[01:26:44]
Or just my personal favorite. You remember I told you about it and stuff, where I said, play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Oh, that's a sexist statement. It's targeted towards women. No, it's a statement that's been around longer than this feminazi movement.

[01:26:59]
Come on. Even as a female, I admit that I use my sexuality for certain things, and I have no problem with that. If I'm going to use my sexuality in a sexual way, of course I expect to be sexual. That's exactly what I'm projecting. Are you fucking kidding me?

[01:27:16]
But yes. No. So I'm going to just say clearly, since if you're on the fence about buying Hogwarts Legacy, but you also feel like you kind of agree with this whole hate against JK. Rowling for no reason, you are not a transphobe. You are not a homophobe or anything like that, if you decide to buy and play Hogwarts Legacy, you like what you like.

[01:27:38]
There's no shame in it. It looks like a positively amazing game. And I'm not even a Harry Potter fan. There's nothing wrong with supporting a game that you enjoy. This is the first game I have pre ordered, with the exception of Final Fantasy Seven remake.

[01:27:52]
Other than that but that was an exception to the rule. I mean, Final Fantasy Seven. They had it. But the remake we've been with you're a Final Fantasy nerd. Yeah, but other than that, this was the first launch preorder I have done in well over a decade.

[01:28:09]
I'm not even a big Harry Potter fan, all right? Like I was when I was a kid, but I haven't been as an adult. But this game just looks absolutely amazing. And again, like you were saying, you're not a transphob if you decide to play this game. If you don't want to play this game, don't play this game.

[01:28:24]
But if you want to play this game, don't let them trick you and try to say that you're transphobic because you want to play this game or anything else like that. Remember, it's all about the content of one's character. As Martin Luther King said, judge them on the content of their character, not the color of their skin, or in this case, at their trans sexual identity or their sexual identity. All right? Judge them by the content of the content of their character, not their sexuality.

[01:28:49]
I see you brought up the kid. Does he want to say anything? Do you want to say anything? No, he doesn't want to say anything. Okay.

[01:28:55]
White Bear this isn't even this game's. Final form for those who are listening later and stuff. White Bear and the chat says it looks pretty great. Sad it took this many years to introduce this form of it. This isn't even the final form.

[01:29:11]
He also said it's kind of like the online Pokemon stuff. You know how much I would have loved even a 2D version back in the day? I know, right? There you go. This whole JK Rowling stuff is really stupid.

[01:29:22]
People just want to be upset for the sake of being upset, and they like to take things out of context to support that mindset. Essentially, people just like to be professional complainers. That too. Right. But like hashtag, I stand with JK.

[01:29:36]
Rowling. I'm sorry. I agree with her on a lot of what she has to say. And again, I don't even like Harry Potter. I recognize exactly what she's talking about, what she supports, and I agree with her in a lot of respects to it.

[01:29:46]
And I say that as someone, too, that has no issues with the trends or LGBT community. Again, you can be whatever you want, do whatever you want, but acknowledge that there is a radical part of your movement which doesn't serve the best interests of everyone involved. Exactly. Matter of fact, I don't know if you remember do you remember JB Techs? No, sorry.

[01:30:05]
Any bells? Never mind. Was part of the team we used to be on JB Tech. That's fine if you don't remember it. Also, she is now a he.

[01:30:17]
She transitioned and now he's happy. And I'm happy for but it goes back to what I was saying. It's about content of the care. Stop sitting here making something out of absolute. I swear, these people, this is how, you know, we live in a first world when first world problems are really nothing.

[01:30:35]
You're just making a mountain out of the molehill. When you start making up problems, that's how you know we have no problems. Exactly. I feel like as a society, we have gotten to a point where I mean, obviously there's issues lately with we're seeing what the W EF and everything else has to do, but as far as a lot of these movements, they've gotten to the point where there's nothing left to complain about. So they just make things up to complain.

[01:30:59]
Because if they don't make a complaint about something, people forget who they are. I can't believe I just said that. I know. You better start complaining right there. Better put the tweets out.

[01:31:13]
All right. Yeah. That's all we have for the Hogwarts legacy stuff. So I hope that kind of gives you some background and perspective as to why this is a thing that has just regularly comes up once a month all over all social media. Here is the context to it.

[01:31:27]
So now you can make your own opinion. Right? So to conclude our show tonight, I have some sad news and then some weird news. We'll start with the sad news. The Pokemon, the Pokemon company announced on Friday, December 16, that it will air the final eleven episodes of Ash and Pikachu's Journey before beginning a new chapter in the long running series.

[01:31:52]
I will say Mikey predicted this. Predicted what? That Ash's journey was going to come to an end and there's going to be a new well, this kid's been ten years old for 30 years. Of course. No, here's the thing.

[01:32:04]
When Ash won the title, we were debating what we thought was going to happen. So he said that it was going to be a new journey, and I said, yeah, but they also might be tired. It's been 25 years, so I'm like, for Pokemon sake. I mean, Japan doesn't fall under this woke nonsense or anything else like that. They're pretty stable, so they can get a new writer to do things.

[01:32:26]
So I was like, I told him I could see them going either way. Either they start a new journey with a new character, or they just end it. It's been 25 years. I'm happy for them that they're continuing and stuff, but it would have been perfectly fine if they decided to end it as well. But for me, once I saw them win the championship, I'm like, I felt like they were done.

[01:32:44]
And Mike is like, Nah, I think they're going to create a new journey, which is exactly what's going on. So if you haven't caught it yet, we also have a weekly anime recap every Tuesday on Twitch at 02:00 p.m. Eastern. There you go. So this final arc of the anime will begin on January 13 in the new year, and then the new show will actually take place in the Paladia I don't know if I pronounce that right region that was introduced in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, which just launched last month and will feature protagonists Riku and Roy.

[01:33:11]
It's currently unknown when these episodes will air outside of Japan, but yeah, for those who just don't recall or maybe weren't around for it, the Pokemon anime first debuted back in 1997 in Japan and then 1998 in the US.

[01:33:27]
As of 2022, Ash and Pikachu have appeared in almost 1300 episodes, while other protagonists have been featured in Spinoffs. This marks the end of the continuous storyline that will be well over 25 years old when it concludes next year. So, sad news? A little bit, but we'll still get Pokemon games. This is the good news.

[01:33:47]
And then it's a weird news. I also hope you enjoy this Pokemon Yellow game play in the background. Making me feel kind of nostalgic seeing that news. I feel like downloading an emulator on my galaxy. I bought a used Game Boy Advance off of Ebay several years ago, specifically so I could play the older Pokemon game.

[01:34:08]
Understand, I have them all in the box. But the question is, do you have a link cable? I don't. I don't have anyone to link to, so what's the point, right? Can we get a link cable that goes from you to me?

[01:34:20]
Should I be a disinfection? But I think we could find a cable long enough. Yeah, there's probably something, at least on Amazon.

[01:34:29]
I found this article off of Kotaku. I mean, it's no surprise. First of all, I found it on Kotaku. If you are for, what about here? So I'm just going to read chunks from this article because there's really no way I could have worded this any better?

[01:34:44]
I'm no stranger to the intricacies of video game porn. I see it all the time when I'm running gaming searches on social media. Yet Pornhub's year interview list revealing the most searched games on the platform in 2022 has got me reconsidering everything that I know about gaming. Porn overwatch, I expect and understand, but Minecraft, who's trying to get off to among us cubhead, apparently the answer is a lot of you. So in this top 20 list of games that were searched on Pornhub, the top six were Fortnite, Overwatch, Genshin Impact, Minecraft, Pokemon, Cyberpunk.

[01:35:20]
Some other notable mentions were Splatoon, Roblox Cuphead and GTA Five. As I continue, pornhub has also shared a list of the most searched game characters on its platform. We've previously reported about diva rising to the top of the porn searches upon overwatch two's release. The second most popular character search is Jenny Mod, a Minecraft mod that allows players to have an in game girlfriend who will have sex with their character. Widowmaker comes in third.

[01:35:45]
Then Resident Evil's, Lady Demystriku. But of course, there's a vast difference between what users will search on a porn site versus what people might be willing to make, especially when animating sex scenes presumably take a lot more time than shooting one with real actors. Cuphead only has one page of Porn results, while Mass Effect has 17 pages. Despite its lower ranking, there's a real undeserved market for Cuphead porn, and I hope the NSFW artists rise to the challenge.

[01:36:17]
I mean, to be fair, deeper to be thick, somebody wrote this. I didn't summarize any of this. Somebody decided it was okay to write and publish this on Kotaku. To be fair, I get the answer. I can even get the Pokemon.

[01:36:35]
As long as we're not talking about the actual animals, they'll make adult versions of the characters. Does that make sense? Cyberpunk, I definitely get all right, let me just put it like this. I've got a thing. I got a thing for Jade Alvarez.

[01:36:51]
But come on, like Roblox cuphead splatoon minecraft. Come on, cuphead man. Cuphead Born. That's the one I really can't get. They're cups.

[01:37:03]
They're cups that give flowers. They're cups that give you head. Cup head. That one I really can't because even the Pokemon one is very disturbing because that's just a whole furry rabbit hole, in my opinion. But like I said, it depends on which way they do it.

[01:37:18]
If they're doing it with the animals, I don't understand that at all. However, when they make adult versions of the actual characters and stuff, sometimes I haven't seen the porn and stuff, but I've seen people draw certain characters in the anime, like NSFW versions. Well, not even NSFW. They'll just make them like thick and adult with, like, normal clothes and it's like, goddamn, as an adult, that person looks good. But let's be real.

[01:37:47]
At the same time, we were also idealizing a child and what they might potentially look like, which is also kind of weird. Very weird. I saw a picture earlier and I'm like, damn, that picture looks good. Who is it? And then I found out later that, no, this is just like what someone drew is the adult version of a child.

[01:38:04]
And I'm like, Wait, what? That doesn't make sense to me. Oh, my God. White bear said cups. You fill me up.

[01:38:10]
Morning. I'm hot. Jesus Christ. People are sick. People are sick.

[01:38:15]
First of all, second of all, I'm going to King Shame totally on this. Okay? Anyone who's jerking off to roblox porn, you're weird. Second of all, it's how this article opens. I am no stranger to the intricacies of video game porn.

[01:38:31]
You know what? As much as we hate on Kotaku here, I hope they never change because the garbage that they produce is comedy gold. Yeah, it's comedy gold and it's an entertainment gold mine. So, Kotaku, I genuinely hope you never change just for those reasons. But yes, I'm at a loss.

[01:38:53]
I generally hope they never change and never expire just due to the fact that I can always make fun of them because they're just propagandists. And we know this, but at the same time, I kind of wish they were gone. Exactly. So, yeah, on that note, we're going to leave you thinking about video game porn for the rest of your Sunday night or whenever you're listening to this. I've got no announcements.

[01:39:16]
We'll be back. Well, we're still doing an episode next Sunday, even though it's Christmas, right? Yeah. All right. Yeah.

[01:39:22]
So we will still be here on Christmas Day. I think we're just going to be if there isn't any big news, for those of you who need a pickup line for Christmas and stuff, for the guys out there and stuff. Got you right here. Who's your pickup line to use for Christmas this season? Walk up to our girl and be like, hey, girl, if you jingle my balls, I'll give you a white Christmas.

[01:39:41]
So if there isn't any big news for next week, what I've been compiling has kind of just been like the biggest news of 2022, like gaming news of 2022. So I think that will likely take the focus for our show next week just because there was a lot that got revealed this year, especially since now this year we've seen most of the COVID restrictions lift across much of the world, and the gaming industry is kind of caught up after basically two years of delay. Right? So we got a lot of good gaming news throughout 2022. So we're going to be doing a recap of all of that on next week's show as a Christmas gift to all you guys.

[01:40:21]
And as lamb, as he mentioned, there is the anime recap that's happening Tuesday at 02:00 p.m. Eastern time. Over on our twitch channel. It's twitch tvalamancy show. And then that's also usually uploaded a couple of days afterwards to our spotify and stuff, if that's where you listen to us.

[01:40:39]
You can also go check out my High on Life review, which is on our website, www. Dot the The Lambency Showshow.com. It's under the Articles tab. If you're interested in seeing just from an unbiased perspective, if you want to just take a look at what that game is like, it's there for you to read. I definitely do encourage you guys to give it a fair shot because it's definitely a lot of fun.

[01:41:02]
But I've got I've got a nice reminder. On the 27th, we are interviewing Copa copa Katana. So you know, that's going to be interesting. He really brings the heat, the spice, the flavor, the passion into everything he does. So we're looking and what does Copa do?

[01:41:18]
Who is copa. I mean, from what we hear and stuff, he just got out of the Copa Catanya, where music and passion is always in fashion. Copa is a movie and TV enthusiast. He's got a YouTube channel where he posts reviews. He's also now a published author.

[01:41:33]
He used to work in Hollywood as a screenwriter, if I'm not mistaken. I believe he's got a lot of ball goodness. As Cannoli has said there in the chat. I actually bought his book. Hold on.

[01:41:47]
I bought his book. Here it is. I think the latest book I bought was Johnny the Walrus by Matt Walsh. I'm going to be reading his book, though, over the holiday break because right now I'm reading The Great Gatsby to put together a novel study for some kids. So after I finish that, this is on my to read list.

[01:42:05]
Yeah, that's all. If you want to catch me, I will be on the Mischief Mayhem Movie podcast over at Canole Sasquatch productions on YouTube tomorrow night, Monday at 09:00 p.m Eastern Standard, 07:00 p.m Mountain Time. Because they're on Mountain Time. So if you want to catch our review of Die Hard as well as a deep dive into some of the movie news that we got over the past last week, you can catch me there. Right?

[01:42:32]
With that being said, that is going to be the end of this podcast. We hope you guys enjoyed this podcast and we hope you guys enjoy the brand new end of stream music as well. And until next time, enjoy yourself.