The Besties - 2019 Recap Special

Episode Date: December 27, 2019

The Besties bid farewell to 2019 with the highs and lows of some of the biggest trends of the year. NOTE: This will be the last full episode on the wide feed. Starting on January 3, 2020, The Besties weekly can only be found on Spotify. Follow and listen for free! Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

2019 has been weird. It's been a weird year, hasn't it? Yes. I don't see how, man. Man, fucking video games at the beginning were one thing, and now they're just like streamed in your web browser to your phone where you can play the latest games? When I was in Japan for my honeymoon,

here I go again. I was at a shopping pavilion, and I peed on a video game in a toilet. So 2019, hey, guess what? You're not there yet. I don't know what year that was in, but 2019 is like, oh, we're at Microsoft streaming shit onto a Sony phone. And it's like, I peed on a game. Like, it doesn't matter yet.

I'm trying to translate what you just said. You went to Japan. Yes. You put a video game in a toilet and you i didn't put it there i didn't put it there i didn't put it there i don't know man but you put hideo kojima's metal gear solid 4 no there was like a special p controller that i blasted and it made mario jump or whatever but anyway i don't care that Stadia is whatever, man. Pee on a video game. 2020. Pee on games. My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best year of the year.

My name is Griffin McElroy, and this was not that. My name is Chris Plant. When are we? My name is Russ Froschig, and I know the best game of the week. Welcome to The Besties, a game of the year show that's kind of like a book club and has why varied wildly in format since it's began its new iteration we're going to settle into a groove here real soon as long as soon as the games return to us but for now we are uh going to talk about 2019 holistically speaking. The best moments, the worst moments. What do we love?

What do we hate? What are we? Where are we milk toast on? No, that doesn't make the cut. Strong feelings only. I do want to mention we did spend two full episodes talking about the video games that we love and or hate. Mostly that we love and or hate, mostly that we love. So this is more about sort of like trends and themes and common occurrences than it is like, hey, Sekiro let you cut guys.

And it did. It did let you cut guys. Actually, that is my first topic, is Sekiro let you cut guys. This is less a discussion of the game and its merits, but a discussion about this was a game that did let you cut guys, and his sword was pretty big.

Yeah, could have been bigger. So that was my big moment of 2019. Okay, who wants to start? Russell? I suppose I'll start. So when we started this year, there was a phenomenon. I guess 2018 was the year of the Battle Royale. It sort of became a thing, like a big deal in 2018. And we played a lot of PUBG, and we all had a good time and it was lovely.

And 2019 has been weird because it started in this like state where, uh, apex legends came out like out of nowhere. And then Fortnite did all sorts of crazy stuff, but I'm like, I can't do them anymore because I'm bad. And I don't know what to do. So just, we're kicking things off with Russ saying,

a lot of shit happened with Battle Royale, gang. I don't know. I got bad at them. I mean, I did. I got really bad at them. Okay. I was pretty bad before, but now it's like. Question for you.

Is the trend that you're describing that a lot of Battle Royale games came out this year, or is the trend that you got old that a lot of battle royale games came out this year or is the trend that you got old and now you're not good at video games i mean it's a little bit of column a little bit of column b i would also have like eternal trend the trend the one way forever trend wrestle it's more that like okay so like apex was really the like one main big new battle royale that came out that like landed. But since then, I feel like there's been like a push away from the genre. I don't know.

Am I crazy? I don't think a push away is a fair way of categorizing it. Because first of all, like I don't think anybody sitting here really even has like a like comprehensive understanding of the actual scope of fortnight let alone pubg like pubg is still like pubg but pubg is still like the bigger one in terms of like mobile and international markets so like you know i i think that it was uh a a mainstream hit genre in a way that few things have been in a long time and maybe that that has died down just a little bit but that's not to say that like fortnite shutting down for a week or whatever while they released fortnite 2.0 and having an in fiction end of the world catastrophe like that's they did so much super fascinating stuff this year i feel like it's gonna be in that category though like this whole genre is moving

over to a like i will enjoy it from afar you know know, I dipped into Apex and everybody got good at that a lot quicker than they did at PUBG, I think. And I think the challenge, the hurdle for Battle Royale games going forward is I think that it's going to the vocabulary of play for these games has or the meta maybe I should say of of the Battle Royale game is has advanced enough to i think that that fall off for casual players is going to get quicker and quicker like i feel like there's so much meta around battle royale games that like it's going to be harder and harder to get like people who don't obsessively play them into the into the ecosystem pseudo counterpoint i think that's true for like apex legends in pub g right but i i feel like uh fortnight's method is just to be

trends the video game that it's the gameplay meta has almost in a way fallen off and now they're like i don't know it's marvel week baby thanos is here oh do you know what time it is star wars time jj is here jj tell us about star wars i mean the beginning of the new star wars uh the very first words in it and the title crawl, which I won't spoil on the off chance somebody hasn't seen it yet, are a reference to a thing that only happens in Fortnite. That's that's bonkers and has nothing to do with the video game now. And I think like that is what Fortnite is like. It's left the battle royale genre. And it's like, I don't know know we're just a place where like millions of teenagers congregate to find out what insert character has to say in the next disney movie the space war is getting really bad blunt rap 69 lowers his nutsack onto his defeated opponent's grill uh justin speaking of we're all old people who uh can't hang with relevant genres anymore do you want to talk about your sort of yeah i want to get into um sort of the auto chess auto battlers that whole genre yeah get into it baby get into it let's hear what you got to say i feel like we shouldn't have bookended these russ i thought that you'd be coming from a position of more authority y'all I've tried on

this one I don't know can't get can't think I've looked at video I have listened to podcasts I have read things about the auto chess genre and friends I'm here to tell you I think it's a prank on the old I think auto chess is a prank on the old like we we'll nod knowingly. Uh-huh, uh-huh. Chess. Yeah, automatic chess. I got it. I'm with it, kids. And now let me just fire it up.

And it's not a real program. It's like the reverse of Frog Fractions. It like looks like a real game, but it's not actually playable in any conceivable fashion. It's wild to me that it didn't click with you, no pun intended, because of your love for the clicker genre. Doesn't it kind of seem like a clickerer a competitive clicker roguelike has no i would have no way of

no you know what i feel like i'm not going to be able to get into new genres that are multiplayer focused if there was a a sort of a single player lore heavy totally different game yeah completely different game thank you of course uh maybe that would be the one but i guess this is just my confession like i don't know how to get i they look they look great they look so good the things are happening all over do you guys have any more insight into this than i do so it's not just like the old man show well i do know that like so auto chess came out and that was like the first one of these. And it was a mod for Dota and it launched. And then Riot, who makes League of Legends, as well as billions of dollars, was like, hmm, something going on here.

And basically made one that was like dramatically more accessible than auto chess and kind of crushed auto chess into dirt, which is a problem for them and i don't know how they're going to sort of bounce back from that so now you really just have dota underlords isn't out on wait which is the one that is out on uh oh the underlords is out on ios right and technically so is auto chess but i do feel like i don't think teamfight tactics is though at this point but it does feel like um riot and valve sort of like look at this idea. No, it's not. Team Fight Packers is not. But it does feel like Riot and Valve sort of like looked at this idea and they were like, hey, we can do this better

and sort of like dominated. It is sort of like the PUBG situation with Fortnite where they just sort of dominated the current competition. Interestingly, Russ, your contribution seems to be more of a survey

or perhaps a history without explaining to me what the fuck the game is, eh? Oh, yeah. So the issue with that is I have no fucking idea. Plant, this is the first year I have not, well, not the first year, because I didn't, it's been a couple years since I've been to E3. The last one I went to was, I think, 2016?

We didn't have our finger necessarily completely on the pulse this year, but just sort of like, you know, quick look at it. It seemed like it really kicked ass this year. From what I heard, checking tweets and like everybody came out of it saying, hey guys, I had a kick-ass year. See you 2020. Have a great rest of your summer. Is it done or is this an inhale? I feel bad saying

it's dead. You know, like y'all like football, right? With the Tom Brady where people try to count out touchdown Tom and then he throws the touchdowns in the final two minutes and then he's back, baby. That's how I feel with E3. It's died before. It's been in high schools.

They're just like not happened. And then it like roars back and suddenly Los Angeles is taken over downtown. So I don't want to say it's dead. It had a lot of people there. But I would say E3 has three people that needs to serve, right? It has to serve fans. Well, listen, if they only got to get three people there. But I would say E3 has three people that it needs to serve, right? It has to serve fans. Well, listen, if they only got to get three people there, I think that they're fine.

It has to serve Justin. It has to serve the fans, the press. Stupid, stupid Louie, the YouTuber. The fans, the press, and like GameSpot. That's right, right? The people who buy and sell the games. Stop. I can't believe you've messed that up.

Oh my gosh, thank you. You've been a professional in this industry for five decades. Retail, press, fans. Yes. And it's not good at any of those now. For the press, the idea was back in the day, like 20 years ago, to get the New York Times and Washington Post to ever write about games. It was like, okay, we all got to come together and do one big event and then maybe we get a paragraph

on like the fourth page of the art section and now like you don't have to do that um for like retail I mean GameStop's not like in the in the best spot in the world and there are plenty of other events and for fans you have things like nintendo direct yeah twist for those listening at home who don't keep up they have never cared if the polygons and joysticks and katakus and igns of the world were there they couldn't give a shit no not at all so they're they're not really like serving anybody and i think the idea now is like well if if this entire model doesn't work we'll just do fan events but the problem is they're not packs like packs has right any arcade expo has such a leg up on them um and they're not willing to commit all the way and then on top of that the esa like the company that runs it just they're not they've fallen the fuck apart man

yeah they like have humored meetings with trump over violent video games they did not put all of the personal information for people who registered for E3 as press or influencers behind any security. So that document just leaked, which let me tell you is great for people's safety in the video game community. They're just kind of the pits. And it seems like even without all of the mistakes they're making that everybody's kind of piecing ea build like a while ago activision shows up sometimes microsoft literally just owns a theater in the complex so they're like why would we possibly pay you to show up the fact that microsoft flex nuts at the game awards not at e3 i think tells a lot and listen the video game

awards are filling in a lot of like what that used to be like there were more announcements like 100 more announcements in the vgas this year than in e3 right i don't i wouldn't go that far um but it was it was competitive in a way that it has certainly never ever been i i i am looking forward to e3 2020 i think this was a you know this was a rough year for all of the bad terrible managerial mistakes that were made this year. But also just like it's that perfect storm of last year before ostensibly a new console generation rolls around. So, of course, it's going to be like the slowest. Yeah. I also just think, though, like at the end of the day, Apple has proven over the past decade and change that why participate in these events when you can just own your own event and have like, yeah, and completely control it.

That makes so much more sense i want to talk about nintendo uh my friend uh uncle nintendo i have uh two uncles who work there they made mario and yoshi and uh what they've been up to this year delighting all of us with that uh switch light uh here's a confession i just switched back to my switch thick why well uh well because it's i was playing some uh some stuff with henry and not being able to like plug it into the tv was detrimental to that not being able to like take this just slide the joy cons out and be able to play two players was kind of a pain in the ass um but the switch light i like a lot i think that was cool i think that was smart i think

introducing that earlier in the console cycle that like 2ds style uh more budget more durable sort of uh model is really neat uh i think nintendo put out a lot of really great stuff this year a lot of like surprising stuff uh i think the recent like update to mario maker 2 is really cool but uh what was disheartening for for me a little bit i know we're coming off as like super negative like there really was a lot of good nintendo stuff it just really boggles my mind how much uh ball dropping vis-a-vis online stuff is still going on uh it's it's it's kind of wild to me the mario maker 2 online experience was like that is maybe the hardest whiplash from being like psyched out of my mind for a game feature to like oh no this isn't good at all uh because the lag was super super bad uh it was

kind of tough to find like uh creators that were on your friends list like the entire system is still like so arcane and i keep waiting for like a the big firmware update which i saw somebody online point out like hasn't happened yet well I don't know this console's been up for what a year and a half almost two years now when did it come out early 2017 I want to say with new consoles coming out next year like I know that Nintendo is not exactly like participating in the exact same

space but like I'm Charlie Brown with the football right now like surely at some point it's just like none of these games are have been good about implementing online like it's not the fact that it is the back end in the like that there is still friend codes shit like that that back end ain't great like that's not a very good back end i don't know i i this is a this is a hyper specific one i think when we came up with

these topics it was uh it was a little bit ago. And this was when I was really mad about Mario Maker 2 not having super great online functionality. But Mario Maker 1 also had a website that you could post your link, link your level codes to and save them for later. There was a bunch of cool stuff there that was kind of... I think, though, it's notable in the context of Mario Maker 2 because it sounds like, from what I've heard from people, the poor online implementation is what sunk that game and why a lot of people like do not care about it sunk is i mean the people who are still like super into that experience are into it i think that mario maker 2 like hasn't had the longevity certainly for me even though i think it's a way better game uh i think it is because like uh i it was just a little bit too tough for me to find

levels from like people i know and people i follow bit too tough for me to find levels from like people i know and people i follow online uh and like that's the kind of stuff it feels like it's just constant and uh there's stuff that i'm really excited about next year like especially animal crossing where like i don't want anything to like get in the way of me and tom nook uh forming a new relationship well something is going to get in the way of this show, though. It's a commercial break. You don't like it when you frame it like that. Oh, really? That's weird. Well, it's my show.

They can come on this show and talk about fucking Mario's hat or whatever we do here if they don't like the way I do things. Russ, you're wearing massive goggles and you're holding what appears to be a katana. If you could come back to us in the real world. And, okay. He's unhooking from.

He just stabbed a whale with his katana. He's getting off his treadmill. Okay. Come on down here. He's unplugging some sort of like jelly hoses from his torso. Okay, Russ. I'm okay. He's completely nude and slippery like an eel well at least that's back

to normal okay uh i wanted to talk a little bit about virtual reality my new passion that lasted for easily 12 hours one day in march this year let's switch topics because i like virtual reality you guys should defend virtual reality and honestly i had a really good time in virtual reality. And I'm just going to keep saying virtual reality because I think gravity is stupid. I really genuinely had a blast with the Oculus Quest, which was the virtual reality headset that came out this year and was fully wireless. And all the games are like baked into the actual headset. And you could sort of mark your your territory as it were with a

virtual wand uh and it made playing vr games like really really easy and fun and quick and i was like damn this is fun this is exactly what i needed from vr like i don't the biggest detractor for v from vr is the like to do required to set it up and wires and batteries and everything um i guess this one does have batteries, but certainly wires. And this eliminated all that. So I was like super jazzed. And we had an Oculus Quest in the office and I borrowed it over like a long weekend. And I played probably like maybe four hours in total and like had a really, really good

time and then had zero desire to ever put one on again. Because I think even though it is like smooth and easy to use put one on again because I think even though it is smooth and easy to use and all that stuff, I think my brain just can't handle it. It's just too much. Your brain can't handle fucking anything, Russ. You think that's it? You're weird, busted up brain.

You can't play a Game Boy Color without yartzing all over the place because you're like, the color is too, I like the old gray and green shade. That was my favorite. I've heard from several people now, I've not fooled around with a quest myself, but I've heard from a lot of people like, this is the easiest way

to get a decent experience. Yes. One problem. Griffin was very kind and he gave me a quest. And I was like, this is great. I have the old Oculus, and I tried to play it in my office, and I couldn't.

There's just not enough space. So I was like, I know what I'll do. I'll get a quest. I'll go outside where there's all the space in the world, and I'll play the quest. In the street. Put the quest on in my backyard like a responsible human being,

and the very first thing it tells me is do not play this outside. As if a low-flying plane is going to scoop by and suck me into its engine if I'm not paying attention. Now, Plant, you're a smart guy. You know that there's literally a billion other reasons why.

There's probably more reasons. That's where Dogs is. That's where Dogs is. That is where Dogs is. Wild Mad Dogs lives in there. We also do have possums oh yeah a side note but a possum died in our front yard a couple weeks ago and you know what happens in texas when that happens nothing a dozen vultures and then all your old neighbors

come out and they go what died and you say possum and they say yep makes sense vultures as if it's just a thing you should all know wait did you break the rules and do it anyway of course they did i think i think okay so here's what here's what i was trying to get to it seems to me and tell me if this read is right that even with all the a lot of the um rough edges sanded off of the vr experience it seems like and this is why i think the what vr has the beginning is a, I'm going to say killer app and don't leap in to defend, because I know there have been a lot of good VR experiences. But by killer app, I mean something that is meaty and large in scale, and you want to continue to play for a very long time. And it seems like the problem is, as immersive as VR is,

the comfort is still not there to where you want to do it for hours on end. So you can't have that immersive experience, even though it is more immersive, you can't have the kind of lose-yourself experience because it is not something that you want to do in perpetuity. I mean, physically speaking, I guess. Yeah, exactly. self-experience because it is not something that you want to do in perpetuity i mean physically speaking like yes yeah sure right i i the the hardest i ever got into a game was that echo lone echo game which is still like probably my favorite vr game i've ever played it was like

that narrative you're in a spaceship and you just have to like push yourself off the walls god it was so so so good but i would play it for long extended periods of time and because i was like really really into it i would take the headset off and be like sweating because you know keeping a screen strapped to your face for two and a half hours is like not great for you quest i think ameliorates a lot of that because it is the most comfortable headset that uh is out there but in terms of it being a killer app like that it is not that term doesn't just mean like a good engrossing game it means a game that makes everyone want to own yeah that right piece of hardware like halo was a killer app for the xbox because people saw that and said well i can't not have an xbox and not play halo

and so far i would argue the closest thing we have for that for vr is like beat saber or super or those super hot is out on other stuff right super hot is is you can play on other platforms it is best on vr of course um the thing that you got like the star wars like narrative games those are all right but they are the thing that you know uh oculus is pushing pretty hard is like the big thing i think i love vr i think it's cool and i have had a hell of a time this year like watching it in its nascency like watching game developers figure out how to make common video game functions work in a vr space that stuff's really interesting to me but i'm in like an early adopter of nerd shit like that i think what it's going to take is legitimately some oasis shit like it is going to be

if not facebook horizon think about if facebook horizon turns out which is like their online social vr space like if that that could be really fucking cool if they if they if it is good and not like aspects of it but yeah yeah well you can't fucking ignore the dystopian aspects of it if you put on a vr headset you're not allowed to ignore the dystopian aspects of fucking anything i'm saying like facebook horizon has a chance to like if not that something like that is going to be what what about half pushes people into it i mean gamers that that's me push some more gamers into the mix but like i don't i think that's what it needs right now i mean absolutely an influx of hey listen we got so much to cover griffin uh you it says here in your contract that you get to talk about this too first i get to talk about

destiny too for i mean it was a weird year for destiny too it was a weird year for all uh like live service games sort of in general but destiny 2 is probably the one i played the most of uh in general this year they broke up with activision which is wild bungie took the reins of their game back from activision which is like we could spend a whole episode talking about that that's quite strange hey activision what you got going on over there now because it was destiny and call of duty and i don't know tony hawk six at some point and i guess in activision's defense i guarantee they looked at the numbers and they were like well it's making this much money and that is expensive so we should do other things like like all of blizzard there has been uh yeah there's been like a a significant i would say like tonal change since they they went not independent

but you know what i mean it's but i guess independent they broke up with activision uh the game has like changed pretty dramatically and it has been really neat like watching this huge huge huge game arguably one of the biggest games out right now sort of take a a major big big big swing uh after breaking up with its longtime business what do you mean total change i mean like the way that they are handling seasons now is different the uh just the sheer volume of shit that they changed, uh, in like strategically how they roll out content, essentially strategically how they roll out content,

how they do battle. But I, it, this is like the big conversation for like a, a live services game, especially one that is sort of MMO ish. Like destiny is like, how do you put out new content?

Especially if there's not a subscription fee, right? Like old school MMOs had that figured out. You pay for the new content by having a subscription fee. Destiny has never had that, right? And so how do you keep putting stuff out and getting people to come back and play? They've never been good about that. I've come back and played every Destiny expansion or update or season or whatever, played it for two or three days until I finished the story shit and then bounced.

or whatever, played it for two or three days until I finished the story shit and then bounced. But this was the season, starting with Season of Opulence, which I think was the last season they did with Activision. Whatever they're called. The last three seasons have been pretty good. I've only just started to dip my toes into the most recent release, but I feel like Destiny

really figured out its pacing and its stride this year, which, I don't know, man. I've watched a lot of other games sort of shit the bed like i've played an incalculable amount of world of warcraft and just like they lost it and destiny destiny kind of found it yeah that expansion was bad and it came up against shadow bringers which i still wish we could just do an episode about but i guess not it's never gonna happen for me probably not i'd like to talk about apple arcade for a second because that was a big thing in 2019 and i will admit to

being and i i would actually like to hear your guys thoughts because i'm i'm i feel like i'm mixed okay so in the beginning if you're too young to remember in the beginning uh the way games would tend to go viral on the app store and that is how discoverability largely worked uh everybody would start talking about something and then everybody would play it for a while and then they'd move on to the new thing and that was the way it worked for a while and then uh the it got so big and some other uh different things happened there started to be more of a focus on microtransactions and pay to win kind of stuff and it became harder for games to go viral like that. Also because it was very diverse and there was, uh,

things didn't get the sort of mass heat, uh, that they, they used to. And then Apple arcade came along and it was suddenly like B you're being surfaced for a very reasonable fee being surfaced. A lot of games, uh,

that had sort of like, you would assume past some sort of smell test that Apple had said, this is good. You'll like this. We've sorted through some of the cruft, which to me was the actual value of it, because I'm not like buying a ton of games on iOS anyway. Like the value was less the monetary and more like time saved. And at the start, I would say there's like a lot of stuff that I was very into and seemed very worthwhile.

I would say that the problem that I have run into is that since... It's twofold. One is that since they don't have 100 games all at once anymore, the hit rate for me has gone down considerably since the service launched. It is much more rare that I find something on there that I'm like desperate to play. I think that's problem one. Problem two is that it's still just a tab in the app store. I think it should be its own app. I think they should break it out into something that is easier to separate.

Why does that matter to you? One, I think it makes it harder to separate things and sort through things. As they get new games in there, it is harder to find the kind of stuff that you would actually want. It also keeps it from being top of mind because it's buried there in the app store. So I think it's a meaningful difference. The third thing I would say, though, is that a lot of games that were in that old model of the microtransactions i should i shouldn't say old model it's still the the main model for most ios games they are designed to keep you playing they are designed to be a little bit uh hookier i would think because they desperately

need you to keep playing them and that can be a little predatory sometimes but it's also something i miss right in a lot of these games it's kind of like take them or leave them like it it's also something I miss. Right. In a lot of these games, it's kind of like take them or leave them. Like, it's fun, but it doesn't have this sort of, like, addictive nature that a lot of these other ones do. Even though they were, like, designed specifically with, like, you had to buy turns to beat a level. Well, no, like, the game I've played most is, and this is probably true for you too, Russ, is Fire Emblem Heroes, right? And it's a gachapon style game, and I get and I get it, but it's also a great game. It just has all of these long tail hooks and all these microtransaction things. Same for, oh God, all the Super Stickman golf games, the golf blitz. I played a lot of that game, but that type of game I don't think works on Apple Arcade because of the way... Well, it's a free to play game.

No, but the original Super Sticker. Sure, sure, sure. But those, I'm talking about like, Justin has just brought up something, which is like, I can't understand why I have not really clicked with Apple Arcade. And it's because all of the games I've ever really loved on iOS

were games that had like run an okay balance of, hey, it's free to play and there's microtransactions, but we're going to put content out for it like forever. so you didn't get into like grindstone or card of darkness or i got into grindstone card of darkness i hit a wall with grindstone was very good that was one of the original ones where i was like okay this is excellent um i think i think that one got a little too uh tough as well uh for for just it wasn't as accessible can i say something else that really bothers me about up arcade there is a like i know it's short but whenever you start an apple arcade game there is an apple arcade card that has to pop up and it's such a fundamental

misunderstanding of how i yes of like how i'm using ios for gaming like there's a lot of the apple arcade games actually that are a little indulgent with that like they hey listen if you don't need to get in and uh buy loot boxes we're gonna go ahead and show you some a few logos if that's okay every time you start the game you actually just reminded me to unsubscribe which i did while you're talking damn through this that's ice cold dude but no i i think the thing i never really thought about this why i don't unsubscribe from say like hulu even if i go a month without uh watching anything on it but hulu it's like i don't know maybe there'll be something here and there that's a half hour that i'll enjoy um but once i've played the games that i want to play on on one of these services and there's nothing else

i don't need to be a subscriber to it until something new pops um and like yeah i got my worth out of grindstone in card of darkness now i'm done so why would i keep paying for it now plan only plays game on games on google stadia oh gosh y'all so i got to play how's it going over there i gotta play the google stadia i actually did it at my my in-laws um because i wanted the most optimal google experience i set them up with the google wi-fi last year because they're always asking me to fix their internet um and that's super easy google wi-fi so i tested it with google wi-fi in chrome literally sitting next to um uh a router and modem spitting out like, I don't know, 200 megasecond or something optimal.

And the results were like, fine, like, okay, it the games looked fine, maybe like console grade, there was stuttering on some games, but not on others. It was like a really cool tech demo. And that I guess is neat. But then I like started thinking about the past decade. And how many times have we been talking about really cool tech demos like this like on live or ps now which i think people have just forgotten that sony already has a cloud gaming service out there um and i know we're supposed to say hey the next decade it's cloud gaming baby like this is the future um you know if you want to be into games you better embrace the cloud and I can we start calling it the cloud the cloud probably not take off the cloud I don't think the cloud is gonna

be it like the Google Cloud not let me check with everyone guys no and everyone's saying no to the hard it's a hard no uh i tested x cloud the the microsoft one and that one so far of what i've tried works really well but again like i don't know the best theory that i can come up with for when i think cloud gaming is going to really blow up is next gen comes right and a new gta comes out or a new madden and you can only play it on next-gen consoles. Now, all the people who would normally buy one of those expensive pieces of hardware will go, I don't know, to theinternet.com. And they'll look it up, and they'll be like, oh, I can spend $500 plus the $60 for the game to play it on the new Xbox or the new PlayStation.

Or I can just buy the game for $60 and play it over the cloud on whatever service I want. And at that moment, I feel like we'll start to see like critical mass when people suddenly only have the option of buying a new piece of hardware or using the cloud. Right now, while I think most people have, most people who want to play these games have the hardware to do it, I don't think it makes a lot of sense. And I suspect that we won't see the cloud be the only option. Microsoft has been saying this for a while. And again, I was kind of skeptical, but now I think they're right. It'll be like Kindle.

You know, if you want to play a hardcore, you can play on a PC. If you want to, you know, have a reliable but average price, you can play on your console. If you want to, if you don't mind stuttering now and then and like lower end graphics you can play it on the cloud and ideally like you buy it once and it works on all those options that sounds great to me i just want remote play on next gen stuff i got that if you've not messed if you've yeah i know but i like the remote play app for ios for playstation 4 is remarkable it's what i've been playing like i've been playing a ton of ff14 like on my ipad connected to a dualshock 4 and like it runs really great like that's what i want i want to own my games on my box and then play it wherever i want on my phone but not like

have to buy them from google and then also like that's that's where they live now now i've given google 70 dollars so weird that they they kept that library sort of metaphor for stadia it seems like such a misunderstanding of what i kind of want to get in there just like fuck around with the game i don't want to like buy something and have it live on google if it was like uh if it was if it was microsoft doing that and it was literally everything was the same except it was microsoft and instead of buying games you had xbox game pass and like that was it you paid the subscription you paid the annual subscriber weekly subscription monthly subscription for that and you had access to like all these games that's great but i'm not gonna buy destiny i'm not gonna buy that's a bad example because that one's free

but i'm not gonna buy you know tomb raider on stadia that's it also neglects trust like i would buy a game on cloud streaming only from Microsoft because I know it's gonna be around I bought games on PlayStation now for for like oh I think you could stream like ps2 ps3 games on your ps4 you bought them and so I did that and it works and it's fine and and it's on my ps4 a box I'm going to own for the rest of my life I want to check in with the people uh mail at besties.fan is our email address uh we'll tell you what we want to talk about here in a second but here's what you we asked this uh for this episode we asked you to talk about your best things of 2019 alex says id software's willingness to delay the release of

doom eternal in order to deliver their authentic vision should be celebrated all right alex okay alex i feel that i feel that I feel that. It's authentic. Hey, y'all, if the best thing that happened in 2019 was something not happening, that's a rough year, okay? Oof. Drew Davenport says, in the year 2019,

I bought a PlayStation Vita, and it's my highlight. That's good. Vitas are good. Man, yeah, okay. Was there something? Is there somebody who's got... I there somebody we did just finish an entire episode where we were pretty negative which i feel bad about now here's a good one eric said my personal highlight was eva 2019 where they finally put under night in birth a gorgeous deep and extremely horribly named fighting game by a very small team on the big stage and had a fantastic showing even if you don't give a shit about fighting games it warms my heart to see game

quality and fan dedication shine even without all of big gaming's big money so that's called under night in birth which is rough yeah i could use a bit of a tweak there it's rough tyler says uh kingdom farts three may have been a real stinker but watching Buzz Lightyear's heart turn to darkness made it all worth it we have been negative I'm going to say my positive thing is the entire Toy Story chapter

all the JRPG shit that they make fake Tim Allen say and fake Tom Hanks say well gosh Space Ranger it looks like Sephiroth has corrupted your heart soul. So thank you to everyone who submitted your great moments. It was a wild and crazy year, y'all. I know we sounded super negative, but I think it's the same way that there wasn't one standout game that everybody's agreeing is the goatee of this year.

I don't think there were a ton of like highlights for everyone I mean there were good games like we did just spend two straight episodes talking about like a pretty large list of very very good games so I'm not necessarily saying it was a bit but it was this weird

like transition call before the storm man yeah we want to hear from you again mail at besties.fan uh let us know your most anticipated game of 2020 and you could be on next week's episode just tell us what you're looking forward to and why that is the end of uh the episode for fucking good no no no in all seriousness if you're listening to us on iTunes or various other feeds, you should know that this is actually

going to be the final episode that you will get in your normal feed. We are moving on to all episodes being- We're dying. Dying. We're dying. We're going to live with your pop pop on a big farm.

That farm's called Spotify. No, starting- Also, your pop pop pops new album on spotify it's fire dude it's so choice starting january 3rd uh all episodes of the besties new episodes moving forward will be exclusive to spotify uh so all you really need to do is uh pop on over and follow and listen for free on spotify um it is free you don't need a paid account or anything like that but literally there will not be new episodes on this feed if you're listening to it on a place that's not

spotify so please please come listen to us there please we the show will probably not exist if you don't come listen to us there so maybe do yeah yeah it'll be a lot we we promised a lot of shit okay listen we made a lot of big promises a We made a lot of checks with our mouths. Yeah, so please come listen to us, and be sure to join us again next time for the best news. Hey, am I coming with you? No! Hey, I'm backing up the car. Emma, am I making the trip?

The giraffe has bitten onto the rear bumper of the car and is now bouncing along the street as we speed away. Guys, hold up. We're bringing New York Giraffe with us too. Fine. Stop emailing us. Be sure to join us again next time for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? The Besties is a Spotify original podcast in association with Vox Media.

The show is edited by Jelani Carter. And our theme song is by Ian Dorsch. Besties!