Giant Bombcast 624: Depth and Lightness

So Ben thinks Cloud is a whiner with an annoying voice. Talk about projection.

@sintes: Some people want a mix of CS:GO and Overwatch. I don't play any Riot games, and it's interesting to me.

I love the shooting of CS:GO. I hate the shooting in OW, but like the idea of skills. Mix the two and it should be no surprise Valorant looks interesting to some people.

And I do give it extra attention because of Riot, not because I like their games, but because while their workplace seems atrocious, they seem to make good games, and have a healthy enough budget to support the game.

Jason’s Pepsi answer is very very good.

Is 311 cult fandom a regional thing to parts of the US, or a certain subculture? As a Canadian in Ontario, I’ve never met a person who is still a major fan of the band.

To support Ben’s loose hierarchy of bands, there is:

-Tier 1: bands that were just megastars during their height of popularity, spanning tons of demographics. The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Nirvana, Queen, Led Zeppelin, perhaps Guns N’ Roses, etc.

-Tier 2: bands that were very popular but only within a very specific scene or subculture that maybe had some crossover appeal OR bands that were very popular but only for a brief period of time before band dissolution or band member death OR bands that just have a weird ongoing cult following. I’m making this super broad, but this is everything from like The Grateful Dead/Phish to Metallica/Iron Maiden to Sublime to whatever else.

-Tier 3: bands that are just continuously low level popular and tour forever, but I question if the history books will ever consider them significant to music history or if they ever defined a period of music for a major number of people. Anyone I put in this category feels like I’m delegitimizing their success, but for a pretty safe example, Nickelback? Their first album is the only one that people thought was kinda fresh and new at the time, but they’ve maintained an ability to keep selling albums and tours for 2 decades since.

-Tier 4: the same general description as tier 3, but bands that had an even lower impact than tier 3 bands. This is, charitably, where 311 exists.

311 was an inside job.

Really though, I don't think a cult following around 311 is that weird?

Yeah, I see the GeForce now thing as a totally separate thing from game ownership / storefront politics. It's a hardware service. It doesn't fundamentally add anything to the game or alter its content. It utilizes an existing license purchased by the user to install a game to the cloud.

The opposition to this is like book publishers wanting Dropbox or other cloud storage services to get rid of any instances of books that they hold the rights to in spite of user ownership. That is what rankles people.

The fact that Nvidia charges for its premium service doesn't change anything legally or ethically.

@maitom: I think you're missing the point that someone is charging for a service to install and run games that they do not own. You can install, run, and stream the game from all of your own devices as you choose, because you own it, but Nvidia does not own your copy of the game.

Nvidia should absolutely be on the hook to pay a royalty to the developer for making money off games they don't own.

If this is what you're looking for (I think everyone is), you definitely want the aggregate services like Geforce Now to proactively to make arrangements with developers that both parties can live with.

This isn't about the technical process of building out datacenters that will let you spin up VMs to run Steam in. That tech is mature enough and anyone can do it given enough resources. The problem is when you're a massive corporation doing it, and you slap branding on it, advertise it, and charge people a fee to use it. Now you're building a business, and at Nvidia's scale and given the huge opportunities around streaming, a business that could end up being worth enormous amounts of money. Absolutely nobody on the planet is going to be okay with their IP being used to build and promote a business like that without having some say or involvement in how their work is used, let alone even giving permission to use it in the first place. That's not how the games business works or has ever worked.

I'd argue it should perhaps be handled the other way around. There should be a form available for the IP holders to fill out if they want to participate in such a service.

Brad is explaining why it's understandable that a company wants to profit off everything they can on their products, which is reasonable for a corporation. Others are just explaining why it sucks.

Think about professional Brood War... Blizzard was probably entitled to profit off the pro scene in Korea. In practice, they all but killed Pro Brood War, SC2 sucked, and we have nothing now.

@toxicantidote: Yeah, I suspect the terms of the publishing contract signed by people submitting content to these storefronts will just end up changing. Depending on how small the pool of IP holders are that are vocally resistant to this, I could see those terms actually being made non-negotiable for all but the largest AAA studios. The value of this service to its customers, the storefronts, and the service provider comes from it being a service that's as comprehensive as it is convenient. If the VM service provider has to wrangle its legal team to make a phone call to every person that writes the equivalent of a 'Hello World' application, or in every instance that someone submits a texture pack mod to the Steam Workshop, then this clearly isn't going to work.

Explain's his take mimicking others that the game should have come out complete day one. He and others severely underestimate the size of FF7 and how much of a hurdle it was to make in the past. It was one of those inflated Shenmue budget like games that would be on par with witcher 3 to Uncharted 4 or red dead 2's budget and time to make. Its no easy feat to recreate. Add that this is a passion project as much as it is for fans since for once i dont know...the actual company loves the game their making more than just making money. FF7 is like sonic or Mario for square Enix hence the several spin-offs on a completed story and movies. Im not a fan but just hate seeing the vitrol nonfans spit at people who like a game. Add in the retroactive "|all old games suck now" narrative games get nowadays and it gets to be a pain. Like when everyone jumped on crash when it came back and said its dark souls hard and was never good etc. Very annoying.

Games like FF7 are made from scratch and varied in locations and have a passion behind it exceeding just money grabs (they'd just make a shot for shot up ress if it was money). It would take years to just come out with it all at once and morale was boosted when they announced it...since no one likes working on some secret project for 10 years with no excitement for it. Plus tell me a project you work on and know is cool and just are ok with not talking about it till its done. Resident Evil 2 isn't a good comparison since most of the assets are stripped from their engine on RE7 and the game is significantly more streamlined and smaller in scope and story. It also is more of the generic zombies and shooting most can jump behind in western audiences. FF7 has way more to prove to gain mass appeal in the west as an RPG hence the changes and inevitable fan backlash if non-fans like it cause its different or backlash from critics if its not different enough and fans like it etc.

@mason_pat: Yeah, it's definitely more reasonable to insist that small indie devs sit on the sidelines and not complain while a massive multinational does whatever it wants with their work.

This hits the nail on the head -- the situation needs to be accounted for contractually, both upfront going forward and retroactively for games that are already out. You can bet Microsoft has been weaving their plans for xCloud into their business arrangements with developers. The fact that Nvidia didn't button all this up before their soft launch is frankly a little embarrassing.

@brad: That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying it's within everybody's right to protect and profit off their IP, big or small, multinational corporation or indie dev... just that when companies are overprotective, consumer experience goes down, and in this case the dream of widespread affordable cloud gaming takes a hit, and services like Stadia become the future of cloud gaming - which is why consumers are upset.

I can't pay full price directly to a dev for their game and play it just because I want to play it on a cloud computer? Because game developers want to make money and have it quantified in a spreadsheet, they'll forego the reach and money that comes with extending their customer base to everybody who can afford $5/mo? The future sucks.

Remember Google Stadia? So, retro!

It's embarrassing that Nvidia didn't get in contact with every third party IP holder that's ever published something on Steam? Surely the cheapest, fastest and most painless way forward is for both Valve and Nvidia to do exactly what they're doing right now - put the onus on developers to opt-out with Nvidia, while Valve gets to take a step back to see how the market of consumers and IP holders hash things out. Expecting Nvidia to rebuild the 30k+ Steam catalog game by game just doesn't make any sense, and using their market cap as a justification to hand wave away the logistical infeasibility of this just strikes me as a lazy argument.

Its very EASY to argue with that. I don't purchase software (except for cases where i sign an enterprise license specifically saying what hardware limitations exist like oracle software, but thats rare) that says where you can and can't run it.

When I run a software suite in AWS, the software developer doesn't get to suddenly go 'oh wait... you want to run it in the cloud? I want a cut from Amazon too!!'

You purchase software. You purchase hardware. Where it sits (in your house or in a datacenter) is agnostic unless you make an agreement. Those devs don't deserve crap. They can build their next game to say 'you've only purchased a license to run this on a home computer' if they want, but i dont see their point of view at all.

@squigiliwams: I suspect that developers are looking to capitalize on the looming landscape of competing streaming services by signing contracts that differentiate between local and cloud-based platforms, and the presence of VM services and the overall mutable nature of the PC blurs the lines of what a "platform" is. If GFN exists as a seamless extension of PC gaming then a developer can't do separate streaming-only deals with Stadia, and they risk cannibalizing some of their sales of multiplatform releases and ports.

ONTARIO REPRESENT

Ben, if you want a good anime arena fighter then you should definitely check out Kill la Kill IF.

My apologies, I think I read more into your comment than you meant after the tone of the discussion around this has gotten pretty heated. People have been calling for a boycott of the dev in question, which is quite an overreaction.

Ive been away for a while.

I want to make clear that I in no way condone people harassing the devs, or even calling for boycotts, because they asked to take their game off the service. All I am arguing against is the idea that the game developers should be able to limit which cloud computing service I'm allowed to play the game I bought from them on.

@brad: it’s a bad look on both ends. Nvidia chose the path of least resistance by adding games first and leaving a wide open option for anyone that isn’t ok with it to opt out. Contacting everyone directly would be a nightmare but they should have sent out at least some blanket statement informing developers that their game is being included. On the other hand developers have every right to control their work, no matter how big or small they are. In this particular case though developers are getting the full sale on their work regardless, and it looks like they are willing to hold back a great step in helping PC gaming reach an even wider audience simply because there is a strong precedent for more money to be made.

Nvidia comes off looking either amateurish or sleazy while developers who often speak on how of course they want their games to reach as many people as possible, but it’s up to the publisher where the game lands, now appear greedy and anti-consumer even though they are acting well within their rights.

@curufinwe: keep it to yourself

Yes, the developer of The Long Dark is being anti-consumer (and actually being two faced in his approach). How the NVidia system works is it takes games I have already purchased and that exist under my Steam account and it installs that on a VM that I can access with the NVidia service. That developer told TWO different stories on Twitter about why he took the game down.

1. "They didn't ask me." This line makes it seem as though he was totally cool with them doing it if "they had only asked permission first!"

2. That this is actually a service that makes it hard for them to SELL YOU THE SAME GAME AGAIN ON ANOTHER PLATFORM or even on mobile which means he would never do this. Can't get Apple money as easily if your game is available to stream through NVidia.

I think the above two statements, if take with sincerity, are mutually exclusive. You can't claim #1 while then agreeing with another developer on #2. This brings game ownership and the old argument of "developers are the good guys, publishers are the bad guys" in a different light. I'm fully there to buy a game but what I do with that game, as long as I'm not effecting another player's experience (cheating in online, for example) I should be able to do what I want with my copy of the game.

This Nvidia Now shit is nuts to me. Nvidia shouldn't need any permissions from anyone. All they are doing is renting you one of their PCs and you're playing your shit on their PC. That's like me going to a gaming cafe/lan center, renting one of their PCs and publishers making me pay for my stream games again just to play shit I already paid for. "Publishers should get to choose where their games are available" Nvidia is getting no cut of any games purchased through their service, everything is still through whatever store the publisher went with. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when I see people somehow having an issue with this service. If anything this service is driving more sales towards publishers as its making high end games available to people with low end systems who probably couldn't of run them prior to this service.

311 has got some genuine slappers, but then they kind of became a meme. I occasionally listen to them every once in a while, and a friend gave me a free ticket to see them a couple years ago and it was way better than I expected. A very fun people watching experience as it took place on a giant lawn/amphitheater .

I have NEVER come so close to a spit-take as I did with "Foreskin Hump."

And I was wondering if Jeff was going to mention "The Tool Sale." Bought my friend her first vibrator there cause she was toooooo shy. Sad to hear it's become a weird, nomadic location cause I remember it as a brick-and-mortar store.

How Jeff feels about 311, is how I feel about wrestling....

@brad What's the difference between GeForce now and me going to a gaming/LAN cafe, logging into my steam account, and playing my steam games on a rented piece of hardware. The only difference is I'm sitting in front of the piece of hardware vs the output of the hardware is being streamed somewhere else.

I'm not trying to be a dick but this is a mental hurdle I'm struggling to overcome and find a difference.

I don't like Coke/Pepsi Zero but I love Zevia. I recommend it for anyone who can't have the sugar or is on keto. When I was in Japan, I had the exact opposite impression as Jeff: I couldn't find Coke anywhere but Pepsi and all sorts of variants on Pepsi were in vending machines. My impression was always Pepsi is way bigger in Japan. I mean, there is a Pepsiman but where is Cokeman!?

I don't get the 311 hate. It's easy to goof on them because they are white guys that rap and incorporate reggae and are pro-weed, but they are actually very good people and made music that is both popular and loved by hardcore fans. They were my favorite band growing up and though I cooled on them, I still think those early albums are fantastic and their latest was not bad. They also still have a lot of integrity and heart with amazing live shows. Over the years, I've known indie musicians who admit to loving 311 and George Clanton of vaporwave fame has a new collab project with 311's singer, just showing how wide-reaching 311's music is and how 311 itself is open to new music and ideas.

It's not like they are Papa Roach or Crazytown. I get people don't like them and don't push it on others, but they are way better than people give them credit for and I predict there will be a reassessment of their career when they retire (probably something along the lines of "woah, these guys were really woke!??") Their lyrics really helped me navigate my emotions and world view as a teen and I didn't smoke weed. And how can you not like songs like "Down", "Come Original" and "Homebrew"

Why is Geforce Now all that different from me buying a Steam Link and streaming my own games myself?

It's taking my own games and playing them on a platform other than my PC running Steam.

@engineno9: The difference is that the game is running it on hardware you don't own.

I'm not really with Brad on this one, but Geforce Now and Steam Link aren't comparable. Nvidia's Gamestream service, which streams the game from your PC to your shield tv, is the actual comparable service to Steam Link. It also doesn't have a subscription fee and supports all games. Edit: I think the comparison to a LAN cafe is actually more apt, since you're again renting hardware to play a game.

To be clear, I'm in the camp that says publishers really shouldn't have a say on whether I can remote into another computer, launch steam with my own credentials and install and play the games I already own. That seems crazy to me.

I also think it's crazy that Nvidia launched this service without nailing all this shit down contractually. As it stands this is the only game streaming service that seems worthwhile but it looks like a mess right now.

I remember back like in 2006-08, when YouTube was still new-ish, watching videos of a guy who had uploaded himself playing GTA games. He eventually ran through all of the games, and the videos were more or less split up into single missions (sometimes two if they were short missions, or sometimes one mission was split into multiple parts if it was a long one). It's how I got to see the GTA Stories games, since I didn't own a PSP or a PS2. Once he gained a bit of traction, that same guy went on to upload playthroughs of other games, still in small chunks. I watched his entire playthrough of Assassin's Creed, since I was interested but didn't have the game. That was years before the concept of "Let's Plays" and Twitch streams and whatnot were a thing. Seemed like this super cool thing back then. Now, it's so very commonplace. It's been a weird time, seeing all of it grow into prominence.

Eff that developer. NVidia is 100% in the right. Who cares if they're "goliath" they're providing a platform for people who paid for their game to play it how they want to play it. Let them play the game they paid for. This is complete BS.

Jeff talks a lot of shit about 311 for a person who is in a band that could have probably opened for 311.

I'll be honest I don't get buying a game and letting companies tell me I can't play them via streaming services. I'd understand if the game companies had to take part in the upkeep of the streamed version of the game, but I thought Nvidia was doing everything from that end. Feels like if Samsung started forbidding certain titles from being played on their TVs unless they got an extra cut.

(edited to elaborate)

I guess I hope Shadow stays relatively small or GB staff is going to start lobbying for it to be outlawed? Weird timeline. Also this discussion keeps ping-ponging between what's a legal right and what people's opinion of what *should* be allowed is. I think it's an obviously sensible proposition that buying a game on Steam allows me to play that game on whatever hardware I choose (even if I have to pay to rent that hardware), unless of course there are restrictions made clear at the time of purchase.

The notion that "Nvidia is multinational" should somehow affect the question of whether that should be allowed is not logical. Framing the discussion that way misses the point and takes the air out of real arguments for the other side IMHO.

For my 2 cents, I think the shade directed at Nvidia is misplaced, and Steam is getting yet another pass here (for now). It seems to me that it's up to Steam to "button up" the arrangements with developers that sell on that storefront. Geforce Now really isn't more than letting my log into Steam on a VM (and that's all I'd be paying for), so if devs want to limit their games from being available in that context then they need to take it up with Steam. I'm sure Valve leaves this ambiguous enough to stay out of trouble while also producing the present mess. Nvidia is also screwing up by seemingly trying to pitch this as a platform (one would think they'd have looked at Stadia and changed tack...I'd say framing this as a "remote video card" would be cleaner and still compelling).

If the issue was about how Nvidia uses games to promote the service, that I could totally get behind if they are doing that without permission. Unfortunately whether that is the actual complaint seems to have gotten lost in noise.

I also don't agree with the "service would be useless without games" argument at all. Nvidia's main business (video cards) is also driven by games and I doubt anyone would support developers who demanded that a particular video card stopped supporting their game based on "they didn't ask permission" and "devs should control where games exist".

As someone that's quite intimate with rockmusic, i've never heard about 311. Perhaps they never made it to Europe. I'm still dissapointed in myself. Also, Fall out boy pretty much dropped the pop punk guitar stuff and is making god awful EDM-adjacent pop music nowadays. I think one song was based around Hit me baby one more time or something. It's really bad. They also went on this tour with Weezer & Greenday recently.

Also, are the default fries in america curly? Don't you have like.. normal uncurly thin fries?