The "Pay-to-Play" Scheme That (Almost) Ruined Video Games, with Dan Soder
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.
Why are we isolating ourselves and hating ourselves so that Jeff Bezos can have another boat for his weird sex lizard wife to crawl around on? Right after this.
Thanks for doing this. Yeah, dude. I mean, it's something that I do in my off time. So, of course, I want to talk about it. I love video games.
You are our video game correspondent, I realize.
I'm not a big video game guy. I'm just a consistent video game guy. What does that mean? I'm not Barry Bonds. I'm Ted Williams. I've played video games since I was like six. What did I get at Nintendo? It was Christmas of 89, so I was like six. And I've just always consistently had a system, and I've just played my whole life. I've been a devout fan of college football since its inception by EA Sports. Because Madden was first, NFL games were first, but when they did the first college football, it was NCAA Game Breaker with Eddie George on the cover. And it was like you would go to Blockbuster or something and find out, they have college football. And I, you know, I remember exactly where it was.
How did Dan Soder first get hooked on video games and college football titles?
I was sleeping at my cousin Luke's house. We rented Game Breaker on a Friday night when college football was the next day. So you're like, you know, it was like a tease. You're like, ooh, we'll play these games. We would like play games that were going to be the next day. Like if Florida was playing Tennessee, you'd be like, all right, I'll be Florida, you be Tennessee. We'll play or we'll flip for it. It was great. But then EA came out with NCAA, which is now called college football. Right. Right.
And so this thing that's happened in college football, I want to be clear to everybody who does not give a shit about video games. This is a story that I think is fascinating, even and perhaps especially for people who don't know what's happening in video games. And I am kind of, I would say I'm like a median voter when it comes to video games. I used to really be into it. But what I have now realized as I hear and attempt to understand what's going on right now is that I have been alienated. by what this is now.
What's interesting about video games to me is that they are a... Thumbprint of our societal evolution and I think they show a lot of parts of our society good and bad I think it's you know, there's people that are adamantly against it and think if you play it you're wasting your life There's people whose brains run hot and it's just a nice thing to turn on and completely shut off all your thoughts about the outside world Yes, it's great for escapism
Oh, my favorite thing. And so when I say that, I think of you when I see the headlines about the revolution happening.
I'm going to tell you right now. I'm not a big Reddit guy, but I go to Reddit. It's a place I go if I need to look up stuff specifically for video games. It's like an excellent source for video games. And I just want to say how proud I am of the college football video game community on Reddit. Partly on Reddit. I know it was in other places. But what they did is there's these streamers that do very popular streams of college football.
And typically they are the foremost and most effective marketers, right?
For the game. It behooves these companies to be nice to these streamers. You should treat the streamers right because they are basically your representation via human form, which we don't have anything anymore.
And on their channels, in ways that are, I think, derived from a genuine passion, it seems, by and large, they're broadcasting your product to people who might also want to buy and spend time on it.
It's an evolution of both capitalism and the unboxing. The unboxing craze that happened when YouTube first came out was because people were watching people be happy opening. They were watching capitalism porn. They were watching someone open. The way that a pizza boy would have sex with a lonely housewife was the way that the kid would unbox the video game and go like, I wanted this for Zola!
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