Crimson Desert Gets Caught Using AI - Kinda Funny Games Daily 03.23.26

Summary

Podcast Summary: Kinda Funny Games Daily – Crimson Desert Gets Caught Using AI

Date: March 23, 2026
Hosts: Greg Miller, Snowbike Mike
Main Theme: The episode covers the controversy surrounding Crimson Desert’s use of AI-generated art assets, the ongoing industry debate about AI in games, major updates to Crimson Desert, upcoming Xbox event news, and more top gaming news.

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Episode Overview

This episode’s central theme is the growing controversy over generative AI in game development, highlighted by the recent discovery that Crimson Desert, a high-profile open-world game, included uncredited AI-generated art in its final release. Greg and Mike dig into the implications of this misstep, explore community and developer reactions, and widen the conversation to consider industry trends, transparency, and the impact on player trust. The hosts also touch on upcoming game releases, major Steam patch reactions, Xbox announcements, and more.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Crimson Desert Caught Using AI-Generated Art

Summary:

• Crimson Desert developer Pearl Abyss admitted that AI-generated images were “unintentionally included” in the final game release.
• They’ve initiated a comprehensive audit and pledged future transparency and corrections.
• This violated Steam’s AI content policy, as disclosure was required but omitted initially.

Host Reactions & Community Sentiments:

• Greg is exasperated with game companies’ repeated "oops, we forgot" explanations:
  • “Every video game developer, every disconnected dumbass CEO... This is exactly what we’re always talking about.” (Greg, 03:28)
• Both hosts cite how placeholder assets should be “obnoxiously temporary” so they can’t be missed, referencing Josh Sawyer’s approach:
  • “If you use temp assets that seem passable, it may stay there.” (Josh Sawyer via Greg, 08:09)
• The hosts and community largely believe the oversight was more likely willful than accidental:
  • “I don’t think they forgot. I think they knew exactly what they were doing.” (Mike, 11:54)

Big Takeaways:

• Transparency is key: Better to own early AI usage than to hide it and get caught.
• Host skepticism: There’s a pattern of “we’re sorry we got caught,” not genuine contrition.
• The industry is being pushed toward disclosure due to player scrutiny and platform policies.

Notable Quote:

“We realized we didn’t realize that everyone knows AI sucks, generative AI sucks... When you make terrible shit, we can spot the shit you make.”
— Greg Miller (10:37)

[Timestamp: 03:29 – 12:44]

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Industry Impact & Future Trends

• Sales not affected by AI drama:
  Both hosts agree AI controversies rarely impact major sales numbers given wide audience reach and general public’s indifference.
• Expect more “oversights”:
  • “Until there’s actual repercussions... I think it’s a lot of ‘oh, shucks, we didn’t know.’” (Greg, 14:02)
• Conversation pivots to speculation: Will major brands like Rockstar (GTA 6) eventually cave to using AI earlier in the pipeline?
  • Both hope not, but acknowledge pressure to do so is rising industry-wide.

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Crimson Desert’s Steam Reviews & Player Feedback

• After a rocky launch, Pearl Abyss rapidly patched the game, improving keyboard/mouse controls, quality of life, and bug fixes.
• Steam reviews jumped from “mixed” to “mostly positive” (approx. 77% English reviews).
• Mike’s hands-on: Still finds controls “clunky” but credits the devs for being responsive.

Debates:

• Comparisons to other comeback stories (e.g. No Man’s Sky, Cyberpunk 2077):
  “Crimson Desert is just a piece of art that either resonates with you or doesn’t.” (Greg, 22:01)
• For players who value incremental progress (“15 minutes before bed” types), Crimson Desert’s gameplay loop is satisfying.

Notable Moment:

“You do unlock a female character... she plays differently... but there’s going to be stuff where you’re forced to go be Cliff.”
— Greg Miller, on Crimson Desert’s playable character options (28:25)

[Timestamp: 19:58 – 29:14]

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Xbox Partner Preview Event Announced

• Xbox event set for March 26, featuring news from Sega, GSC Game World, Owlcat, and a deep dive into RGG’s Stranger Than Heaven.
• Other highlights: S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 update and a new look at The Expanse: Osiris Reborn.

Host Hype:

• Mike: “I’m pumped up. It’s a great lineup right here. I love seeing new games, love seeing returning titles.”
• Greg plans to host live reactions with the Kinda Funny crew (10 AM PT, YouTube/Twitch).

Predictions:

• Life Is Strange Reunion possibly appearing, Minecraft Dungeons 2 teased for 2026 with six-player co-op speculated from trailer details.

[Timestamp: 33:00 – 41:47]

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Other Major News

Nvidia’s DLSS5 Controversy

• DLSS5, which redraws game frames with AI, is likened to a “Snapchat filter over your game” (Mike, 45:17).
• The hosts note industry backlash and ongoing skepticism over practical benefits and fairness in game rendering.

[Timestamp: 44:39 – 45:46]

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The Last of Us Season 3 Casting News

• Michelle Mao and Kyriana Crater join as Yara and Lev for Season 3.
• Concerns from community about casting a female actress as a transgender boy—hosts briefly discuss but lack detailed insight.
• Greg is pragmatic: “I wish them luck. I don’t know.”

[Timestamp: 45:45 – 50:27]

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Quick Hits & Smaller Stories (“WE News”):

• Capcom clarifies no AI-generated assets in their games—but is experimenting with AI internally for efficiency in programming, graphics, and sound.
• Sony removes over 1,000 shovelware games from PlayStation Store.
• Atomic Owl, a 2D action platformer, announced.
• Several Microsoft execs depart, causing speculative discussion about Xbox’s internal AI strategy.
• Penny Parker joins Marvel’s Token Fighting Souls.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Greg, on industry excuses:

  “You don’t need to put some… You don’t—oh, man. This one more than anything smacks of… We’re sorry we got caught.” (10:37)

• Mike, on AI usage transparency:

  “If you’re using AI, get ahead of it and just say so. You’ll probably get a better response than hiding and then having this.” (09:17)

• Greg, on Crimson Desert “come back” comparisons:

  “Crimson Desert is just a piece of art that either resonates with you or doesn’t… Not the same as, ‘Oh shit, we didn’t have aliens in the game.’” (22:01)

• Josh Sawyer’s temp asset approach (read by Greg):

  “The placeholder assets in a game should look obnoxiously temporary so no one would mistake it for final...” (08:09)

• Mike speculating on Minecraft Dungeons 2:

  “I think we’re getting six players on this.” (41:13)

• Greg, on DLSS5:

  “Every game is going to look... Artists have complete control. Complete control. Complete control.” (45:46, sarcastically)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Segment | Description | Timestamp | | ------- | ------------ | --------- | | Crimson Desert AI Controversy | News, dev reaction, industry commentary | 03:29 – 14:39 | | Crimson Desert’s Reception/Patches | Steam reviews, player experiences | 19:58 – 29:14 | | Xbox Partner Preview Discussion | Upcoming event, predictions, excitement | 33:00 – 41:47 | | Nvidia DLSS5 / AI Rendering | Analysis, skepticism | 44:39 – 45:46 | | The Last of Us S3 Casting | Discussion and community reaction | 45:45 – 50:27 | | WE News Segment | Quick industry updates | 51:37 – 56:34 |

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Tone and Flow

• Language: Candid, humorous, sometimes exasperated—true to the Kinda Funny style.
• Flow: Lively back-and-forth, full of banter, with digressions on industry trends, developer best practices, and player psychology.

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Useful For...

• Anyone seeking a deep dive into the current debates around AI in game development.
• Listeners wanting updates on Crimson Desert’s launch, Steam review changes, and patch reception.
• Fans interested in upcoming major game events, particularly Xbox’s roadmap.
• Catching up on gaming’s latest news with a mix of expert analysis and irreverent fun.

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For more, check out the full Kinda Funny Games Daily episode on your favorite platform, and tune in live for instant reactions to breaking news throughout the week.

Transcript

[Mike]

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[Greg Miller]

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[Mike]

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[Greg Miller]

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[Mike]

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[Mike]

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[Greg Miller]

dishes and more time together. Shop [e-mail] if you want to get

[Mike]

our shows ad free and our exclusive shows go to patreon.com kinda funny today

[Greg Miller]

in the nerdy news, you need to know about it. Good and bad news for Crimson Desert. Xbox announces a partner event featuring Stranger than Heaven. And Nvidia confirms DLSS5 is redrawing games. We'll evolve this and more because this is kinda fun at Games Daily. What's up, everybody? Welcome to Kinda Funny Games daily for Monday, March 23, 2026. I'm one of your hosts, Greg Miller alongside out of the iron lung, making his return to kind of funny content. The one, the only, the master of hype, Snowbike Mike.

[Mike]

Happy Monday, Greg. I am back. Thank you for the time off to get better and back on my feet and I'm feeling good.

[Greg Miller]

You say get better. I don't believe you. Just heard you hacking along up in the bathroom season. And then over here, you're still hacking, right before we go live.

[Mike]

Yeah, it was funny. The neighbors saw me yesterday and like, I have some really great neighbors, but we don't talk much. Right? It's like the pleasantries, but they're like, they're like, oh my God, you've been dealing with allergies. So they've been hearing me hacking up along for the past week. Yeah, yeah, it's like once a year here in San Francisco from December to this March window, something happens to me, whether it be the cold, the GDC bug, or maybe it is allergies. But I get my butt whooped for about a week. Really stuffed up and so I'm feeling a little bit better today though. I missed you. I missed.

[Greg Miller]

I missed you too. I don't like being away here. No. It was weird not having you around, you know.

[Mike]

Yeah, it's not fun. I watched all the earbuds though. Every airbud.

[Greg Miller]

I think you just need to. We're just doing the one, right? We just doing the one. You have to watch them all.

[Mike]

You got to watch them all.

[Greg Miller]

Science Dog official super chats just like you can on YouTube.com kindafunnygames it says we love Mike. We love Mike. Welcome back Mike. We're happy to have you. And of course you've missed nothing. Haven't had any big reviews, industry shaking news. Yeah, AI just getting worse by the day. Nothing like that's happened.

[Mike]

It seems like we're just going to do it all over again.

[Greg Miller]

Why don't we. Why don't we run it back everybody? Because this is kind of fun. And games daily each and every weekday on a variety of platforms. We run you through the nerdy video game news you need to know about. If you like that, of course, pick up a membership. Patreon.com kindafunnygames YouTube.com kindafunnygames Apple Spotify get everything ad free. Remember we couldn't do this without our producers over on patreon.com kindafunny so thank you Carl Jacobs, Omega Buster and Delaney. The Psalm twining for now. Let's begin with what is and forever will be the Roper Report. Time for some new. Six items on the report. Gold stars for Barrett for rising to the challenge and meeting my freak. Number one Crimson Desert Dev launches quote comprehensive audit end quote of AI in game assets. I'm sorry. Of all in game assets after AI generated art was quote unintentionally included in final release. This is the one, the only wypn.com Wesley you Yin Pool before we even start bear give me the one. Every video game developer, every fucking disconnected dumbass CEO. I don't even need to read the story. This is exactly what we're always fucking talking about. Well we don't use AI but when we're in pre pro, when we're in alpha, we just use AI to put things in there so we can. Then you fucking forget about it. You become a headline looking like a stupid dumbass motherfucker. Back to IGN.com Crimson Desert developer Pearl Abyss has launched a comprehensive audit of all in game assets after admitting the use of AI generated image in the final release should have been disclosed. After the hotly anticipated open world action game launched this week, players were quick to spot signs and paintings that looked very much like they were generated by AI. IGN's Brendan Graeber shout out to Brendan second kind of funny day of content in a row where he's getting name dropped a lot for the king of wikis over there. Found further examples of in game images with the telltale signs of AI. Crimson Desert's use of generative AI art put Pearl Abyss in violation of Steam's AI content policy, which requires generative AI use to be disclosed on the game store page. There was no disclaimer on Crimson Desert's Steam store page as of Saturday, but on Sunday a disclosure was added. Pearl Abyss has released a statement regarding the we'd like to address questions regarding the use of AI in Crimson Desert during development. Some 2D visual props were created as part of early stage iteration using experimental AI generative tools. These assets helped us rapidly explore tone and atmosphere in the earlier phases of production. However, our intention has always been for any such assets to be replaced following final work and review by our art and development team with work that aligned with our quality standards and creative direction. Following reports from our community, we have identified that some of these assets were unintentionally included in the final release. This is not in line with our internal standards and we take full responsibility for it. We also acknowledge that we should have clearly disclosed our use of AI. While these tools were primarily used during early production with the expectation that these assets would be replaced prior to release. We recognize that this does not excuse the lack of transparency. We sincerely apologize for these oversights. We are currently conducting a comprehensive audit of all in game assets and are taking steps to replace any affected content. Updated assets will be rolled out in upcoming patches. In parallel, we are reviewing and strengthening our internal processes to ensure greater transparency and consistency in how we communicate with players moving forward. End quote Mike, what do you think?

[Mike]

You know Greg, you guys got me you and bless. I thought we're gonna talk about a different story to kick off the show, but we'll go right to AI.

[Greg Miller]

I like to keep you and yeah,

[Mike]

we'll cycle back with what we've been talking about all week long last week with AI in games, but this is another one. This feels like the Growing trend that we're going to can see, we're going to see more often, right?

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Mike]

Hey, we had this placeholder totally spaced on it. Didn't bring it back. Are bad on this, right? This seems like what's going to be going trending wise here and it's unfortunate. I thought Josh Sawyer had a great tweet up over on Blue sky where he's like, when we do placeholder arts, we make it weird and dumb.

[Greg Miller]

I didn't see this. Let me read it. Yes, Josh has it up. Audio listeners, it's worth coming over to see. The visual placeholder assets in a game should look obnoxiously temporary, so obvious that no one would mistake it for the final release. In past games we've used The Doge Dog RIP as an icon, hot pink versions of characters, our CEOs head, et cetera. If you use temp assets that seem passable, it may stay there. Bambi up. That's upside down from a spit. This guy drawing a little thing. Adorable.

[Mike]

So I like that call out from Josh Sawyer, right? I think that's a guy I can look to learn from and be like, hey, that seems to be the right call, right? I get the temp assets that you want to kind of set the vibe, the right tone when people are playing through it, kind of talking about it in pre stage. But like when we get to the final moment, you probably shouldn't forget that it's there and it seems to be. That's what we're doing here, right? You see the statement, of course that's going to be the easy cookie cutter answer of like, hey, our bad. Everybody will work to get that out of there, right? But hopefully we're learning. You have the message at the top of the show. Hey CEOs, hey game developers, all the teams out there, here's the message. Nobody likes AI. If you're using AI, you might as well get ahead of it and just say, hey, we're using AI at the beginning of our stages to help build out these worlds. We're hopefully taking them out. And then at the end say AI was used in this. You'll probably get a better response than hiding. And then having this.

[Greg Miller]

Well, it's the whole thing of like just putting it in there, forgetting change. You're like, when you're making a cake, you can't accidentally put your I'm putting placeholder rocks in it. And then there's rocks in the end cake. We know there's gonna be rocks in the fucking cake. Sonny Knoll says Every time I see this, I hear quote, we're sorry. But in actuality, I feel like they're only sorry they got caught. That's part of it where it's like, I'm Greg Miller. I talk about video games, play them, and give my best opinion of them. I've never made a video game. I don't understand making video games. However, for the developers I have talked to for the builds pre alpha, I've been lucky enough to be showcased, touch play, seen a documentary. Oh, we needed this to set tone. You needed these fucking weird ass paintings to set the. To like, that's so the end. I'm putting the fucking bride and groom on top of the cake. You can look at what you've made and see gray boxes there, see bright yellow. Just color to know something needs to go there. You don't need to put some. You don't. Oh, man. This is. This one more than anything smacks of. We're sorry we got caught.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

We were hoping we could slide this one past you, but we realized we didn't realize that everyone knows AI sucks, generative AI sucks. And they can spot the fucking shit you make. When you make terrible shit, we can spot the shit you make. Barrett, what do you got for me?

[Mike]

This is from someone who's at gdc. They bs, that's a blue sky Tim

[Greg Miller]

saying, I was in multiple rooms at

[Mike]

GDC where management of game studios let their hair down and said, everyone's using it, gamers hate it, so we just have to hide it now. But none were actually able to explain if and how I were making games faster to develop or better at all. And especially with talking about, like setting the tone and like creating like kind of early art pieces to like, figure out what you want your game to look like. Using AI is such like a, I think a. A bullshit reason to like set that up, you know, what's the. What's the Psychonauts documentary Psych Odyssey, Right? Like there's artists working on early art assets to figure out the tone. That is like a job. People have to figure that stuff out. I don't want like the excuse of like, oh, we're just. We're not creative enough. Then find somebody creative enough to help

[Greg Miller]

see through your vision. No need for it. Kebab is also super chats. I don't think they forgot. And this is also Hail Brendan. Hail Brendan, indeed.

[Mike]

Yeah, I don't think they forgot. I think they knew exactly what they were doing. I think a lot of these companies that we see will have this situation come up, probably know what they're doing and are very aware of it. Right?

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Mike]

What's. Let's talk about the flip side, Greg. Flip flop, Crimson Desert comes out and says, hey, we use generative AI to placeholder asset stuff. We left it in the game. How much sales do you think affect this?

[Greg Miller]

Not at all. I don't. You know what I mean? I think it's like I. We all want to act like, you know, we'd be offended and you wouldn't do it, but I mean, like this thing, two million in a day or whatever, it was like, I. I don't think you're thrown off that 2 million mark. Yeah, you're over 2 million for sure.

[Mike]

What is the fear of coming out and just saying that, right?

[Greg Miller]

Like, press like this.

[Mike]

I feel like the numbers would not change, right? I feel like this game would have sold very well on day one, throughout the first weekend if it even said, hey, we have Gen AI stuff out there are bad, right? Or like anything like that. I don't think it changes for a

[Greg Miller]

game of this scale. And I think that's reaching this wide of an audience. You know, Roger was on here last week talking about how his trainer at the gym, who doesn't play games was talking about this game, like, when you cross that Rubicon, like, no, that the train doesn't stop for something like that. Not to mention, you know, as much as, again, we're all. And I mean, I'm including the people who listen to games daily, every day are like, man, Gen AI sucks. We hate it. Da da, da. The general public doesn't necessarily feel that way. They're using fucking chat GPT to plan their grocery list and do all these different things. And they're seeing a use in it, not understanding the way it's going to hurt creatives the way it's going to already. It hurts the environment, et cetera and et cetera and so on. So it's like, no, I don't think coming out and saying that wouldn't get in the way of anything other than bad press for a game that they've been trying to get as much good. I'm still shocked where we are that they did reviews. I think this game would have been a fascinating case study. And hey, we're not. We did that last preview event in LA and even have that, which the previews came out of that positive, right? Have that lift very late, like right before it, and be like, the statement is, yo, we see you, the community, we believe in this game. We think this game is so humongous that you need to go experience it and not have review. Especially because they had a rough start with reviews for patches like that.

[Mike]

But, well, now we continue down the track. See more of these statements in the next couple of months with games releasing

[Greg Miller]

of people saying, oh, gee, Jiminy Jill, we forgot. Yeah, of course that's going to go on every. I think, until Steam has some kind of actual, like, all right, you fucked up and you didn't say it, so we're taking you off the store for 48 hours. I don't fucking know. Until there's like some actual repercussion for forgetting. I think it's a lot of, oh,

[Mike]

shucks, we didn't know there's a monolith at the end of the year. GTA 6, maybe. Do we see AI usage in that? All of your favorite companies around the globe now have kind of succumbed to this and started using AI. So some have held Song not doing it, but we're seeing even the biggest and the baddest put AI in there.

[Greg Miller]

So let me then be naive and I'm going to say no. And I say no because I do think, take Take two and Strauss Zelnick out of it. You have Rockstar who understands that they are Rockstar. And because they've earned it, I would say have a pride, a reputation and an ego that they're fucking Rockstar. And I feel like them opening that door immediately waters down the product immediately takes away from. Here's a game we've handcrafted for this many years that we're trying to make the best video game of all time. Because, you know, we. There's so much Starfield talk last week, right? And there was. I kept bringing up the conversation with you from back before launch where you're like, this needs to be a game of the generation for Xbox. Like, clearly, GTA 6 needs to be a game of the generation, if not the game of the generation. They know how high people are riding on that, betting on that, wanting that. And I just feel like for the team they have. And again, maybe I'm just being naive. Maybe I'm just being naive. They wouldn't fuck with that. But of course, then you get into a million different scenarios where. Look at the Marathon stuff, Keep me honest, there's a Destiny stuff, the Bungee stuff, remember where it was? Stuff they did leaked in, but they didn't. They didn't seem like they knew about it and it was one art person. But like, yeah, there's always there could always be one art person that is like I am gonna. I'm Gen AI this so I can cut off a few hours of crunch where I can't. I'd like to go home, see my family, you know what I mean? So I'm gonna do this and I'll remember to take it out and you don't take it out and then something spirals out of control. Do you think they do?

[Mike]

I am just aligned with you, Greg is. I. I am an optimistic Mike. Right. And I like to put Rockstar at the very tippity top. But I've also seen teams like Activision where I think, oh no way, Call of Duty with how many people they employ, all the talented developers that work there, there's no way that they would be using AI. Well, that pie on my face. So Kobe super chats. Not that.

[Greg Miller]

The real shitty thing is this won't change anything regarding Gen AI. COD sells millions when Jenna and Gen AI is even more blatant in it than this. I hate it, but I don't see it ending anytime soon. Well, no, it's going to keep coming in. But back to your point is I think Rockstar would be appalled to hear you put them in the same sentence as Activision slash Call of Duty.

[Mike]

Yeah, I think we all hold Rockstar up to this, like super high tier. But in reality they're all up in the same umbrella and they're all doing the same things. Right. And so who is the ones that will say, hey, we put our foot down, there's no way I in this. Who are the ones that said, ah,

[Greg Miller]

we saw with Playground, we fucked up.

[Mike]

We forgot, you know, AI was in it. My bad. And then there's going to be the teams who are like, I use AI. This is it. Yeah, we'll see moving forward. I like to believe, Greg.

[Greg Miller]

I want to believe. I want to believe. I want to believe. I want to believe. But we'll see. I'm looking through. See. We're going to move on to a different Crimson Desert story here. I think the one you were expecting maybe. No, we're just move on. We move on to story number two, also in the Crimson Desert lane. Crimson Desert Steam reviews jump to mostly positive as latest patch makes significant improvements. This is once again Wyp Wesley Yin [e-mail] Crimson Desert Steam reviews are improving, moving up from mixed to mostly positive on Valve's platform as developer Pearl Abyss releases game changing updates. As IGN reported, Crimson Desert launched big on Steam with nearly 250,000 concurrent players, but was met with mixed user reviews. Much of the early criticism from players revolved around the controls, which some called clunky and unnecessarily complicated. There were some performance complaints too. For example, PS5 owners joined forces to work out the cause of blurry visuals, an issue that was also on the PC version. Today's patch addresses keyboard and mouse control complaints and improved control responsiveness with the promise of more to come. But it also made a long list of quality of life improvements, including the addition of an actual storage box nerfs to a lot of the difficulty in game and more fast travel points. And there are some key fixes too detailed in the patch notes. This update, which arrives just a few days after Crimson Desert came out, really does change the experience in quality of life terms and should make the game more easygoing overall. Now Crimson Desert Steam reviews are mostly positive across both English only reviews and all reviews. At the time of this article's publication, 70 70% of the 37,660 Steam user reviews were positive. That percentage jumps to 77% for English language reviews. Quote we are currently reviewing various elements based on your gameplay elements based on your feedback, and will roll out further improvements and fixes in subsequent updates. Pearl Abyss said. We remain committed to improving Crimson Desert and your experience in Powell. Thank you once again for your continued support. Snow Michael Michael, you of course sidelined by the GDC play during Crimson Desert week. You were supposed to do a stream and he jumped on the grenade for you. Have you started Crimson Desert and what has your experience been like?

[Mike]

I've played three hours of Crimson Desert while I've been away and it has been clunky for me. It has been a rough start so far I am trying to get past that and master the controls but so far I have not been in love with the moment to moment. Hey, my hands are on the sticks and like I feel the flow. I'm in control and so we'll see if I keep going back to that. I have a lot of fun games that I'm currently playing so it's like Slay Inspire 2's eating up my time. Zelda Ocarina of Time I'm all about right now so playing a lot of good games but on the flip side for me feeling that maybe they'll be addressing this but what I like to see is hey, they're listening to player feedback. They're getting on it right away. Right? That's the big positive news here.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah you know last week there was an ongoing Crimson Desert coverage beat Here at Games Daily Games Cast kind of funny and I loved it. I thought we had so many great discussions and it was an ongoing thread with me and bless of like it's going to be fascinating to see what this game looks like in 6 months, 12 months, 18 months. Because again, you know at that clip where we were talking about again Brendan on Gamescast in his things of like I just published my wiki on how to do all this stuff and they just patched it all so none of it makes sense. You don't need to worry about it anymore. Like they're fixing, slash updating, patching the game at that kind of clip to really answer fan feedback and player feedback. You know, I put so many people are like oh man. But it invalidates reviews and it does this. It's like, fuck that. It's great for the people playing the game and that's. That's who these people are trying to serve. It doesn't matter what that is and I'm happy to see them get in there and fix it. A super chat in this comes from Otis prime who says no man's sky. Cyberpunk 2077, Halo Infinite Destiny Vanilla. We have examples of comebacks. Is that possible for Crimson Desert or the problems people have unfixable stories, characters, etc.

[Mike]

Wow.

[Greg Miller]

I as a reviewer who did not vibe with this game whatsoever, I think it's silly to put into the conversation of this.

[Mike]

I wouldn't lump. I wouldn't lump Crimson Desert into the. No into that conversation at all.

[Greg Miller]

Crimson Desert is just a piece of art that either resonates with you or doesn't resonate with you. And I think that's the long and short of it where it's like the games you're talking about here had like no Man's sky is a completely different game when we read what they're doing right now. And maybe that'll be the thing with Crimson Desert, but what they're doing here is adding more fast travel points, fixing clunky combat. You know, like that's not the same as oh shit, we didn't have aliens in the game or whatever the fuck it was. You know what I mean? We didn't deliver any of the promises. Crimson Desert is something that has already come out and already spoken loudly to an audience that people love it and are obsessed with it. It's like to your point, for somebody like me, Unfixable. Yeah. Like I don't like Cliff and I don't his story as a gray mane and what they're doing with the world there. Really cool puzzles, combat that's easy to get into, challenging boss fights I bump into, that's all great. But if there isn't a narrative backbone to what I'm doing, if I don't care about the world, then I'm just doing things and I can go do those things. As I said in my review, in Zelda, in Starfield, in the Witcher, like there's a million different games to go get the pillars that Crimson Desert is based on and go from there.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

So yeah, for me that I don't think it's a broken game at all. I think it's just a game that appeals to a kind of gamer that is in me.

[Mike]

Of course I think the people who are playing it are going to really enjoy that and appreciate the updates like you talked about, that's what it's here for. And hey, maybe if you fell off, you want to give it one more try, maybe some of these updates will start addressing your issues there. But it's been fun to hear the conversation, to watch a lot of the gameplay streams from various different areas and then of course play it myself and have this fun conversation of like you either like it, you love it. A lot of people are just spending time enjoying their time in it. So it's pretty cool. It's a, it's a different one.

[Greg Miller]

Well, I think you see it with the streamers, you see it with the subreddit, you see it with the thing. There's this type of player who just wants stuff to do and that's what we were saying like, you know, people are obviously trying to turn it around and fight people. I think it was Shrier who was talking about his content for content sake. But there are people who just want content like that. And one of the things I found fascinating when we were either in I think it was when we, you know, when we got our codes we had to go to like a review. I for us went to a Discord thing where they had Pearl Abyss there and they had PR there and yada, yada, yada. And I the Will Powers from Pearl Abyss and then their PR company who does third party stuff. And I think it's here, but it might have been an interview somewhere else where Will Powers, the PR guy for Pearl Abyss was like one of the reasons this game resonates with me or whatever is the idea that when you sit down as an adult and play a game you don't necessarily have the six hour gaming binging you. Right. And he was like When I sit down for 15 minutes, it can be as simple as I go off and harvest lumber or I go get stone and I feel like I'm making progress. And I was like, oh, that's an interesting angle. And I know there are so many of those gamers.

[Mike]

Yeah, we've heard about that a lot. We've had that conversation with a lot of these big games of, oh, I don't have time for two hours being locked in to complete this. Right. I don't have five hours in my night to really make a big effort in this. But having those small milestones, those small chunks that you can go, hey, that's a win for the night. That's fun for gay.

[Greg Miller]

And I think for like that and I think for again, gamers who maybe can't consume content as quickly as we do or just don't. And I shouldn't even do that. I'm trying to speak for an audience I'm not a part of, but oh man, this story, it sucks. And Cliffside, like, if you're doing a week where you're like, all right, cool, I harvest lumber here and I did stone here, and then on Wednesday, now I'm going to go make the sword better and now I can go fight the ball. Like, you're not thinking about it that way. You're thinking about it very much in the gameplay mechanics of it, which I understand 100%. I got a few more crimson desert ones in here for you, Mikey. Okay. Eco is Matt 1992 super chats like you can on YouTube.com kind of funny games it says, I feel like initial reviews were lower due to social media. People see quote unquote, okay reviews and just agree and hop on the bandwagon. One single small patch doesn't change the game's overall review sentiment. Oh, you're hung up on reviews. I don't think that's what matters. I think it's the commitment of a developer to serve their audience and we're going through and changing this and refining this. And again, reviews are that opening salvo of a of criticism of how people are going to talk about a video game. And then from there it's in the players hands. And so in the same way we're still talking about it right now because of patches and updates or whatever. I think the ongoing narrative now becomes the social media, the YouTube, the TikToks, the whatever of the people are like, I'm 300 hours in and I just found this crazy demon over here. Whatever the fuck's going on you know what I mean? Like, that is the thing that then people still see go, oh, maybe I should jump in. And they did this and they're still updating and they fixed the thing that people were complaining about.

[Mike]

I mean, we even seen it on the kind of funny subreddit. Right. Somebody put in. I wish Andy played a little bit longer to see this crazy technique with the horse. The guy was like punching the horse and showing.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. But I couldn't tell if that was a joke or not because it was horse physics of like he wrote it.

[Mike]

It's like one of those things, like you're just going to see more and more of this game and they either speak to you or get you excited about something new you can go see. So that's kind of cool.

[Greg Miller]

Metal Baby Mario says, How would you, Greg, compare Crimson Desert to Kingdoms of Amalur, which is also a single player mmo? I of course, adore Kingdoms of Amalur. I think Kingdoms, this is something you've probably seen in the conversations out there. I think Kingdoms of Amalur is immediately more rewarding. I think you are immediately into. You are doing cool in combat. You are tearing it up. You're getting the gold. I. I think again, take it or leave it. I think they're putting story front and center there of you are this character. You are figuring this out now. Go talk to this person. Get that side quest. Engaging things, fun stuff. It is a big MMO like world that you're running around. Very colorful wow vibe to it. But like, I instantly am having fun in that game. In Crimson Desert. I did not find myself having fun in that game. It was more of a time to holy shit, this is great. Way longer in Crimson Desert if it happened for me at all. Yel Singh says, from what I've seen and played, Crimson Desert is for MMO nerds. Mike, you're an MMO nerd.

[Mike]

I'm an MMO nerd and I like. I mean, when I think of WOW and all my time with wow and how much I loved WOW and how they expanded the world of Azeroth and the things you can do inside of Azeroth, like, that's my dream open world, right? When I think of Skyrim and everything that Bethesda does, when I do think about Crimson Desert, it is that like, here's the world. Do whatever you want in it, right? Go over that crest. Explore what's on the ridgeline. Oh, you want to stay home, bake a pie? Oh, you want to knock?

[Greg Miller]

I do want to stay Home and make a pie.

[Mike]

Yeah, these are things that I want to do. And so for me, this kind of does speak to me when I think about Crimson Desert. It speaks to the playstyle that I like.

[Greg Miller]

Okay, and final one here comes from Jenny who says, I wish Crimson Desert had a female main character option. I'm tired of the excuse about quote unquote, it has to be this guy, end quote, when clearly there's no contive tissue there. You do unlock a female character playable very early. She plays differently, she has a gun and all this other stuff. But there's going to be stuff where you're forced to go be Cliff. Whatever. I think the bigger thing is I saw so many people on the Crimson Desert subreddit being like, oh my God, Black Desert Online has like the best character creator ever. It'd be awesome. And I was watching a video, I'm like, damn, that really would have been cool if I. If I wasn't just Cliff. I'm here with my gigantic fucking forearms. Yeah, Vady is. He looks like he's got two cock arms. They're so veiny. Wow. They're just veiny as fuck. You know what I mean?

[Mike]

He's been working out, man.

[Greg Miller]

Fucking yeah. If I don't have generic ass Cliff there, I'm so excited when I got a helmet to put on him.

[Mike]

I mean, it would be a fun conversation to have of like here, Crimson Desert team behind the scenes of like, why Cliff? Why not use that engine of like, hey, we have this awesome character creator in our previous game, let's put it here. Does he really need to be Cliff? Can he just be anybody and just have fun? The decision on that one, well, the

[Greg Miller]

decision on this one is that we love you and hopefully you love us. And if you love us, you should pick up the kind of funny membership. Of course, Patreon, YouTube, Spotify and Apple, you can go get it. Get all of our content ad free. Get your daily dose of me, Greg Miller and a 15 to 20 minute podcast we call Greg Way each and every weekday. And of course get good karma for supporting an 11 person 11 year old small business. But right now you're not using your benefits. So here's a word from our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by patreon.com kindafunny yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We'd love you to come give us $10 to get all of our shows ad free. Get your daily dose of me and get good karma because Patreon is the best place that gives us the best revenue share on the Kind of Funny subscription. But if that's not your style, we'd love it if you came over and signed up for a free account. That's right, a free patreon.com kindafunny follow gets you the weekly schedule, access to quips, Patreon's version of Twitter and as an exclusive bonus, this Friday, March 27th, it gets you access to a live Greg Way. That's right at 9:30am Pacific. Thank you. 30 minutes before kinda funny Games daily, I'll go live, answer chats and record the day's Greg Way. Any free member can come ask me questions in the chat. What have you got to lose? Sign up for a free sub on patreon.com kinda funny and I'll see you Friday, March 27th on Patreon at 9:30am Pacific. Who else are you gonna talk to A shoe

[Mike]

Spring starts at the Home Depot and we are bringing the heat to your backyard this season. Fire up the flavor with our wide variety of grill under $300 like the next grill 4 burner gas grill that's perfect for hosting your spring cookout. Then set the scene and turn your outdoor space into the go to spot with patio sets for every budget. Bring it this season with grills that deliver flavor and patios that set the vibe from the Home Depot. Start your spring with low prices guaranteed at the Home Depot. Exclusions applies to homedepot.com Pricematch for details.

[Greg Miller]

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[Mike]

The treat you deserve.

[Greg Miller]

Pepsi Wild Cherry and Cream Treat yourself. Protein is now at Starbucks and it's never tasted so good.

[Mike]

You can add protein cold foam to

[Greg Miller]

your favorite drink or try one of our new protein lattes or Matcha. Try it today at Starbucks. Marvel Television's Wonder man, an eight episode series now streaming on Disney. A superhero remake. Not exactly what we'd expect from an Oscar winning director. Action Simon Williams audition for Wonder Man.

[Mike]

I'm gonna need you to sign this, assuming you don't have superpowers.

[Greg Miller]

I'll never work again if anyone found

[Mike]

out monolips are sealed Marvel Television's Wonder

[Greg Miller]

man all eight episodes now streaming only on Disney. So good, so good, so good. Spring styles are at Nordstrom Rack stores now and they're up to 60% off.

[Mike]

Stock up and save on Rag and

[Greg Miller]

Bone, Madewell, Vince, All Saints and more of your favorites. How did I not know Rack has Adidas? Why do we rack for the hottest deal? Just so many good brands.

[Mike]

Join the Nordic Club to unlock exclusive discounts.

[Greg Miller]

Shop new arrivals first and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite Rack store for free.

[Mike]

Great brands, great prices.

[Greg Miller]

That's why you rack. And we're back with story number three. Sega's Stranger Than Heaven will headline an Xbox Partner event this week. We go to VGC and Andy Robinson. Microsoft has announced its next Xbox Partner Preview digital event will take place this week on Thursday, March 26th. Partner Preview is Xbox's event series that focuses on upcoming games from third party developers. According to an announcement, this week's installment will include news on upcoming games from partners during sega. I'm sorry. Partners including Sega, gsc, Game World and owlcat games. Plus brand new reveals, world premieres and Xbox Game pass announcements. The March 26 partner preview will feature an in depth look at RGG's new project, Stranger Than Heaven, an update on S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, Heart of Chernobyl, plus a new look at the Expanse. Osiris Reborn. This game looks dope. That's not all we'll have for you with first looks and announcements from more great games coming to Xbox consoles, Xbox on PC and Xbox Game Pass. Microsoft said the event will broadcast digitally on Thursday, March 26th at 10am Pacific

[Mike]

morning starts. I like that.

[Greg Miller]

You like that, Mikey? You like that? What do you. What do you think for Stranger Than Heaven?

[Mike]

I'm so happy I'm back to work because I would not want to miss this.

[Greg Miller]

Oh yeah.

[Mike]

And I am pumped up. It's a great lineup right here. It's a nice little. I mean, we are getting so many showcases, partner previews, indie developer directs to start off the year. I'm having a great time. I love seeing games, love seeing new games, love seeing returning titles come back into my life. Now when you put RGG Studios in the mix and you show me Stranger Than Heaven. Yeah, I get really excited about this. Right? Like, okay, this looks dope. 1943, setting up Yakuza some more like I'm into that. Right. I love that. And then you also brought it up. We're talking about an Expanse video game. Shout out to the Telltale Expanse video game. That wasn't telltale. Deck 9. I think made that Telltale.

[Greg Miller]

I thought they were Telltale.

[Mike]

Yeah, it might be under Telltale's name. I don't remember the Telltale lineup.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, no, it was. It was. Yeah, it was an. It was a Telltale game.

[Mike]

I want more Expanse in my life.

[Greg Miller]

Can you. Can you throw up the Expanse trailer? Because remember this trailer was so good.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Tim and I bought the book.

[Mike]

Have you watched the show yet?

[Greg Miller]

No, because people Are like watching like we're buy the book. We bought the book and I read one chapter and Tim read one page. But we're going to work on it. I mean we're working on it. Right there.

[Mike]

Okay.

[Greg Miller]

The expanse of Cyrus.

[Mike]

Don't be afraid to start the show. Show's really good. I mean it is going to take up a lot of your time when you are a father and you don't have much time. But the show is really good.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Mike]

And this game looks really good. I'm super excited to see more of this. I want more Expanse universe. Of course I brought up the Telltale game. Fun. Cool to get more in the universe now. A full fledged game. That looks awesome. Kind of like Mass Effect vibes.

[Greg Miller]

Yep.

[Mike]

Really excited for that. We're going to be riding the high off of project Hail Mary this weekend and throughout the week.

[Greg Miller]

Do I.

[Mike]

Not yet for me. But I think people are going to be really excited about like a sci fi universe. And once again, like I said, I know there's the books for me. I watched the show. I loved the show. I can't wait to be in this universe. I want. I want it. I really want it.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. I mean the game looks awesome. I want to know more about this to the fact that they're part of. I mean one of the three that are getting a lot of news here or you know, layout. I'm very into. I'm very excited for that one. Yes, of course, everybody. We will be live reacting to it here on kind of funny. Of course. YouTube.com/kind of funny games. Twitch TV kind of funny games. 10am It'll take the normal slot of Games Daily. Maybe it'll be Games Daily. I haven't had enough time in my desk to actually lay it out because we do have an embargoed preview. So maybe you're getting two games cast. Maybe this is Games Daily. We'll figure it out. Don't worry about it. But we'll be live and you got to come. Hang on.

[Mike]

And of course stalker 2. Get an update with that team. Right. What have they been working on? What are they adding to this game? This was a game that I was really into but got my butt absolutely whooped in it. I gave up on it. So it's like I really am into the idea of playing Stalker 2. I don't know if I'll ever. I would love to see more content come that way from that team and see if one day I'll get into it. This was punishing. Yeah, it was Cool, man. That invisible guy was chasing me all around in the fields and I was trying to shoot it.

[Greg Miller]

And I'm surprised. Yeah. Because soccer team came out a while ago. Right?

[Mike]

20, 24.

[Greg Miller]

Right.

[Mike]

Okay.

[Greg Miller]

Okay. So yeah. What are they bringing here? What are they talking about now? What's the update?

[Mike]

And then what else will they show? Also first kind of brand new reveals

[Greg Miller]

world premieres and game pass announcements in

[Mike]

the Asha Charman rain now. So this is Sharma. Thank you. New reign. So this is kind of exciting. I don't think we'll see the true vibe until June for her and the team. Right. The reset.

[Greg Miller]

Do you see her? Oh, does Asha have something going on in this? Does she pop up like, hey, everybody, I'm Asha. Happy to meet you. Is it her and Phil? Do we see Phil too?

[Mike]

I thought that's June. No, I'm gonna go with June. I think we don't see her, but

[Greg Miller]

like putting the games up front and center. I forget what these usually look like in terms of they're not the developer directs that have that nice like circle.

[Mike]

I feel like Sarah Bond and Matt Booty and Phil have appeared trying to

[Greg Miller]

get to you and Matt Booty.

[Mike]

So it'll be exciting to see. But I love that I'm back to work for this. I can't wait to see the other games, but.

[Greg Miller]

Well, don't get ahead of yourself. This is Thursday. Let's see if you're still standing by then. Okay.

[Mike]

I don't want to miss out on any more work.

[Greg Miller]

Let's see who's still standing by Thursday. We'll figure it out for that. Do you have any predictions? Plus a brand new reveals world premieres?

[Mike]

No, I have no predictions for you right now. You got anything coming out of your back pocket?

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. What. What's the. When are we. Life has changed Reunion. That's this week, right? Is that tomorrow or is that okay. Another Life Is Strange reunion release date March 26. That lines up, right? They could have.

[Mike]

That's that day.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. They'll say something about that. Shit. That'll be there. Fucking put that out there.

[Mike]

Life is strange.

[Greg Miller]

Chloe, maybe you. I don't know. You know, hold on, let me. I think it's in WE news. Let's make sure. Hold on.

[Mike]

Don't.

[Greg Miller]

Don't go anywhere. Don't go anywhere. Don't anymore.

[Mike]

Anywhere.

[Greg Miller]

Look at this. I don't even think blessing put it in here. No, there it is. Toss it in the top. Barry, if you don't mind. Minecraft Dungeons 2 has been announced. Oh, this Is from the top of we news. I'll read the Steam description. The next chapter. Chapter in Minecraft Dungeons begins in the fall of 2026. A new threat is descending upon the land. Become a hero and clash with forces of evil once more. I forget. I know this is Partner direct. I know they own Mo Yang. Who's the one who does Minecraft Dungeons though?

[Mike]

Want to say Blackbird Interactive sounds really good. There's two different Minecraft games. There was Dungeons and you know, the other one.

[Greg Miller]

So they list so on the developer of this, when they have Steam has mojang and double 11. I think you could fart around in fudge it and say that this is one of them because I thought this is a weird one just to have announced over the weekend, but come on.

[Mike]

Well, they had a big Minecraft announcement party there.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, but nobody cares in the weekend.

[Mike]

Come on. They're having a. They're making a Minecraft amusement park. Did you see that?

[Greg Miller]

Didn't see that because it was the weekend. Come on. You know what I mean? Help us out here. Let me be dialed in on a weekday. Let me have a job.

[Mike]

Well, let's take a moment to talk about this because this is an exciting announcement.

[Greg Miller]

Very much so.

[Mike]

Baby's first arpg, which we talked about on the last one. A surprise little hit for families and gamers alike. Like, I'm into this game 100%, Joey

[Greg Miller]

and I loved it, platinumed it.

[Mike]

I'm surprised that we're getting a second one.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Mike]

Honestly, I thought with Minecraft Dungeons and Legends they'd be kind of one and done. Like, hey, we gave them a try, tested the market, see where we go from there.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Mike]

To see that we're getting a Dungeons too.

[Greg Miller]

That's a thumbs up for me too. I'm very excited. As much as I like Dungeons 1 to see what they're going to bring to the table and in fact, I'm so into it, it's my final ad to the Fantasy Critic team. Ecto one Games did pick up Minecraft Dungeons to Minecraft Dungeons Open Critic. It was like 70 something.

[Mike]

Okay. But I think it's going up.

[Greg Miller]

I think. I think it is because we all had so much fun with that. I really feel like you look at that, you go, especially if you're like, we're doing another one. Yeah, let's double down on what people really like. Let's have it come out of the gate with a whole bunch more content, a whole bunch more stuff. And I think an audience now looks at that and Goes, man, I've heard good vibes about it. Let's go. I'm expecting more than I give you a thumbs up on whatever the open critic was. It was 70, 72, 76. I'm expecting at least an 80, which ain't banger numbers, but I'm probably fucked by the chance. I'm locked on so many goddamn games.

[Mike]

Ready for my.

[Greg Miller]

I don't believe in this Half Life game anymore. Yeah, go for it.

[Mike]

I'm going for a shot in the dark. A up a theory here, Barrett. If you go back to the trailer at the very end, they show six light up spots. I think it's gonna be six players.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, hot four. Okay.

[Mike]

Yeah, that's my thought right there. Because it goes. It shows 1, 2, 3, 4, and then it adds 5 and 6 on the colors right here.

[Greg Miller]

Okay.

[Mike]

And then they take some all the way. I think we're getting six players on this.

[Greg Miller]

Damn. You asked me that's worth 20 points. You know what I mean?

[Mike]

This would be fun. But yeah, I'm looking forward to this.

[Greg Miller]

Me too. I'm glad. I love more details. I'd love to see it, especially for 2026. I feel like that snuck in, you know what I mean?

[Mike]

Back in the year.

[Greg Miller]

Let's go for it. Of course. Like I said, March 26th is the Xbox Partner Preview. Stranger than Heaven S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 update. The Expanse, Osiris Reborn. Plus brand new reveals, world premieres and Xbox game pass announcements. It is 10am on Thursday, our normal Games Daily time slot. We will be live. We will live react to it. Then we will do a show after it. Will that show be Games Daily or will that show be another Gamescast? I vote Games Daily. So we don't double up the Gamescast feed and there's no Tim to talk me down. Don't worry about it. You know what? What am I saying? Let me check in with Tim, Jr. CEO of Jr. Barrett Courtney.

[Mike]

Hey, man. Here's the thing though.

[Greg Miller]

Like, it's the only news of the day probably.

[Mike]

Do we really want to set the expectation that live reactions are a part of Games Daily?

[Greg Miller]

Like I don't. We're going to cut out the live reaction.

[Mike]

Sounds just like. Tim, that's crazy.

[Greg Miller]

No, I say roll with Games Daily. Games Daily. All right, there you go. The motion passes. Rest in peace, Tim. Let's move on to number four. Nvidia confirms DLSS5 is redrawing games. This is Jacqueline Thomas at IGN.com formerly Imagine Games Network. Nvidia announced DLSS5 on Monday, which was swiftly followed by immediate backlash from gamers and developers alike. And while Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has claimed people are wrong about their distaste for the fledgling team, Green has released some comments that have clarified what it does for better or worse. In a statement to YouTuber Daniel Owen, Jacob Freeman, GeForce evangelist and for Nvidia, clarified some of the finer points about how DLSS5 actually works. And just like Death Stranding 2 animator Mike York suggested, it seems the algorithm is just taking frames from the game along with motion vector data and drawing a new image that's pasted on top of the When Owen asked whether or not the model is just taking a rendered frame as input, Freeman responded, yes, DLSS5 takes a 2D frame plus motion vectors as input. Then he clarified, DLSS5 is trained end to end to understand complex scene schematics such as characters, hair, fabric and translucent skin, along with environmental lighting conditions like front lit, all by analyzing a single frame, end quote. Nvidia has made the claim about quote unquote complex scene schematics before, but because the model is only taking the rendered frame and motion data as input, it has no way to know definitively the values given to various in game objects by developers. Owen was told the same thing I've been told by Nvidia too. The developers will have quote detailed controls such as intensity and color grading. Artists can use these controls to adjust global contrast, saturation and gamma and determine where and how enhancements are applied to maintain a game's unique aesthetic. But given what Nvidia has shared about how the model works, these controls seem limited to the kind of sliders you'd find in Adobe Lightroom. We've talked it today. Yeah, there's a lot of shows last week about how lot of shows. Yikesy, yikesy, yikesy. And here we are again. Yikesy. Mike, you got anything new to say under the sun about this other than you hope people just don't use it?

[Mike]

Yeah, no, I have nothing to add to this one. A long time conversation last week. A lot of fun memes coming out of that one. A lot of just giggles and a lot of kind of grabbing your hair going what are we doing? And you know, I'm not the tech guy. I don't understand much of this. But then when I read it I go, oh, it's just a Snapchat filter put over this. That's great. That's what I needed.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, well that they were.

[Mike]

Don't love that.

[Greg Miller]

That's where you know, Jensen would pop up and say you're completely wrong.

[Mike]

Yeah, exactly.

[Greg Miller]

We will continue to watch this nightmare unfold and see if anyone actually tries it.

[Mike]

Greg, it's going to be great.

[Greg Miller]

Every game is going to look Artists have complete control. Complete control. Complete control. Number five on the Roper Report. The Last of Us adds Michelle Mao as Yara and Kyriana Crater as Lev for season three of HBO series this is Nelly and Revo. Over a deadline, the Last of Us has cast two key roles for the sec from the second game. Sibling siblings Yara and Lev Bridgerton's Michelle Mao and Kriyana Crater. Star wars skeleton crew are joining the upcoming third season of the HBO post apocalyptic drama as series regulars playing Yara and Lev respectively. Sarah fights Yara and especially Lev are a major part of Abby Anderson's Caitlyn Dever arc, which is believed to be the focus of the Last of Us third and likely final season. Lev is the Lev is a duro. Duro. What'd he say there? No, it's like neuter so duder antagonist of Abby's dude or I've never seen this in my life. People are too fucking smart.

[Mike]

I like that.

[Greg Miller]

This is why I don't write about movies or TV of Abby's storyline in the Naughty Dog game serving as her partner and moral compass. Like in the game, Lev crater is a 13 year old transgender boy. HBO held an inclusive casting call for Lev with young actors of different backgrounds auditioning. It was won by Crowder, who was a child herself at 8. At 15, Crowder was a main cast member opposite Jude Law and Ryan Kira Armstrong in Disney's Jude Law was in Star Wars.

[Mike]

There it is. He was really good in it.

[Greg Miller]

And this wasn't a cartoon or was it a cartoon?

[Mike]

No, it was like it was Star Wars Goonies and no one watched it

[Greg Miller]

and it kicked ass.

[Mike]

No one's really good.

[Greg Miller]

Okay, great. Maybe I'll watch. Is it Ben appropriate yet or do I have to let him get a little bit older?

[Mike]

I.

[Greg Miller]

We'll talk off air. Like I don't know what his level of like what thing was scary and what is it? She also had recurring role on Disney channels Bunk'd. Mao is coming off a major role as Sophie, Sophie's evil stepsister Rosamond in the Cinderella themed season four of Netflix's Bridgerton.

[Mike]

Greg, I'll just. I'll kick it right to you. You're the PlayStation guy. The last of us, man. You happy with this?

[Greg Miller]

I mean, I know nothing about these people. I've seen this go the the obviously what I had seen run within our circles was that this was happening and Lev, a 13 year old transgender boy was being played by a female actress.

[Mike]

Yes.

[Greg Miller]

And that not somebody from the transgender community. And I saw people were very upset about that. And so I'm trying to find an image of these people, but I don't have the bandwidth to talk while you also could get to me. Yeah. I don't know either of these people. I wish them luck. I don't know.

[Mike]

Let's talk about season three.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Mike]

What's your excitement level for that? You know, I think a lot of people talked about season one, season two. It seems to be like, yeah, we're just like here. And then season three where yeah, season three.

[Greg Miller]

I'm excited for as much as anything else. I don't know. I'm going to watch it week to week. I'm sure we'll be doing reacts to it. All that jazz. It will be that, you know, you brought up the Expanse. You should watch the Expanse. How many. And you're like, but it's a commitment. Like how many seasons of the Expanse are there or whatever?

[Mike]

Six to seven.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. See like Jen and I are good for that Sunday HBO show. We like a Sunday HBO show. So like this is. This falls in this perfectly to. Here you go. Something we like obviously the source material of. And let's go off and see what's up. So like I'll go do that for sure.

[Mike]

What six seasons, 62 episodes.

[Greg Miller]

God.

[Mike]

A lot of stuff.

[Greg Miller]

You know what I mean? And not to stop us, but I mean like.

[Mike]

And it gets good.

[Greg Miller]

We gave, you know, when Ben was born, we gave the Sopranos an honest, honest college try there. But like we did, you know, we didn't finish the entire run. That's a lot of episodes. You know what I mean? Anyways, I'll be watching this. Yeah. What I'm more interested about this season. Right. And this is an interesting conversation to have here as we go through people talking about, ok, well we're casting a female as a transgender boy when we could have found a transgender boy to be the. It's also harkens back to this whole thing of like no Neil, no, no Halle in this. Like, you know, I mean this is, this is what's his face, Craig Mason at the controls with no counterpart to it. Not that I'm saying it would have changed or anything else if Neil had been there, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I'm more interested of like what does a season of the Last of Us without Neil Without Hallie actually look like when it's just Craig, they're running ship, we'll see. But yeah, you know, like I'm interested in it, of course. Yeah. I enjoyed the first two seasons of the Last of Us, but yeah, I'm not like, I'm not beyond hyped. I'm not like, oh my God. Now granted, I assume it's because I have no idea when this is launching. Maybe you know, like the build up to that first episode, I'll be more into it. Okay. But like right now I'm like, yeah, cool. You know, I like Last of Us a lot, so more. This is cool.

[Mike]

Great.

[Greg Miller]

You are. What is your hype level? Are you not hype?

[Mike]

No, I'm off on that one. Yeah, I fell off after season one.

[Greg Miller]

See, Barnell says, Greg, it's gonna be awful. Honestly though, that's one of the things I'm saying is I would like to watch and see is that the case, you know what I mean? Does.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

What I think season one being probably the best adaptation of a video game. Right. Go to this where now we have no Neil there. And not that he's like the missing link or anything or he's infallible.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

God knows nobody is. But is it the thing we're gonna get to this and it's like, well, this isn't Last of Us anymore. But the whole thing, the chat right there is talking about season two was awful. I liked season two. I don't. I didn't have a problem with season two. I know, I know that that is blasphemy to say on the Internet now, but I legitimately am like, I don't know. I love Catherine o'. Hara. She was great in it, had a lot of fun with it. Like it was another telling of a story of that I know really well. So, like, cool.

[Mike]

That's fine. Yeah. You're ready for season three?

[Greg Miller]

I am ready for season three and see how this plays out. But Mike, when season three debuts, which might already be known and we just don't even fucking know now again. Okay, go. Forget it. That'll be big news. But I have no idea what season three debuts, so take me somewhere with smaller news.

[Mike]

Where would I take you? To our last story, the WE News Channel, where we cover all the small news items you need to know about. Greg,

[Greg Miller]

number six, we news we already talked about. Minecraft Dungeons 2 has been announced. Congratulations, everybody. From Eurogamer. Microsoft has lost another two long serving members of its senior team. Corporate VP of Partnerships, Business Development and Marketing Lori Wright and general Manager of gaming AI at Xbox, Haiyang Zhang, both announced their departures on LinkedIn.

[Mike]

Best of luck to both of them wherever they go. I don't. Not familiar with both of them, but I will say the vp partnerships and business development and marketing. Marketing, I had my eye of like, thinking back, he had your eye on that job.

[Greg Miller]

You want to get over that?

[Mike]

Had my eye on, over the years, all of the partnerships that we've seen with Xbox Game. Pass. We kind of talk about Sarah Bond and bringing that content stuff, but like, they've done a really good job with Xbox. Microsoft teaming up with companies that I want to give me benefits. Right. When I think about Riot games, we've seen other MMOs team up and other things, I really enjoyed that. So I look forward to more of that, hopefully.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, I, you know, that's what jumps to you and I understand that and appreciate for me it is the departure of the general manager of gaming AI at Xbox. What does that mean?

[Mike]

Yeah, yeah.

[Greg Miller]

What does that mean? Asha coming over from the AI team, which granted, was rebranded. I know. And then of course, this Microsoft copilot coming to your Xbox right now. What does that mean? I'd love to know about where we're going. I'm sure it'll be great though. Xbox, Order me a Domino's pizza.

[Mike]

I can't do that for you, Greg.

[Greg Miller]

I know. It'd be the opposite, right, of like calling Dominic, like, no, don't call Dominic from.

[Mike]

Wasn't that a thing?

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, well, yeah, yeah, yeah. Remember that?

[Mike]

That was a thing.

[Greg Miller]

Your Kinect. Remember that?

[Mike]

Gotta love that connect.

[Greg Miller]

You love that connect from Automaton. Capcom says it will be using AI generated content in its games. Fuck me.

[Mike]

Will not.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, sorry, I missed that. Will not be using.

[Mike]

Highlight that, everybody.

[Greg Miller]

Quote, our company will not be implementing any AI generated assets into our video game content. On the other hand, going forward, we plan to actively utilize this technology in order to improve efficiency and productivity in game development. That is why we are currently testing out various methods of usage across our departments. Testing out various. That is why we are currently testing out various methods of usage across our departments, including graphics, sound and programming. End quote. Graphics wrote in the briefing session summary.

[Mike]

Great job, Capcom. That's exactly what you do. Slide in there. Just say, we won't be doing that.

[Greg Miller]

Except for these places where we won't be doing that. Which again, is back to the bigger news. Not the Wii news, but the bigger news, right? Where it's like we've had this conversation all last Week AI not inherently bad. There's good uses that could save developers time and make their jobs easier and make run a spreadsheet, do all the nobody wants to do. You have to Google how to do this in Excel. But then it's the generative AI business where we're in trading games and taking jobs and doing these kind of things. So Capcom seeming to do what I would like to see more people do. I think of yo, we're not putting that AI generated in our games. But back end just being a business. It sounds like it'll be there, but what am I? Oh, the Nvidia thing. I was like they were such the lightning rod there with Resident Evil 9. It's interesting to see them come out and make this statement now, isn't it? Sony has removed 1,000 more shovelware games from the PlayStation Store. Those could have been easy.

[Mike]

Platinum. Do you lose platinum?

[Greg Miller]

You do? Well, no, they can't take them away once you got.

[Mike]

They don't take the platinum delay. Right?

[Greg Miller]

No, no, no, no, no. Penny Parker joins Marvel token Fighting Souls roster. That's cool.

[Mike]

Nice, nice.

[Greg Miller]

And then Atomic Owl launches May 20th on Xbox, PlayStation 4, PS5, Nintendo Switch and PC. And that, ladies gentlemen and Enbs is it for the one, the only we news. We turn our lonely eyes to the super chats. What am I looking at?

[Mike]

Atomic Owl, I was gonna say. Should I be aware of this? If Blessing's putting in the Wii news channel. I appreciate Bear bringing up the trailer so we can see it looks like a 2D kind of almost Celeste style platformer here to start. I bet you there'll probably be some like Orea ask action I'm hoping for. Okay, but kind of, kind of cool. If you're listening audio listeners, this would be a Blessing and Andy Barrett joint video game. When you think of 2D action platformers, maybe like a Katana Zero. Yep, that's where my brain went. Thank you, Betsy. I. I know Bear.

[Greg Miller]

I thought Katana zero looks better though.

[Mike]

Well, yeah, I'm just trying to paint him a picture of what you should be imagining here.

[Greg Miller]

Okay.

[Mike]

Yeah, it feels like an interesting combination of Celeste and Katana zero, but yeah, Katana zero art style is like one of the goats. Let's be real. It's hard to hit that again over

[Greg Miller]

in the super chats on YouTube.com kind of funny games sky says reminder to get your your yearly snake vaccine. Of course, everybody got bit by snakes and that's why they weren't here last week.

[Mike]

Last week.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Casper says not sure if this is a Greg Way or a games cast before. Would it be nice to have a video slash conversation from a reviewer on broken games being beta tested till three months down the line when they're finally fixed? I feel like we've talked that to death already. Both in Crimson Desert gamescast staff last week with me and Bless and then yeah for sure in Greg Way last week. But. But yeah, Will says when do we get the Greg, Ben and Mike Ocarina of Time 30 Years later review? We are anxious.

[Mike]

Is he ahead? He's got to be ahead of me.

[Greg Miller]

Oh no, no, no. He plays Spider man every day and skate every day and then what's the other one he's been on lately? Oh, he's back to Astrobot. Kid cannot be stopped in Astrobot.

[Mike]

Could we set him up with a wheel for Forza? Would he dig that? Like do you think if I put the wheel with the pedal in front of him it'd be too much or would you think he'd be into that?

[Greg Miller]

It would take. He would have to relearn to play because he knows how to play with the controller. But he'd be into it probably for a little bit. Yeah.

[Mike]

Okay.

[Greg Miller]

Get it set up.

[Mike]

Stop talking about.

[Greg Miller]

I've talked to you before about this. We only did that one weekend where we did Friday night and Saturday.

[Mike]

Yeah, but I don't know how far you got. Where'd you get to? This is my first time playing all this new.

[Greg Miller]

I mean. Yeah, but I mean like I think we got just out.

[Mike]

We saw Mount Doom?

[Greg Miller]

No, no. We saw Gannon through the window and came. He's a four year old boy, you know what I mean? He fought things that fought things in the Hyrule field.

[Mike]

That's a cool. Hey, it's dangerous out there.

[Greg Miller]

It is dangerous. Don't go alone. Let me go on these super chats and see who's talking about stuff that isn't stuff we already talked about. I scroll to the bottom. Mr. Hawk says four months of stress and worry. But your boy got a job offer. Thanks for helping. Kind of funny. And all the kind of funny. Best friends. Congratulations, Mr. Hawks.

[Mike]

That was Mr. Hawks.

[Greg Miller]

That was.

[Mike]

Are you big dog?

[Greg Miller]

Special K says I worry in the near future Big game reveals at TGA, SGF, etc. Could be the DLSS5 version that is shown. Essentially the killzone 2 situation will be more common occurrence. I don't think DLSS5 I mean you say in the near future so maybe I'm being too broad. I don't think DLSS5 is going to be approachable enough for people. Since that again, like we talked about last week with the debut, they're running one. One graphics card is running the game. One graphics card is running this tech. Like we're not to the point where it's going to be everywhere. And they would have to put it at the bottom saying it's running on X, Y and Z. And so people would tear it apart. And again, if the devs we keep quoting are correct of like, yo, this ain't it. I don't think you're gonna see devs necessarily run to it as much as some checkbox to put in with their. Hey, we launched this.

[Mike]

Do you know anything about this killzone 2 that they put in there?

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Don't you?

[Mike]

No, I don't remember that.

[Greg Miller]

Back in the day when Killzone 2 debuted its first trailer. Okay, it looks stunning and amazing and it was like, that was all just bullshit. And so like for years that was the thing of like, like anytime any game debuted, it was compared to Killzone. Oh yeah, Killzone got dragged for that really, really bad. Danto 42 says no lie. Star Wars Skeleton crew was really good. There you go. Confirmation. Smooth Segue says welcome back Mike. Please try to stay away from snakes in the future. We missed you especially Andy. Adam says Greg, any progress on reading book one of the Expanse? I watched the show back in the day and it just Finished reading book 6. Can't put it down. Great series, incredible writing. No, but again, I am on a reading tear right now because of audiobooks. So maybe I try the Expanse Book 1 as an audiobook.

[Mike]

Okay.

[Greg Miller]

Okay, Vinnie. Or sorry, Vinyl says Greg. I started my first playthrough of Starfield over the weekend and I'm absolutely loving it. Oh hell yeah. Good for you. I'm on my sixth or seventh new game plus now. That's fucking great. You know what I mean? I'm setting this thing up right now. I'm ready to rock.

[Mike]

How's the content? New stuff.

[Greg Miller]

Great. I mean the tracker alliance stuff last week was awesome. And I'm playing like literally. It's so good that I went through the unity, started this new game plus and it's what I've run to. Well, I start. I restarted the Watchtower stuff which was the creation for King Gaff because I got lost where I started it when it launched and it was. But then part of it is like, you know, this is a conversation. I'm doing the Watchtower content and I'm doing, I'm doing all the trackers, a lot of stuff right now to get the cool. They have really good drops on it. So it's like I now that I'm back with a new character, gotta get a new character. I gotta go through and get all my stuff. Ah, let's get your wrongs here.

[Mike]

Yep.

[Greg Miller]

No. Okay, here we go. Deuteronomy, which I couldn't say is pronounced this way. Deuteronist used to describe the secondary character. Usually a foil to the primary character, such as Han Solo's ruggedness to Luke Skywalker. Straight face.

[Mike]

Oh, okay.

[Greg Miller]

Deutero goodness. Never gonna remember that. But I appreciate you writing in Eric Allen. And then Mad Rocks says note, CapCom has an AI commentator in Street Fighter 6.

[Mike]

The AI voices. Okay. Yep.

[Greg Miller]

What do you believe? What do you do?

[Mike]

I don't know.

[Greg Miller]

What do you fucking do anymore?

[Mike]

We'll be talking about it a lot.

[Greg Miller]

We will be. And it won't matter. Everybody, this has been another episode of Kinda Funny Games Daily. Remember each and every weekday we're here on Twitch TV. Kinda funnyg. YouTube.com kindafundungames Apple Spotify, of course you podcast servers around the globe. You can watch for free. You can super chat to be part of the show. You can go be a Patreon producer. You can Support us on patreon.com kindafunny YouTube.com kindafunnygames Apple Spotify, get all of our shows ad free. Get your daily dose of me, Greg Miller. And of course get good karma for supporting an 11 person 11 year old small business on yet another humongous week. If you didn't watch the buzz this week which was hosted by Nick, you know, let me tell you, you got embargoed previews all week long. Now you got on Thursday this, we're gonna do a live react to the Xbox thing on Friday got a live Greg way. There's a lot going on everybody and we couldn't do it without you. Until next time, it's been our pleasure to serve you. Like subscribe, share.