The "Pay-to-Play" Scheme That (Almost) Ruined Video Games, with Dan Soder

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Pablo Torre Finds Out

Episode: The "Pay-to-Play" Scheme That (Almost) Ruined Video Games, with Dan Soder
Host: Pablo Torre (The Athletic)
Guest: Dan Soder
Release Date: July 14, 2026

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Overview

This episode explores the recent controversy affecting the video game industry, focusing on how “pay-to-play” microtransactions have invaded beloved sports games—especially the long-awaited return of College Football 25. Pablo and comedian/gamer Dan Soder break down the evolution of video game economics, what’s been lost for players, and how online communities have fought back against predatory monetization schemes. Together, they examine the broader implications for media ownership, capitalism, and gamer culture—while sharing funny, nostalgic, and at times passionate takes on the subject.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Personal Nostalgia & Evolution of Gaming

• Dan Soder's Gaming Journey: Soder grew up with games, recalling the anticipation of picking up new releases at GameStop and all-night college football tournaments.
  • "I've played video games since I was like six... I've just always consistently had a system and I've just played my whole life." (04:20, Dan Soder)
• Shift to Online & Digital: The physical act of buying and owning games is fading. Pre-orders are now digital, disc drives are vanishing, and games increasingly are subscription-based or licensed, not truly owned.
  • "You walked out of GameStop with a physical disc. And now...you actually are just licensing" (26:42-27:02, Pablo Torre & Dan Soder)

2. College Football 25 and the Microtransaction Revolt

• The Hype & the Letdown: After a decade-long hiatus, EA’s College Football returns, breaks sales records, and is immediately engulfed in controversy for locking player progression and features behind expensive microtransactions—up to $150 “MVP” bundles and subscription-based skill trees.
  • "For the first time in this game's history, it was loaded with microtransactions." (17:15, Dan Soder)
• Collective Backlash: Streamers and Redditors, often game's biggest promoters, rebelled with organized campaigns (#CFBPlayDontPay), refusing to purchase microtransactions and publicly shaming the publisher.
  • "There was a hashtag, hashtag cfb Play don't pay. Basically what it was was like even if you pre ordered the game...do not do the microtransactions." (27:41-47, Dan Soder)

3. The Rise and Spread of Microtransactions ("Pay-to-Play")

• Definition & Impact: Microtransactions—virtual currency, XP boosts, cosmetic items—started as optional but are now increasingly embedded in core gameplay, often walling off content unless you pay.
  • "You grind it out, you play a game, you get XP for touchdown scores. How many good things you do..." (20:49, Dan Soder)
  • "What they're doing is they're making some stuff only accessible via microtransaction...you can play all you want. You'll never be able to access this unless you give us money." (21:22, Dan Soder)
• Where It Crossed the Line: The introduction of microtransactions into single-player, offline modes is seen as a breaking point.
  • "If you were to say, like, what is the felony? Like, what is the absolute crime they did is that they brought it to single player..." (23:41, Dan Soder)
• Industry Perspective: Former EA designer Michael Brooke shares supportive yet cautionary advice.
  • "If these microtransactions are improperly implemented...by removing or disabling features that were previously free...gamers will see through the marketing gimmick and will express their wrath." (28:19, Pablo Torre quoting Brooke)

4. Case Study: 2K and the Marketplace Metastasis

• NBA 2K & “The City”: 2K once competed on gameplay quality, then pivoted hard to extracting money through virtual fashion, boosting, and even selling durags more expensive than their real-life counterparts.
  • "They took quote unquote unlockables and just made them microtransactions." (33:48, Dan Soder)
  • "You have to spend more to purchase a 2K virtual durag $5 than you would on a real life." (34:02-18, Pablo Torre & Dan Soder)
• WWE 2K & Ruin of Community: 2K’s changes destroyed cross-platform collaboration on custom wrestlers and fun unlockables, making nearly everything paid and shattering a once-thriving fan community.
  • "It was the Create a Wrestler suite...2k went, whoa, whoa, whoa. You guys are having too much free fun." (40:02-42:52, Dan Soder)

5. Ownership, Capitalism, and the Disappearing Customer

• The New Model: With companies moving away from physical copies (GTA 6 as landmark case—fully digital, subscription-based), players can’t resell, mod, or even access games they’ve “purchased” forever.
  • "We're not selling you this. You're borrowing this." (49:57, Dan Soder)
  • "During COVID people were reselling NCAA 2014 for like 260 bucks a disc." (50:29, Dan Soder)
• Private Equity and Mega-Acquisitions: Ownership is abstracted; EA was taken private by a Saudi/Kushner consortium, fueling ever-more aggressive monetization.
  • "No one owns the product they sell anymore. No one owns the product they buy anymore." (26:15, Dan Soder)

6. Culture Shift and Gamer Agency

• Loss of Joy and Community: Video games that once meant fun, social connection, and personal mastery now feel like chores or predatory schemes.
  • "Video games are supposed to be like a dessert and you're, like, making it feel like homework or you're making it feel grimy and gross." (61:26, Dan Soder)
• The Return of Shame & Hope for Change: Online shaming (“you buy credits”), boycotts, and revolts offer a rare glimmer of hope for accountability. There’s a call to compete—on gameplay and value, not just squeezing users.
  • "You can't shame people for being themselves, but what you sure as hell can do is shame people for greed." (56:39, Dan Soder)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On Microtransactions & Changing Ownership:

• "What they're doing is they're making some stuff only accessible via microtransaction...You'll never be able to access this unless you give us money. And that is where it goes. Oh, it's just. That's the ugly face of capitalism." — Dan Soder (21:22)
• "No one owns the product they sell anymore. No one owns the product they buy anymore." — Dan Soder (26:15)
• "We're not selling you this. You're borrowing this." — Dan Soder on the coming of fully digital games like GTA 6 (49:57)
• "I loved cheat codes...There are no cheat codes anymore." — Pablo Torre (48:48)

On the Player Revolt:

• "There was a hashtag, hashtag cfb Play don't pay. Even if you have the game, do not do the microtransactions." — Dan Soder (27:41)
• "Companies have forgotten that we wanna buy stuff. You don't have to shove it down our throats. You don't have to trick us. You don't have to trap us. Make good stuff and we'll buy it." — Dan Soder (25:38)

On the Broader Meaning:

• "If I have a good weekend and I want to put new boots on Roddy, Roddy Piper, let me put new boots on my baby...you don't have a gun to my head." — Dan Soder (57:28-57:58)
• "The competition is how America got great...losing is like, to me personally, when you lose, it's so motivating...If you lose, go win. Just go compete. But I hope to God someone starts competing with these companies." — Dan Soder (59:50-61:20)

Comic Relief & Nostalgia:

• "Miguel Tejada is fluent in three languages. He's fluent in English, Spanish and home run." — Dan Soder reminiscing about gaming banter (11:38)
• "I just want to play with Kansas State. I just want to beat Tennessee, which I will. I'll get my revenge on Tennessee in the playoffs and go Wildcats." — Dan Soder (61:26-62:08)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Topic | |-----------|-------| | 04:12–14:32 | Soder's history with video games, nostalgia, Madden & NCAA Football culture | | 15:31–17:19 | College Football 25, NIL, cousin in the game, real athlete likeness | | 17:15–23:41 | Microtransactions & the paywalling of standard game features | | 23:41–25:10 | Streamer/influencer revolt, origins of backlashes | | 26:02–27:02 | Private equity in gaming; shift from ownership to licensing | | 28:19–30:53 | Michael Brooke on microtransactions; proper vs exploitative design | | 31:10–34:18 | NBA 2K: monetization, “The City,” virtual fashion apocalypse | | 39:44–44:18 | WWE 2K, destruction of the creator community, community isolation | | 49:57–51:25 | GTA 6 and the all-digital, all-subscription future | | 55:22–57:28 | Online signaling, shame culture, buying credits as community diss | | 59:50–61:20 | The value of competition and hope for market correction | | 61:26–62:08 | Final thoughts: video games are supposed to be fun, not work |

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Final Takeaways

• The video game industry’s aggressive move to microtransactions and “pay-to-play” directly threatens the joy, fairness, and community that once defined gaming.
• Nostalgia and fun are eroded by relentless monetization, with even single-player and core game features locked behind paywalls.
• Community organizing and consumer backlash can bring momentary change—but as Dan and Pablo warn, unless business models shift or new competitors emerge, companies will persist in maximizing profit at the expense of players.
• At its heart, video games should be about fun and connection—not about squeezing every dollar from the player base.

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For new listeners: This episode walks through the evolution and economics of gaming, but does so with warmth, irreverence, and plenty of funny asides—making the threats to gaming culture feel both personal and urgent. Whether you’re a hardcore gamer or someone who just remembers the joy of GameStop midnight releases, Pablo and Dan’s conversation is essential, eye-opening, and sometimes hilarious listening.

Transcript

[Pablo Torre]

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre and today we're gonna find out what this sound is.

[Dan Soder]

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.

[Pablo Torre]

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[Dan Soder]

Yeah, dude, I thought, I mean, it's something that I do in my off time. So of course I want to talk about it. I play. I love video games.

[Pablo Torre]

You are our video game correspondent.

[Dan Soder]

I realize I'm not a big video game guy. I'm just a consistent video game guy. I'm not.

[Pablo Torre]

What does that mean?

[Dan Soder]

I'm not Barry Bonds. I'm Ted Williams. I've played video games since I was like six. When did I get a Nintendo? It was, yeah, Christmas 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 was NCAA Gamebreaker with Eddie George on the COVID And it was like you would go to a Blockbuster or something and find out that and go, they have college football. And I remember exactly where it was. I was sleeping at my cousin Luke's house. We rented Gamebreaker 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.

[Katie Nolan]

Right.

[Pablo Torre]

And so this thing that's happened in college football, I want to be clear to everybody who does not give a 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. 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.

[Dan Soder]

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.

[Pablo Torre]

Oh, I. My favorite thing. And so when I say that, I think of you when I see the headlines about the revolution happening.

[Dan Soder]

I'm gonna 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.

[Pablo Torre]

And typically they are the foremost and most effective marketers for the game.

[Dan Soder]

It's it. It behooves these companies to be nice to these streamers. You should treat the streamers right because they are. They are basically your representation via human form, which we don't have anything anymore.

[Pablo Torre]

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.

[Dan Soder]

It's an evolution of both capitalism and the unboxing yes. 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 housew was the way that the kid would unbox the video game and go, like, I wanted this for Z. We all feel. It makes us feel something.

[Pablo Torre]

For those who are steep in the lore of the show, this is kind of the thesis behind why we have people like Katie Nolan open shout out

[Dan Soder]

one of the best, one of the all time greats.

[Pablo Torre]

It's just a friend of the show

[Dan Soder]

friend I'm obsessed, desperately in love with. Just make it sound unhealthy. I would follow her to the end of the world. It turns out that was her future husband.

[Pablo Torre]

But we put journalism in folders because we're unboxing it and you see the surprise and the horror and you vicariously enjoy what feels like the eternal Groundhog's Day Christmas morning of what's in there.

[Dan Soder]

I used to go to GameStop, dude. I used to go to GameStop at midnight and like I can remember, I can tell you which Assassin's Creed I went and bought. I'll tell you, like in Queens, I used to walk to Steinway, which was like 12 blocks away from my apartment. And I would like really look forward. You would have conversations with guys in line about like getting the game. And then the, the, the moment of leaving with your copy, the physical copy in your hand to someone that you were talking to in line at GameStop and being like, dude, have fun. And they're like, you have fun. And that was. And obviously things evolve and we're all online now. So now you pre order it, but you, you still get the feeling of the pre order when it pops up on your screen and you go, oh, I get. And it gives you a countdown like six days.

[Pablo Torre]

But. But now we're getting to. Is the way in which. What I grew up doing, which I think a lot of people may assume is eroding or mutating or being corrupted into something else. And I want to establish that when I look through your appearances on the show, video games have come up consistently.

[Dan Soder]

Yeah, probably you played old Pothead that loves video games when you were playing crunchy rock music.

[Pablo Torre]

Playing, Playing Madden against Mike McDaniel. He grew up with.

[Dan Soder]

That was tecmo super bowl. Technically.

[Pablo Torre]

Tecmo Super Bowl. Excuse me.

[Dan Soder]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

With the now offensive coordinator of the Los Angeles Chargers Y playing as Deion Sanders.

[Katie Nolan]

He would.

[Dan Soder]

Yeah, he Would play as the Atlanta Falcons and he would switch to Dion and pick it almost every time. Anybody that played techno super bowl, you remember down B with the 49ers was one of the most dangerous plays on earth. Rice would do like a 10 and in John Taylor would run a streak, Roger Craig would run a streak out of the backfield, and then Brent Jones would sit just kind of squat in the flats. So usually Rice is your first option, but you're looking Taylor downfield and he knew I was going Taylor every time. So he would drop Dion back, go one on one with John Taylor and just pick it. And it just made me, it still makes me mad.

[Pablo Torre]

I do like the idea of, as always, future NFL coach taunting you.

[Dan Soder]

Yeah, Mike's a great talker. And then what happened is he stopped playing video games. And video games evolved. So by the time it got to like, you know, I remember like Madden 01 was a big one. When the PS2, when I got a PS2 my senior year in high school, Madden 01 was like, everyone's coming over, were putting names in a hat. You're drawing the team you get. I got the Vikings with Culpepper.

[Pablo Torre]

The number of just like sleepover play date, like multiplayer.

[Dan Soder]

Just afternoon before you have to go

[Pablo Torre]

to work in high school bloodsport tournaments of video games.

[Dan Soder]

I mean, you know what one of my all time favorite moments with my friend, my buddy Mark, who I went to college with was we would sit there and play all Star Baseball on PlayStation 2, but we just play home run derby. Cause all you had to do was pull the right joystick back and fling it forward to hit home runs. But our fun part was calling the home runs. So we would be like, Miguel Tejada is fluent in three languages. He's fluent in English, Spanish and home run when you like hit it. So we would just do like dumb calls. And that was like so fun. And we'd just do that after class at the University of Arizona. You'd be like, you want to go play home run derby? And you'd be like, yeah, absolutely, of course.

[Pablo Torre]

And then the episode we did with you where we invaded your home with Katie.

[Dan Soder]

Yeah, that was awesome. Trying all the athlete weeds trains, which you have to play video games, of course.

[Pablo Torre]

And we. And we did. But that was the same moment at which the 2024 return of what is now known as College Football 25 became the all time best selling American sports game in terms of dollar sales ever.

[Dan Soder]

Over like 500 million. Correct.

[Pablo Torre]

It was. And you contributed to that.

[Dan Soder]

Oh, Brother, I. It was. It was a full circle moment for me. Shane Gillis used to open for on the Road with me back in like 2018, 2017 and 2018, and I would bring an Xbox 360 and we would play the defunct NCAA 2014, but we'd run a dynasty together. So we would be like. You'd be like. You'd be OC and he'd be DC and then we would recruit. It was just a fun thing to do on the road. Hey, the boys hitting it in the game. I mean, if it's in the game, it is.

[Natalie Kitroeff]

All right.

[Dan Soder]

We praise Jesus in the game. Long way from Happy Valley. Cause you would, like, have it at the hotel and then you bring it to the green room, and you'd be like, well, we're recruiting between shows. And then, you know, he became like the most famous comic in the world.

[Pablo Torre]

Playing literal arenas.

[Dan Soder]

Yeah. And this video game came back and they were like, hey, we want you to stream it. So he called me and he was like, do you want to stream the new college football? And I changed the passing options, and that's where I screwed up. And he beat the hell out of me the second game. No, that was stupid. I up. I up. You must feel like an idiot because you were up. You were doing so good at the beginning.

[Pablo Torre]

You changed the passing.

[Dan Soder]

I screwed up. But anyways, that game came back and it was like a full circle moment that Shane was like, hey, I'm gonna. In fact, even this year, he was like, you want to download? I pre ordered it. And he's like, you want to download code? And I was like, for a week early. And I was like, yeah. So I've just been building my Kansas State dynasty. Shout out. Wildcats.

[Pablo Torre]

Why? Why Kansas State?

[Dan Soder]

My little cousin plays there now. Oh, yeah, My little cousin's on the team.

[Pablo Torre]

What position does he play?

[Dan Soder]

Tackle. He's a true freshman. Oliver Miller. Shout out big number 73.

[Pablo Torre]

Oh, my God, there he is.

[Dan Soder]

Yeah, that's my cousin, dude. I love him to death. Shout out his older brother Graham, who never gets shine, but Graham rules. He's the older brother of a starting tackle in football. He's like, no one gives a shit about me. And you're like, your brother is a house.

[Pablo Torre]

Your brother is 6 foot 6 to 90.

[Brooke Devard]

Whoo.

[Dan Soder]

He's only getting bigger, baby.

[Pablo Torre]

Number 73.

[Dan Soder]

Yeah. Big 73. Colorado.

[Pablo Torre]

Damn. Yeah. Inglewood, Colorado. So.

[Dan Soder]

So it went to creek. I forgive him for that, but whatever. But it's so you were another one. This year's special to me, this year

[Pablo Torre]

is even more special in ways that are like beyond even what I expected when you walked in here.

[Dan Soder]

So you were talking about playing TECMO super bowl against Mike McDaniel. NCAA used to have all the things in this thing that I used to do in college. For those of you who are old enough and played PlayStation 2, you had memory cards.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes.

[Dan Soder]

That was how you saved everything. Were these just like tiny memory cards. When I was at the University of Arizona, NCAA was out and I was in summer school because I'm not a good student. And I was at summer school and one of the guys in my class, we were talking about NCAA coming out and he was like, oh, give me your memory card. I'll put all the names on it. And I was like, what do you mean? Because at the time you weren't allowed to have likeness or names or anything. Cause the athletes weren't getting paid. So you. I brought him my PlayStation 2 thing and he came back with all the names. One of the names on the roster, Yale, I think at like, yes. 62 overall. He was like a 58 overall. He was dog. Mike McDaniel at Yale.

[Pablo Torre]

Wide receiver.

[Dan Soder]

Yeah. And like I think that was like NCAA 03 or 04.

[Pablo Torre]

So 591-75.

[Dan Soder]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

Smokey Hill.

[Dan Soder]

Yeah. Smoky Hill High School. Go Buffs. That's why I'm disappointed. Oliver went to creek, but this year is the first year where someone's in the game, but now there's nil. So Oliver's name is in the game. I took a picture of it and sent it to him on Instagram the second I got the download code and he was like, I haven't even seen it. And I was like, yeah, here you go. They made you look like. It's like they made you look horrible.

[Pablo Torre]

But the point being that all of this is what you bring to the Christmas morning.

[Dan Soder]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

Of getting to play this.

[Dan Soder]

I love this game.

[Pablo Torre]

And the thing that happens when everybody who loves this game turns it on and this is including the people who had been playing like the beta pre release versions.

[Dan Soder]

Oh yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

These influencers that you're describing, who are the marketers slash publicists of this empire. There's a big difference.

[Dan Soder]

Yeah. For the first time in this game's history, it was loaded with microtransactions. The first one that you saw was when you do the pre order, they were like, hey, you know, you can spend 50, 60 on the game, you can spend 90 on the deluxe or you can do the MVP package.

[Pablo Torre]

69.99 for standard, standard, 99.99 deluxe.

[Dan Soder]

And then the MVP bundle, 149.99. Crazy. But that is for Madden and college football. Because what happened when college football came out was Madden took a beating because you realized how many people were playing Madden to scratch the itch that college football had left. Because college football is a different game. You're not doing contracts, you're not dealing with free agents. You're like recruiting kids. They're leaving. There's the transfer portal. It's just a different vibe completely. So all the people that missed college football because I was buying Madden, I bought Madden to see Mike McDaniel as the head coach of the Dolphins. That was the last time I bought Madden was his first year, I think his first or second year as a coach, where I was like, I want to see what they make Mike look like. But college football comes out and you're like, madden, I don't care about Madden. I just want to play college football.

[Brooke Devard]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

A half billion dollars worth of people agreed in the first year, $500 million

[Dan Soder]

went to college football. You could see EA immediately go. Because then there started being things on the home screen of college football of like, hey, Madden's 40% off. Like, hey, you can just buy Madden. We'll just give you Madden. They just like started to be like, please take Madden. We made Madden. Please use it. But this year they said, hey, we're going to do the MVP. We're going to do. It's 150 bucks. The thing that was up and the thing that everyone noticed, myself included, was they went, when you do a dynasty in college football, there's a skill tree that you unlock where you unlock these things that, like, help you get recruits or they help you start a rivalry game in a, like, on fire. This one was like, hey, there's going to be two new skill trees that you cannot touch unless you do the MVP bundle. And everyone was like, so there's just a thing in the game you can't access unless you want to play, which is also the MVP bundle, I believe, is a subscription. So then people were going, well, if the subscription's up, am I going to be able to access it?

[Katie Nolan]

Right.

[Dan Soder]

And this is where we're running into a massive problem.

[Pablo Torre]

Well, okay, so hold on. I want to establish that when you even say that, because you're, you're getting to. When we say that, this is a thumbprint for the way we live now, effectively. Yeah, you're mentioning words that we've heard in other contexts in the effect of degradation and, and fracking of media, of owning media. What it even means to own something in media.

[Dan Soder]

You don't own anything anymore.

[Pablo Torre]

But the term microtransaction.

[Dan Soder]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

For those who have never played a video game, could you please explain what a microtransaction is?

[Dan Soder]

Basically what a microtransaction does is, is if you have a player or something in the character and you want to make it better, you want to make it somehow better. They do this thing where they go, you know, for 10, 99v bucks or whatever they want to call it, it's money.

[Pablo Torre]

A virtual currency.

[Dan Soder]

A virtual currency which is just an in between. Because I'll tell you what, when you say yes, they sure as hell take you right to that screen where your credit cards on there. That's American money that I'm spending when it is. But you buy like XP and then you, you progress faster.

[Pablo Torre]

College football points is what the euphemism is for these virtual currency pay to play things.

[Dan Soder]

So NC or college football, you grind it out, you play a game, you get XP for touchdown scores. How many good things you do.

[Pablo Torre]

You earn it.

[Dan Soder]

You earn it. And then when you re. And then the next week after you go, they give you these points that you go spend to make your coach better, which makes your team better there. And so basically what EA Sports is doing now is going, hey, playing the game. You want to just give me money and we'll just like progress you what

[Pablo Torre]

if you could pay?

[Dan Soder]

Yes.

[Pablo Torre]

For the things you used to have to earn?

[Dan Soder]

Yes. Well, now that's also a big difference this year more than anything is because there are people that are fine. If you just want to progress fast. You, you know, you might have four kids and you have a job and you just like can sit down and you have the $50 that you want to pay so that you're got your, you know, you can play in peace so you can turn off your brain. Fine. What they're doing is they're making some stuff only accessible via microtransaction. And they're going like, no, you can play all you want. You'll never be able to access this unless you give us money. And that is where it goes. Oh, it's just. That's the ugly face of capitalism. I know this is probably not an adult only show, but it reminds me of the time I got a lap dance and I saw the woman check her time. It really takes you out of it. When they look at the. She looked at her clock on her phone it was a Saturday night in Montreal. I was at a comedy festival festival, and these, like, agents took me out to a strip. This is like 15 years ago. I was. When I was drinking and we go out and this beautiful woman gives me a lap dance. But it was just, like the most capitalistic lap dance I've ever had where she, like, it was on her iPhone with the timer, the way I time my set on stage. And I saw her check her time and I went. You know, I just got up, I was like, we're good.

[Pablo Torre]

And her, she's like, no, no, no, no.

[Mars Men Advertiser]

I was.

[Dan Soder]

And you're like, nah. Please let me leave. Please let me leave.

[Pablo Torre]

Part of me. Part of me is glad that she did that, if only to spare you from the sound of the alarm going off.

[Dan Soder]

Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. It's at the end of a Nickelback song. Beep, beep, beep. Look at my photograph. I go, oh, man. Sorry, we gotta go. Yeah, it just feels like when you see stuff like that, you go like, oh, you just want my money. This isn't a community. This isn't a game. That's why I'm so proud of the Reddit community for college football. And I'm proud of the streamers. There was a couple major streamers.

[Pablo Torre]

So what the streamers did, and they point out a couple of changes, by the way, that I also just want to detail, because one of the other things they did, which had not happened before, apparently, is that they introduced the xp, slash, virtual currency slash college football points thing into single player modes.

[Dan Soder]

So that's what. That's. If you were to say, like, what is the felony? Like, what is the absolute crime they did is that they brought it to single player, which felt weird because you're like, I'm alone. I'm just like, in my office playing this at 1:30 in the morning. Like, I don't. Why do I gotta pay to progress faster? I'm gonna play all the plays. I like the progression. The work is the fun. It's a game.

[Pablo Torre]

Right now, what I want to establish for people who are just listening, who don't know anything about this topic at all, is that on the Internet, the influencers, the streamers that you're referencing, particularly a guy named Bordeaux.

[Dan Soder]

Yeah, Bordeaux is a huge college football streamer. He does, like, you know, he does, like, a program build, and people love it with Kentucky.

[Pablo Torre]

That's his team.

[Dan Soder]

Okay. Yeah, there's a couple people. One guy does Hawaii, one does Kentucky, and it's fun. You pick a school that traditionally isn't good at college football, and they get

[Pablo Torre]

to do the thing that real life doesn't give them, which is the satisfaction of winning a national championship.

[Dan Soder]

And it. By the way, I'm not joking when I say it's my favorite football game of all time. I lost in the playoffs to Tennessee. I'm sorry, Oliver. You were starting at right tackle, and it was fun. I got home from the airport yesterday. Katie and I hung out and watched some golf. And then I was like, I'm gonna. Oh, I got the playoffs. And I went in and I lost. And she, like, we laugh about it. We make jokes where she's like, that's. She'll act like a college football wife. It's all right, honey.

[Pablo Torre]

I like Katie. Sandra Bullock, in the Blind side version of your video game.

[Dan Soder]

See them, you block them. They're trying to tackle. Yeah, that's what she really does. But it. It's. It was.

[Katie Nolan]

It.

[Dan Soder]

It grossed me out. It grossed me out. And then you. And then. So to see streamers who usually fall in the line, who.

[Pablo Torre]

Who are there, because if you give us the product we love, we are typically, you'd assume, very compliant. We're gonna help sell the thing you want us to sell.

[Dan Soder]

Companies have forgotten that we wanna buy stuff. You don't have to shove it down our throats. You don't have to trick us. You don't have to trap us. Make good stuff and we'll buy it. All these venture capitalist groups come in and buy it. And I'm not surprised this move is happening with EA Sports, because now that Jared Kushner and the Saudi collective.

[Pablo Torre]

Are you mentioning perhaps the fact that there's a headline on front office sports that reads, literally, saudis comma Silver Lake, Jared Kushner, take EA private in a $55 billion deal from September of 25.

[Dan Soder]

This is my advice to anyone that is kind of like me and kind of stupid walking through this world and. And right now going to themselves. Why is everything starting to suck a lot more. Private equity, venture capitalism. No one owns the product they sell anymore. No one owns the product they buy anymore. No one is selling you anything. You're not going to. Mr. Duncan isn't selling me this. No.

[Pablo Torre]

You walked out of GameStop with a physical disc.

[Dan Soder]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

And now, I mean, we'll get to.

[Dan Soder]

Well, because there's a lot to bring up because Sony is moving away from

[Pablo Torre]

the physical disc, which is basically saying everything you thought you were buying and holding as a customer. You actually are just licensing.

[Dan Soder]

It can't just be CEOs and the guys at the top of the companies getting bigger and bigger bonuses and stuff running the way it's supposed to.

[Pablo Torre]

Well, the question for EA Sports was, it turns out we just made in that, in that aforementioned headline, over $500 million on the most successful video game of all time in America, of all time. How can we make more?

[Dan Soder]

That's where it's broken.

[Pablo Torre]

But the thing that has happened on this online community, on these subreddits and on YouTube is that there was effectively an organized revolution.

[Dan Soder]

There was, and this has hasn't happened in quite some time.

[Pablo Torre]

There was a hashtag, hashtag cfb Play don't pay.

[Dan Soder]

Basically what it was was like even if you pre ordered the game, even if you have the game, do not do the microtransactions. Do not give them that extra money. Which by the way, I wasn't going to anyways.

[Pablo Torre]

So one of the things we did, by the way, because I was trying to understand this, like what do people who work in video games think? We contacted a guy named Michael Brooke who was an EA game designer from 1987 to 2001. Okay, so that is a fertile period. But in the before era it was

[Dan Soder]

honestly, it was like he put them, he set them up to become the dynasty that they became in the 21st century.

[Pablo Torre]

And when Michael Brook told us, among several things, he said he's very passionate about this question about in game microtransactions. He said, quote, I believe that in game microtransactions can be a wonderful way of adding features to the base game. Only gamers interested in those features need pay for them. When these additional features entail added development, testing, licensing costs, as they often do, they're a way of extending gameplay value and have been a standard part of sports games for at least 60 years. However, if these microtransactions are improperly implemented, for instance, by removing or disabling features that were previously free or obviously have no relation to additional costs, gamers will see through the marketing gimmick and will express their wrath. In general, it is important for those implementing and setting pricing for microtransactions features to work with gamers and developers to tune the gameplay elements. You wouldn't have your marketing guys be the sole determinant on how fast players run in a game or how accurate they throw. And you shouldn't have them be the primary determinant on how quickly a dynasty player progresses, end quote. And so the idea here that he's expressing with clarity is the marketing guys.

[Dan Soder]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

How do you get the money up guys?

[Dan Soder]

Yeah. They're controlling everything. They, I think they're controlling everything and every asset, every aspect of society right now.

[Pablo Torre]

And turning them into assets.

[Dan Soder]

Yeah, they're literally trying to turn everything into an asset. How do we, how do we charge with it? I'm in my 40s, I don't have a kid. All I do is work. I still play video games. If you were to tell me for 399 that I could download every uniform from 1982 for the teams and they'd be available. Hell yeah, I'd give you that 3.99. I'd give you that 5.99. I'd go, that's so cool. I would definitely want to see that. And you know, or if it's just the Big 12 uniforms or something like that, something that's like add on, like he said, that is clearly an add on of value to the game that

[Pablo Torre]

you can choose if you'd like, if

[Dan Soder]

you want or not. But it will not affect the basic game. I completely agree with that. I'm always down, like I said, for DLC packs.

[Aura Advertiser]

Right.

[Dan Soder]

Downloadable, downloadable content, which is usually extras that come with games that you play where you get more of a game if you want it.

[Pablo Torre]

Right. You. So you pay again.

[Dan Soder]

It's just, it's in a lot of ways it's like a second serving of food. If you want it. It's the, it's the super size of fries. You're gonna get fries, fine. You 99 cents more. You get more fries and you go, great. You don't have to. It's not, you know what I mean? But you can if you want. That's what they should keep it at.

[Pablo Torre]

Now the thing that began happening and I, I want to take us to 2K here for a second because this became sort of like the ghost of Christmas future for all of these, I think streamers. They saw the way in which NBA 2K, which was a competitor once upon a time to NBA Live.

[Dan Soder]

And then I think it beat NBA Live.

[Pablo Torre]

Oh, it curb stomped it.

[Dan Soder]

Yeah. Which is crazy because I was an NBA Live guy.

[Pablo Torre]

Me too. EA sports, that was EA.

[Dan Soder]

And then you played 2K the first time and you went, well, do you remember NBA? Do you remember NFL 2K?

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah.

[Dan Soder]

Because NFL 2K was a legit threat to Madden.

[Pablo Torre]

So when we say there used to be competitors and now there are fewer of them, this is what we mean. Like there used to be direct, head to head competitors doing the same thing.

[Dan Soder]

And Madden got nervous and EA got nervous and they went and bought all the NFL rights. So. So 2k couldn't make an NFL game. You can't make the NFL game if you don't have the NFL. And so that's what 2K did against EA, where they went, well, we're the best basketball game. We're going to go get the licensing.

[Pablo Torre]

And at a certain point, 2K asked themselves the question that every corporation in America asks itself these days, which is how can we make it so for effectively very little margin, we can extract a lot more profit.

[Dan Soder]

Yeah. And I think what they saw was the boom of online competition, of players reaching out, playing each other, the birth of streaming, the birth of like, you know, Pewdiepie and doing all that stuff really led way to these people going, twitch. Twitch. Yeah, Twitch was entire platforms, entire platform going, oh, I want to watch these people play 2K. I want to watch them talk. I want to see him get good. And it's fun to watch guys good at 2k and they're talking and you watch a guy get mad. It's so fun. They saw that and they went, what if we just make that? And it like almost the heart of the game.

[Pablo Torre]

The city.

[Dan Soder]

The city. It's called the city. That's what it is. And you basically walk around with a created character, bump into other people.

[Pablo Torre]

My player is the mode, the my player mode.

[Dan Soder]

And you can go online and play as your character against other characters online or with them you can run, you know, 3v3 for, you know.

[Pablo Torre]

But this is it. What it became is effectively like every one who plays a sports video game gets to build their own like role playing game avatar.

[Dan Soder]

And when you make your avatar, what they found out was they could put shoes and shorts and shirts and hairstyles and tattoos and watches and as these things that you used to unlock if you played the game.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, like bonuses. That's basically what they prizes.

[Dan Soder]

I would say at the heart of it, for anyone that plays video games, you saw this. They took quote unquote unlockables and just made them microtransactions. Right. So they just went, oh, you can unlock this. If you play this game long enough that give me 10 bucks.

[Pablo Torre]

You have to spend, it turns out, according to the user, Jimmy, for real, this is on a Reddit post four years ago. You have to spend more to purchase a 2K virtual durag $5 than you would on a real life.

[Dan Soder]

That's very funny. That's very funny that if you just want to go get a wave cap at a bodega.

[Pablo Torre]

It's like 299,000 VC is what that costs.

[Dan Soder]

Exactly. Which you're like, I don't know what that is. What is that? I'm not an economist, I'm not an online economist.

[Pablo Torre]

But, but that's, but that's the question of like, wait a minute, we could build an entire marketplace in which people are enthusiastically going to pay more than they would for the real physical objects and we don't have to manufacture any of it. Yeah, what a deal.

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[Pablo Torre]

This episode of PTFO is brought to you by Best Western Hotels and Resorts. The sun is staying out late and the humidity is just starting to creep in. Which can only mean one thing. Summer is here. And that means it is officially travel season. From road trips to last minute flights, weekend escapes, or really anything that gets you out of your usual routine, summer is a time for adventure and travel. And while the plans don't always go perfectly, that is kind of the point. The unexpected moments are what make for the best stories. But one thing you can count on is having a reliable place to stay. And that's where Best Western comes in. Wherever your trip takes you, it is a dependable home base. After a full day of exploring, adventuring, or figuring things out as you go, it is one less thing to think about so you can actually enjoy the journey. And this summer, Best Western has something extra for you. Get 1,000 bonus points and a chance to win 250,000 bonus points. So wherever you're headed, make the stay part of the trip and make it count. With this limited time offer, life's a trip. Make the most of [e-mail] no additional purchase necessary. For sweeps, see Bonus Points, Terms and Conditions and Sweeps Rules for details and visit bestwestern.com for complete terms and conditions. Here's the thing. Every organization has two versions of reality. There's the version in the handbook, the flowchart, the PowerPoint, the meeting where everyone nods and says, yep, that's how we do it. And then there's what actually happens, which if you've ever reported on anything or run anything, you know can be a very different story. Because people create workarounds, teams develop habits, processes drift, and eventually leaders are making decisions about automation, AI, and efficiency based on a version of reality that may not exist anymore. Which is why today's sponsor, Scribe Optimize, is genuinely interesting to me. Scribe Optimize helps organizations see how work is actually getting done. It passively captures workflows across approved business applications and uses AI to identify bottlenecks, inefficiencies, and opportunities for improvement without interviews, workshops, or months of process mapping. What stood out to me is that it follows workflows across tools. So if a process starts in Salesforce, moves through email, and somewhere else entirely, Optymyze connects the dots. And on the dashboard you can actually see what's happening right now, where time is being spent, which workflows matter most, and where the biggest opportunities are. Then it goes a step further. It doesn't just identify problems, it explains why they're happening and provides AI powered recommendations including estimated time savings. And importantly, this is about workflow visibility, not employee monitoring. User level data is anonymized by default, activity is limited to approved business applications, and sensitive information stays protected. So if you're tired of making decisions based on assumptions instead of evidence, check out Scribe Optimize. To see Optimize in action, Visit scribe how PTFO and mention PTFO for a 30 day risk free trial. That's S C R I b e.h o w p TFO.

[Dan Soder]

By the way, 2K, whoever's working there is just like hungrier and hungrier for more microtransactions because they completely ru. Ruined the WWE franchise.

[Pablo Torre]

Okay, so through my.

[Dan Soder]

My micro.

[Pablo Torre]

So what happened to. To your favorite now from your childhood?

[Dan Soder]

Now come, come, come with me to a lower level of nerd. To the seventh circle of nerdom. I'm a huge wrestling fan. I love WWE 2K. It's just a fun thing to do. It. The thing that made WWE 2K the best wrestling game. And honestly, there were others that tried to compete. It wasn't the gameplay. The gameplay is fine. It's fun. It's very fun. It was the Create a Wrestler suite. So basically you could create any wrestler that's ever existed to put him in the game. But the thing was, is they made the creation suite so good that these guys online were making better models than in the game, where you go, whoa, that looks more like Roddy Piper than Roddy Piper. And you go, that's great. And there was this community center where you could just type in a wrestler's name and then you'd see all the ones that were created and you could go through them from that. You could follow the creator of that guy to see who else they created. And it created this community. But what it was was, and it was for a long time, cross platform. So Xbox users were bumping into PlayStation users who were bumping into PC users who are bumping into Switch users. And they're all making creator wrestlers and trading them. And it's this community where basically you're like, hey, this guy. There are guys who make who you know, every year they're famous and like, I follow a couple online and they go like, hey, the new WWE's out. Here's who I've made so far. And you look at him, you go, that rendering is awesome. This guy. This guy's so good. 2k went, whoa, whoa, whoa. You guys are having too much free fun. So they created this thing which was called the island, based off Roman Reigns character and the island of Relevancy. And so two years ago, they put in the island, which was an online marketplace. So you want the stone Cold Steve Austin shirt with the skull on it. Go to the island and spend your VC points and then you can unlock it. You want Cody Rhodes boots from WrestleMania, go to the island and wrestle. But then what it did was it stopped cross platform sharing. So it basically cratered the creator wrestler movement. So now no one can now you. If you're PlayStation. You can only see the ones the guys on PlayStation make. So now these creators, these guys who were doing really good and honestly, some of them were starting to turn careers out of it, streaming, making it, you know, look good. These guys go, listen, I got to make this on Xbox, and I got to go make it on PlayStation. I got to make it on PC. And it just everything up. And you saw it was for that. And where it got worse was this year they were taking unlockable things that you were just unlocking the game and putting them on the island for money.

[Pablo Torre]

When has making an exclusive island ever backfired?

[Dan Soder]

Never. I don't even think inviting the wealthy to an island for a. For a thing that most decent humans would find disgusting. It's never backfired. And in fact, they've never covered that up. What's. What's crazy is 2k is like drunk with power. And this year, they. I didn't buy. This is the first year I didn't buy WWE 2K. I'm done with it. I don't need it.

[Pablo Torre]

I don't want.

[Dan Soder]

I don't want it. Because what happened is they put it out again. And now. So it used to be a thing. And WWE 2K fans will tell you, if you're an older guy and you don't want to grind out the game and play, like the thing where you do it, they would do a microtransaction where they go, we have a thing called the season pass. Pay 20 bucks and you get every DLC we drop. It'll automatically download and you get it, but 20 bucks, you get all of them, or five bucks per one, and they usually drop like five or six. So it would make sense I go, give me 20 bucks. You also unlock all the venues, all the belts, all the secret things that you have to unlock. Now 2k goes, give us money for a DLC and you pay him. And they go, great. Now you got to grind it out in the game. So now it's the worst of both worlds. I'm paying you money, and I have to. I have to go do this. This match that I don't want to do, or I have to do a thing that literally has me angry at the game. I don't want to do that.

[Pablo Torre]

I like to. I like to imagine you as the guy who is like, master of, frankly, the voices.

[Dan Soder]

The two voices, really, for being honest, I'm working on Roddy Piper.

[Pablo Torre]

Well, wait, so what are the. What are the two.

[Dan Soder]

Macho man and Andre the Giant. That's Those are probably the two. Those are the only two wrestling voices I can really do.

[Pablo Torre]

What. What is. What is. What is sad? Andre the Giant Think about, I don't want this.

[Dan Soder]

This is too much money. But it is. It's. It. Listen, man, it's what I was telling you. We want to buy it. Don't us over. And that's all they're doing. They're like,

[Pablo Torre]

it feels. I'll use that word, it feels predatory.

[Dan Soder]

I would tell you right now, we are at a stage in society where most capitalism is predatory.

[Pablo Torre]

Where we are in the US Economy has made all of these companies seem particularly unworried and frankly desensitized to what it is when customers might gather and organize and cause something.

[Dan Soder]

Well, then the thing that really outrages me and probably a lot of people, the thing that really pisses me off is the faux concern, which is what we talked about with ea. What they released the statement after the

[Pablo Torre]

revolution on the Internet. There was a statement.

[Dan Soder]

They put out a statement on Sunday that was kind of like, yeah, you guys are pissed. It's like that was the energy. Like they came out.

[Natalie Kitroeff]

Whoa.

[Dan Soder]

Like the storekeeper came out to the front

[Pablo Torre]

post. I love it when any statement is a jpeg and all the text, because there needs to be a lot of it is so tiny. So.

[Dan Soder]

Because that isn't the first draft. No, that was the first draft that they cooked up that went through seven layers at EA.

[Pablo Torre]

Happy College Football 27 launch week. Big text, red font. And then it goes.

[Dan Soder]

And then it turns to a whisper. Happy college football. Hey, we really up back there. I'm really sorry. My text.

[Pablo Torre]

Thank you for your continue bash.

[Dan Soder]

You guys are like really super pissed. Are you guys really that pissed? I talked to a couple streamers and

[Pablo Torre]

they're really mad and effectively they're saying, we're gonna undo this for now. Tomorrow morning we will remove all paid progression options from Road to Glory and online Dynasty. Unfortunate side effect of removing paid progression is that players have college point balances in their wallets that will not be able to apply the balance Road to Glory or Dynasty. So jump in between now and then apply your points, exclamation point. And then it gets to the like. And this is like the post credits scene.

[Dan Soder]

You gotta watch the post credit. If Marvel's taught us everything, it's don't leave until after the credits.

[Pablo Torre]

Our goal for live Service plans in CFB 28 and beyond will be to deliver valuable features and content with greater transparency and communication.

[Dan Soder]

Basically, I'm going to Go wash my junk in the sink. And then next year I'm throwing it right back in you. That's what they're doing. They are. This is not going to improve, not over. This is not going to regress. This isn't going to change. They are literally going to wait for us to get so lost in our 24 hour news cycle that next July they Launch College Football 28. And to start the game, you need to pay $10 every time. You know what it feels like to

[Pablo Torre]

stick the key in the ignition.

[Dan Soder]

It feels like. I don't know if you've ever had friends with horrible drinking problems that have received multiple DUIs, but this feels like when those people have to blow in the breathalyzer to start their car, that's what they want out of video games. They just go like, yeah, here you go. You want to play the game? Give me 20 bucks right now.

[Pablo Torre]

So this is where we are though, is that. I used to grow up subscribing to a game Pro.

[Dan Soder]

Shout out game pro.

[Pablo Torre]

Dude, I bought a game shark.

[Dan Soder]

Yeah, I had a game shark on my 64.

[Pablo Torre]

Yep, yep.

[Dan Soder]

Dual wielding goldeneye. How did you. Not with two AKs. Good luck. Good luck not getting through the dam on that one. Just untouched.

[Pablo Torre]

The. Just. Just sitting in a bathroom as. Odd job.

[Dan Soder]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

Double barrel.

[Dan Soder]

Yeah, dude. Just looking up. Because you always had to look up Ye them so short. Yeah, dude, that.

[Pablo Torre]

But, but, but, but the point being that like I am not some sort of paragon of video game morality. I loved cheat codes.

[Dan Soder]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

There are no cheat codes anymore.

[Dan Soder]

No, there aren't.

[Pablo Torre]

And that because they, because they became micro.

[Dan Soder]

Yeah. It became. Oh, you don't have to type in a code. Like I remember learning the ammo code on Grand Theft Auto.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes.

[Dan Soder]

And then you play it for a while and then you go. This kind of makes the game unfun. I'm gonna go back to when I was saved and I had to go find ammo. But it's fun to learn that. And that's like a life lesson you learn.

[Pablo Torre]

And the idea is that they saw what people sort of hungered for and they wanted. Okay, well, if we could charge you for that. Cool. But the thing that is happening next because you mentioned Grand Theft auto is that GTA 6, the most anticipated video game in the history of Earth.

[Dan Soder]

Easily. I mean this thing has been built up for over. I mean for years. And it's. And they've announced it's coming out in 2026.

[Pablo Torre]

It's been 13 years. Launching November 19, 2026. And yes, I guarantee we will do an episode when that comes out because I love committing terrorist acts in the virtual world.

[Dan Soder]

It's. It's going to be crazy, but, but

[Pablo Torre]

there it will not exist as a

[Dan Soder]

physical disk, which is a sign that they go, we're not selling you this. You're borrowing this. That's all you're doing. And I don't know if you ever borrowed video games back in the day.

[Pablo Torre]

Oh, Blockbuster, yeah, all the time.

[Dan Soder]

But there was this feeling of insecurity when you did it, where you go, but I gotta, I, I gotta play it so much. Cause I gotta return it or my friend needs it back. And then you'd go like. And then when you owned it, you go, I own this. I can like sink into this game

[Pablo Torre]

and I can even resell it later if I want to. I can make my money back.

[Dan Soder]

So during COVID people were reselling NCAA 2014 for like 260 bucks a disc.

[Pablo Torre]

Oh, man.

[Dan Soder]

Because people wanted to play the game so bad. And this was before college football came back, right? That people were like, online you could find people selling it for a crazy amount of money.

[Pablo Torre]

So now where we are, the state of the video game union is you don't actually buy video games. You rent them. You pay for them via subscription services, as everywhere in media wants to sell you subscriptions because that's how they get more money. You sure? Sometimes you'll forget. Am I still subscribed to that? To Hulu?

[Dan Soder]

Oh, man, I just got one that made me so mad. That came up where I was like, how am I still subscribed to that? It was like, which one was it? It was one.

[Brooke Devard]

Exactly.

[Dan Soder]

It was one of the streamers where I went, I just have to shut off my whole credit card.

[Pablo Torre]

But we don't even know. We lose track. And so you'll be subscribing individually to dozens upon dozens potentially of video games.

[Dan Soder]

Is this podcast episode been an elaborate rock and mortgage ad? Here we go on Rocket Mortgage. I'll show you all the subscriptions I have. Go, Pablo. You got me. I thought we were talking about microtransactions.

[Pablo Torre]

Acast powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend.

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[Dan Soder]

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[Pablo Torre]

The fact that the multiplayer mode, which is where the VC economy first sort of metastasized into the thing that took over everything else. The fact that when you show up online as your avatar, dressed however you have been able to afford.

[Dan Soder]

Sure.

[Pablo Torre]

You end up meeting people for whom the distinguishing characteristic is you spent all of this money. Yeah, that's what this is all signaling. You can't afford this.

[Dan Soder]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

But you can go broke trying.

[Dan Soder]

But you can. And that is. You know, when we did the episode with Katie at our apartment, we were playing Rocket League. You can do quick chat when you're playing people on Rocket League. And one of the things they used to say when someone was flying around with the cars, they would be like. They would write in the chat, you buy credits. It was like a diss. Yes, it was like, you buy credits. You didn't work your way up. You bought that. And by the way, someone that buys credits. Yeah. And you go, yeah, I did. I barely. I mean, I don't play Rocket League anymore. But when I did play it, I'd be like. Like, oh, yeah, I want that Wolverine skin. I'll spend VC5000 VCs or whatever. But it wasn't. I wasn't beholden to it. I wasn't like, oh, if I want to play the game, I have to do this, or if I want to play the game better, I have to do this.

[Pablo Torre]

But the thing that seems to be returning as comments like that occur and revolutions on the Internet like this happen is something like. And again, it's the rarest commodity now. But this statement in its tiny font sort of implies it. Yeah, maybe shame is possible.

[Dan Soder]

I think it's a really big part of society that is like a flavoring that you just can't overdo it. And I also think you can't shame people for being themselves, but what you sure as hell can do is shame people for greed.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes.

[Dan Soder]

And that is something that we don't do. As an alcoholic, I've been shamed for it. It as someone with an addictive personality. Wealth is an addiction. There are people running our country right now that are addicted to wealth. They want all the wealth. And what that does is it sucks up all the resources for people at the other end that don't have any resources, that don't have any wealth. I'm not talking about communism. I'm just talking about loosening the chokehold that five nerds have on our entire civilization. It's like.

[Pablo Torre]

It really is.

[Dan Soder]

It's just five dorks that couldn't get in high school, and they're just taking down the whole planet. And it's like, I. It's like, dude, I want to act. I want to be an active member of a capitalist society. If I have a good weekend and I want to put new boots on Roddy, Roddy Piper, let me put new boots on my baby. If I want to go buy them, but have them where I can. It's a dlc. It's something that's not. That you're not.

[Pablo Torre]

You don't have a gun to my head.

[Dan Soder]

And I also collectively would say we need to wrestle with the idea of sacrificing convenience for community. It's just a thing that I think we need to do. It's. It sucks that you're. You're out of socks. It's. I know you don't want to get in the car and go to Target or Walmart or whatever shoe store is by you and buy the new socks.

[Pablo Torre]

I feel like you're now giving a coaching pep talk to Kansas State, to Oliver.

[Dan Soder]

Well, I'll tell. I don't tell Oliver anything. That guy's diet's right. I've been looking at his preseason workout. We're talking irl. Oliver's doing great, but, yeah, man, I just. I feel like, man, humans rule. It's so fun being friends with humans and hanging out with them. And 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? You know what I mean? How about you? How about just pay the people that work in the fulfillment centers a good wage? Walmart. Pay your employees well, and then they shop at Walmart, and then the money comes back to you. It's almost like if you treated people well, it would come back to you. Let's just do that idea. Stop. And ea, I promise you that if next year there's microtransactions, we're good. We're good. I can play this game. Or until you tell me I can't, I will lease this game from you, and I'll play college football 26 until the wheels fall off.

[Pablo Torre]

The word I think of, the word that I think is the through line in the motivational speech that I think America needs to hear. And also the thing that EA and all these other companies need to worry about is in the end, competition. The value of having to compete and earn what it is that you think you deserve.

[Dan Soder]

And I will. I will argue to a capitalist, someone that might have disagree with a lot of points that I'm making, isn't it? The best part is a free market. Isn't the whole point that this is a free market and that if someone isn't doing something right, someone can respond and, and do it better? And then. And then the customers go there. So there might be a computer, you know, a video game developer that has an idea for a wrestling game. That's the gameplay is more fun and the create a character suite is big and you can make all these characters and we don't worry about it. It's all free, it's all fun. And then all of a sudden they make that and it gets a push online. Well, now 2K is going to be like, there's another wrestling game. How do we squash them, right? Instead of going like, how do we make ours better? How do we compete? How do we. The competition is how America got great. It's what makes America great is competition is true competition. And also part of that is losing. Part of losing is like, to me personally, when you lose, it's so motivating. There's not a more motivating thing than getting beat at something and going, like, I want to get better at that. I want to get better at it so I can win at it. What isn't American is getting beat at something and then going, well, then I don't want to. Well, then I don't want to. It's like, well, that's loser. That's how you're a loser is if you lose and you give up if you lose. Go win. Just go compete. But I hope to God someone starts competing with these companies.

[Pablo Torre]

Dan Soder, thank you for taking me on a journey through, frankly, your. Your childhood.

[Dan Soder]

And yeah, I'm sorry, I really just, just dumped on you there a lot. But it sucks because I think it's such a fun thing. It's such. Video games are supposed to be like a dessert and you're, like, making it feel like homework or you're making it feel grimy and gross. It's just like, just, come on, man, let's just have fun. I just. I just traveled all day. I just want to play with Kansas State. I just want to beat Tennessee, which I will. I'll get my revenge on Tennessee in the playoffs and go Wildcats. I'm all about. I'm all about the cats.

[Pablo Torre]

This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out a Meadowlark Media production and I'll talk to you next time. Acast powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend.

[Brooke Devard]

Hello. Hello. It's Brooke Devard from Naked Beauty. Join me each week for unfiltered discussion about beauty trends, self care journeys, wellness tips, and the products we absolutely love and cannot get enough of. If you are a skincare obsessive and you spend 20 plus minutes on your skincare routine, this podcast is for you. Or if you're a newbie at the beginning of your skincare journey, you'll love this podcast as well. Because we go so much deeper than beauty, I talk to incredible and inspiring people from across industries about their relationship with beauty. You'll also hear from skincare experts. We break down lots of myths in the beauty industry. If this sounds like your thing, search for Naked Beauty on your podcast app and listen along. I hope you'll join us.

[Pablo Torre]

All new drinks are now at McDonald's with refreshers like the Strawberry Watermelon Refresher and the Mango Pineapple Refresher with Popping

[Dan Soder]

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[Pablo Torre]

Berry Blast with berry flavors and cold foam.

[Dan Soder]

Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire six? All new drinks are here now at McDonald's.

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