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

Virtual currency is a new cheat code. But when EA Sports tried to squeeze extra cash out of sports fans with so-called "microtransactions" inside its latest-college football title, gamers revolted... and won? Comedian Dan Soder, who's been playing video games with a future NFL coach since childhood, takes Pablo on a journey to the seventh circle of nerddom: What does this phenomenon say about private equity turning fun into an asset? How do we stop sacrificing community for convenience? And is shame still possible? • Subscribe to "Soder" https://pod.link/1716617572 Previously on PTFO: • Share & Madden & Tell with Katie Nolan and Dan Soder https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/OTUyZDY0ODQtODRkZC0xMWYwLWFjNDUtNGI3MzhkNTQwNjU4 • We Smoked All the Athlete-Branded Weed We Could Find https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/OTUyZDE0M2UtODRkZC0xMWYwLWFjNDUtNDdkNjM5YWEwNGI2 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Pablo Torre?

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

• 0:06Speaker 01

  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?

• 0:15Pablo Torre?

  Right after this. This episode is brought to you by apollo.io. A lot of the stories on this show start the same way. Something that looks pretty simple turns out to be a mess, once you look under the hood. Well, it's no different in the sales world. Your team has a tool for finding prospects, a different tool for reaching out to them, and a third for keeping track of it all. On paper, that's a system. In practice, it's a salesperson spending the better part of the day copying names from one tab into another, and not much of it actually selling. Apollo.io is a platform that helps sales teams find the right buyers and reach out to them. It brings prospecting, outreach, and follow-up into one place, instead of several separate tools.

• 0:59Pablo Torre?

  It's used by sales teams of all sizes, from small businesses to larger organizations, and it's built for teams who want less manual busywork and more time with buyers. If your marketing and sales teams are trying to work from the same view of the customer, it's worth a look. Sign up for free at apollo.io. That's apollo.io. Thanks for doing this.

• 1:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, dude. I did something that I do in my off time, so of course I want to talk about it. I love video games.

• 1:34Pablo Torre?

  You are our video game correspondent, I realize.

• 1:37Speaker 01

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

• 1:41Pablo Torre?

  What does that mean?

• 1:42Speaker 01

  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 of 89, so I was like, six. And I've just always consistently had a system, and I've just played my whole life. I've been a devout fan of college football since its inception by EA Sports. Because Madden was first, NFL games were first, but when they did the first college football, it was NCAA Game Breaker with Eddie George on the cover.

• 2:13Pablo Torre?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  And it was like you would go to a Blockbuster or something and find out they go, they have college football. And I, you know, I remember exactly where it was. I was sleeping at my cousin Luke's house. We rented Game Breaker on a Friday night when college football was the next day. So you're like, you know, it was like a tease. You're like, ooh, we'll play these games. We would like play games that were gonna be the next day. Like if Florida was playing Tennessee, you'd be like, 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.

• 2:45Pablo Torre?

  Right. 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.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:50Pablo Torre?

  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, I'm a median voter when it comes to video games. I used to really be into it, but what I have now realized is I hear and attempt to understand what's going on right now is that I have been alienated by what this is now.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  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. But 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.

• 3:44Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 3:44Speaker 01

  It's great for escapism.

• 3:46Pablo Torre?

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

• 3:54Speaker 01

  I'm, I'm gonna tell you right now, I'm not a big Reddit guy, but I go to Reddit. It's the, 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.

• 4:16Speaker 01

  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.

• 4:24Pablo Torre?

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

• 4:30Speaker 01

  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.

• 4:44Pablo 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 wanna buy and spend time on it.

• 4:57Speaker 01

  It's an evolution of both capitalism and the unboxing.

• 5:00Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 5:01Speaker 01

  The unboxing craze that happened when YouTube first came out was because people were watching people be happy opening, they were wa, they were watching capitalism porn.

• 5:11Pablo Torre?

  Dude.

• 5:12Speaker 01

  They were watching someone open, the way that a pizza boy would have sex with the lonely housewife, was the way that the kid would unbox the video game and go like, "I wanted this result!" We all feel, it makes us feel something.

• 5:42Pablo Torre?

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

• 5:50Speaker 01

  Shout out, one of the best, one of the all-time greats.

• 5:52Pablo Torre?

  Just a friend of the show.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  Friend, I, I'm obsessed, desperately in love with, just make it sound unhealthy. I would follow her to the end of the world, you go, alright, turns out that was her future husband.

• 6:05Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  Um, but.

• 6:06Pablo Torre?

  But we put, we put journalism in folders because we're unboxing it.

• 6:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:10Pablo Torre?

  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.

• 6:21Speaker 01

  I used to go to GameStop, dude.

• 6:23Pablo Torre?

  Oh my god, me too.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  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.

• 6:40Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 6:40Speaker 01

  About like, getting the game. And then, the, the, the moment of leaving with your copy.

• 6:46Pablo Torre?

  The physical copy.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  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 preorder it. But you, you still get the feeling of the preorder when it pops up on your screen and you go, "Oh, I get..." And it gives you a countdown, like, six days.

• 7:08Pablo Torre?

  But, but now what we're getting to is the way in which, what I grew up doing, which I think a lot of people may assume is still happening, 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.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, probably.

• 7:28Pablo Torre?

  You played...

• 7:29Speaker 01

  An old pothead that loves video games.

• 7:31Pablo Torre?

  When you were playing...

• 7:32Speaker 01

  And crunchy rock music. I'm a, I'm a hack.

• 7:35Pablo Torre?

  Playing Madden against Mike McDaniel, who you grew up with.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  We played, that was Techno Super Bowl, technically.

• 7:40Pablo Torre?

  Techno Super Bowl, excuse me.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:42Pablo Torre?

  Um, with the now offensive coordinator of Los Angeles Chargers.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:45Pablo Torre?

  Uh, playing as Deion Sanders, he would.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. Uh, he would play as the Atlanta Falcons and he would switch to Deion 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. Uh, 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 Deion back, go one on one with John Taylor and just pick it. And it just made me, it's still... makes me mad.

• 8:22Pablo Torre?

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

• 8:26Speaker 01

  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. We're putting names in a hat. You're drawing the team you get. I got the Vikings with Cole Pepper.

• 8:50Pablo Torre?

  The number of just like sleepover, playdate, like multiplayer.

• 8:56Speaker 01

  Afternoon before you have to go to work in high school.

• 8:58Pablo Torre?

  Bloodsport tournaments of video games.

• 9:00Speaker 01

  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'd just play Home Run Derby. Because 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. Uh, 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.

• 9:40Pablo Torre?

  Of course. And then, uh, the episode we did with you where we invaded your home with Katie.

• 9:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was awesome. Trying all the athlete weed strains, which you have to play video games.

• 9:50Pablo Torre?

  I mean, of course, 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.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  Over like 500 million, correct?

• 10:07Pablo Torre?

  It was, and you contributed to that.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  Oh, brother, I, it was, uh, it was a full circle moment for me. Shane Gillis used to open, uh, 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, I'd be OC and he'd be DC. And then we would recruit. It was just a fun thing to do on the road.

• 10:36Speaker 02

  Hey, the boys. Hit it in the game? I mean, if it's in the game.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  It is. All right.

• 10:41Speaker 02

  We praise Jesus in the game.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  Long way from Happy Valley. Because 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, um, you know, he became like the, the most famous comic in the world.

• 10:57Pablo Torre?

  Playing literal arenas.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  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.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  No, that was stupid. I fucked up, I fucked up, I fucked up.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  Damn.

• 11:24Speaker 02

  You must feel like an idiot. Because you were up, you were doing so good at the beginning.

• 11:29Pablo Torre?

  You changed the passing options?

• 11:30Speaker 01

  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.

• 11:48Pablo Torre?

  Why, why Kansas State?

• 11:49Speaker 01

  Uh, my little cousin plays there now.

• 11:51Pablo Torre?

  Oh!

• 11:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, my little cousin's on the team.

• 11:53Pablo Torre?

  What position does he play?

• 11:53Speaker 01

  Plays tackle. He's a true freshman, Oliver Miller. Shout out big number 73.

• 11:57Pablo Torre?

  Oh my god. Oh, there he is!

• 11:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:00Pablo Torre?

  Hey!

• 12:01Speaker 01

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

• 12:14Pablo Torre?

  Your brother is 6'6", 290.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  Woo! He's only getting bigger, baby!

• 12:19Pablo Torre?

  Number 73.

• 12:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, big 73, Colorado.

• 12:22Pablo Torre?

  Damn. Yeah, Inglewood, Colorado.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, he went to Creek. I forgive him for that, but whatever. Yeah, but it's so.

• 12:29Pablo Torre?

  But you, you were, in other words-

• 12:30Speaker 01

  This year is special to me. This year is even more special.

• 12:31Pablo Torre?

  You were anticipating in ways that are like, beyond even what I expected when you walked in here.

• 12:39Speaker 01

  So you were talking about playing, um, Tegmo Super Bowl against Mike McDaniel.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  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.

• 12:53Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 12:53Speaker 01

  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. Cause 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. Uh, I'll put all the names on it. And I was like, what do you mean? Cause 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

• 13:29Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 13:29Speaker 01

  62 overall, he was like a 58 overall. He was dog shit, Mike McDaniel at Yale.

• 13:35Pablo Torre?

  Wide receiver.

• 13:36Speaker 01

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

• 13:41Pablo Torre?

  So 5'9, 175.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:44Pablo Torre?

  Smokey, Smokey Hill?

• 13:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, Smokey Hill High School. Go Buffs. That's why I'm disappointed Oliver went to Creek. Um, 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 [BLEEP] ass. Like they made you look horrible.

• 14:10Pablo Torre?

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

• 14:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:16Pablo Torre?

  Of getting to play this.

• 14:17Speaker 01

  I love this game.

• 14:18Pablo Torre?

  And, 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.

• 14:27Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 14:27Pablo Torre?

  These influencers that you're describing who are the marketers slash publicists of, of this empire.

• 14:34Pablo Torre?

  There's a big difference.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, for the first time um in this game's history, it was loaded with microtransactions. If the first one that you saw was when you do the preorder, they were like, hey, you know, you can spend fifty, sixty on the game. You can spend ninety on the deluxe or you can do the MVP package.

• 14:56Pablo Torre?

  So sixty-nine ninety-nine for standard.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  Standard.

• 14:58Pablo Torre?

  Ninety-nine ninety-nine deluxe.

• 15:00Speaker 01

  And then the MVP bundle.

• 15:02Pablo Torre?

  One forty-nine ninety-nine.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  Crazy, but that is for Madden and college football. Cause what happened when college football came out was Madden took a beating. Cause you realized how many people were playing Madden to scratch the itch that college football had left.

• 15:16Pablo Torre?

  Hmm.

• 15:16Speaker 01

  Cause 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, cause 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 the coach. I was like, I wanna see what they make Mike look like. But college football comes out and you're like, fuck Madden. I don't care about Madden, I just wanna play college football.

• 15:44Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, a half billion dollars worth of people agreed in the first year.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  Five hundred million dollars went to college football. You could see EA immediately go, shit. Cause then there started being things on the home screen of college football of like, hey, Madden's forty percent 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 gonna do the MVP, we're gonna do, it's a hundred and fifty bucks. The thing that was fucked up and the thing that everyone noticed, myself included, was they went, uh, 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.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  This one was like, hey, there's gonna 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 wanna 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 gonna be able to access it?

• 16:52Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 16:52Speaker 01

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

• 16:55Pablo Torre?

  Well, okay, so hold on. I want to establish that when you even say the, because you're, you're getting to, when we say that this is a thumbprint for the way we live now, effectively.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:06Pablo Torre?

  You, you're mentioning words that we've heard in other contexts in the effective degradation and, and fracking of media.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  Of owning media.

• 17:16Pablo Torre?

  Of what it even means to own something in media.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  You don't own anything anymore.

• 17:21Pablo Torre?

  But the term microtransaction.

• 17:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:24Pablo Torre?

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

• 17:29Speaker 01

  Basically, what a microtransaction does is, is if you have a, a player or something in the game, a character, and you wanna make it better, you wanna make it somehow better, they do this thing where they go, you know, for $10.99 V bucks, or whatever they wanna call it, it's money.

• 17:46Pablo Torre?

  A virtual currency.

• 17:48Speaker 01

  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 card's on there. That's American money that I'm spending when it is. But you buy like XP, um, and then you, you progress faster.

• 18:05Pablo Torre?

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

• 18:10Speaker 01

  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.

• 18:19Pablo Torre?

  You earn it.

• 18:20Speaker 01

  You earn it. And then, when you, 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, [bleep] play in the game. You wanna just give me money and we'll just like progress you?

• 18:39Pablo Torre?

  What if you could pay?

• 18:41Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 18:41Pablo Torre?

  For the things you used to have to earn?

• 18:44Speaker 01

  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 know, you might have four kids and you have a job and you just like can sit down and you have the fifty dollars that you want to pay so that you're got, 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.

• 19:27Speaker 01

  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. Yeah, it was a Saturday night in Montreal. I was at a comedy festival and these like agents took me out to a strip. This is like fifteen years ago, 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 timed my set on stage. And I saw her check her time and I went, I'm out. You know, I just got up, I was like, we're good. And she's like, no, no, no, no, I was, and you're like, nah, please let me leave. Please let me leave.

• 20:12Pablo 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.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  Beep beep beep, 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, 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.

• 20:45Pablo Torre?

  So, so what the streamers did, and they point out a couple of changes by the way that I also just want to detail is, 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?

• 21:03Speaker 01

  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.

• 21:30Pablo 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.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, Bordeaux's a huge college football streamer. He does like, um, you know, he does like a program build. And people love it.

• 21:48Pablo Torre?

  With Kentucky, that's his team.

• 21:50Speaker 01

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

• 21:58Pablo Torre?

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

• 22:03Speaker 01

  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 a, she'll act like a college football wife. That's all right, honey.

• 22:32Pablo Torre?

  I like Katie O'Sander Bullock in the Blind Side version of your video game.

• 22:36Speaker 01

  See them? You block them. They're trying to tackle, yeah, that's what she really does. But it's, um, it was, it grossed me out. It grossed me out. And then you, and then so to see streamers who usually fall in the line.

• 22:50Pablo 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.

• 23:00Speaker 01

  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.

• 23:16Speaker 01

  All these venture capitalist groups come in and buy it. And I'm not surprised this move is happening with EA Sports. Cause now that Jared Kushner and the Saudi collective.

• 23:24Pablo Torre?

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

• 23:37Speaker 01

  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, Mr. Duncan isn't selling me this.

• 24:03Pablo Torre?

  No, you walked out of GameStop with a physical disc.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:07Pablo Torre?

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

• 24:09Speaker 01

  Cause there's a lot to bring up because Sony is moving away from the physical disc.

• 24:13Pablo Torre?

  Which is basically saying, everything you thought you were buying and holding as a customer. You actually are just.

• 24:22Speaker 01

  Licensing.

• 24:22Pablo Torre?

  Subscribing.

• 24:23Speaker 01

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

• 24:32Pablo 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. How can we make more?

• 24:46Speaker 01

  That's where it's broken.

• 24:48Pablo Torre?

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

• 24:59Speaker 01

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

• 25:04Pablo Torre?

  Hashtag CFB play, don't pay.

• 25:07Speaker 01

  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.

• 25:18Pablo Torre?

  So, what are 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 Brook, who was an EA game designer from 1987 to 2001.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 25:29Pablo Torre?

  So that is a fertile period, but in the before era.

• 25:32Speaker 01

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

• 25:41Pablo 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

• 26:25Pablo Torre?

  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..."

• 26:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:49Pablo Torre?

  "How do you get the money up, guys?"

• 26:51Speaker 01

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

• 26:56Pablo Torre?

  And turning them into assets.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  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 $3.99 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 a add-on, like he said, that is clearly an add-on of value to the game.

• 27:35Pablo Torre?

  That you can choose if you'd like.

• 27:36Speaker 01

  If 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.

• 27:44Pablo Torre?

  Right, downloadable.

• 27:45Speaker 01

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

• 27:54Pablo Torre?

  Right, so you pay again.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  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 supersize of fries. You're gonna get fries, fine. $0.99 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.

• 28:14Pablo Torre?

  Now, the thing that began happening, and 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 and then became.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  I think it beat NBA Live.

• 28:34Pablo Torre?

  Herb stomped it.

• 28:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, which is crazy because I was an NBA Live guy.

• 28:38Pablo Torre?

  Me too. EA Sports, that was EA.

• 28:40Speaker 01

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

• 28:45Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 28:45Speaker 01

  Because NFL 2K was a legit threat to Madden.

• 28:50Pablo 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.

• 28:59Speaker 01

  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 gonna go get the licensing.

• 29:18Pablo Torre?

  And at a certain point, 2K asked themselves the question that every corporation in America asks itself these days, which is,

• 29:27Pablo Torre?

  How can we make it so for effectively very little margin? We can extract a lot more profit?

• 29:36Speaker 01

  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.

• 29:55Pablo Torre?

  Twitch.

• 29:56Speaker 01

  Twitch, yeah, Twitch was.

• 29:57Pablo Torre?

  Entire platforms.

• 29:58Speaker 01

  Entire platform going, I wanna watch these people play 2K, I wanna watch them talk [BLEEP]. I wanna see them get good and it's fun to watch. Guys go to 2K and they're talking [BLEEP] and you watch a guy get mad, it's so fun. They saw that and they went, what if we just make that in it like almost the heart of the game?

• 30:18Pablo Torre?

  The city?

• 30:19Speaker 01

  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.

• 30:26Pablo Torre?

  My, my player is the mode.

• 30:28Speaker 01

  The my player mode 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.

• 30:38Pablo Torre?

  But this is, what it became is effectively like everyone who plays a sports video game gets to build their own like role playing game avatar.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  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.

• 31:06Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, like bonuses, little prizes.

• 31:09Speaker 01

  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.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  Microtransactions.

• 31:18Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 31:18Speaker 01

  So they just went, oh, you can unlock this if you play this game long enough. Fuck that, give me 10 bucks.

• 31:24Pablo Torre?

  You have to spend, it turns out, according to the user Jimmy4Real, 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 durag.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  That's very funny. That's very funny that if you just want to go get a wave cap at a bodega, it's like $2.99.

• 31:45Pablo Torre?

  15,000 VC is what that costs.

• 31:48Speaker 01

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

• 31:53Pablo Torre?

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

• 32:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:05Pablo Torre?

  What a deal!

• 32:15Pablo Torre?

  This message is brought to you by Apple Card. With Apple Card, you earn unlimited daily cash back on everyday purchases, like groceries, or merch, or tickets to the game. Plus, it can be used anywhere MasterCard is accepted. No matter your team, no matter where you shop, Apple Card is here to help you tackle game day. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval. Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank, USA, Salt Lake City Branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.

• 32:46Pablo Torre?

  One thing you learn quickly as a journalist is that you should go directly to the experts when you want the best info, the ones who live it every day. And when it comes to jackets, what could possibly make you a better expert than being a Jackson Hole local? Steo is designed and tested in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, right at the base of the Tetons, by the locals who ski, bike, climb, and fish every day there. Steo has been at it since 2011, and 15 years in, it's the real gear that the locals live in. These folks live through Wyoming winters, so they know warm. The Hometown Down jacket, for instance, is 800 fill down, but somehow feels more like your favorite hoodie than some puff. I just ordered my own jacket after hearing about the brand from my producer,

• 33:30Pablo Torre?

  who practically lives in his. And he promised me that with a Stio jacket, it'll feel like the warmest New York winter I have ever had. And looking through their website, it is not your typical outdoor gear. The stuff does look good anywhere. You don't have to sacrifice looks for warmth. It'll become the jacket you grab every time you leave your house. And with ski season almost here, make sure to gear up now the way the locals do. Go to stio.com/ptfo for 20% off your order. That's S-T-I-O dot com slash P-T-F-O. Stio dot com slash P-T-F-O. Stio, designed and tested in Jackson Hole.

• 34:12Speaker 01

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

• 34:24Pablo Torre?

  Okay, so.

• 34:24Speaker 01

  Through microtransactions.

• 34:25Pablo Torre?

  So what happened to your favorite?

• 34:28Speaker 01

  Now, real.

• 34:29Pablo Torre?

  Not in your childhood, Dan.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  Now, come with me to a lower level of nerd, to the seventh circle of nerd-dom.

• 34:37Speaker 01

  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 creator wrestler suite. So basically, you could create any wrestler that's ever existed to put them 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.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  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 are 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 is out. Here's who I've made so far.

• 36:02Speaker 01

  And you look at him and 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 in 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.

• 36:47Speaker 01

  So now no one can, now 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 are starting to turn careers out of it. Streaming, making it, you know, look good. These guys go, listen, I gotta make this on Xbox and I gotta go make it on PlayStation. I gotta 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 would just unlock in the game and putting them on the island for money.

• 37:19Pablo Torre?

  When has making an exclusive island ever backfired?

• 37:23Speaker 01

  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. I don't want it. I don't want it. Because what happened is they put it out again and now, so it used to be a thing and, 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.

• 38:06Speaker 01

  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.

• 38:27Speaker 01

  Now 2K goes, give us money for a DLC. And you pay him and they go, great, now you gotta 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 wanna do or I have to do a thing that literally has me angry at the game. I don't wanna do that.

• 38:46Pablo Torre?

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

• 38:54Speaker 01

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

• 38:58Pablo Torre?

  Well, so what are the, what are the two?

• 39:00Speaker 01

  Macho Man and Andre the Giant. Those are probably the two, those are the only two wrestling voices I can really do.

• 39:05Pablo Torre?

  What, what is, what is, what does sad Andre the Giant think about?

• 39:09Speaker 01

  I don't want this. This is Tomas Marley. But it is, it's, it, listen, man, it's what I was telling you. We want to buy it. Don't [bleep] us over. And that's all they're doing. They're like...

• 39:27Pablo Torre?

  It's, it's, it's, it feels, I'll use that word, uh, it feels predatory.

• 39:33Speaker 01

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

• 39:40Pablo Torre?

  Where we are in, in, in, in the, 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.

• 39:54Speaker 01

  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.

• 40:07Pablo Torre?

  After the revolution, on the internet, there was a statement.

• 40:12Speaker 01

  They put out a statement on Sunday. That was kind of like... Yeah, you guys are pissed. That was the energy like they came out and they went, whoa, like the storekeeper came out to the front.

• 40:25Pablo Torre?

  I love it when they 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.

• 40:35Pablo Torre?

  So.

• 40:36Speaker 01

  Because that isn't the first draft.

• 40:38Pablo Torre?

  No, no, no, no.

• 40:38Speaker 01

  If you think that was the first draft that they cooked up.

• 40:40Pablo Torre?

  I'd love it.

• 40:40Speaker 01

  That went through seven layers at EA.

• 40:43Pablo Torre?

  Happy College Football 27 launch week, big text, red font, and then it goes.

• 40:49Speaker 01

  And then it turns to a whisper. Happy College Football. Hey, we really [bleep] up back there. I'm really sorry about that.

• 40:54Pablo Torre?

  My text, thank you for your continued passion.

• 40:56Speaker 01

  You guys are like really super pissed? Are you guys really that pissed? I talked to a couple of streamers and they're really [bleep] mad.

• 41:04Pablo Torre?

  And effectively, they're saying, we're gonna undo this, dot, dot, dot, for now. Tomorrow morning, we will remove all paid progression options from Road to Glory and Online Dynasty. An unfortunate side effect of removing paid progression is that players have college point balances in their wallets. They will not be able to apply the balance for 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.

• 41:30Speaker 01

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

• 41:34Pablo 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.

• 41:44Speaker 01

  Basically, I'm gonna 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 gonna improve.

• 41:55Pablo Torre?

  It's not over.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  This is not gonna regress. This isn't going to change. They are literally gonna 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?

• 42:16Pablo Torre?

  To stick the key in the ignition.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  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 wanna play the game? Give me 20 bucks right now.

• 42:34Pablo Torre?

  So this is where we are, though, is that I used to grow up. Subscribing to a GamePro?

• 42:42Speaker 01

  Shout out GamePro.

• 42:43Pablo Torre?

  Dude, I bought a GameShark.

• 42:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I had a GameShark on my, um, 64.

• 42:48Pablo Torre?

  Yep, yep.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  Dual wielding, uh, Goldeneye.

• 42:51Pablo Torre?

  Oh my god.

• 42:52Speaker 01

  How did you not, with two AKs? Good luck. Good luck not getting through the dam on that one. Just untouched.

• 42:58Pablo Torre?

  The, just, just sitting in a bathroom as Oddjob.

• 43:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:01Pablo Torre?

  Double barrel.

• 43:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, dude. Just looking up, because you always had to look up.

• 43:05Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 43:06Speaker 01

  They made him so short. Yeah, dude, that.

• 43:08Pablo 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.

• 43:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:17Pablo Torre?

  There are no cheat codes anymore.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  No, there aren't, and that really sucks.

• 43:20Pablo Torre?

  Because they became this.

• 43:23Speaker 01

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

• 43:31Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 43:32Speaker 01

  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, and I had to go find ammo. But it's fun to learn that, and that's like a life lesson you learn.

• 43:42Pablo Torre?

  And, 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.

• 44:01Speaker 01

  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.

• 44:08Pablo Torre?

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

• 44:19Speaker 01

  It's, it's gonna be crazy.

• 44:21Pablo Torre?

  But, but there, it will not exist as a physical disc.

• 44:26Speaker 01

  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.

• 44:37Pablo Torre?

  Oh, Blockbuster, yeah, all the time.

• 44:39Speaker 01

  But there was this feeling of insecurity when you did it, where you go, but I gotta, I gotta play it so much because 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.

• 44:52Pablo Torre?

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

• 44:57Speaker 01

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

• 45:06Pablo Torre?

  Oh, man.

• 45:07Speaker 01

  Because people wanted to play the game so bad, and this was before college football came back.

• 45:11Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 45:12Speaker 01

  That people were like, online, you could find people selling it for a crazy amount of money.

• 45:16Pablo Torre?

  So now, where we are, the state of the video game union is, you don't actually buy video games.

• 45:22Speaker 01

  Nope.

• 45:23Pablo Torre?

  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 from you.

• 45:30Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 45:30Pablo Torre?

  Sometimes you'll forget, am I still subscribed to that, to Hulu?

• 45:34Speaker 01

  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?

• 45:41Pablo Torre?

  Exactly.

• 45:42Speaker 01

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

• 45:45Pablo 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.

• 45:52Speaker 01

  Has this, has this podcast episode been an elaborate Rocket Mortgage ad? Here we go. On Rocket Mortgage, I'll show you all the subscriptions I have. I go, Paul, you got me. I thought we were talking about microtransactions.

• 46:17Pablo 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.

• 46:32Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 46:33Pablo Torre?

  You end up meeting people for whom the distinguishing characteristic is, you spent all of this money.

• 46:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:42Pablo Torre?

  That's what this is all signaling. You can't afford this.

• 46:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:46Pablo Torre?

  But you can go broke trying.

• 46:48Speaker 01

  But you can, and, and it is, that is, um, 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'd be like, they would write in the chat, "You buy credits." It was like a diss.

• 47:06Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 47:06Speaker 01

  It was like, "You buy credits. You didn't work your way up. You bought that." And by the way, is 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, 'Oh yeah, I want that Wolverine skin.' I'll spend VC, 5,000 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."

• 47:30Pablo 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.

• 47:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:46Pablo Torre?

  Maybe shame is possible.

• 47:48Speaker 01

  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.

• 48:04Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 48:05Speaker 01

  And that is something that we don't do. As an alcoholic, I've been shamed for 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're, 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-

• 48:37Pablo Torre?

  It really is.

• 48:38Speaker 01

  It's just five dorks that couldn't get [BLEEP] in high school and they're just taking down the whole [BLEEP] 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 it. But have them where I can, it's a DLC. It's something that's not, that you're not, you don't have a gun to my head. And I also collectively would say, we need to wrestle with the idea of sacrificing convenience for community.

• 49:19Speaker 01

  It's just a thing that I think we need to do. It sucks that you're out of socks. 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.

• 49:33Pablo Torre?

  I feel like you're now giving a coaching pep talk to...

• 49:36Speaker 01

  Kansas State?

• 49:37Pablo Torre?

  To Oliver.

• 49:38Speaker 01

  Well, 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.

• 49:46Speaker 01

  But yeah, man, I feel like, um... 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 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,

• 50:31Speaker 01

  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.

• 50:40Pablo 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.

• 51:00Speaker 01

  And I will argue to a capitalist, someone that might 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 do it better? 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?

• 51:40Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 51:41Speaker 01

  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.

• 52:24Speaker 01

  If you lose, go win. Just go compete. But I hope to God someone starts competing with these companies.

• 52:29Pablo Torre?

  Dan Soder, thank you for taking me on a journey through, frankly, your childhood and-

• 52:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm sorry. I really 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.

• 53:18Pablo Torre?

  This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Metalark Media production.

• 53:24Pablo Torre?

  And I'll talk to you next time.

• 53:45Speaker 03

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