Nerds Amalgamated

Should celebrities watch what they say? The latest controversy has come out after Emilia Perez was torpedoed by a castmember's comments. And why not hold them to the same standards most of us are? Urban Dead, one of the longest running zombie MMOs, is being shut down due to the new Online Safety Act in the UK. While it's sad to see something with such a cult following go, you can't run a product l...

Balatro has been rerated after an appeal to PEGI. Now teenagers can legally play it. Amazon now has full control over James Bond. They promise there won't be any TV shows, but it remains to be seen what they'll do with the narrative problems the last movie left them. A company plans to release genetically modified mosquitos in Australia to control the spread of dengue fever. This can't go wrong at...

This week we interviewed Isaac Fox of Astral Ticket Comics. Astral Tickets Comics Website - https://www.foxxycomics.com/   Youtube - Astral Ticket Comics - YouTube Facebook - ATFoxxyComics Instagram - Izumi Fox (@atfoxxycomics) • Instagram photos and videos X - https://x.com/ATFoxxyComics/   Kickstarter - https://www.kickstarter.com/profile/1784220658/   Bluesky - https://bsky.app/p...

The US Copyright Office has decided that at this time, generative AI doesn't deserve copyright. We've got a small chance of a massive asteroid hitting Earth in 2032. The good news is NASA already has an astronaut who was a driller. There's been a disappointing update to the Stop Killing Games campaign with the UK rejecting changes to the law. This episode supported by Rez www. DrinkRez.com US Copy...

CGC Cards has been accused of selling fake Pokemon alpha playtest cards signed by Takumi Akabane. Who is behind this devious act, and what are the implications for TCG collectors? Trump's tariffs on Canada could cause the price of comics to jump by 25%. Will this push independent comics out of business or create a new opportunity? In the next few years, Mastercard wants to get rid of the numbers o...

Nintendo says emulation is legal, but what does that mean? Are they being hypocrites for going after Yuzu? Trump has announced Project Stargate to advance AI for the US government. What could they want with images of people with too many fingers? Anime studios in Japan have started using AI as a tweening tool to speed up production. What does this mean for the animators? The UK Ministry of Defence...

AAA games are getting so expensive to make that companies have started marketing them as AAAA games. Despite this, games haven't really increased in price. But who's responsible for spending so much money? You can retrain your tastebuds to like a food that you hate. Will this finally end the war over pineapple on pizza? Harrison Ford wasn't always the first choice to play Deckard in Blade Runner....

The rumours are flying that Half Life 3 might be close to done. We're trying not to get too hyped just in case, but this might actually be happening this time. Alan Moore spoke about his new novel, The Great When from The Long London Quintet. Lots of parallel universe shenanigans seem to be heading our way. 2025 has some great astronomy opportunities coming up in Australia, from the possibility of...

It's the end of the year, so welcome to our Year in Review episode. We discuss our favourite things of the year from games to movies and science. We hope you have a happy New Year and we'll see you next year for more nerdy shenanigans. 2024 in video games – 2024 in video games - Wikipedia   2024 in film – 2024 in film - Wikipedia   2024 in Science & Technology – 2024 in science - Wik...

Your kids might be gambling in underground Roblox casinos. Or you might be gaming in underground CSGO casinos. Either way, there's been a proliferation of underground gaming casinos gambling in game assets for real world money. The latest investigation shows found children who have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of Robux. Scary stuff. In what is certainly not just a way to get on the...

There's a big potential for the untapped Indian games industry. Why hasn't it taken off yet? Is 2025 finally the year of the Indian games industry? Former Bond girl Gemma Arterton thinks James Bond can't be genderbent. Someone out there will probably take that as a challenge. A group of scientists working with school students have identified a cytotoxic chemical found in goose feces. Really. It'll...

This week, things get heated when Professor and DJ talk about the reasons AAA games have to play it safe and take no risks. Disney is remaking Snow White and it looks AWFUL. They really should stop doing this, but they won't as long as people keep watching them. There's been a lot of news about birdflu lately. So why hasn't it become a pandemic? Playing it safe Triple A style - Borderlands 3 and T...

We are have a new Nerd on the Block : Shane from ComX Once an international brand, GAME is on the verge of shutting down. They've adapted to the changing market by not selling games anymore. We're not sure there's a way to survive as a physical games retailer with the domination of online marketplaces, but they're trying. Hate might be a strong word but Denis Villeneuve really doesn't like Star Wa...

Disco Elysium is a famous game for very good reasons. But when it comes to creating a sequel, there are now five companies all claiming to be working on a spiritual successor, all with part of the original team. And they're all suing each other. Get your popcorn. Ben Affleck (Batman) and Hirohiko Araki (JoJo's Bizarre Adventure) have both come forwards to complain about AI. The future of their ind...

Reuploaded due to Spotify sync issues Australia's proposed social media ban is very broad and will likely affect gaming platforms like Roblox and Fortnite. We discuss the impact on the gaming industry if this comes into effect. Disney announced new Star Wars movies, then almost immediately cancelled one of them. What are they doing? Does anyone there have any idea what to do? Probably not. Track y...

This week we went to Supanova 100. We'll discuss our favorite panels, some great sights and of course the best cosplays. Brisbane Supanova 2024 – Event Home - Supanova Comic Con & Gaming  Shane Syddall from Comics Network Australia (ComX) – Comics Network Australia – Shane Syddall | Comics Network Australia    Full Show Notes : https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tdeHIlAmUYvngQu...

Call of Duty Black Ops 6 has a new pay to win audio tier using customised Head Related Transfer Functions. Cool tech, but what isn't cool is allowing some players who can afford a subscription to have a gameplay advantage. Netflix are saving the Anime industry by... *checks notes* paying the animators a fair wage. This utterly insane idea will hopefully lead the industry in a better direction, awa...

A minor actor has had his identity used to create Venezuelan propaganda. He's not too happy about that, and hopes the unions will be able to prevent this in the future. Playstation have spent ten years suing a company for making hacks for their games, and they just lost. While this might lead to a proliferation of cheaters, we're more excited about the legal protection for modding. The Tasmanian T...

The Nobel Prizes for 2024 have been awarded. AI. AI everywhere... A study has attempted to estimate the actual cost of game piracy for developers who use Denuvo DRM. Is it really worth using on games? Hollywood has changed a lot in the last few decades with the rise of streaming. Some insiders have concerns about its ability to adapt. Nobel Prize 2024 Winners - Nobel Prize 2024: All the Winners |...

EA have announced that they aren't working on The Sims 5 after a decade. Instead, they're farming out future content releases to the fans. Is this a sign of EA's laziness or is it the right move? Toxic fans ruin everything. Fortunately, studios are developing techniques for protecting actors and fans from their actions. A recently discovered bacteria eats plastic. Yay. Also not yay. Can it cause a...

Steam has once again broken their record for most concurrent users online. So where are all these new users coming from? What do they want? What does this mean for the future of Steam? OpenAI is being sued for copyright infringement. If they lose it could mean the end of the existing LLM AI hype. For the next few months Earth will have a new moon too small to see with the naked eye. Well maybe you...

Australia has now brought in an R18 rating for games featuring gambling. We discuss the merits behind this change and whether it will really protect the children from gambling addictions. Lionsgate have decided to use AI to create AI generated "augmentations" to their films. We go deep on deep fakes, and appropriate usage of AI. New research explains how sleep resets your brain and prepares it for...

A New Nerd Approaches and his name is Phoenix If you own the game Oxenfree through Itch.io, you're about to lose access to it. The Netflix owned games studio is pulling the game from storefronts and libraries, leaving nothing in its wake. This time, even if you own it, you won't be able to download it. This should be completely unacceptable, so how do we fight back? Disney didn't have the rights t...

Suda51 and Shinji Mikami got together to talk about Japan's CERO system of games classification. They've raised some excellent points about the inconsistencies in the system. Humans don't like the heat much. New research shows that the fatal limit for temperature and humidity might be much lower than expected. Jenna Ortega thinks more women led franchises should be original IPs, not gender flipped...

Epic Games Store's long running free games program seems to be paying off for their user acquisition strategy, despite their low sales of exclusives. They still can't hold a candle to Steam though. The Marshmallow test is supposed to determine a child's future. The latest studies actually debunk it, and prove that you really aren't limited. At least not that way. The US FTC has finally banned fake...