Some Patches Required

This week, Zak and Aaron dive into a new controversy that may have long-lasting implications for the industry at large — Nintendo's decision to price some first-party AAA games at $80. The duo discusses why this price increase is not only unnecessary and bad for consumers, but also how it stands to open the floodgates for greed among big publishers looking to make the all-powerful line go up...

This week, Zak and Aaron sit down to discuss the newly formed United Videogame Workers Union — a brand-new collective attempting to bring the power of collective bargaining to every corner of the industry, regardless of company or position. They spend some time outlining the circumstances that brought us to this crossroads, and then dissect some of the potential positives of the movement as well a...

This week, Zak and Aaron sit down for a delightful conversation with Kevin Messenhimer, one of the co-founders of the indie game studio Fiveamp.  The trio covers a broad range of topics as they follow Kevin's journey from a member of Intel's hardware team to his time at Gearbox Software and eventually to the recent release of NIMRODS on Steam Early Access. It's chock-full of insight...

This week, Zak and Aaron revisit the world of Marvel Rivals, albeit tangentially and under less than pleasant circumstances. In the wake of some unexpected and unfortunate layoffs at NetEase's Seattle-based studio, the duo noticed some hyperbolic headlines circulating online that not only felt slightly misleading, but also contrasted with the titles for similar articles about the much more se...

This week on Some Patches Required, Zak and Aaron sit down to do something they've never done before: review an episode of another podcast. Then again, they've never encountered one that prominently features ex-Activision-Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick sharing anecdotes from his career, drumming up wild accusations against the CWA Union, and loudly eating celery into a microphone before today...

This week, Zak and Aaron return to the world of gaming topics not as friends, but as rivals... Marvel Rivals™! Inaccurate and misleading introductory statements aside, your intrepid hosts sit down to discuss the latest chart-topping game in the highly saturated hero shooter genre, Marvel©'s Marvel Rivals™, a Marvel© product, presented by Marvel©. More specifically, they dig into some of the i...

As 2025 begins in earnest, we have some phenomenal news for you! Everybody's favorite dewy salamander, Mark Zuckerberg, is going FINALLY going to rebuild trust in our most hallowed institutions, enrich your social life, and help stave off those pesky feelings of loneliness, isolation, and general ennui. How will he accomplish this, you ask? By flooding all of Meta's social media platform...

Xbox and PlayStation, two brands locked in what may be an eternal conflict for market superiority, seem to have found yet another field on which to clash: the rapidly growing world of handheld gaming.  This week, Zak and Aaron sit down to discuss the landscape for handhelds at the end of 2024, what new entries from Sony and Microsoft may look like, and what each is likely to do to achieve success....

Well, would you look at that? It's consolidation time again in the games industry! Who knew 15 minutes could pass so fast? Jokes aside, this is a big one: Sony is looking to acquire Kadokawa Corporation, which is best known as the owner of From Software, the industry titan behind generation-defining hits like Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring. This week, Zak and Aaron sit down to discuss...

This week, Zak and Aaron take some time to discuss Grand Theft Auto VI, but not in the "WHEN FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WILL IT FINALLY RELEASE" way to which you may be accustomed on the internet. Instead, they dig into the industry-wide perception that Rockstar's newest will be some sort of savior for the whole business of games. Between driving the adoption of current-gen hardware and gi...

This week, Zak and Aaron take some time to discuss the newly renamed Halo Studios (so long, 343! We're sure Xbox didn't rename you because of all that bad press you've accumulated!) and chat about some of the big changes coming down the pipe for future titles. The most notable of these is the sunsetting of the Slipspace engine in favor of the shiny and ever-so-popular Unreal Engine...

Brace yourselves for a shocking revelation: Ubisoft is in serious trouble again. Or still... or, maybe, both. This week, Zak and Aaron sit down to discuss the newest plan to wrest control of the storied French studio/publisher away from the Guillemot family — this time at the hands of activist-investor group AJ Investments — and what that all-too-possible future may look like. They also discuss Ub...

This week, Zak and Aaron sit down with notable Austinite John Henderson, who has shipped numerous games and made a name for himself in the local development community for hosting Game Dev Beer Night and supporting aspiring professionals as they try to make sense of their careers. John was kind enough to share his insights on a wide range of topics from advice on finding fulfillment in your job to...

Alas, poor Concord, we hardly knew thee. That's right, Sony's next big foray into the wild world of live service shooters, is no more. And the real kicker? It barely lasted two weeks. This week, Zak and Aaron sit down to discuss the unprecedented failure of Concord . In addition to enumerating some of the factors that led to the AAA game's unceremonious sunsetting (namely questionab...

When you look at a game like Monopoly Go!, your first thought is probably not that its marketing budget was nearly twice the annual GDP of the Marshall Islands. That's right, Hasbro and Scopley spent a borderline-obscene $500 million to get their new mobile title in front of as many eyes as possible... and it seems to have worked.  This week, Zak and Aaron sit down to talk about the cost of m...

Xbox Game Pass has been called the best deal in gaming, and for a while that was hard to dispute. But the times are changing, and with it comes a new era for Microsoft's subscription service - one that costs considerably more than it used to. This week, Zak and Aaron sit down to discuss the Xbox Game Pass price hike, and why it's far more significant than it may seem at face value. Betwe...

Every few years, notoriously sadistic game studio From Software releases a new title, and with it comes a heated debate about game difficulty. Well, that time has come again with the launch of Shadow of the Erdtree, the one and only (massive) expansion for auteur director Hidetaka Miyazaki's magnum opus, Elden Ring. So, with some people conflating the DLC's brutal skill requirements with...

Among the bombastic trailers showcased in the Xbox showcase at Not E3™ — er, I mean Summer Game Fest™ — was one particular reveal that some fans have been waiting for for the better part of a decade: Dragon Age: The Veilguard. And boy oh boy, was it ever a bewildering first look. This week, Zak and Aaron sit down to discuss their impressions of the newest iteration of Dragon Age 4, and why it seem...

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the latest episode of Consolidation Watch - a show where we puff out our proverbial chests and celebrate all of the excellent acquisitions that mega-corporations have completed recently! This week, we've got a doozy for ya' from the world of games media, where IGN successfully ate up the Gamer Network, home of mainstays like GamesIndustry.biz and Rock Pap...

This week, Zak and Aaron chat with Josh Bowlby, a UI/UX designer (user interface and user experience, for the neophytes out there) who has experience at companies like Virtuix and Wayfinder developer Airship Syndicate, among others. Not only was he kind enough to speak on some of his experiences in that space, but also his active role in the Austin, TX, game development community. From tips on net...

War. War never changes... but the media landscape sure does. With Amazon's new Fallout show dominating headlines and streaming charts alike, Zak and Aaron returned to the vault this week to dust off an old favorite topic: video game adaptations.  This time, the question at hand isn't the program's quality (spoilers: it's pretty good), but rather what its success means for the f...

Ahh, Apple. Creators of the smartphone, pioneers of industry, the gold standard for excellence, the last bastion of inspiration in a world that's gone dull, and... an illegal monopoly? That's what a recent set of lawsuits allege - and they're gaining traction. Between an all-out assault from Epic Games' Tim Sweeney and an 88-page treatise on illegal practices from the US Depart...

Rejoice, RPG fans, for Dragon's Dogma 2 is finally here! The reviews are in, and the consensus is... well, complicated as hell. While critics are stoked overall, fans seem to have some grievances — and they're quite happy to share them.  This brings Zak and Aaron to the ever-relevant topic of review bombing, or the practice of leaving droves of negative reviews on a product as a response...

When you think of AAA games, does your mind fill with excitement imagining what spectacular worlds dedicated artists have crafted for you with the benefit of near-limitless resources? Or do you imagine boardrooms filled with disinterested people demanding endless compromises in pursuit of maximum profit? This week, Zak and Aaron sit down to politely inform you that option A is likely a nice dream...

At this point, trying to find a new or clever way to say that the games industry is in turmoil is a profound exercise in futility. There is no one way to "fix" the problems that seem to follow developers from studio to studio, but there's one pretty clear step in the right direction: unions. This week, Zak and Aaron sit down with former union organizer and current Austin, TX City Co...