Episode 85: MOBAs

people will literally hit me up. I know people hit you up though when they need my number, but people will hit me up and be like, where's your work husband? I'm like, I don't, like, are you asking about where he is supposed to be on set? Like I don't know where he's got I swear yours. Yours is way cool Because when people hit me up, it's like, hey, I want to hire people, like where's if he's bum bumself?

Why isn't he on your coat tails? In this? What I was going to say is our next week, we're having our good friend Mark ellis on and I pulled up a picture of him and I'm like, oh, my hobby, because like just we actually dated, like years ago. But he's just like also one of my best friends. So I just think, like, I don't know, you all have to fight it out for ultimate best friend. Very interesting that ye had. It's years ago. Now you said that and you're like, yeah it is. Oh man, time is

moving way too fast. My daughter's getting older, she's learned no, not a fan of her knowing that word. She's told me to slow down. She says I drive too fast, and I'm mad because she's right. Um, but you know, you know how it goes. Do you want to introduce our guests? Yes, that third voice here is the producer of this very cast. It is a good Man and his name is Dan Goodman. Hey, yeah, how many times have people done that? Well? Actually, how many podcast do

you produce? Yeah? Um, I produced quite a few. I'm more of like a executive producer on things like Daily Zicos, which is mostly Ana Hosni's Beast, things like Worst Year Ever, which is mostly Sophie Sophie Lichtman's but Chelsea Handler, which was also Sophie's. I mostly do editing and engineering and recording and stuff like that. But I you know, I've been working with you all for a long time, over a year. I think so before Will Ferrell invaded, before

before I Heart took over. Yeah, we do like y'all. Uh I Heart, who obviously the president of I Heart listens to every episode. Yeah, Bob Bittman, Hey, how are you doing? But how you doing? Settling? It's a good one. We love Mr Heart Radio. What is his good heartbeat? His heartbeat? Um, Dan, what are you geeking out about this week? I'm geeking out about death stranding. I think a lot of people are geeking ot about death standing

right now. But I'm just really enjoying it. It hits that, you know, little nerve of I don't know, package delivery is like really therapeutic. I guess I'm just driving around this weird landscape has been a lot of fun. That's been the wild thing to me is that that is the game. You're just a ups guy and people are having a blast. I'm gonna get into it invidually, but there has been an influxive game between that and Pokemon Sword and Shield and you know, Jedi Fallen Order. I mean,

there's a lot of games coming out right now. What about you, Danny Well, I thought you were going to take mine, but I guess I get to go for a baby Yoda. Yeah. Also, it's just like taking over my Twitter feed, like there could not be more. I think. I tweeted though, and I made people. I said, baby Yoda isn't vaccinated. Remember who's obsessed with Baby Yoda? Now, was like, let me have one thing that's facts though, that's true. It's kind of true. Baby Yoda can't go

to pretty school yet. Well, and then it was yeah. And then it was really funny because John Favreau actually tweeted the concept art and and somebody replied, Jeremy um Simser, who's actually working. He's like the storyboard artist from one division, which is I think it gonna be on Disney Plus, right, And so John tweeted the concept art for Baby Yoda, and Jeremy was like, so you just went with the first thing baby. It was like tool tee what we saw.

So anyways, that's that's a good thing. Well, what I'm geeking out besides Baby Yoda is Pokemon Sword and Shield, and this is the first time and they streamlined so many things, and you know, some people feel some way, some people don't. There's no longer any e V training because they're the like stats aren't capped anymore. It's very like when you catch or fight Pokemon, it automatically goes

through the whole party, so everyone. You know, some people might be like it's easier, but I'm like, great, I'm an adult now I have responsibility. So right before I sleep, I can just sit back and just power level. Like it's funny that even though it's easier, I'm like, I'm still gonna power level, so I just one shot every every Pokemon that comes at me. So that is kind of like I want to say, taken over my life, but really it's just kind of been there for me

when I just have some downtime. So that has been popping up in the news a lot. Would you say none of the hate is justified? I have no opinion on this. I haven't played the game, and I think all internet wining is lame. But yeah, I mean, what's your take on it? Yeah? It this I it's very complicated because like I as the one who like just enjoys whatever they give to me, like in a Pokemon game, I'll be fine. I mean, like it's a very fine game.

It plays just well, and it seems like the things people are mad about are like almost like very nitpicky, where it's like, oh, there's not the national Poka decks and all this stuff. And I think it's I do come from a weird place knowing like wanting to go in the game design. Being in a place where I work with gaming, I know what goes in a game design, and a lot of time the consumer ask for things without even considering like what has to go in it?

You know you you don't like they and and like then like people get very like weirdly nuanced with their thing where it's like if they would have just said I was like, well, how about for once in your life you give someone the benefit of the doubt. Now about instead of saying like if they would have just did this, you just go like, well, maybe they wanted to do this and they didn't, but we don't. We're

we're at this weird place. And I and I have a creeping suspicion, uh that they're going to release a Snyder cut because it's because they across the board have have had all the actors that have been a part of it saying it's I think it's time to release, and it feels like a social media campaign. And I don't like the culture of allowing people to just yell

at yell at creators to get what they want. Uh. I think, you know, there are some people out there who make, you know, a like genuine criticism and desires and being great about it. But for every one of those people, there are twenty anime avatars saying heinous stuff to creators. And and so I don't know, the game freak thing, it seemed like just don't buy it, like

we It's always this in gaming. This has kind of been a circular thing where like there's a large pitchfork gang of people mad about something in games, and then you have the other side that goes, then don't buy it, but they The part that scares me is also when it comes to casting, Like, you know, we haven't seen that quite yet. We've seen it a little bit, and some of the backlash with casting has been justified, like

if um whitewashed or something. But when I think of like casting that I'm afraid of in that world, it would be like when people freaked out about Heath Ledger being cast as a joker, or even if you go all the way back to like if there was social media back then Michael key in being at Batman, like, you know, nobody believed in them, and so like, is

that how far it's gonna go? Like if somebody one of us here on this podcast gets cast in a role and you know, for a superhero or a villain and uh, and then people are all mad and they're like, no, I wanted Gina Rodriguez. And then it's like, you know, if enough people scream about it, are they gonna as a studio going to give in? Like that's the thing

that kind of scares me. I'm a selfish standpoint. I love love, love, love love that you used Heath Leather Ledger as an example because I think and even now, the same thing people were mad at Joaquin Phoenix. Now Joker fans are like coming at anyone's neck who doesn't like it. But they it was the same people who were like, oh this, I don't like this. I don't like this, And now you're threatening critics and like docs

and critics over the guy that you didn't want. And then the same thing, Heath Ledger came out and now he's untouchable. No one will beat that role. But y'all did not like it. How about you just wait till the movie comes out and then see what you think before making yourself look silly by doing that. It's a shocking problem. But and I think the thing that makes it so wild is that they just pretend like that

never happened. Like you're not seeing anyone online talking about how they were, how they were wrong about the one they're just and that Oh Daniel Craig, remember we talked about him being cast with James con Like, my main thing is that, like, it scares me now because nobody was really listening back then, like they took it in and they were like, okay, whatever. But now that social media is so prominent, it scares me that it might seep into not just like changing story or changing this,

but actually changing the actors that are cast. I think it'll only work for NERD properties because I think Hollywood has a very strong ego and they'll be damned if they let some dorks online tell them what to do, you know, because because well, we can get them to change Sonic, we can get them to uh, we can get them to change releases nighter cut, but we won't be able to stop them from letting white ladies write K pop stories, you know, like like like they're they're

still gonna They're still gonna do what they want and you know what, hey rebel, you know you might nail it. I'll have to wait and see. But also every because there was a there was a thing where like there was the one side of me that was like, oh man,

we should wait and see. But then there's the other side of me thinking about that, like Korean American who was writing a K pop story, who now doesn't get to tell tell it because now that is saying So that's like the kind of like toss up of it is like when someone interjects with like a specific cultural story, if someone from that culture is writing that story, that that is now harder for them to sell because they're like, well,

you know it's great. I mean they were or you know, who knows, they'll they might have already passed on a K pop and then they're gonna push this one cough cough book of life, Coco, I'm looking at you. Even though Coco was amazing and there were great Latin American people,

a part of Coco implicated we're talking about mobiles today. No, actually, I will point out that that is a great segue, because speaking of complicated and speaking of gamings, that is what mobile's a k a. Multiplayer online battle arenas are so uh um and they're They're also known by very very very very very through a few people as action real time strategy games, but it's a subgenre of strategy video games that originated as a subgenre of real time

strategy games, in which each player controls a single character, usually on a map in an isometric perspective, which is more like a top down esque for these in layman's terms, and you're a part of a team competing against another team of players. The ultimate objective is to destroy the opposing team's main structure with the assistance of periodically spawned computer controlled units also known as AI, artificial intelligent units

that march forward along set paths. However, mobile games, which is sure for multiple are online battle arena can have other victory conditions, such as defeating every player on the enemy team. Player characters typically have a set of unique abilities that improve over the course of games, which contribute to a team's overall strategy. Multiplayer online battle arena games are a fusion of real time strategy, role playing and

action games. And though mobile players usually do not construct buildings or units, there are examples of mobile games that cannot be considered RTS at all, such as Smite and Paragon. The genre is a big part of the sports community. And that's the last I'll probably reference this doc because this is something I do know very well. As a matter of fact, before we even go into this, I'm gonna just double check. I'm gonna scroll to see what

I was gonna say. Boom can't curse. And I was really proud of how writing am Mobile's started as a as a mod which mods I know, we we have, we have even got that deep into mods really on but mods are PC gaming, which is one of the most fun ways to game. No no hate for my console fan, but PC gaming. One of the big draws to it is that you can do mods to games.

You can have like modifications. And one of the biggest kind of like parts of that community was the RTS real time strategy community because you were able to build maps and then upload them to the game service for people to play. But because as we know, nerds always take things to the next level, They're like, what about instead of maps, we just made whole new game modes. So there are a whole different type of game modes where like it wasn't just mobis. They were like some

like just like strategy, farm and shooting. Looking at the history, StarCraft was a popular real time strategy game. Blizzard released it in became famous in a very short amount of time. Um, if you tell people what StarCraft? What is that? What is it like to play it? Oh? Man, Yeah, let's talk about StarCraft. StarCraft is very very very very important to gaming and esports. Uh, it's it's it's like, just

I want to put some respect on their name. So there was Warcraft, which eventually built the lore and led to the game World of Warcraft, which became its own beast. But Blizzard was like, hey, you know, let's get innovative. What if we did a sci fi version of Warcraft? Now, just to for anyone who is not familiar with the Craft games at all. Typically it's a real time strategy game. Uh,

that kind of goes like this. You start off with a base and you have units, and you build worker units who can farm for resources usually minerals and gold. Use those resources to build a base of barracks. Then you upgrade your weapons for more uh for stronger units as the game progresses, and then the first one to destroy the other players home base wins and the game had like a story that went along with it. But the game as itself, like the that's the multiplayer aspect

of the game, StarCraft does the same thing. Uh, it involves other races. So you have the Terrens which were the humans, you have the pro Toss which were these weird alien dyes in the Zourg who were these beasts. And then like I said before, you were able to update upload maps, and then you had mods. So StarCraft is very important to the gaming and the sports community because of this reason, StarCraft blew up out here very

much so. But as the US move on to other games and flighty as we are, Korea stick to StarCraft and was having huge million dollar tournaments overseas for this game, which in turn will eventually be the thing that turns the tide for America to finally get the picture and go like e sports is big over here because America has like always had an e sports community, but it's

always been bigger in Korea. And this is very important, like seed to plant now because within this story you will see how they bridge the gap between how big StarCraft is in Korea to how it gets big over here. It's it's within this story. Dan is shaking his head in agreement, absolutely, and it's it's kind of cool. Um, Yeah, I would say, I mean, I would say E sports in general really like bloomed in Korea and how that community took E sports and saw them as an event

that could honestly make money. If I'm just being real, They were like, let's just put a bunch of money into this. A lot of people want to watch this, They're coming out to these events, and like Korean StarCraft is where E sports was really kind of you know, exploding, and Ye showed how it could be. I mean, like, I think that's the thing. I mean, Danny and I talked about it on like our episode about careers. But

really everything is driven by money. I mean, that's why we have Transformers, you know, it was to sell toys like money. I mean, money is the root of all evil, but is also the driver of all like capitalist. Once you get money involved, it can really catalyze a lot of different things. But the first E sports event I see saw on television actual television, was a Korean StarCraft

tournament being telecast on like ABC or NBC. Yeah, but yeah, So we have this game StarCraft and there's a there's a player called aon sixty four who created a map called a on of Strife and this was like the first brick of like the mobile game UH. And in this map, players controlled the single unit and fall a team against AI units in three lanes. The basis of the two teams were at the end of three lanes and the objective was to destroy the other team space.

So this is like the skeletons of a mobile, because that's one of the main things I think. Just right off, rip, I can tell you the wind condition and most mobiles is to destroy the other team's main base, with their usually almost always being three lanes, and there are towers, UH tiered towers on each team side, so most teams have two towers before you get to the inner home base tower, and you it's kind of like a slow

game of attrition between the two teams UM. And the reason these units are so important is because obviously since you have UH usually about five like player characters, sometimes they're going to be going to the other lanes to help each other out and while that's happening, you still

have your AI controlled units attacking. Yeah, that was a big development that came with a DODA after a on Strife, and Strife was really what developed or what like set the standard of the three lanes and then and we don't need to move on quite yet, but yeah, it

was three lanes four v four. It was like the max that the map would allow at the time, and it was the kind of thing where players were like, we can't really split evenly amongst these three lanes with four players on each side, and it kind of developed a meta of having different types of players played together as a team in different lanes. To you know, that just started the meta of of of two players working together, one acting as a support to the other player, and

that's kind of started there. So can you, um, can you explain what DODA is to people? Sure? Absolutely, So.

DOTA is short for Defense of the Ancients. It was a custom map made within Warcraft three by this guy named yule Um real name Kyle Summer Summer and it really developed on the mobile developed on and Strife by giving the map a lot more character, developing it significantly graphically and also just shape wise and strife really played as a left or right kind of map, whereas DODA is much more of a square where the lanes peek up the the outsides and insides, with a big middle

lane that goes across the center diagonally, and a Dota added something very specific that has, you know, maintained throughout all of mobile's any kind of mobile, which is the jungle. And the jungle was the way to get in between each lanes, and it added a whole another role to mobile's which was the jungler, the person whose job it was strictly to help out their teammates in their own

solo lanes. Yeah. So typically, you know, as we go through the history will also be refreshing with just straight up you know mobile knowledge. Typically the main roles that you have for the lanes is top, which is exactly like it sounds. The top lane, which is usually a solo player who's pushing with usually a beef, your tanker

tank your champion, because you're doing that by yourself. Then you have mid, which is usually like a newker champion or a mage because that since that's the shortest lane, it's a lot of back and forth and it's kind of the most contentious point. Then you have the bottom lane, which usually has two shared roles, which is the A d C, which attack damage carry I think like a

glass cannon. Yeah. And then you have your support which is there to protect the attack damage carry, making sure and it's and it's not as simple as just kind of playing because also as the support, you have to make sure you're not stealing any of the creep kills, which, like I said, we'd said this is complicated. Let's talk about creep kills. So those little AI controlled units are known as creeps, and you get experience for killing them

only if you get the last hit on them. So you get you get some experience for killing them, but you get more if you get the last hit. So that means that the A d C has to time that both the A d C, the top and mid have to time their hits to make sure they get the last hit, which means that the support needs to be protecting them because that's where the other team will try and harass to make sure you're not getting all

your last hits. It's a very I would compare it to almost football and why I think it helped in pushing the sports because this all sounds complicated, but if you're watching it, it kind of makes sense. Like you may not know like the minutiae of what's going on, but you can kind of visually see what's going on. I think like the battle of a creep is a

really good compare us into things. Like you said, with football, it's kind of like running plays where you're using these short kind of you know, things that you know you can make progress on to make small leaps across the field. It's like, if you know that you are going to be able to get all of your creep kills, you can really concentrate on that to create a small advantage

over your opponent, especially in the beginning of the game. Yes, another thing just about the creep kills, just to go back to that real fast that they also give you money, which is another big important thing about mobis in general. The money that you get allows you to buy items back at your home base, and those items make your

character better. As well as getting experience and leveling up making your abilities better, the items you get also buff your abilities and your power and just make you stronger, so that getting creep is not only just a small advantage in the actual lanes. It's it's it's crucial to your development throughout the game of getting items and leveling

up and stuff like that. So if I can just take two steps back and suck us out into the minution and just taking and that's where the RPG element comes in, right because now you're having you know, you're you're kind of doing what all across all RPGs we know as a build, you're trying to build specific stats, specific armor, specific things, and lots of players go into this knowing what they want to buy, and that's and that's what that's the kind of fun of it is everyone.

I mean, that's the kind of fun and the toxicity of it, which I think will save the toxicity of the community to uh to to later because it's there and I have lots of theories why speaking of later, we have to take a really quick break and then we're going to hop back into Mobi's right after this,

and we're back we're still talking about Mobi's. Um if you tell people about League of Legends, oh man, So League of Legends was the first stand alone mobile game, because at this point, when we're talking about Dota, Dota is a mod that so I I got an a Dota who if we go way back? I was, I just moved back in with my dad. I'm lake Elsinore. I was taking computer science courses because I still thought

I wanted to be a programmer game designer. And I there was this kid in my uh computer science class because because of course, and he was like, you gotta play this game Doda. Doda is the game. And he's like, okay, but you're gonna have to buy Warcraft three and Frozen and I was like, what, like a way, you just made me have to buy two games to play one? Uh? And so so Legal Legends was the like first game where you just bought. You just bought that game, and

it was a standalone game. And all these characters in League are based off of known characters in Dota. That's definitely true. I do want to point out though, that a major difference between League and Doda was that League has actually always been free. Yeah. League was always a free to play game. And so when that came out as a stand alone and people were like, wait, I don't have to pay for this, oh, I think I

actually kind of do want to. I do want to get into this game because of their experience with DODA and what they heard, and then basically someone was like, yeah, but you can get it for free though, and they're like, oh, um, yeah, I'm not playing this Doda game anymore. I know. It really did make it way more enticing. And I mean this is another we talk about, you know, east, how

StarCraft kind of led e sports and all this. I also want to talk about how League and soon Dota kind of let the charge in micro transactions and eventually what we've known in uh in um Fortnite and Apex is the battle pass. Like a lot of people, I don't think people put enough respect on the fact that that came from like the international stuff like that very good. Um yeah, you know everyone sleeps on it, mostly because I think not a lot of people play Dota too.

But yes, um so yeah. The formal author of DODA, which was Win Sue, partnered with Brandon Beck and Mark Merrill to form Riot Games and developed League of Legends. League had a similar place out of Dota, but was

developed on a completely unique map with unique champions. Most importantly was that it was free to play, like Dan said, and that made it way more enticing and uh, but then In two thousand nine, the same year that league launched, UH, famed Hall half Life developer at Valve announced that it had hired ice Frog, that the moder that had taken over maintaining Dota All Stars after Freak left for Riot Games.

And ice Frog and Valve we're working on Dota to another standalone successor to the original DODA and UH, Dota two was UH. What was interesting is because you might be listening to this and be like, oh, then are they the same? No, they are two very different games. And I say that as someone who's played and kind of plays both. DODA was incredibly faithful to the original Warcraft three map and it had a much nicer epics obviously because it was updated and it was free to

play as well. I just wanted to say a quick thing about ice Frog. So ice Frog was the lead developer, like if he said, for Dota two and the original UH. In the original DODA. To date, he has remained pseudonymous, and other than revealing that he was twenty five years old and that and that was back in two thousand and nine, um characteristics such as his physical description and real name are unknown. Although it's the Internet, so I'm

sure they're known, especially in that community. Um ice Frog speaks English and Chinese, which he learned in order to better communicate with Doda's large fan base in China. Um I just find this fascinating that this was a five year old who was like, Oh, I know how to make this game better. How exactly moving forward after that, does he get paid? Oh? Yeah, No, when he got brought onto the team, he was. But before that he kind of was doing it right free. Then they were,

but then they hired him. Yeah, So before that, whenever you saw Moths lots of time. Sometimes times they'd have like PayPal donation stuff, but for the most part, you're doing it for the like love of it. And this that was the cool part about mods is sometimes you

got like you got to be a developer. I think the closest example to that was a Player Unknown Battlegrounds originally was a mod to uh Armor, which was a very realistic war shooter, and then that turned into h one z one, which he went and developed, and then he went and left the h one z one team to develop Player and Own Battlegrounds. So he went on to develop two different games, and I believe another Armor

mod Daisy got their own standalone game. So this was and this isn't uncommon, like lots of times if a mod gets popular, they would be the person would be tapped to make a real game. It's happening right now again as a matter of fact, with this new game type called auto Chess. Auto Chess another mod made out

of Dota two. So there was a modification of a modification game that created this kind of chess game type that League of Legends once again borrowed with big old air quotes to make their own title team fight tactics. And it's another kind of just game type built out

of the same game. And I think it kind of goes back to what you were talking to like the very beginning about how like the audience being able to interact with the product has like positives and negatives, Like when you're just yelling at something, it doesn't do anything, but like when you have the ability to interact with it, you just get the positives of negatives of people like either play this or I don't like League of Legends. People have been trying to mode League of Legends in

different ways. If you go to the Dota two custom maps, there are several. It's not just auto chess. There are so many different modeed things in different ways to play the game, but auto chess was the cream that rise to the top. And so you know, the modification community has really I think, you know, StarCraft deserves a lot of credit. Valve for Dota allowing this deserves a lot of credit. League of Legend Right Games to a certain extent being like, yes, Monty is good. We'll take those

ideas and do them ourselves. I mean, you're not losing anything by no, Yeah, and in fact it might be even getting jobs because of that. Yeah, yeah, I mean that's the interesting thing is, like, you know, games have been doing the fun thing of like borrowing it and putting its own spin to it. Like I mentioned, H one z one spawned Player Unknown battle Grounds, which then spawned Epic two as a fluke at a Battle Royale

version to their like tower defense game. That was the game they were trying to make a tower defense game, and then their Battle Royal game blew up so much that they're like, all right, well this is the game.

They made a billion dollars. You know, it's just so funny and that now we're seeing the same thing happen when Auto Chess, where it was a valve thing, then Leak doesn't, and now Hearthstone is doing their own version of Auto chest It's it's just a fun thing of just like and one out of those people will have

a favorite. So now after League of Legends they have well, League of Legends is kind of like it's kind of at the peak right now, whereas they're developing League and making it more and more, and uh, Dota two has kind of also cemented itself in this place, like E sports has really solidified these games as just mainstays in the gaming community, and it's only you know, people are looking to those companies in general to make new stuff

alongside these other games because they are just such mainstays. Like there's League Legends is still the most popular game in the world bar none. Like it's played the most everywhere in the world, and it's frankly, it's like not stopping. They're making so much money on micro transactions on skins. They just did a collab with Louis Vatan that it's like there's there is no end in sight to the

money that Legal Legends. I will briefly talk about like the other moments that kind of came and went because of it. But this is I think where the more fun discussion is going to be happened, because I really want to talk about the influence Mobis has had on the gaming community as a whole, because mobile's for the most part, is a taste maker game. Like not everyone's

into it. It's and you know, it is like most games in a mobile is at least a thirty minute investment for one game, So it's it's definitely not for everyone. But the things that they've done that have worked and been so successful or why a lot of our favorite games are successful. But you know, we got to talk about Smite. Smite is still sticking in there, and Smite they're spin on it is that it's more of a third person version, so you're it's you're you're not getting

the like top down view it. It makes it a little more action base. But then you know, you had Paragon rest in Peace. That's you know, that was that and and that Paragon is a rest in Peace only because of Fortnite. Paragon made by Epic Games. Yeah, Paragon was made by Epic Games. It was there, and like, to be honest, it wasn't like it was a smash

it but there was a debtic a community. When I played, there was a whole Yeah, I was playing, but Fortnite was made a billion dollars and they said, this is where we're gonna put and who's gonna blame them? If you make a billion dollars, Danny, if you off of a fluke recorded an R and B single and someone gave you a billion dollars, would you still be writing or would you do another? Would you do another album? You know, I'm too creative. Take all that money. Make

a horror film. That's great? Oh man, I mean I have to. I I give Epic Games credit and that they make so much money off of the Unreal engine and every game that uses it that you know, we have to do a sidebar on that. Sure, So Epic Games makes the Unreal engine, which if that sounds familiar, it's because it's kind of the engine that used to make Unreal Tournament back in the day and kind of

has been the industry standard. Every game you play for the engine, but because they make the engine, game companies have to pay them to use the Unreal It was. It was essentially was like creating the video game Wheel. They were like, we so honestly all the money, like they kind of have this like flow of income, and personally, I think they should be way more experimental, like when you have like that much flow, and they've been they you know, I feel like Fortnite and itself was kind

of an experiment. Definitely just just the game, not even the Battle Royale. The Fortnite as a tower defense and it was kind of fun. I got into it, and man it was it was crazy. It was wild watching Fortnite happen real time because there are some people who are coming in now, but if you were someone who played it, this Battle Royale thing really was just a

side thing. Like it was like imagine if Nokia stopped making cell phones and only made snake Like that's what Fortnite was for the Yeah, um, they just you I mean they you know, they had all the money. They used it, but they were very quick to cut stuff that wasn't working. Like we were just talking about Paragon. I was one of those people who threw twenty dollars out of Founder's pack and they I'll say this to their credit, they had enough money from Fortnite that when

they closed the servers for Paragon. They refunded every single player for every dollar they spent on Paragon. If you bought a skin, if you bought a Founder's pack, if you want anything. They were like, you know what are bad? We close the game, here's your money back, which is wild. The company had enough money to refund every player, which is that that's truly unheard of if you don't game that never happens never like and and really like gaming has is in a new Okay, I feel like there's

lots of nuggets we we have stopped on. So like back in the day that games that we are used to console games, a game comes out, you buy it when it's done. Now we're in an era on PC gaming where there's a thing called early access games, and it's almost like you buy into the game before it's finished,

and you hope that it finishes one day. You pray that it finishes one day, but you were essentially buying an incomplete game, sometimes at a lower price than when it does a full release, uh, in the hopes that you know, you're supporting them developing it. And this was originally away for smaller developers to do it. And then somewhere along the way, larger developers just started doing it.

They were like, we can get away with and it's just created an interesting culture because sometimes you do have people who like player on the battlegrounds. Pub G was a was a early access game when it launched. Some may argue it was still early acts. Yeah, and now they've kind of gotten their footing, but the damage has already been done because in that time, Fortnite came out, Fortnite Apex Legends, Yeah, I can talk about there's so many came out and after that day, I love it

so much. But to go get back to uh Mobile's so you had like your paragrams, you had your Smite. Smite still standing right now. I think if you had to say that it goes League Doda Smite and now there's a few mobile mobiles that that are getting some tracks. Is definitely picking up a little bit. It's very interesting because that whole it's a whole another subject we can get into with mobile games, where mobile games are really

on a path now and people were real mad. I mean some people flew a valuable member of my streaming community after of the of the Salt Squad, after we did the Blizz Kin episode. The way we first interacted is he damned me and said I was a blizzard chill because he because I said that I liked the Dioppolo game. And I was like, He's like, he's like, you're sounding like a real blizzard chill right now, and I was like, I'm just being on it. I was like,

you you listen to the pod. You know, I have no reason to lie if I don't like something, I'm very honest about it. And I'm just saying I did enjoy the mobile game for what it is, and I do think mobile games are the future. And now I get to sit back and watch as Call of Duty Mobile blows up as Arena Valor is blowing up as pub G mobile like mobile game because it's accessible, it's for the people, like like, how many kids have an Xbox now, not that manie. How many people have a

PS four? Not not that many. How many kids have a cell phone literally at a certain age, all of them. I think that's where like Google Stadium is coming up and is and is gaining a lot of popularity because it's not so much about owning the games, are owning a system that is so good, it's just about having internet fast enough to be able to literally stream the game to your phone so you can play any game you want on your phone. Same thing with xboxes, x

cloud service that's coming out soon. It's like it's really bridging that gap to bring everybody together, to make it let about what you have or what you're playing on, and just making it like, hey, are we all playing the same game. It's like as cross platforms coming more of becoming more of the norm, where we are also trying to, you know, take off the limits on what people are able to play, because, like you're saying at

the beginning, PC gaming is the best. I completely agree as some sort of you know, loser who spent way too much money on their PC. But it, you know, I don't feel like I should have to say or I don't want to be the one to say somebody like, oh, I want to play this game with you, but we can't because you're on a Mac, or we can't because you only have a PS four or you only have an Xbox or something like that. Like that's that's lame.

I don't I don't like that. I would much rather play with everybody all the time than just be like, well, I have a PC and we can play PC games, or I just have a PS four we can play PS four games. It's like, I don't think that is the future personally. Yeah. You, um, you'll kind of touched on the International, but I just want to touch on it a little bit more. Um. So, the first ever International was, which is a tournament, was held in twenty

eleven and was the first official Dota two tournament. In fact, it was the first real time that we got to see the game in action being played at the highest level. Uh. And then, like you all said, the tournament happened when Dota two was still in early development, still very difficult to play. Um and not necessarily because the game was poorly made, but also because you know, select people were

allowed to play the early beta. This is very fascinating, and that the last tournament, which was in August of twenty nineteen, the prize money was over thirty four million dollars. Yeah, and they do a really cool thing with the their

international now. Now the fans are kind of contributing to the prize money because there's a compendium that you buy that unlocks tons of cosmetics, has a fantasy game where you can track the International, it really is like a companion to the tournament itself, which gets I think it's a perfect way to get your user base excited about

this tournament. But every dollar space it towards the compendium goes into the prize pool, which is such a cool concept because you know you're directly kind of helping your community grow versus hoping for the best amen. I think bringing the sports is really important too, because like mobi's have wildly expanded the popularity of the sports across the world.

It definitely started with StarCraft, but but with League of Legends and with the International, you're seeing like record attendance of events, record viewership of these of of the events on things like Twitch and YouTube and like a Zoobo and other another streaming services, And I think it really highlights how much people are investing into mobile games as

more than just like the game itself. Yeah, and that's and that's that's the link I wanted to talk about when I said earlier, because StarCraft was there was money

in it. But I like, if you if you have to know StarCraft to watch StarCraft, you just you simply have to know, like you'll understand when a team is invading but that's third minutes in, whereas like a mobile you understand two characters shooting beams at each other, getting to kill someone sneaking, and also the excitement of seeing like the Jungler pop out to harass and maybe get

a kill early game. I think even if you don't even play, and I know a lot of people who watch you know, League and watch like the it's called the LCS, which is the League Championship Series. I know a lot of people watches it, watch it and don't even play League because it's a little easier to follow. And I think that was the final piece to kind

of bring it over here to a larger audience. And then, like we said, the money that was involved once Brand saw that like, oh, we can just make E Sports teams and they have to wear our logo when they play in front of millions of people. Oh, let's invest in it. And then you have like things like now E Sports blowing up across the wather. You've got Echo Fox, which is owned by Rick Fox or formally owned by Rick foxunate. Yeah, that was all. That's a whole bunch

of mess. But like that the that whole thing, Rick Fox leaving Echo Fox. I read on ESPN and this and it was a long flighty road. And like I said, I've been here from the beginning. I've been watching from the beginning. And I remember every time I knew ESPN was going to cover the sports, I go on Twitter and like, let's see what people are saying, because it was ridiculous from the jump. And I'm gonna tell you why.

Because everyone's like, oh, we're watching video games on the sports networks, Like, yeah, bro, you're also watching poker and theseus you're watching bowling. Get out of your son, like you get out of here, don't you pushing it? Like bowling? I could see, yeah, you're actually moving. Yeah, but poker is literally the same the same amount of movement as someone playing a video game. Maybe just mental sports. Yeah, you're thinking that's always I mean golf, you know, like

you know, yeah, you don't don't make. Don't make the golf people they put in the hips and you have to be physically fit. They'll tell you they have they have to work out. I mean, but you ain't. You ain't in there, like they're all pretty golf. I'm gonna give you all. I'm gonna put some respect on golf,

you do need a lot of physical stuff. Um. But yeah, like but I remember because I remember the first kind of big one I kind of saw because they did it briefly because Blizzard always kind of snuck in there. But they did the High School Champions this series, which was a mobile that we didn't get to talk about too much. But Blizzard did their foray in the Moobis which was Heroes of the Storms, which was funny because Blizzard, where this all started, was kind of the last to

kind of touch on it. And then they started very very late, in my opinion, bringing in old champions, so you had like the Samurai, which was obviously the Berserker, and you had They did that way too late, Like if they would have started with those champions, I think Heroes would have lasted a little longer. We have to take a really quick break and then we're hopping back into Mobi's right after this, and we are back. I was just telling if he um. I was pulling up

this Washington Post article about how we'll link it. It's how the League of Legends World Championship became the super Bowl of e sports, And this was comments from a week ago. Even I thought they would have like I know originally, but this was a week ago. It says it's offensive to call this a sport. Can't some clever person come up with a new word and get famous for doing it. Um my exact same sentiments, This is not a g damn sport. Um Well, I guess well

somebody did say was if he? Someone said, well, if golf can be a sport, I guess anything can. Somebody else, by the name of Tuna fish said the brain gets a workout, but not sports unless the whole, Unless the whole of the body is involved. That is not true. That's not many sports like a tree. Well, let's talk to the dictionary, the thing that knows what it's talking about, and not some dork in the comments. So sport number one is indeed an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess,

and often a competitive nature. As with the first thing, is that as racing, baseball, tennis, golf, bowl and blah blah blah to a particular form of this, especially in the out of doors. So that two is saying that anything is like a form of because also ESPN is showing a NASCAR Shut up, Oh that's true. You're sitting the whole. Yeah, what are you talking about. I also think that, like you know, mobiles are really cool kind of uh mix up of a bunch of different video games.

Like you're saying, there's are there's RPG elements, there's even like you know, shooter elements. There's a lot of different elements that make up a mobile. Similar how there's like a lot of elements that make up sports in general. And I think if you watch a broadcast of a League of Legends game, whether it's else yes, the World Championship or something like that, there's a lot of things you see that are almost identical to traditional sports, basketball, whatever,

football anything. First of all, the desk, the analyst desk, that people doing color casting, all of those people look just as professional on sets that cost just as much money as anything that you'd see for an NBA or

an NFL broadcast. Everybody's wearing uniforms, there's teams, there's coaches, everybody is working together, the teamwork, the communication, all of that stuff I think is so that people would say is crucial to sports, and like you know, defines team sports is also crucial to the sports into you know, what people are doing on stage when they're playing legal legends are playing a game like this. You know, I get that the lack of the physical element is you

know what people racing. Yeah, exactly, very similar, I mean granted those people. It's also also I must say the sports people have a workout regiment absolutely because one of our friends, her brother lives in a house like she he is on a team and they have to live in a house altogether. They trained together. It's like you can't you know, you have to be physically fit, mentally fit, like you have to coolutely in order for your brain

to work. Yeah, hand eye coordinations, the same with drivers, drivers, all of the all of the like the really slight movements. Everything that is like high motor skill function is like super on display. Especially in sports. Everything is like split second to the moment decisions that are like creating games.

That's why most people age out in their like twenties, like because it is you need that much of that twitch effort, you know, as opposed to like I think the fighting game community has a like older base you can still kind of busted out, but like something with like literally if I just look the game's free, go on league and just try to last click. It takes so much effort to like because it really is like a split second and then you're also looking at the

mini map the same time. Like it really is a lot of trained stuff. But I do you want to talk about MOBA's effect on different games, because I mentioned earlier you have the battle Pass. The Battle Pass is very similar to like Danny was saying, the International that compendium that came you leveled it up, um lots of times with money? Can you level it up with the money you spend? You? Like Steam? I don't know if

it's still around. You just have a feature where you can see how much money you spent on a game, and oh boy, you can don't tell people about Steam. Yeah, so Steam is one of the first kind of uh because yeah, I remember it's since two thousand and six. I was using Steam as one of the its bi Valve, the company that have made Counterstrike, Half Life, eventually Team Fortress two, and it was It's essentially a store and a kind of library for your video games on PC.

For a long time, it was the only one of its kind, and then developers are like, we're gonna make our own, but it's not gonna be as good it's gonna be bad. I will give Origin some credence because I do love Origin Access because that's how I was able to play Anthem without wasting any money, and that's how I'm able to play the New Jedi games. So Origin is the only one who got it right because they that the benefit. And then now the rumors that

Origin is going to go back to Steam. That's the rumor. Yeah, is that really? Yeah? That's because Origin posted a video on Twitter of just a coffee cup and then Steam coming up, and so everyone's like they're going to They're going to Steam. And then someone, of course data miners found a code that had I launch um launch codes from Steam. So yeah, which I'm mad because I'm like, this means I'm gonna lose Origin Access because if so,

I'm gonna lose my mind because I love it. For those who don't know, Origin Access is just Netflix for video games, but specifically e A games, So you pay a monthly fee and you get all e A games for free, Madden, Fifa, Anthem, Jedi, Fall in Order, Unraveled, Unraveled too. Uh what is it? Feed heat and needs for speaking, Like, it's a huge library and it's truly worth it. Um, A lot of are trying to do it, and not as well as Origin access in my opinion. Yeah,

that's definitely becoming more popular. Yeah, but yes, so Steam. Where was I with Steam? We were just talking about what it was. It's iTunes for games, yes, Steam. Yeah, that's a way quicker way to say it. Sorry, Steam is iTunes for games, and that's and I remember going to buy the BFC can of Monster walking to my PC cafe, crank that plan, Counterstrike one point one point six yeah, one point six D Dust D Dust two,

uh going Hammerty. I've been playing like a free to play mobile called Rose Online because we were a Chimpy anime character and I was still awed back then. So I made my character have gold air and looked like Goku beautiful and has evolved into the premier platform for gaming.

Uh and is the same company that developed Doda too, and eventually uh So and so valve at this dope system for the companium where you can buy micro transactions, and you can even they have like the communities, they go even beyond modding, where the community can create cosmetics

for the community to buy. And this is a very similar thing that uh was first piloted by Fortnite because they started breaking up the game in the season's and then they had the Battle Pass where through um through experience that you will earned from playing their game, you would unlock cosmetics, but you can also pay to boost it along, which already makes it made it better than the International because honestly, obviously it was the same way

for the International, but because every game took thirty minutes, leveling up your compendium took significantly longer than this. And then after Fortnite did it UM that it kind of blew up for a bit, and I think Apex did the next Apex was recently launched, which was EA's kind of Battle Royal game that was launched from there. But I think that was one of the things that they kind of took from mobi's I think everyone's kind of been structuring their e sports around it. I think the

Overwatch League exists because of LCS. They were able to watch absolutely league UM and this is actually a very important part of it that UM just if we can stop take a pause on video games and talk about TV. LCS is owned by Riot, so it's there, it's their game. They're running their tournaments uh, the International owned by Valve. They're running their tournaments and vice versa. This is a very important thing because in TV, since video games are

intellectual property, you need permission to broadcast it. So when back when I saw you know, StarCraft you know on NBC, Blizzard gave them permission to air it. So you have different companies, um like e League for example, who are doing street fighter games, but they have to pay out Capcom to use that footage, and lots of times they'll just ask for more and more money, and which is why you see a lot of these companies doing their own e sports because they get to have all the

money and they have to control it. So that's actually like a very important X aspect to point out in the game. And why League is kind of dominated is because Riot has had the wherewithal to do it and that and I will say that Overwatch also followed that point because Overwatch was on the league first and then they launched their Overwatch which also changed. Like I think, I'm very interesting to see where the sports goes from there because typically eight sports are broken up into organizations,

like we said, owned by different people. So you have like your Cloud Nines, which used to be an Overwatch team, You've have you have your um dignitas, uh evil is it evil geniuses? There's there's so many sports organs all over the world, but with Overwatched now they own the teams.

So you have like the Los Angeles Valiant and the Outlaws, but these are all teams owned by Blizzard, which means that this kind of I was gonna say, that's that's actually not the case, like that the teams are still owned by organizations, like the London Spitfire is actually owned by C nine what But what Blizzard did that was like different. That was kind of trying to they're just kind of trying to not I shouldn't say bite, but they're trying to borrow from traditional sports in the way

that the teams all have these like locations. It's the London Spitfire, it's the Los Angeles Valiant, but they're still owned by They're still owned by organism, They're still owned by organs, but those organs are not allowed to advertise their organs on any of the jury and that's yeah, that's the thing. So it's like they're they're trying to move away from the kind of traditional sports market in the way that all the sports are kind of decentralized.

Like the reason that the NBA is so successful is because like one, you know, companies by the rights to show the m b A. There's like four major sports in this country, whereas with the sports, there's a new e sport every week, and so you know, even though Mobile's kind of set the mold for what a good E sport is supposed to look like, Like a lot of these new games have to even make that much money to show themselves in the same light as League of Legends, and Overwatch was like, Okay, we need to

be completely different from that, so we're having our own league that's not associated with any of this stuff. So it's like people who are Overwatch League fans, like I think they even struggle to identify with things like C nine or these other sports because they're like, I'm a I'm a Valiant fan, I'm I'm an Excelsior fan. I'm not you know, I play Overwatch. Like Overwatch really has this core community that just loves that game so much.

I mean, and I do want to give Blizzard credit where credits due, because it's very easy to bash Blizzard were siding with China and this Hong Kong is a dispute. I have to mention that because if we talk about Blizzard and we don't mention that, you're gonna be like, if you why didn't you mention that? Are you on Blizzard side? No? You know me. You know you've seen my tweets. You know who side I'm on. I mean.

And also, in case you were curious legal legends, the company Ran James is owned by So if you're curious about whose pocket they're in the answers, I mean, well because and that's a very important thing to say because Lee try talking that smack and people were very quick to be like, hold up, wait, you're kind of not talking. And that's kind of the that's the kind of like connective tissue. Is it is? It is not that necessarily

Blizzard is on the side of China. Is that Blizzard is owned by ten Cent, which is in China, which and that's that's what happens when your business gets into play with art, is you don't get to say everything you might want to say because your boss is owned by the man. But to what I will give them credit for is they were the first um E sports

kind of Uh. Yeah, they're the first E sports to give players a salary and benefits because, as it stands, the way EAT sports worked before outside of the Overwatch League is you had a team, your team's winnings split amongst everyone. But what happens when you and the organ Yeah, and the organs, So you're getting a percentage after the org gets it. It's like your manager or something. Yeah, pretty much. And so and you're you're like, you know, we talk about you know, football players who are in

their twenties not knowing how to manage money. What's a sixteen year old, like the kid who just won a million dollars in Fortnite? Yeah, and he's like what he's like, sixteen fifteen year old? No, I mean, schools already don't teach us about money management. Now you're sixteen with that much money, you know, it makes it hard to like understand like investing it in the right way, making it go towards something. I mean, hopefully his parents will help

him out with that. But in E sports, orgs, you know, you're making all these moneys, especially if you're successful team, but you don't have benefits, so like if you do get sick or if something does happen, you know, I mean Danny will tell you out of everyone's being sick is very expensive in America, and you know, having a million dollars if you have something like a chronic illness,

that can go away real quick. So Blizzard, Oh, well, what I was going to say, if you want to hear more of that conversation and the controversy of like being in the sports. We had a really great episode with Malik Forte. It is our e sports episode at drump last year, but still very relevant that we talked about a lot of the controversy, even like doping, you know, because that's not really regulated. When you are, you know, have a new sport come up, So check out that episode.

You can literally just google or look up nertificent e Sports. You're already on the feet, just search. I saw Malik recently. I think he wasn't like a Honda ad. It was like an ad for Honda and he was driving to an Overwatch event. Makes sense, good for him York to a level and people just ask, um, well, I mean that's pretty much most of MOBA's that. Yeah. We I

think we did great on the history. But it was really fun talking about the influence because I mean with anything, like I want to say, with games, but just anything entertainment wise. It it's fun to see the things that might be affecting the other things you love, right, Like, you know, someone who plays Overwatch might be like what about mobis and not knowing like, oh, actually Mobi's kind of helped you. I mean, I mean, MoMA's kind of

built Overwatch because it uses a mobile definitely skeleton. But and that's how they killed battle BORNU alright, bringing up bringing up old wounds. But Dan, where can people find you? Um? You can find me on Twitter at dj Underscore Daniel. You can find me here at the office every day, cutting up people's voices and doing the usual. Um, it's been a pleasure. Thank you both for having me. I

really appreciate it. Fun talking mobis, I will the last thing I will say about MOBA's I highly recommend everybody at least give one try if you're into video games at all. I find that mobis are such a cool combination of different mechanics of many different video games that if you're interested in video games at all, there's something about mobis that will interest you and to lightly touch in the toxicity. Just mute everybody, don't talk to anybody else.

If you have your friends and a discord, talk to them. If you have a toxic friend, do not play with them. Just play a mobile for fun. Give it, give it a shot because they're super fun, adventurous, just well designed games that you know, they're the most popular in the world for a reason, so definitely give them a shot. Hey you, Oh, I'm at miss Danny Fernandez, and I don't think I can announce anything. I have so many

things to announce that I'm not allowed to. I hope in a week next time you guys listen, I can announce something. Um. But in the meantime, Oh yeah, check out our merch store in public dot com slash meifice, Yeah, get some of our merch. You know what's coming up

the holiday. Myr friends and their difference share. Even if they don't listen, now that maybe they'll start listening because you got them assured it's public dot com slash Night said yeah, and of course because people have been asking again, the discord is discord dot g g Forward slash Salt Squad. If you want to come in, if he's on Twitch, if you wire away on Twitter and Instagram and uh, like we always say, stay nerdy, stay