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Sacred Symbols, Episode 16: Sound the Alarms?! (Patreon)

Published:
2018-10-17 16:01:00
Imported:
2022-01

Downloads

Content

In an interview, Rockstar's co-founder seemed to indicate that the massive team working on Red Dead Redemption 2 is pulling 100-hour work weeks to finish the game. But is that actually true, or have his words been completely misconstrued? Is all well, or is it time to sound the alarms? We discuss. Plus: Sony finally confirms PS5 is coming (duh), PlayStation Network names will be a-changin' starting in early 2019, some naughty bits are being removed from the upcoming Senran Kagura game, and Sony Santa Monica appears to be working on two separate, unannounced titles. You can look forward to all of that -- and much more -- on this week's Sacred Symbols, with plenty of your questions, comments, and concerns peppered in. Y'know. For flavor.

Timestamps:

0:00:17 - Intro.
0:03:28 - Should we endeavor to have guests on the show?
0:05:20 - We love our Sacred Symbols listeners that aren't even PS gamers.
0:06:08 - An inquiry about brand loyalty.
0:07:58 - Is a bagel a sandwich?
0:09:29 - Chris has been playing a lot of Call of Duty: Black Ops 4.
0:16:11 - Sony confirms that it's working on a new PlayStation (plus Q's).
0:28:16 - PSN name change coming in early 2019; beta sooner (plus Q's).
0:34:18 - Was Red Dead Redemption 2 developed under bad circumstances (plus Q's)?
0:48:46 - Sony fixes devastating PSN message-related bug.
0:50:37 - The best-selling digital games on PSN for September, 2018.
0:52:28 - Senran Kagura: Burst Renewal delayed due to content being removed.
0:57:44 - Sony Santa Monica appears to be hiring for two unannounced games.
0:58:24 - Insomniac outlines Spider-Man DLC in more detail (plus Q's).
1:02:06 - Cancelled Shenmue I/II Remake footage leaked, verified.
1:04:21 - Square Enix shows interest in bringing Dragon Quest X westward.
1:05:41 - This week's new releases for PS4, PS Vita, and PSVR (plus Q's).
1:18:11 - So... what's the deal with Media Molecule's Dreams?
1:22:34 - What should Naughty Dog do next?
1:27:37 - What do we think about Level-5's Dark Cloud?
1:29:22 - Will a Dead Space Trilogy Remaster ever come to be?
1:32:17 - Remember when playing games in 3D was gonna be a thing, then wasn't?
1:34:23 - What are the chances we get a new Sly Cooper game?
1:37:30 - Outro.

Files

Comments

Tyson Williams

I went to an escape room recently and the one guy running it had a black maga hat (which I didn’t know ever existed) and a red maga hat sitting on a shelf above his desk like it was a treasured memory

Tyson Williams

I think it could be cool to occasionally have a guest. God I hope they do a remaster of the Dead Space trilogy. Although I feel at this point in the console lifecycle, maybe we should just hold off on remasters for the next generation?

Marcus Brown

Great show as always. I am one of those people that love immersion and will spend a long time just creating a character cause I'm a psychopath lol. Seeing how I'm a completionist this game will have me be away from society for a long time.

Joey Finelli

Make Wednesday Great Again!!

Matthew Perry

Not been able to listen to show yet as I'm at work but had a sneak peek as wanted to see if my question was read .. it was :-) can't wait to listen and thanks in advance for reading my question , can't wait to listen : )

Kenneth Oms

when it's hackweek and Sacred Symbols week, couldn't be more stoked.

Jimmy Champane

The way the Rockstar situation has been reported feels like people wanting themselves to be right about terrible working conditions in favor of unionization so much that they'd paint Houser in the wrong no matter what he said. I don't work there so there's no way for me to know, and I'm not educated enough on the topic to comment on game developer unionization, but his response seemed totally reasonable to me. Another consequence I see here is that since the Houser brothers almost never allowed themselves to be interviewed publicly before, there's no way they will in the future after this mess. These are people who have a vast wealth of knowledge and insight that could help a younger creative person learn when they’re just starting out. Now they’ll most likely never have the opportunity because words seem to have been irresponsibly taken out of context to push a political ideology forward.

Destynee Andrews

Chris' twitch channel is named chrisraygun. Loving the content lately Chris and Colin.

Tyson Williams

I miss a world where weebs didn’t ruin the term fan service

Jeshua Anderson

100 hour work weeks are absolutely a thing in the gaming industry. I can't speak for Rockstar employees, but when I game tested Metroid Prime as a contract employee for Nintendo, once crunch time hit, it was expected you would work 8am to 8pm atleast 6 days a week. Most would work 8a-11pm 7 days a week in the final 3 weeks. A few volunteers did 8a-2am a few days a week, and 24 hour shifts were available as well. They fed us, and we were definitely paid time and half, plus premium pay for work after 11pm that also accrued time and half. It was grueling work, but I made great money. But while 100 work weeks weren't mandatory, they were definitely happening.

John the Nabo

In the subject of giving your best an crunching hours on something you love, i wanna remind y'all about Takayoshi Sato, the character animator for silent hill that lived on his Office at Konami during two years in order to single-handedly animate all PF SH's CG cutscenes, sleeping under his desk for that period of time. If that isn't dedication, i dont know what is

Brett Carlson

Hey Colin. I notice you and Chris always mention the fact you cant play PS3 games on PS4, but you can play over 600 games on PS NOW including Dead Space. The only difference between GamePass and PS NOW is the download vs streaming and playstation has begun to roll out the download option for PS NOW games. So Back Compat in principle is there. It's just located inside a service that seems to go unnoticed by most playstation fans. I have PS NOW and in my opinion streaming is not ideal but I have replayed many old playstation games and had great experiences. Just a thought.

LastStandMedia
>>16393184

There's no doubt that Houser is a workaholic, and there's no doubt that others around him will try to emulate him in order to survive and thrive. The thing is, if the dude is saying, "listen, we don't make people do that," and no one wants to accept him at his word, I don't think that's on him. And people pointing back to the "drama" surrounding the original RDR and this subject need to remember that the "drama" was literally complaining about 60 hour work weeks. I'm not saying you have to work 60 hours a week, but I sure do, and I simply couldn't imagine doing everything I needed to do in only 40. Ultimately, everyone has an agenda. I know Jason at Kotaku is working on an exposé, and I'll wait to hear what he has to say before making final conclusions. I'll note, to be fair, that multiple people who have worked there (including people I know) have publicly stated in recent days that they worked their asses off there, and felt like they had to. But no one seems to be making a 100 hour work week claim, and I really doubt anyone will. But if they do, I'll be happy to say I was wrong and correct the record. My assumption is that people are doing six 12 hour days a week leading up to launch, which is common across the industry, and that they will get copious vacation time (and maybe even bonuses) on the other end. It's worth noting that someone from Rockstar Tweeted at Jason saying that extra work is compensated at the company.

LastStandMedia
>>16394689

I'm not saying that no one has ever worked 100 hours a week; I'm merely contesting that it's happening at Rockstar with regularity, or that Houser even meant it literally, and not as hyperbole. Even the time you describe working on Metroid Prime doesn't amount to anywhere close to 100 hours. Six days at 12 hours is 72 hours, which isn't terribly uncommon for me. Maybe I come from a different position (and I also own my own company and reap its rewards, which is an important point), but I don't begrudge hard work, AS LONG AS IT'S COMPENSATED. Important point, that.

LastStandMedia
>>16396473

You hear about that constantly in Japanese development. I've told the story many times about how when I went to Sony San Diego and went into the office of The Show's producer, he had a mattress -- like, an actual mattress, not a blow up or a couch -- on the floor. They have nine months to make their game.

LastStandMedia
>>16396844

That's a completely fair point, and we should correct the record. Could you be sure (if possible) to include this (or a similar) comment in the submissions thread for the next episode?

John the Nabo

The japanese games industry is actually fucking insane.

John the Nabo

The only bad thing about getting the oodcast earlier is that my anxiety goes to shit whenever i realise that the questions thread is only on fridays. Well, at least i have time to proof check my engrish and properly word my question. But regardless, supporting cls on patreon is one of the best things i did this year.

hugplx

It couldn't agree with Chris more regarding realism and art styles. Photorealism - or rather the increasing of its quality - is starting to have diminishing returns now. I still think the tentposts look incredible, but they don't take my breath away anymore. In fact, I only really take real notice of it if it's bad. Maybe phoro node's recent popularity makes a mokery of that stance. As much as I adored spiderman, I honestly thought it kinda looked generic (yet still objectively beautiful - does that make sense?) If the entire game was done in the art-style of the vintage suit though? That would have likely taken my breath away. It's basically why Okami is still the one game I want remade the most.

bk200jj

#MWGA

Saulius Vekteris

I wish Colin return someday in one of the sacred symbols podcast and said it: "I beat the witcher 3 i finally did it" :D

Joey Finelli

I laughed out loud at Kratos vs Boy... hahahaha

LastStandMedia
>>16399030

I think he's right, too, and I think what devs (and pubs) need to focus on is a breadth of styles, and not assume that more computation and graphical power equates automatically to realism only. That's a fallacy.

William

I'm enjoying Black Ops 4 so far, and surprisingly enjoying the Blackout mode However, I don't think it takes the place of the campaign. I really hope that the campaign will make a return in the future games. With that being said, I think the reason why Black Ops 4 dropped it's campaign mid dev cycle was because of a change in the game's setting. I'm convinced that Treyarch had every intention of making this a future warfare game, but felt like they needed to change to a more modern warfare setting because of Infinite Warfare's somewhat lukewarm reception. I mean if think about it, out of CODs 3 pillars (Campaign, competitive MP and Zombies) the campaign would be the one most affected by this change in setting. That's the only reason that I can think of that makes sense to me as to why the campaign was dropped this year.

LastStandMedia
>>16422363

I know a bit about this, but I'm not really at liberty to say. My hope is that the campaign will return (and I think it will).

Elias Salcedo

A Bagels most definitely a sandwich

Haydyn

A bit confused by Chris' comments regarding Black Ops 4's multiplayer. I agree COD has always had a quick time to kill that makes it a game of who shot first in the engagement but the TTK is noticebly longer than it's been in any COD title and most engagements seem to come down to who aimed better. So many salty nerds on the subreddit are complaining about the TTK being too high. The campaign issue is strange, you can definitely tell it was well into development. They have fleshed out characters with backstories and cutscenes setting up a world. Shame it was cut, a trillionaire business woman funding a merc group to battle terrorists is a cool set up for a single player campaign.

Petre Cismigiu

I think the 3rd chair idea sounds cool, but i think it would work best for a milestone episode, like the 100th episode (which I'm sure you'll get to)

Tyler

I totally get why people wouldn’t like Battle Royale games. However, if done right, they’re such a blast. Playing with your friends and getting into the top 10 becomes very tense.

Ryan Harvey

I feel that every Tuesday release should be Colin and Chris, an interstitial in episode with an interview would be a good addition. But I agree that the chemistry is growing and that it should keep going!

LastStandMedia
>>16434853

I can't speak to CoD's multiplayer; if you wanna bring it up next episode, feel free to submit your question on the Episode 17 thread! As for a campaign, yeah... that does sound like a cool setup. =)

LastStandMedia
>>16439864

Oh, I know. When millions of people are playing something, there's probably something to it. =)

Haydyn
>>16434853

I wont waste time with a Q because now that I think about it, it's probably got something to do with Chris being a Halo guy, the TTK in that is significantly higher. Besides the only response that I'll accept is "shut up nerd" XD

Anonymous

Thanks for reading my question about 3D gaming. I think Chris was right that VR has replaced the idea of wearing 3D glasses. I know it was a gimmick but I do think it did work well for some games. Cheers

Ryan Cook (edited)

Comment edits

2022-01-24 12:50:51 HEINZ > HUNTS. YES, THERE IS A DIFFERENCE. YES, I FEEL STRONGLY ABOUT THIS. NO, MY CAPS ISNT JUST STUCK. ALL KETCHUP IS NOT CREATED EQUALLY. DONT @ME
2018-10-19 22:46:05 HEINZ > HUNTS. YES, THERE IS A DIFFERENCE. YES, I FEEL STRONGLY ABOUT THIS. NO, MY CAPS ISNT JUST STUCK. ALL KETCHUP IS NOT CREATED EQUALLY. DONT @ME

HEINZ > HUNTS. YES, THERE IS A DIFFERENCE. YES, I FEEL STRONGLY ABOUT THIS. NO, MY CAPS ISNT JUST STUCK. ALL KETCHUP IS NOT CREATED EQUALLY. DONT @ME

LastStandMedia
>>16452011

I barely remember even trying it. Killzone 3, maybe? Something like that. I dunno. I'm glad that fad is dead.

Anonymous
>>16452011

Yes Killzone 3, Motorstorm Apocalypse, Black Ops 1 & 2, Puppeteer, GT5 and a few more.

Aaron Treble

You pulled a Grantland/The Ringer situation with this podcast, Colin. You set a seemingly impossible to reach PS podcast bar once before, and then managed to somehow surpass it in every way. I love this podcast! You and Chris make a great team. This is fine work you're doing. A million thank yous to you both for showing up and delivering the goods week in, week out. It's a bright spark in my world, and I'm sure everyone else's, too. Thank you!

LastStandMedia (edited)

Comment edits

2022-01-24 12:50:51 You know I'm a huge Grantland (RIP) and Ringer fan, so that praise is extremely kind. And I appreciate it. <3
2018-10-24 00:23:47 You know I'm a huge Grantland (RIP) and Ringer fan, so that praise is extremely kind. And I appreciate it. <3
>>16538517

You know I'm a huge Grantland (RIP) and Ringer fan, so that praise is extremely kind. And I appreciate it. <3