Total Playtime: The Phil Spencer Xbox Explosion
Total Playtime is a Patreon-supported podcast about videogames, hosted by Alice Bell, Jon Hicks, Brendan Caldwell and Nate Crowley. Jank has partnered with them and we'll be posting new episodes each week.
This week's episode is unsusually quiet and on-topic, because both Alice and Nate were away and that really cuts down the level of free-form improv and extended complaining about people on the internet. It fell to Brendy and myself to hold the fort, which does at least mean it's an all-Jank show to merit this post.
The lead talking point was Phil Spencer's departure from Xbox, in which I attempt to present him positively and Brendan counter-argues that executives should not be treated like humans. Humanity is further cited in discussion of the entity wearing Videogamer.com's skin pumping out AI-written articles, including a Resident Evil review which briefly appeared on Metacritic. Brendy has already made clear our view on AI-written reviews, which the article in question handily backed up by being extremely dull and offering no useful insight.
Having a games writer phographed wearing a shirt and suit jacket, rather than a black T-shirt and a dead-eyed stare, was another dead giveaway and that's before you get to the name "Shooter Orson", which corresponds to no human I could find and suggests both name and the database for anything it wrote were scraped from GameFAQs.
We also deviated from PC gaming discussion to consider which of the new Pokémon starters would serve as the best restaurant starter, which is the sort of premium discourse that lesser analysts shy away from. There's also a bit more chat about the Next Fest demos we played last week, in case you want to consume our takes in audio rather than text form.
You can listen to the episode right here, or find it in your podcasting app of choice:
iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/total-playtime/id1790845149
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1jPv8y9BRzqATFT7zXRxKW
RSS: https://feeds.acast.com/public/shows/6786cf573ceecdbe85eac067
Acast: https://shows.acast.com/total-playtime
Total Playtime is produced thanks to the generous philanthropy of those who back it on Patreon, and appears here as part of our launch partnership, although it's a free episode so you can get it pretty much anywhere. The art is by Marsh Davies and the music is by God Ribbon. You can submit feedback and Pokémon recipes at totalplaytimepod@gmail.com.
Links!
Phil Spencer left Xbox, along with Sarah Bond. Everybody except Brendy regards him as a lovely bloke who knew a lot about games. The new boss is a creation of pure business and maybe that’s for the best. Metacritic pulled the Videogamer’s Resi Requiem review for being written by AI after nearly all the staff were laid off. Clint Hocking has left Ubisoft again. We would only eat one of the new Pokémon starters.
Games!
The Ratline, Beyond Words, Word Play, Resident Evil Requiem, and Marathon is out today so you can find out yourself if Jonty’s just really bad at it.
Recommendations!
Werner Herzog’s Instagram and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin.
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