Gallium #31

Jules: What’s up everybody? This is episode 31 of the Cool Black Nerd podcast, Gallium. I’m your host, Jules, we have everybody’s favorite co-host, Justice here with us; How are you doing today?

Justice: I’m doing amazing, I’m doing amazing.

Jules: That’s good, that’s what’s up.

Justice: You know, it’s been a while since we’ve been on, so loving this.

Jules: It has, it has been a while. You know what, that’s my fault, but it is what it is. That’s how we get down, you know, what’s up. Do you want to just jump into it.

Justice: Let’s do it.

Jules: All right. I didn’t want this to be the case, but I feel like this is gonna end up being the Elon Musk episode. So I guess we should just get started with Elon Musk.

Justice: I mean, he just seems to have acted a plumb fool since we’ve been off.

Jules: Yeah, he’s doing a lot. You know, I’m a big fan of Tesla. He even has me questioning whether I’m going to purchase a Tesla, one day in my life. I don’t I don’t know anymore, I don’t know if I want to support this, this madness. I don’t know what’s going on with him. Just I guess we could start from the beginning. He’s, he’s attempting to buy Twitter, although now it seems like he’s trying to get out of it. But he is his plan, you know, was to take Twitter private, he was going to fully finance the purchase himself. Which is going to be what a $35 billion purchase, I believe.

Justice: That or 40, one or the other.

Jules: So it was going to be 40 something billion and he was going to finance 35 on his own, and have what about 6 billion from other sources. And he, you know, after he made that announcement, it seems like he immediately went on. He went into how can I destroy Twitter from the outside mode.

Justice: Yeah, he was like, I don’t want to pay that no more. How do I get it at a cheaper price? I don’t know what happens, but.

Jules: I’m not sure either. He started putting out all these things questioning the amount of bot users on the account. He wasn’t satisfied with Twitter’s efforts to report that on their own, he didn’t like the process that they used. So he is now you know, claiming that they have way more bot accounts, then they claim. I think Twitter claims that it’s 5%, he says it’s way more than that, although he doesn’t say how much. And he’s saying that they have not been transparent with him anymore, about the number of bot users or the method that they use to calculate how many are there. And of course, as a result of his comments, the price, the share price is dropped significantly. And just in my personal opinion, I think he’s doing it on purpose, I don’t know if he still wants to buy the company, because there was a lot of backlash for the prospect of a social media company, especially one that is so you know, it’s definitely a worldwide social media company. Like, what are the implications of that, if it just has one, private owner?

Justice: Yeah.

Jules: You know, although he is promising, you know, he’s claimed that he wants to purchase it to boost free speech, or, you know, he has all of these, these lofty goals that he put out there, but.

Justice: None of that’s happening.

Jules: Is that really what he would do with it?

Justice: No, it’s not, and I know that the idea of having Twitter being under, you know, these tech giants, as you know, as they are, seems scary to a lot of people, but it’s even more scary if it’s just one person who clearly has a radicalized idea of how things should go. Because I mean, as soon as he started doing this stuff, he started, oddly enough, going on Twitter, making rants and you know, the CEO is like, dude, we’re just trying to be cordial and actually talk to you about this, and he’s sending poop emojis as tweets. It’s like, this dude will have a tantrum, and then shut it all down for everybody. And currently, I’m not sure if it’s still happening, but at one point in time, I believe it’s still happening, but at one point in time, like all the tweets that were out there were being like, recorded into like the Library of Congress, because it has such an impact on our fabric. I remember when the first time I heard about Twitter, which was back in, back in my day, but no believe was like 2000, 2004. And the company I was working with at that time, they were like, we need to send tweets and I remember the CEO, kind of looking like, did you just curse at me like what is, they was like no, it’s just a new thing, tweets and everybody in the room was like, okay, she’s not gonna last long.

Jules: Yeah, thats hilarious.

Justice: I remember that because she was she was just like, we have to use these tweets. And everyone’s like, whatever.

Jules: Oh, my goodness. Yeah, I don’t, see I’m, I feel like I’m torn about how do I feel about one person owning it versus what it is now, which is just a publicly traded company where you know, you’d have a CEO and a board, etc. And I mean because either way, right, they’re not subject to, like anything other than social pressure, like, sure, as a publicly traded company with a board, there, probably more susceptible to whatever the public is thinking. Versus just being in the control of one man who can just say, hey, you know what, I’m the CEO and owner, I said, shut down everybody who said kindergarteners need to go to kindergarten. So you know, but on the flip side of that, I mean, they could do that now and then you really wouldn’t have any recourse. But, they wouldn’t do that.

Justice: They wouldn’t do that. That’s the problem, yeah, because they still want to make money. They still want this to be, you know, part of the Zeitgeist as our you know, fabric and culture. But with it being just a personal privately held company, similar to you know, something like, Chick fil A or Hobby Lobby, when there’s stuff that can’t be done, there’s no swaying that, considering this is like, inter woven into the way that we pretty much a lot of communication nowadays, that’s scary. I can’t see that being anywhere near the same where it’s just Elon and his poop. But now, they have, if I’m not mistaken, like, the investors are trying to sue him for trying to back out of this it Well, it’s been such, it’s such a big thing. Even the board has actually come out to the investors and was just like, um, you know, this deal is still good, please, you know, approve it, be okay with it. But with the way that Elon is, you know, playing this, this game, necessarily, because you know, what he did with Dogecoin, just him talking about it, shot it up. Now, him with this. I wonder if this is a game to him, you know, what just, you know, just a test of, what I can do to manipulate the stock market.

Jules: What I can or what I can’t do?

Justice: Yeah, yeah.

Jules: It might be, it might be that, I mean, but at the same time, it’s almost like he’s crazy like a fox, right. Because he’s, he agreed to buy the company for whatever, $42 billion. But if he tanks the stock price enough, you would imagine he could go back and renegotiate it for a lower price. Now, there is a $1 billion breakup fee, which I mean, I’m gonna just say it for Elon Musk at this point a billion dollars, is pocket change. Like that, which is crazy, that that’s even a thing but a billion dollars is pocket change to this man. I just don’t know, and I think you’re right, like this might just be a test for him to see how far, how far can he go in manipulating markets or, you know, making the, making the world move. Like what are the things that he can and what can he not do.

Justice: I think he’s pulling a Trump. I really do, you know, he ran and didn’t think he would win. And I think this is the same. I think he is saying, oh, I want to buy it and didn’t really think that they would be like, okay.

Jules: Actually be a thing, yeah, that makes sense to me, too. I mean, and to keep talking about Elon Musk, as much as he, you know, goosed Dogecoin, it’s being said that he is at least partially responsible for this drop off at NFTs. He posted like, you know, the bored ape yacht club, NFTs that all of the celebrities have been talking about, which I mean, to the point though, they ain’t talking about it no more. But he just posted like, an image that had all of the ones that they supposedly owned as his Twitter profile picture. And the tweet was, seems pretty fungible to me. Which this brought into question like, what do you actually own? Because obviously, you know, anybody can still use those images for whatever.

Justice: You know. I mean, similar situation, Seth Green, who was the voice of Chris on Family Guy, as well as being one of the producers and one of the main people on like, Robot Chicken, and he was on a bunch of shows like if you, you probably don’t know his name, I’m not I’m not sure. But.

Jules: Wasn’t he Dr. Evils, son?

Justice: Yes, Dr. Scott. But if you see him you like, oh yeah I know you. So he purchased, he purchased an NFT and he was actually creating a show around NFTs that was based upon this one that he had purchased. So at some point, he got fished, and lost that NFT then went on to Twitter again. See how it’s always coming back to it. And was like, Oh, the person who now holds it is like, he goes to them and says, oh, I need to get in touch with this person. If you know them, blah, blah, yeah, I got hacked, but this is my rightful property. And I need to talk about getting it back. And everyone’s going like, well, he didn’t know it was stolen at that time. Yeah, you got fished or whatever but according to the law, which has no real basis or foundation in this right now, it’s his property. And he was like, no he didn’t buy the rights. And they were like, yes, he did. Once he bought that NFT, he is the sole owner. He’s like, no, but this is like stolen art. Unfortunately, the law does not see it that way. And finally, the person came out and was just like, I have no intention of giving this back to you. But, you know, after a while, you know, everyone just, it just kind of went away. And I’m pretty sure he’s just kind of licking his wounds with this, because he really has no recourse.

Jules: Yeah, what can you do? There’s nothing who enforces ownership of a non fungible token of a thing, that’s not a thing.

Justice: So before, before we go on, let’s actually just kind of explain what a non fungible token is or what it’s supposed to amount to. A non fungible token, or NFT is a cryptographic asset on blockchain with unique identification codes and metadata that distinguish them from each other. It’s different from cryptocurrencies. And it mainly is supposed to be a way to be able to have where individuals are given the rights and properties to any type of digital media that they make. So that’s why you see it a lot with pictures and things like that. The problem that comes about is that when you have a picture that is widely done on the internet, if somebody has a copy of it really does not matter they’re trying to make where like these pictures, and these digital assets, such as even our podcast episodes, have these codes to where you know, people can actually buy pieces of it similar to what they do for art, actual art, in real life or whatnot. But it’s a very, very hard sell when right now, a lot of the surrounding information for NF T’s seems to be scams. People are getting fished or stolen. I mean, the biggest hack recently on open seas, which is one of the main sellers and marketplaces for NFT’s was headed. And when I say hacked, like $40 billion worth of stuff was gone. That’s a lot.

Jules: That is, and this is the issue for me too. Like, the like, a lot of people will say that it’s like buying art, right. But it’s, it’s not in the sense that when you purchase an NFT, you’re not actually buying the image or the video or whatever it is, you’re buying its location on the blockchain.

Justice: Essentially, yes.

Jules: So you, so you don’t have any rights as far as who can use the image, who can see the image, whatever.

Justice: So the idea and a lot of the times, if you look on like on open seas, they’ll have where, yeah, you are purchasing the rights and everything along with this, because it’s attached within that metadata that I spoke of earlier. And metadata being just digital information that is tagged within a file, you’ll you probably hear metadata a lot when they’re talking about images. Like say, for instance, if you take a picture with your phone, they’re like, well, it’s metadata attached to that, like it has your location, and things within it.

Jules: The time the picture was taken, etcetera.

Justice: Yeah. So yeah, they’re saying that you can be able to still have that information in and NFT. The problem is, is that I think it’s a little bit too complex for people to really understand. The people that get it, those are the ones who, you know, jumped into the craze early on. But like, there have been many of auctions that have tried to go off, you know, that people are trying to hold where they spent millions of dollars for these things. And now they’re not even crossing, like five digits when it comes.

Jules: What was the one? Was it the first NFT sold, right, it was like the first tweet ever, right?

Justice: Something like that yeah.

Jules: And somebody bought it for like $2 million, and recently put it on auction. And it was, it got to 2000, is where the bidding stopped.

Justice: Yeah, yeah, yes.

Jules: So it’s, to me and you know, everybody’s entitled to their opinion. And I’ll say this before I say how I feel about NF T’s. I think, for the people who were able to, to actually make a come up from it. The people who were, you know, started with nothing, and now, you know, have a little bit of money for themselves based on it. Congratulations to you. And this is the same way that I feel about cryptocurrency. I think that in general, I feel like it is just a scheme where whoever purchased it, purchases it, and now I just need to find somebody who’s a bigger sucker than me, to pay more for it.

Justice: Them’s fighting words.

Jules: Because either, that’s, that, that is how I feel like I don’t think, because there are no rights that you have to these things that, that you can actually use in the real world. Like you can’t, you know, you know what I mean? Like, even even if you have access to the metadata, whatever, and you technically our that, anybody can just go get the picture and use it for whatever.

Justice: Yeah for sure.

Jules: They can just go get the video and use it for whatever. Like even the NFT’s that like these, the sports leagues are selling. Like you can buy Michael Jordan’s game six winning jump shot, but you don’t get paid every time they air that.

Justice: Yeah, yeah, sure.You own that moment in time.

Jules: It’s like you’re just buying, you’re buying something that has no real value attached to it. And to me, you’re always looking for somebody who is willing to pay more for what is essentially nothing, then you did.

Justice: The thing, you’re right, it’s a lot of potential in it for people. So I kind of liken it to people, to artists, and musical artists, specifically. Where, you know, like, oh, I want to buy my masters, I want to own my masters. This allows people to be on that level, the thing is, is that it’s just not as widely understood, and implemented to where it would have legality in the real world. I think that’s the real issue for it right now. That’s, that’s my take.

Jules: Yeah, and that’s, that’s my problem, the lack of any legality or any actual rights, to me, is what, what ruins it for me. And I lean up, I believe, on this point, me and Elon agree, which is surprising.

Justice: Poop emoji.

Jules: With NFT’s I would, I would send a poop emoji about NFT’s.

Justice: Oh, man. But it seems like everything is kind of already going down for NFT’s and actually, for cryptocurrencies as well, because they’re having like what they call the crypto winter, or whatever right now, where I mean, that people are just pulling their money left and right. Coinbase, which is one of the main marketplaces for cryptocurrencies started slashing their staff. There was another one, I forgot the name of it. That just froze people’s assets. And they were just like, okay, we just went through this with Robinhood and the Gamestop stuff. Come on now.

Jules: Yeah, that one is, yeah. Even a mess that, like you brought up Coinbase, they put out a statement that basically said, you know, just so people will know, like, if Coinbase goes bankrupt, it’s a pretty good chance, you’re just going to lose all the money that you have in your accounts.

Justice: Yep, and that’s scary.

Jules: But that is, so it’s not even, and, you know, it’s not, it’s not a bank is not FDIC insured. You’re not covered if the company goes under, so I mean, it’s just a, it’s the, cryptocurrency and NFT’s right now are the wild wild west, and this the gold rush. Like you might rush out there to San Francisco, bought you a plot of land and found out all it had on it was dirt. While your next door neighbor struck gold. It’s just a it’s even more of a casino than the stock market right now.

Justice: Oh, we coming with, yeah, Jules came came to fight then. Damn all right, I gotcha.

Jules: I mean, I think we’ve seen like through the, through the pandemic, and now, you know, with with all of the economic issues going on inflation, you have companies just raising prices beyond inflation, claiming that that’s the reason why. I think people are finally or, in general, I think people are finally starting to see like a lot of, what a lot of this stuff is and just how companies or even individuals just take advantage of a situation that’s not necessarily always for the greater good. It doesn’t you know, doesn’t benefit most people.

Justice: I gotcha. That kind of I know, this wasn’t actually one topic tonight, but I it relates to this as well. So I don’t know if you’ve heard about Jay Z wanting to do a crypto academy.

Jules: Yeah I did you it was crypto academy in the Marcy projects, I did hear about that yeah.

Justice: Yeah, in Marcy projects, and it was not going over well with some of the residents, similar to the sentiments that you, you know, are talking about, they just like, like, I’m worrying about rent, I’m worrying about this. I’m not caring about that, I don’t have the money for this. But there are some people who are there. They’re like, if you can teach you, we grew up in the same place, we I actually knew JZ. When he was running in the hood and I’m out of work, and he’s a billionaire. If you can teach me how to just be a millionaire, I’m good, so. I don’t know, well, we’ll see.

Jules: I mean, it is one of those things where you know, that, that could be good if if somebody takes the right thing out of it. But also, is that what I need if I can’t afford to buy crypto in the first place?

Justice: I gotcha, I feel you.

Jules: I don’t know, but you know, I guess on to lighter subjects. Before we

Justice: What that wasn’t light? The poop emoji wasn’t light?

Jules: I don’t think that was light, you know, it started out like, then we started getting heavy, I think. Microsoft has announced I’m just gonna call it what I think it is. Microsoft has announced Stadia, but Microsoft. It’s called Microsoft Keystone, and basically, it’s, it’s like a it’s like a Google Chromecast that lets you play games instead of stream Netflix. So the way it’s being described, is basically just a dongle that you can connect to your TV, and it just turns your TV into an Xbox. So it’s just cloud based gaming.

Justice: I don’t understand, you know what, I was actually talking with Dre D about this the other day, about the Google Glass stuff, which is actually coming back now in different forms for other people, not necessarily Google Glass. But there you have Amazon with the Echo Lenses and things like that, Snapchat has its lenses. Sometimes Google was just ahead of, you know, the curve. And we have always said that the Google Stadia thing is game changing when it comes to being able to game anywhere, without necessarily you just need that, that internet connection. Unfortunately, they set it up to where you got to have like the best of the best. But I think, again, when we said it on one of the other episodes, that they probably just made this to be like, okay, we can do this, now give us money to license.

Jules: Right, we prove to you that this works, so what do you want to do? And we’ve seen it, we’ve seen in action and unfortunately, no, there’s not really a way to confirm it. But I think we mentioned this as well, Peloton has a game that you know, streams that are exercising equipment that is probably powered by Stadia. And also Netflix has games available now too, and they actually recently announced a ton of games that are coming out that are like based off of their most popular franchises like Stranger Things, etcetera. And all of that stuff is rumored to be powered by Stadia. So, you know, a lot of people were saying that, oh, Google gave up on Stadia. They, you know, like they always do, but I don’t think they have, I think they just licensed the technology to other companies now, and that’s, that’s how Stadia is going to live on. And you are going to see more companies like Xbox or Microsoft, you know, come out with similar products, I think that is going to be the future of gaming, and getting away from people having to buy expensive consoles, or having to buy an expensive PC or laptop or something that can actually, you know, have the horsepower to power these games. I think they’re just trying to expand the market make gaming more broadly available than it is now.

Justice: Yeah, yeah, widely accessible, because the Steam Deck, which came out this year was wildly popular. It did have some hiccups in the beginning. But for the most part, everyone pretty much loves it, and for its versatility and being able to be accessible at any place. I think with this Keystone thing, I don’t know, and if it has a better reception, then we’ll say Google Stadia, then I will, to my grave always think that it was just because Google came out with it.

Jules: Oh, that they that they ended up doing it too?

Justice: Yeah, if it has where Keystone is more widely accepted. Because I mean, gamers, game news enthusiasts. They were when I tell you, you would have thought that when Google came out and announced Google Stadia, they had killed puppies and kittens on the stage. They were just hating on this product. I could not understand it, but they would talk you know about GeForce being so much better, where in my opinion, it was not because it was always very clunky trying to get to do stuff didn’t work as well. But the Google stadia stuff worked pretty well for the most part. So I will for ever feel like it will be, if the Keystone is just accepted, widely accepted, because I think the biggest problem that people were saying was that I don’t own going back to the NFT stuff. I don’t own the game when I play on Stadia, which we have always said, you do not own any game, nowadays.

Jules: Right, yeah, you don’t you don’t own any game really, yeah, that’s true.

Justice: Yeah, that goes back to the, what is that, the servers. Yeah, they give you access to the servers and service. So even if you break those terms, they boot you.

Jules: You can’t play that game ever again.

Justice: Yeah, you paid the money but you can’t play it.

Jules: Or you know, they decide that, hey, we’re turning the servers off. You’re not playing that game anymore. So yeah, you don’t really own any game that you have nowadays anyway. And unfortunately, that’s just the nature of the business and that’s how I see it. So to me, that wasn’t a big deal, because I haven’t owned a game since I had a PlayStation 3 so, you know, I don’t know.

Justice: Yeah, yeah, crazy.

Jules: I don’t know, and I think, I think there’s so many things changing in the games industry. And I think, I don’t know if this streaming games is part of it, but we’re starting to see studios get purchased up like, you know, Microsoft purchasing Activision, Zenimax, and Bethesda, Sony purchasing Bungie, and now even EA is just openly trying to sell themselves to somebody.

Justice: I noticed, I noticed, I noticed this right, but it is just it’s giving Only Fans to me, I’m sorry. It’s just like y’all, y’all, come watch my stream. Nobody want to watch that.

Jules: Oh man, EA is our favorite person bag of a game studio. Oh, my goodness, that’s funny. But yeah, they just openly like on the market.

Justice: Oh, and it was just like, yeah, we for sale. It was like nobody asked. And one of the other headlines that I saw that was hilarious when it comes this. So as we talked about in a couple of our last episodes, EA with the I mean, just horrible culture. Activision, had their horrible culture as well. If I’m not mistaken, one of them came out and said, oh we did a thorough investigation of our own and found no issues. Y’all said that out loud?

Jules: Yeah, you can’t do that. That’s, that’s a recipe for disaster right there.

Justice: Y’all said that out loud, really, okay.

Jules: That was a bad idea, definitely shouldn’t have said that.

Justice: I can believe it.

Jules: Hopefully it wasn’t EA, because they, they have enough problems on their own. They are losing the license to FIFA, which was their biggest game like that’s their their money maker, even more than Madden now. And just decided that, hey, we’re going to make our own soccer game. I think they’re going to be surprised to learn that people buy those games because they love the teams and the players, not necessarily because they just love the game. So if you just got generic players and teams out there, probably not gonna do so well. And yeah, they also lost the rights to Star Wars, the Star Wars games, reportedly because Disney is just not happy with the quality of those games for the most part. They had one good one, but the rest of you know, those Star Wars Battlefield games were terrible.

Justice: Very much sp.

Jules: But yeah, so now they’re just up for sale. Rumored to be, I guess, in talks with I don’t know if they’re actually in talks, but rumored to be in talks with Amazon, Disney and Netflix, I believe, to be purchased.

Justice: Can Netflix really be trying to purchase anything at this point, like, really?

Jules: I don’t know.

Justice: I mean, their stock price is just cratering. I don’t know.

Jules: I don’t know, I think they can I mean, it’s I don’t see how Netflix is doing so bad. Like what, is it just because I think like people are saying it’s doing bad because they lost subscribers. But how many do they still have, like did they lose?

Justice: Well, because it was they were always seen as a sure bet, sure thing on the stock market. Because they were always having growth, people were always signing up for it. But controversies like the one with the silly movie The Cuties with the little girls who were twerking, the close, the Netflix closer thing and also the war in Ukraine, where they have to, you know, pull back their service, just cost them more subscribers, then they were thinking. So initially, they were like, okay, well, we won’t hit our target but we’ll be close. They thought that they would still have added users when they didn’t even hit that target and then lost users. They like oh shit. So they start looking at the numbers again, in the quarter coming up. They’re like, okay, yeah, we lost 200,000 people last quarter, we think it’s gonna be 2 million this quarter. And at that point, everybody was like, oh, I’m out. And they lost, I think like 20 billion in value at that, or maybe a little more. So, it’s, it’s disheartening, but I mean, their growth model wasn’t sustainable.

Jules: Being a subscription based company and especially for what they do, like you at a certain point, you’re not going to be able to grow anyway, I think, I think that’s just how I’m looking at it.

Justice: But I don’t think that they thought it would come this quickly.

Jules: Yeah, I guess they didn’t think it was gonna come all at once like that, I guess.

Justice: Pretty much yeah, maybe they can hitch a ride with the, who is that, that’s Activision Blizzard that does Diablo right? Diablo Immortal.

Jules: Yeah, that is Activision that does the Diablo. Another game company that is definitely on our punching bag list. What’s what’s going on with Diablo. Like I loved Diablo 3 so much. I don’t think that I’m in line to play another Diablo game.

Justice: I don’t know if you remember, and you know, audience if you don’t know about it, Blizzard used to do what are called BlizzCons. Of course, it’s very much like what it sounds like, it’s a Blizzard oriented convention. And they announced the Diablo franchise will be continuing as a mobile game and similar to what Jules said, it has a very fervorous fan base. What happened is, if you have a game that has been usually played either on console or PC, and you say, oh, I want to go to mobile, people are like what I mean, unfortunately, mobile gaming isn’t seen in the best light because it can be a little skeevy and trying to get you to buy a lot of stuff, which is generally what happened in this game. The setup is completely behind a paywall for all of the users where one person to prove a point, he is a streamer. I believe he’s in, he’s in New Zealand, to prove a point of how shady and how messed up this is one of their loot boxes, which is essentially kind of like a slot machine chance to be able to get something that’s super valuable or rare in the game, they’re supposed to have a better chance, depending on the severity. So it’s like five levels or whatever, to be able to obtain one of the rare five star gems that they call them, he spent $15,000. That was the only way to be able to get it. Out of the chance, he didn’t even actually count how many times he had gone through these different loot boxes to get this, this item. But in the in the process spent $15,000, and that’s what they’re banking on. They don’t want you to ever actually have that rare item in your your possession, but to hook you on the possibility of it. Similar to a casino. So the reason why many people kind of look down on the mobile gaming and the loot boxes is they kind of go hand in hand in that. And it preys on people who have maybe a predisposition to gambling or to some sort of addiction. And these people end up having a bunch of you know, they they ruin their lives, in some instances. There was a kid who was trying to just get something I forgot what it was, I want to believe I believe it was in FIFA, trying to get their favorite player or whatever on their parent’s credit card and spent upwards of like $20,000 And.

Jules: Oh my goodness, wow.

Justice: Yeah. So with Diablo you know, people are just like, it’s even worse. Because they’ve done the you know, the statistics and the math on it if you wanted to actually be able to, to go through this game to get through it. Because unfortunately, to have these types of things to progress, you would need to have these loot boxes, so you’re gonna have to put in some money. You can’t just grind it out. You’d have to spend $110,000.

Jules: Wow, that’s, that’s extreme.

Justice: Yeah, it’s ridiculously extreme. Not, if you’re just looking for one, if you want to actually progress in this game, period, you most likely you are going to have to spend $110,000. And now of course everyone is calling for, you know, there to be some legislation on this. And I do believe there is one country that does have this, you know, you can’t have the loot boxes in it as strict legislation, and Diablo does not, is not distributed in that country.

Jules: It’s not available there yeah, yeah, I think yeah, I think there is going there definitely needs to be some legislation around that, unfortunately.

Justice: I mean, they’ve gotten away with it for so long and, that’s their cash cow, so.

Jules: This is one of those things where I’m kind of at a loss. I feel like that might be part of the reason why FIFA is not renewing their license with EA.

Justice: The bad publicity?

Jules: Because it did also, yeah the bad publicity from those loot boxes. Because, you know, I hadn’t heard about the kid that spent $20,000, but FIFA it was one of those games where it was getting worse every year, like every year just got worse and worse with the loot boxes. NBA 2K as well is getting worse and worse. I’ve seen more and more complaints about that game too.

Justice: The, what do you call that? Metacritic. Which is just kind of like the Rotten Tomatoes for gaming. Diablo was actually the lowest rated game like ever. It, well it keeps going back and forth. It was tied with Madden ’21, which is a another I believe it’s an EA too isn’t it?

Jules: It is an EA game, yep.

Justice: Yeah, which was .30, and Diablo was .2, then you know somebody gave it a thumbs up or whatever and it went back to .3, so it keeps going back and forth.

Jules: Wow. I don’t know, I really hope these game companies change I know that at the moment there’s very little incentive to do so because unfortunately there are people who are going to pay for that kind of stuff.

Justice: Yeah, because that one I don’t know if it’s because they don’t know any better or two it’s just because they do have that predisposition to those types of vices and that’s unfortunate. I don’t know, which is the issue but unfortunately you’re right, they will be prey to that. And oh man, it’s just scary to see like, throwing so much money away for a game right?

Jules: Well, man for something that you don’t own sounds like something else we were talking about today.

Justice: At least you get a little happiness from the poop emoji.

Jules: I mean, I’m sure some people get happy looking at them ape pictures or whatever.

Justice: Do they though? Okay.

Jules: I don’t know. You know what I think, I think this might be a good place to end. Just protect yourself people.

Justice: Yeah, be wary out there.

Jules: Protect yourself out there man. You know, what we gonna do, we go out, we always say this, I always say this at least. We’re gonna do better about getting these episodes together and putting them out. But we got to do better god dog it. At least I am. Let’s go ahead and call this one an episode ladies and gentlemen, thank you for listening to the Cool Black Nerd Podcast. Again, check us out on social media. Always go check out saywharadio.com, there are several podcasts in our network that I think everybody would enjoy and love and just have a great time listening to.

Justice: Always, we out.