I went ahead and skipped the September newsletter because I was so dang sick for most of August that I had little to report. Sorry if you use these to follow VGBees ‘cause now I’m droppin eight of them on your head. Take care of your guts…
New From Me
The combined K-YOS episode for July, August, and September is out (podcast master link, YouTube) and talent is back on the menu! Artists discussed: Kelela, Frost Children, Baby Rose, Twisted Teens, Nia Archives, Alabama Shakes, Krewella, Leon Bridges, and Tinashe.
The Dialed Indie podcast will also be returning shortly! Sorry to my wonderful guests who’ve now had to wait a whole earth season for their episodes to be released. All y’all’s grace and patience is much appreciated. Seeya soon!
VGBees
Episode 114: This is the episode where I realized I was actually pretty sick and then flagged through until I dipped before the Hive questions! Which is why I’m not on the following episode, 115. Electronic Arts is officially sold to the Saudia Arabian PIF and their friend, Jared Kushner (via Affinity Partners). Devolver Digital is doing poorly enough to ask to be delisted from the little-regulated and fraud-ridden Alternative Investment Market, where they were initially valuated at over $930M. John and Niki both enjoyed Spider-man: Brand New Day and we all enjoyed our first session of Big Walk, which you can watch in condensed form here, mostly from my perspective.
Episode 116: We’re still keeping an eye on the U.S. government’s growing interest in abuse in Roblox, but my concern for potential ulterior motivations is growing… There’s also the unfortunate news that 2XKO will be ending development by the end of the year and the smattering of games that John and Niki sampled: Agent 64: Spies Never Die, Esoteric Ebb, and Entropy.
Episode 117: If you want the long and dumb history of my old luxury vehicle, check out those timestamps. It might’ve been a weird piece of shit but it did always get the job done, R.I.P. The beginning is dedicated to all our speculation on Grand Theft Auto VI after its big showcase. Oh, and The Witcher 3 is getting a remaster-esque update and a new DLC a decade-plus since its release, both of which are out now.
Episode 118: John’s voice was completely shot for this episode as he recovered from strep which added a lot of fantastic comedy to it for me. There’s a bit of news here, but a chunk of the episode is dedicated to sports reporter Pablo Torre’s fantastic investigative work on the LA Clippers (a professional men’s basketball team) and, relatedly, how investigative journalism has gone downhill, and scarcely even touched video games. I promise it and Pablo Torre’s original report are very interesting financial scandals even if you aren’t into sports.
Episode 119: Our brief thoughts and curiosities on the announced Ocarina of Time remake, as well as a looksee at the big Steam achievement leak, which revealed major spoilers (not directly stated) for Kingdom Hearts 4. The news that Sony had dropped Hideo Kojima and Xbox scooped him up sparks a discussion on auteur theory as it pertains to video games, and although I didn’t quite get to the points I wanted to or in the way I wanted to, I’m still happy we got into it! Both Niki and I saw Coyote vs. Acme and although we’re happy it exists and released, agree that it’s a messy movie — I thought it was pretty mediocre, in fact!
Episode 120: King (the Candy Crush people who are also under the Microsoft umbrella as part of Activision-Blizzard King) faces a potential strike, which leads to a long and thoughtful discussion about the ickiness of deliberately addictive games and dark patterns and where we draw lines for what is too icky. Game Developer, a games media and news site we used regularly on VGBees and which I was very fond of, is just about gone. They’ve lost almost all regular staff and it’s hard to imagine their genuine continuation. Long-time GD reporter and overall stellar newsman Chris Kerr has teased a new games news and reporting outlet on his Bluesky, so please go follow and keep an eye on that. I will be!
Episode 121: This includes an update on the second wave of Xbox’s layoffs, with just, uh, about 1,000 more employees to let go. Bungie does the reverse as it decides to do some extra work on Destiny, as well as a lot of extra work on Marathon, which has us raising our eyebrows. I finished Roman Sands RE:Build and Niki just started Control: Resonant.
Episode 122: One of the dumbest and funniest episodes in a hot minute. Rave reviews for the epic discussion at the center of this episode: Did Mike Tomlin fake his Minecraft city as Niki proposes? I wonder if you can rent pallbearers. Among the many Hive questions we answered this week is a discussion of the late Pac’s best wrestling matches and we spent some time on the Jacob Geller situation.
Song of the Newsletter
You’ll hear all about it if you’re a K-YOS listener but wow, Tinashe’s new album Popstar is spectacular. “Pillow Fight” is the single that fully grabbed me, but I wanna give special attention to the title track and its intro, “The Show Must Go On.” The latter is just a short interlude to transition to and build hype for its follow-up but it does its job well — so well, in fact, I might prefer it to just be part of the song. Either way, “Popstar” totally deserves this kind of highlight treatment. It’s a perfect contemporary pop song. A great beat with great vocals and an excellent melody; it’s got some melancholy and sentiment to it, and still manages to feel a little new to boot. Jam2go’s Crash Test finally has competition for my AOTY.