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The AggroCast crew is joined by Mr. Hartgrave in the latest episode of the podcast. You've seen and heard him in some of the gaming reviews we have had here recently, and now we get to know him a little better in the latest podcast. Have a listen to them all complain more about Marvel Strick Force and various other elements of the industry that are good and bad for us all.

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Raymond Bruels: Welcome to the AggroCast. This is Ray Bruels with David Hades Becker. Today we are going to be introducing the talent behind some of our game reviews and a well-known content streamer, Frank Hartgrave. Hello, Frank.

Frank Hartgrave: Hey, how's it going? I hate that intro. Hey, how's it going? That really bugs me whenever people say that, like, I don't know. I’m here. leave me alone.

David Hades Becker: That's where you gotta throw out something horrible when you when somebody does that just to throw them off… off base…

FH: Yeah.

RB: Yeah, I always think about the tick so how's it going.

DHB: Expecting to recite back like Spoon or Not In The Face or…

RB: Not the Earth. that's where I keep my stuff.

FH: It's just so pedestrian and as you might be able to tell by the by the background that I rock I’m not pedestrian. And it's just, how's it going? I’m like, I’m on the AggroGamer podcast. I’m talking to you.

RB: That's true.

FH: I’m very aggro. I think this is apopro.

RB: Well, and I love the fact that you always find some way to kind of wrap that in to whatever review we're doing. And it's generally, it's like, I put the Gamer in Aggro or the Aggro in Gamer. I don't f*****g know. I’m Frank Hartgrave. It's It's always like you're confused while you're there. It's great.

FH: I am actually genuinely confused about all of this. Life imitates art.

DHB: That's all part of the fun.

FH: There you go.

RB: So to give our listeners some background, I had initially started trying to write a article about Marvel Strike Force. the sunk cost fallacy mobile game. And then I started watching a ton of YouTube content came across this guy by the name of Mr. Hartgrave. Who seemed really cool, super on top of shit, and was far smarter than me about playing the game despite the fact that he tends to be self-deprecating. And I was like alright I want to talk to this guy. I want to see what he's about maybe try to work him into an article, especially given the fact that he was the only person I found talking about negativity of mobile games and how they try to just suck the life and money out of people and nobody else was really addressing that. So, I reached out he was willing to talk to me. Juliet says I stalked him.

DHB: You stalked him. You definitely stalked him.

RB: All right look. I I just wanted to know and so we had a conversation and then the article didn't go anywhere because every goddamn week. There's something going on with Marvel Strike Force. Sometimes it's every fucking day. And then we got caught up in going to shows. But I tried to keep that avenue of communication open with Frank, and here we are.

DHB: Get back on your thing. Like the other podcast we did specifically about Marvel Strike Force, by the time we finished recording that podcast, the entire ecosystem of the game changed. In like the 20 minutes like when we hit end recording.

RB: Did you hear at the end of that episode, I added an addendum?

DHB: I did, yes.

FH: That's just a change. That's the inside joke.

RB: Yeah.

FH: I’m glad it's not just me. When you started talking about Marvel Strike Force, the cursing intensified. Which is just what happens. People are like, you curse so much. And I’m like, I’m just talking about Marvel Strike Force.

RB: The game gives people Tourette's. It's natural. Yeah, it's natural. It's just what happens. Though I think I do it all the time, but it's more so, it's uncontrollable with Marvel Stri

The AggroCast crew has some words to say about the cancelation of E3 in 2023 in the latest episode of the podcast. Okay, it is more David has a lot of words to say about the E3 cancelation. Partially as the long-term journalist going to the convention for over a decade. Partially since Ray was a bit under the weather during the recording but was still a superstar to press on through.

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Raymond Bruels: Hi! Welcome to the AggroCast. This is Ray Bruels with David Hades Becker. Today we're going to talk about E3. Or, more importantly, the cancellation of E3 in 2023. So, David, what the hell happened?

David Hades Becker: There's a lot that's happened, and there's a lot that still hasn't come about because they put out the official statement canceling it. There's rumors going about. If you read some of the signs that are out there, you can kind of piece things together. but what it feels like is there was so much backlash for E3 for the longest time mixed in with the pandemic that other organizations and all that stuff kind of feel like they're moving in to do their own thing and... Here I am I'm rambling there it feels like there's a progression that most people didn't see or saw coming and now some of those companies are finally taking advantage of it to do their own thing and by that I mean we have to go back a few years with some of the drama that's happened with E3 in the past... because when I started going E3, every publisher, developer, hardware and creator would show up and they would have a place on the floor or they'd have a meeting room for everybody to get together and actually talk about games, look at games, play the games, all that kind of thing. And then slowly over time, because of the internet and technology, it became easier for them to stream stuff. So like EA, EA was one of them, Ubisoft did the same thing where they would host their own streams, but they would still be on the show floor until it was cheaper to just do the stream and not have these big booth spaces. And that's kind of where it all started. Even though you still have like, you had Sony showing up, Nintendo showing up, Microsoft showing up, and they would do these huge booths, as well as these massive showcases, so that people see the games and everybody that wasn't actually able to on the show floor could see the games. But if you're on the show floor, you can actually play some of them. And it just feels like the shift right now is it's just deeper into stream stuff, as well as allows them to dictate their narrative that want to sell it at all. I think that's the bigger one I kind of want to dive in on.

RB: Yeah, I wondered with some of the changes, especially after COVID and the lockdowns and how everything was kind of put on hiatus, if some of this was because of that and companies recognizing that they didn't need conventions to get their message out, to get their advertising out and so they've shifted to a more online platform.

DHB: Well in some instances it makes sense for it because I remember the last in-person E3 I went to they were still showing off Psychonauts 2 and I remember having a special press access and all they did was they took me into a special room that was done up in a theme, they gave me a little press swag bag and all they did was show me video that they could have just uploaded to YouTube so I could have watched. The only difference was I was in this room that they kind of built an experience around. I was still just watching gameplay that ended up getting uploaded to YouTube a day or two later. So I mean, I get like for companies like that. I mean, at the time, I can't remember the name of the studio, Double Fine. They were a smaller studio, they hadn't been bought by Microsoft yet. So it made it would have made sense for them to save their money and do that. Whereas like, there was one year I

The AggroCast crew has some words to say about the mobile game Marvel Strike Force in the latest episode of the podcast. Ray and David dig into what the game is, how hard it can be for new players to get into the mix of it all, if Marvel fans should pay attention, as well as the predatory aspects that the app has built in to abuse those with gambling/gaming addiction.

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Raymond Bruels: Hi, this is the AggroCast Resurrected with Ray Bruels and David Hades Becker, and we are talking about today the mobile game Marvel Strike Force. Yeah, I know, it's one of those that we've been wanting to talk about for a while, and especially me. I started writing an article about four months ago, and I just could not finish it because every week it's something new with this game.

David Hades Becker: Right, it's like, yeah, not even every week, it's almost every other day.

RB: Yeah.

DHB: Something changes, or they make some tweak or whatever, or they screw up on their own and completely screw over the fan base.

RB: And there are so many YouTube content creators like Frank Hartgrave and BoilOn and ValleyFly and MobileGamer are constantly talking about these screw ups, and it's got to be just a media rich environment for them because they can just keep going back to all of these mistakes, content galore. But you and I have both been playing it pretty close to inception, if not…

DB: Pretty much, yeah, almost like at least four or five years or so.

RB: Yeah, since it started, and I used to love this game. I agree with so many people talking about how you're addicted to this game. And yet I think now I cannot break the habit because I'm too invested.

DHB: Well, too invested financially or just in general?

RB: In general. I try not to spend any money on mobile games. I know I have spent some money because there have been a couple of opportunities where they have screwed up and they have put out offers that were just too good to be true. And I had to jump on them. But what started off for me was simply a game of collecting has now became this strategized…

DHB: Game of hoarding.

RB: Yeah, it's hoarding. Oh yeah, HordeForce.

DHB: Yeah.

RB: Every week you're having to sit on resources waiting for somebody to tell you when you can spend them because I don't have the time to read the blog. I don't know if you read the blog.

DHB: I think I've read them maybe two or three times. That's about it.

RB: And even those are so convoluted that it's difficult to understand just what the hell they're doing. All right. And to roll it back, for those who may not know what Marvel Strike Force is, it's a game that originally was put out by Fox Next. And then it was bought by Scopely, put under the Boundless umbrella. And in 20, was it 2020? They said that they had made $300 million off this game.

DHB: Yeah, I think it was about that.

RB: But they have not posted any financial figures since then that I could find. And all of the envoys, all of these content creators on YouTube and Reddit, part of an envoys system that they get to talk to the developers that are under NDA. They get to see stuff as it's pre-released. There's a couple like Tana that actually do deep dives and can read the backend coding. So they kind of see what's going on…

DHB: Get a better feel on like those random drops or yeah.

RB: Well, and what characters may potentially be next. But we just came through a massive push that they were doing for Apocalypse. Oh my gosh, Apocalypse, Apocalypse, Apocalypse. And this is something else I've learned is that they have different categories for people that spend. You've got your Whales and your Krakens and your Dolphins and all of the sea life whatsoever has some title. I am nowhere near any of that. I'm kind of a casual player for the most part.

DHB: Well, I am allergic to fish, so I'm not even in the swimmin

The AggroCast crew had the opportunity to take in what this year's GDC had to offer up out of San Francisco. Raymond sits down with David to go over the many different things that were a highlight for GDC this year. Some of it mo-cap, some of it physics engines, and some of it how AI could be changing the game. Pun intended. All of it will be something we will see soon in not only our video games but also many other forms of media out there. Hear just what is coming around the corner.

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Raymond Bruels: Welcome to the AggroCast Resurrected, this is Ray Brules with David Hades Becker. Today we're talking about GDC and some of the announcements that came out of that convention.

David Hades Becker: More along the tech line of announcements, because I know there was a couple of games dropped out there because it's a gaming convention, and the big one was Counter-Strike 2, nobody expected that to come out, but it wasn't Portal 3, so.

RB: Alright, so for a plebeian like me, what is GDC?

DHB: GDC is the Game Developers Conference, it's a place for all the developers to get together and talk about new stuff they've worked on, plugins they've used for engines, or even just new engines they've built. In the past they've shown like the Unreal 3 engine was debuted there, some of the new technology they've used in like Unreal 3, 4, and 5 have been debuted there before even going out to the mass public and stuff like that.

RB: And that was your first convention with Aggrogamer, right?

DHB: Correct, yeah, it was way back in 2008, my very first convention going out there with Andy.

RB: 15 years?

DHB: Yeah, it's been a journey, and I guarantee it's a whole different ballpark. Funny enough, back then, the big thing was online streaming games, like that was the big, like onLive was the big thing being shown off, whereas, you know, it took so long, and then Stadia did the same thing, and then it crashed and burned just the same way. Plus, sometimes it's interesting to watch as the technology dies like that.

RB: Well, yeah, especially when you get the long view…

DHB: Yeah!

RB: As you're able to look back and you see how far things have come, or what everybody thought was going to be the big thing, and it crashed and burned, and now something completely different.

DHB: Yeah, because back then, yeah, obviously it was the streaming video games as a platform, and it's been resurrected so many times, but I think it was like a few years later, even though VR has been around for a lot longer than that, that was when they first started talking about having like the Oculus Quest and all that stuff before, you know, Meta bought them out and everything. And people then were like, oh, VR is not going to be a thing, it died before, yet here we are. VR and AR is the next bigger thing people are pushing towards.

RB: All right. So what big news came out of this year's GDC?

DHB: Well, I know there's a lot that came out. Most of the stuff I paid attention to was I'm an Unreal developer, so I usually pay attention a lot more to that. I know Unity had a couple of things. There was the one that they announced with Ubisoft, the Ghostwriter that uses AI to dynamically generate NPC text or even dialogue. So if they can get put, I think the idea people have put out there is going into an Assassin's Creed. Obviously, if your NPCs have the same bit of dialogue over and over, even though they try to make it feel like a fully fleshed out world; it doesn't. Because how many times can you hear the town crier like, "Hey, come over here because somebody did something" over and over. This one, it can they can have it generate live text based on what you're doing, as well as if somebody else says something, another NPC can react to it. So it's using AI to generate the world and actually make it more immersive.

RB: That sounds like there's a lot of poten

The AggroCast crew had the opportunity to head out to GenghisCon 45. Raymond and David are here to give you a nice little feel for the convention, how long it has been going, some of the fun experiences to be had, and how the gaming community is becoming ever more diverse out there. Even if someone had to suffer through some rough snows to get there…

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Raymond Bruels: Hi, welcome to the AggroCast. This is Raymond with 'David Hades' Becker. And today we're gonna talk about GenghisCon 45 in Denver, Colorado. I, full disclosure, used to live in Colorado with my partner, Juliet, and we had gone to GenghisCon for a number of years. And we know Donny and Andrea, the folks that run the convention. We know a lot of the mainstays who are always there running content. But we decided to invite David and Ike. We're like, guys, you should come out. It's a great convention. Arguably, you could say it's even a national convention given the fact that it's been running for 45 years. It was a great time. And so we're gonna kind of go over that. That was your first time at GenghisCon.

David Hades Becker: It was, and I'd like to say, you know, un-thank you for taking me out to negative 10 degrees. That's how cold it was when I first got out there. My beard froze. But other than that, the rest of the convention was a good time, so I didn't have to leave.

RB: Well, and they had a lot of different games and content. I know we spent a lot of time playing D&D with the Adventures League. That has always been a mainstay because my buddy, Michael McGovern, who runs S.C.A.L.E., which is the organization that, I think it's Southern Colorado Adventures League Events. They run Adventures League for GenghisCon and a bunch of the other conventions in Colorado, and I think even maybe Wyoming at one point. Michael was in the hospital. We wanted to go and get the full experience. We've been running Adventures League here in Las Vegas. And so that was a great time, to be able to sit down at the table and play through some of that.

DHB: Oh, yeah, not just one table. There was, what, 15 tables just for D&D 5E and only for Adventures League as well. If I remember correctly, there was multiple other rooms, not only just running other games, but other D&D games as well.

RB: Yeah, well, and then you got to play through an Epic.

DHB: Yes, I did get to play through an Epic, and that was an experience I've never gone through before. I mean, I've never been to an actual tabletop gaming convention before. But the Epic was something I've heard about and was always interested in seeing… For those who don't know, at least from my experience, Epic is, everybody's kind of running their own table, but all of it builds into one massive story. And depending on how well individual tables do is how well the overall story goes. And we also came out on top.

RB: Which was really, really strange.

DHB: It shouldn't have happened.

RB: Given what our table compliment was, because we had three kobolds.

DHB: Oh yeah, three kobolds, because one person changed from a kobold, yeah.

RB: Yeah, because I-

DHB: No, we had four kobolds.

RB: Four kobolds, because you, me, Juliet, and Ike. And then we had our buddy that was playing the dwarf. And then we had Coach, the human paladin.

DHB: Yeah.

RB: And yeah, kobolds were ridiculous.

DHB: And somehow we won out everything else. We saved the day.

RB: Yeah, it was great. But yeah, so it was a fun convention. It started on Thursday with GooeyCube, and they do kind of an event around that. Which if you've never looked at GooeyCube, totally recommend taking a look at that. It's self-contained, fifth edition content with picture cards and item cards and maps and everything that you need to run a quality game.

DHB: If you've never run before.

RB: Yeah, and we actually had an opportunity to speak with the son of the gentleman w

The AggroCast crew had the opportunity to head out to the new Super Nintendo World out at Universal Studios Hollywood. Raymond and David are here to give you all a nice little rundown of their experiences, their loves, their hates, and more commentary to help you decide if you want to make the pilgrimage out to the park yourself.

Universal Parks invited us out for this event, granted us free access to the park, gave us free Power-Up Bands, and offered us the meals that we discuss in the episode. We spent our own money buying souvenirs.

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Raymond Bruels: Hi! This is Raymond Bruels and David 'Hades' Becker with AggroCast Resurrected, covering the Super Nintendo World Press Day in 2023.

David Hades Becker: That was so much fun.

RB: You got invited out to…

DHB: We got invited out.

RB: We got invited out for the press day. I have to say that I really was impressed with Universal and how they handled the press going into that event.

DHB: I was going to ask how you thought about that, because this has been one of your major press events that you've been able to do before, right?

RB: Yeah. I've done a few other press events, but this one was really awesome. The fact that they gave us our press badges, they had the super comfy van that shuttled us to where we needed to be, they gave us the wristband so we got to play with that. Yeah, it was just a hell of an experience, and I was really impressed by it all coming together. But you've done a fair number of these.

DHB: I have. That's why I was curious, because for me it felt like a little bit of old hat, outside of obviously with it being Universal, they drive us all the way down to the back lot let us out there instead of just parading us through the park wearing our badges and stuff like that. I've had a mixed bag on that, but I will say it was definitely handled a little more professionally, but it's Universal… I didn't think I expected less than that.

RB: And we also got to see a lot of other content creators as well as YouTube personalities and podcasters. It was a really neat experience seeing all those folks.

DHB: Yeah, the director of Nintendo was out there in the mix of it all too.

RB: Yeah.

DHB: I didn't get to see him, but I know people saw him in the backstage and all that stuff.

RB: Well, I'm not sure I'd be able to identify him. We rolled up, we got dumped on the back end, not dumped, we got off the bus.

DHB: We kind of got dumped off because we didn't know where to cross and we kind of jaywalked across.

RB: And then you stopped and you asked questions to make sure that we weren't going to get in trouble with any content or pictures that we took. You've been releasing pictures and some of the video that we took through our socials. I was amazed by how immersive an experience it was. We walked in, there were the pipes.

DHB: The first thing you walk in is you see the warp pipes. It's a photo op, yeah, but then you have the main one that you have to walk in, makes the noise, does all the lights, so it feels like you're actually transported from Universal in.

RB: And the thing that we noticed and we spoke about while we were there was the fact that it was kind of self-contained.

DHB: Yeah.

RB: You didn't see the rest of the park.

DHB: Yeah, I think once we got inside, the only thing I was able to see outside of the natural sky was there was like one crane working on something next to us, but it just blocked out everything. Like all the sights, sounds, everything else from Universal, so it felt like you were transported into Super Nintendo World.

RB: Well, and even when we walked out and we took the escalators up into the rest of the park, when we stopped to look down, we still couldn't see a whole lot into the park.

DHB: Yeah, we could see a few things here and there to let us know it was there, but you couldn't see like any of the finer d