Total Playtime

This week it's a conspiracy theory special, as Alice develops increasingly outlandish theories about the forces and decisions that shape the games industry, the pharmaceutical industy and the world, and Jonty and Brendy try and talk her down. Plus, layoffs again, pondering the ideological opposite of Rivers Cuomo, why the AI era is dumb and stupid, and a truly inspired Alien: Isolation mod idea.

You can download the podcast right here, or find it in your podcasting apps:
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Thanks to all our current Patreons for making the podcast happen (join them here!) and to Marsh Davies for our art and God Ribbon for our music. Submit to the Sausage Mailbag at [email protected]. Make the most of our partnership by viewing Jank.cool.

Links!
AI is eating all the RAM. Component shortages are coming for routers. If you want to read 10,000 words about OpenAI being a scam then Ed Z has you covered. Rob Fahey on how consoles left families behind. Lots of Highguard devs got laid off. Do not post on X. Some industry lessons from the Highguard launch, one of which is that the world can change a lot over the course of a game's development. There are some wildly disparate voice actors in Mewgenics and Edmund McMillen swears that's intentional. He also went on Post Games.

Games!
Mewgenics. Super Meat Boy. Relooted. South of Midnight.

Recommendations!
Glen Baxter. This game engine is from the 90s. Columbo is on Channel 5 in the UK and a number of episodes are up on YouTube.
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It was claimed that Sydney Sweeney was excited about the Split Fiction movie, and that’s an excuse for Alice to be absolutely livid about the Split Fiction game, so please strap in for ten uninterrupted minutes of her choking on her own bile. After that, we manage to find time to discuss the nature of Morrowind, people choosing not to go to GDC, Highguard’s doomed pact with Geoff Keighley, the most Alan Partridge thing Alice has ever said, and more.

You can download the podcast right here, or find it in your podcasting apps:

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
Thanks to all our current Patreons for making the podcast happen, and to Marsh Davies for our art and God Ribbon for our music. Share your recommendations of games and shrimp at [email protected]. Make the most of our partnership by viewing Jank.cool and perhaps joining the Discord.

Links!

Syd is not actually hype about the Split Fiction script. Bruce Nesmith reckons Morrowind doesn’t hold up. Nate never visited the Crab Palace. Lots of people said they’re skipping GDC this year but the organisers say it’s fine. Highguard’s debut went badly which the dev considers “risky in hindsight”, although they’re trying hard and the 5v5 mode is now permanent. Please enjoy MerritK’s post in the Jank newsletter, and the rest of Jank.cool come to that. Iron Lung is in cinemas now. Brendy reviewed TR49.

Games!

Split Fiction. The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind. Highguard is free. Everything Is Crab. TR49.

Recommendations!

Moldovan Rara Neagra, Shitstorm by Fernando Sdrigotti, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, Andycruns on BlueSky.
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This episode was previously exclusive to our Patreon backers, but we're making it available to everybody to show what you're missing behind the paywall. You can get access to more Text Adventure plus a year of other subscriber episodes, at patreon.com/TotalPlaytimePodcast.

Text Adventure is our videogame book club, in which we and a guest read a videogame novelisation and try very hard to like it. In this episode we are joined by Johnny Chiodini to read Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, which turns out to be story about a neocon Alan Partridge who's totally devoid of emotional intelligence and incredibly bad at stealth. Which is quite close to how we played Splinter Cell but not, we suspect, the outcome they were aiming for for.

Music by God Ribbon, art by Marsh Davies and our entire existence care of our Patreon backers. Please consider joining them and enabling us to continue our quest to find a games book that isn't absolutely terrible.

Games!
You can still buy the first Splinter Cell game, but the remake is out soon(ish)

Links
This is the book most of us read and this is the one Nate read.

Recommendations!
Going to the charity shops in the most fancy area available to you, London Centric's snail farmer mafioso article, thermal instant cameras, and the Realms Unknown podcast which has featured our own Nate!
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It's a heady intersection of belief systems this week, as we combine Alice's insomniac enthusiasm for weird Instagram crystal sales with Nate's rigorous interrogation of Tim Cain's Types Of Quests. Plus: a horny dog, a nightmarish Pikachu, the Roman god of webinars and Games Anubis joins our increasingly incoherent pantheon.

You can listen to the episode right here, or find it in your podcasting apps:
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

Nate's Quiz will be coming to Patreon next month, but in the meantime we have many other fine episodes to which you get full access by subscribing at patreon.com/totalplaytimepodcast. Thanks to all our current Patreons for making the podcast happen, and to Marsh Davies for our art and God Ribbon for our music. You can suggest quest types and your means of death at [email protected].

Links!
Tim Cain's 9 types of Quest. The moderately nightmarish Lego Pikachu is yours for £179.99. Various people will sell you bootleg plans for Lego Metal Gear Rex and probably also the Horizon Zero Dawn Tallneck because Lego long since sold out. Facepunch offered to buy New World after it was given 12 months to live.

Games!
Assassin's Creed Origins and New World, but only if you bought it already.

Recommendations!
The Holdovers, Tokyo These Days and The Long Walk.
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It's 2026, and Alice's dog is still being a dick so she had to leave Jonty, Nate and Brendan to share their gaming New Year's Resolutions, only for the wheels to come off immediately because Nate won't commit to playing new games and Brendan won't commit to resolutions as a concept. We were nevertheless able to muster some recommendations along important discussion of the Eurovision of games, becoming The Balls Guy and the unsettling experience of joining an ARC Raiders suicide cult.

You can listen to the episode directly right here, or find it in your pod catching apps.
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

Music by God Ribbon, art by Marsh Davies and our entire existence care of our Patreon supporters, without whom this show would not exist. Consider joining them at https://www.patreon.com/c/TotalPlaytimePodcast. Share your comments and additional New Year's Resolutions for Alice to [email protected].

Links!
People are convincing themselves that Half-Life 3 is coming. The plan for Subnautica 2 is mostly litigation.

Games!
ARC Raiders. Mon Bazou. Totally Legit Wheeler Seller. Let's Build A Zoo. Ark Nova. Crusader Kings 3: Roads to Power. Nivalis. Streets of Fortuna.

Recommendations!
but the games were good. Get yourself a snake plant, and schedule an input day but don't give Nate any credit for it.
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