Based Camp - Their Ranks Have Broken—Now What？ Arch Weighs In!

00:00:00.000 hello this is malcolm collins i'm excited to have a special guest here today um this out of all of

00:00:06.420 our special guests it's probably the youtuber who i watched most before this but it's funny

00:00:11.680 it's that the thing i knew him most for was warhammer content because people who know me

00:00:16.400 know i love lore anything with a ton of lore i love but now he is known as a conservative

00:00:21.340 politics commentator so he's got his arch warhammer channel which is just arch and then the arch cast

00:00:27.660 which is his more politics channel very similar takes to us i'd say very sort of new right this

00:00:33.580 new right movement that we we have an episode on this where we're like it's really weird that like

00:00:38.380 the online right today is descended from like the online atheist movement of like ages ago i was like

00:00:45.300 how did that end up happening but what i wanted to talk with you about today was because you know

00:00:51.140 you're such an expert in obviously like popular media i i guess i call it like low media the

00:00:57.600 type of media i prefer video games warhammer star wars all of that and so i wanted to focus this

00:01:04.960 conversation on two particular questions one is is that we have been fighting against the sort of

00:01:12.060 like mind virus that's been controlling our society for a while now and finally with this vibe shift over

00:01:18.360 these past few months it feels like the tide has finally not the the enemy troops have broken rank

00:01:24.940 and and we can attempt to do something now right but the question is is what does that look like like

00:01:31.720 what does taking advantage of this look like and then the second question i want to focus on in this

00:01:36.420 podcast is we are increasingly seeing that despite whether it is fantasy games or video games or media

00:01:44.680 the demand for it has never been higher and yet the mainstream companies don't seem to be able to

00:01:51.120 produce something that that demand wants anymore there's obviously a ton of opportunity that's opened

00:01:57.280 by this how do we take advantage of this what does taking advantage of this look like and where do you

00:02:03.460 see the future of the media space going so take the stage okay it's quite a lot to unpack there isn't

00:02:11.240 there what does winning look like i suppose is is the first question because i don't think we know

00:02:19.460 just yet i don't think anyone quite knows question what does winning look like like in your head like

00:02:24.980 how would you answer that that's a great fucking question well that's the thing isn't it because i i

00:02:30.640 have been seeing a little bit recently as well that there have been a i don't know about resurgence

00:02:36.960 but more like a creation of a new group of people who are now moving into the space as our side is

00:02:43.420 becoming more popular we are going to see a lot more people join our quote-unquote side in essence

00:02:49.440 like zuck do you see that yes yes exactly zuckerberg getting rid of fact checkers which is an obvious

00:02:56.220 attempt to kiss the ring of donald trump in essence you're you're already moved the fact-checking team

00:03:01.440 that's what's left of them from california to texas to try to make them sane again anyway continue

00:03:06.760 yeah absolutely and this is of course then the normal thing whenever a political movement gets

00:03:12.180 into power then everyone else will begin to move up to join around it for advantage this is why

00:03:18.420 disney and all of the entertainment industry joined around the left because they saw advantage in doing

00:03:23.800 so rather than an ideological one and then of course a lot of people were hired into that company to be

00:03:29.040 like okay we need you to explain to us why it's a good thing to be progressive you're going to be

00:03:33.640 an ihr department you're going to hire people like you and will be popular didn't work out so much so a

00:03:40.660 lot of the how do we continue from here is going to be studying what the left did wrong and attempting

00:03:47.580 to avoid that whenever possible because we are not trying to simply recreate the left's rise to power

00:03:54.200 which was meteoric and then plungingly meteoric in the opposite direction soon thereafter

00:03:59.240 i i love that you pointed that out because it's one of the things i've heard pointed out that i

00:04:03.680 really wrap my brain around is that the time period of american history while we lived through it what

00:04:09.520 we call the urban monoculture or the far left the time period where it was a dominant culture in the

00:04:13.960 world it's probably the shortest any civilization has ever held power it held power for like 20 years

00:04:22.420 before dying like it's wild that that happened and i think that one of the things you point out and

00:04:28.380 it's one of the things that i think that we all need to be very careful about is us repeating the

00:04:34.320 mistakes that they made now that we have more power and a lot of people you know like james lindsey

00:04:40.480 has been calling out like the woke right and stuff like that and i think some people bristle at this but

00:04:44.660 i think he's very smart to be doing this because the biggest mistake that we can make is attempt to do

00:04:50.480 what they did to us which is impose our cultural values on people who don't want those cultural

00:04:56.420 values if we can just enforce a system of cultural freedom i think that to me that's winning enough

00:05:03.300 because it might be stable but thoughts you know absolutely i myself have been kind of mulling this

00:05:10.100 over the idea of the tyranny of neutrality to enforce this upon everyone to bring back the idea if you're at

00:05:16.960 a gaming table or a comics convention uh make discussion of politics and religion taboo again

00:05:22.780 and they'll allow these to be in specialized spaces where people want to bring them up allow fantasy to

00:05:29.420 become an escapist hobby again yeah well and there's so much you can do with fantasy so one of the things

00:05:36.320 that i've been working on recently some people know this i've been funding the development of a game

00:05:40.080 and when we were like deciding on game worlds what we've ended up focusing on is a post-apocalyptic

00:05:46.380 llm based world where we're sort of like automating everyone but we were looking at doing an izakaya

00:05:50.720 world and one of the izakaya things i was looking at doing is oh my god can we have like historic

00:05:56.280 civilization hold on you mean izakaya izakaya sorry they go all in on their historical tropes like can i

00:06:02.820 have like a native american civilization that's like the most extra like aztec-y thing ever can i have

00:06:08.740 like middle eastern magi floating on magic carpets and i was like it was genies and stuff and i'm like

00:06:15.200 it's so wild that we lost this world of being able to like lean in to ethnic and religious tropes

00:06:22.760 even though like the wokies might have a problem with like a magi on a magic carpet like dressed up

00:06:28.780 like a but i don't think middle easterners would they find that dope like so yeah the the new worlds

00:06:36.680 that are accessible to us is really exciting but then how do we not overplay those worlds hands

00:06:43.860 and i guess people would be like oh well look at warhammer this is an example of overplaying into

00:06:48.520 rightist fantasies and yet even there you know we seem to be what are your thoughts on that

00:06:55.920 well all entertainment goes in waves right so things will be popular and then things will be

00:07:02.840 you know wane in popularity again we had an era of a lot of very high-flying very positive heroes

00:07:09.300 like you know the original superman for example the boy scout and we grew tired of that after a while

00:07:15.380 and then we started looking for darker superman evil superman and now we've been doing that for so

00:07:20.300 long that it too has become boring and we're looking back to bright superman again a well-functioning

00:07:25.740 entertainment ecosystem in one is one in which you have all of these things you don't have one of

00:07:31.420 them to an exclusive extent you have opportunities to play 40k you can play lord of the rings you can

00:07:38.240 watch superman you can pick and choose whatever you want the problem with having the overarching

00:07:43.320 political narrative that we've had with the left was that it needed to dominate and 40k needed to

00:07:48.600 become more progressive superman need to be more progressive you got to get rid of truth justice

00:07:52.880 in the american way and so on and then you just have everything be the same slot well do you think

00:07:58.920 by the way with the news because i've heard some people arguing this but the evidence has seen that

00:08:02.260 strong to be do you think female custodes are out now i don't think so gw barely spell checks

00:08:09.580 their own rule books these days so until they like make some sort of pseudo official announcement

00:08:16.980 maybe the next codex that they only were men always were men i'd assume they were in but at the same

00:08:22.900 time the female custodes were obviously a bit of a forced marketing stunt to begin with that they

00:08:27.120 still have not actually produced any models for them so yeah well okay so here's a question for you

00:08:34.400 to to the initial questions do you feel like the big game studios can reverse course in time to

00:08:41.380 financially save themselves i mean obviously ubisoft can't but what about the other ones

00:08:45.280 that is a very interesting question now ubisoft tencent is smelling around them because china of

00:08:51.960 course sees an enormous opportunity here to sweep in whilst the western entertainment industry is weak

00:08:56.280 and just take over everything i mean marvel rivals was a huge wake-up call for them where they're like

00:09:02.200 hold on we we can we can take all of this just by having women be attractive again well shit we're

00:09:09.700 gonna do that and so whether or not western gaming industries they they don't have to just like

00:09:14.460 refocus on becoming profitable they have to do so while some of the largest corporations on earth

00:09:20.380 in china are actively competing against them so yeah it's gonna be an uphill battle i'll add i think

00:09:27.220 it's i i shared in the private chat of this tweet to this and that this is an issue i think largely

00:09:34.140 of staffing and i think that one thing that means that maybe this war can be won is ai that basically

00:09:41.820 teams can be made very very lean very aligned and less bloated because when it comes to executives who

00:09:49.080 say they feel pressure from stakeholders to engage on issues like yeah i want to pull up that graph

00:09:54.700 actually that was really fascinating to me because i had bought into this narrative that this was

00:09:58.800 all like downstream of back black rock and the funders yeah this is this is not about funding this is

00:10:04.860 about employees at these major companies being like we need to have lgbtq plus rights highlighted

00:10:11.860 here we need to talk about climate change like we need to talk about gender equality and i think

00:10:15.800 once once we see developer teams get really small game studios get super small and boutique and super

00:10:23.540 powered by ai we will be less likely to be caught up in culture war issues but i'm curious to to to hear

00:10:32.360 what your thoughts are on that like i want to make clear the poll that you're talking about so there

00:10:35.940 was a poll done recently what it showed was that if you're looking at like where are ceos feeling

00:10:42.820 pressure to make things woke it is predominantly from employees and not shareholders so if you look

00:10:51.260 at something like reproductive rights 91 of the pressure came from employees 15 they felt pressure

00:10:56.920 from stakeholders lgbtq rights 92 from employees 10 from stakeholders this is gender equality 90 from

00:11:06.060 employees 10 from stakeholders this is predominantly something that is coming inside the house the key

00:11:12.420 to fighting woke ism is to fight the rare loud threatening and manipulative woke individuals

00:11:20.720 specifically individuals within companies or to make ceos or power players and not afraid of these

00:11:27.600 individuals anymore it is fortunately not that we need to defeat black rock or something like that

00:11:33.880 not that i wouldn't love to defeat black rock it's just a much harder task than defeating sharon

00:11:38.680 which implies to me that this is predominantly a governance question as well the larger and more

00:11:43.980 sprawling a studio is the more it is likely to get caught up in culture wars or ruined by cultural

00:11:51.820 trends the smaller a team is the more they can autistically focus on whatever the subject of the

00:11:57.920 game is like whatever makes it cool like the lore and the design and the changes in in in kind of

00:12:04.900 of really cool gameplay anyway do you think that these studios can get small enough or that enough

00:12:09.700 small boutique studios can sort of take over the market to make things cool again potentially we have

00:12:16.620 seen a rise in indie developers for quite some time now yeah and i mean the size of the studios is

00:12:21.540 absolutely a thing because a lot of these companies will basically well they'll hire people on the

00:12:27.160 assumption that they know what they're doing so if you hire a marketing executive you presume that he knows

00:12:33.040 about marketing and what the market wants often they don't and then you also more often than not

00:12:38.220 exactly that that hires based on politics so if you've got one dude who's like okay i'm gonna get

00:12:44.480 the best person for the job and then you've got another i'm gonna hire the person i like the person

00:12:50.280 who aligns with me and then they get more power then they hire the next guy who thinks like them

00:12:54.580 and why is like them and then you have bloat where you've also got this was the thing at creative

00:12:59.100 assembly which has like 900 employees now they were hiring people because people in the company

00:13:05.360 were like you got to get a job here the benefits are incredible and they were just making up positions

00:13:10.020 oh my god and this brings me to something that we often say is the way companies went woke is they

00:13:16.280 were at first like oh we've got to hire more diverse people okay we need to hire somebody who's

00:13:21.160 incompetent but like fit some diversity metrics where can we stick them where they won't do any harm

00:13:25.860 hr hr doesn't actually build anything hr doesn't actually do anything and they conveniently forgot

00:13:32.620 that hr does the hiring um and that's what led to what you're talking about i think exactly like i mean

00:13:39.660 it's it became the world's largest market like entertainment is enormous and so much like government

00:13:47.560 it becomes a place where everyone needs to find a position for their friends and family and cousins

00:13:53.220 and everybody else they know it really is that bad it's no wonder that things got as crazy as they

00:13:58.640 did i i would be shocked if they didn't just when any organization gets that big it's going to happen

00:14:03.460 do you think these companies can like do you think it's only going to be small companies that take

00:14:07.700 over do you think that there's any hope for or if you are going to give advice for the large

00:14:11.540 companies out there like how do they fix this well again that's the problem because you've got the

00:14:16.540 reverse issue with china which also have enormous companies but they are aligned in the opposite

00:14:21.260 direction politically like china is no less censorious than the west by any stretch of the

00:14:26.320 imagination but they're they're leaning in an opposite direction to them and they are more of

00:14:32.240 a collectivist grouping so they have an easier time maintaining these large functional hierarchies

00:14:37.760 without being ruined and since they are now also in a position where they are producing what people

00:14:41.800 actually want to buy they are going to have a very large advantage but ai as you mentioned

00:14:47.120 is an excellent potential leveler i mean we're already a point now where we can have ai make

00:14:52.460 art and programming so what is the reason why we can't have one guy essentially do the work of 10

00:14:58.660 making art making programs making design documents etc like that is a competitive advantage the west can

00:15:06.580 take advantage of as somebody who's designing a game right now that's using you know ai llm based ai

00:15:12.980 because for a long time we said video games had ai so i find it very weird i mean like no like actual ai

00:15:18.320 in games which is to say a lot of the quote-unquote programming that i am doing is writing story or

00:15:25.920 writing characters which is something that like anyone can do and i'm even using ai to help with this

00:15:33.100 the degree to which games of the future and i mean near future i mean like next year or the year after

00:15:40.200 that are going to be like one guy writing to an ai i want a game that does x how do i do that and

00:15:46.740 who can win in that environment i mean i just don't see how companies can even begin to compete

00:15:51.820 you know yeah yeah i mean the the end goal that i would like to see is the democratization of

00:15:58.320 entertainment where everyone can do whatever they want like instead of having the lord of the rings

00:16:03.560 trilogy you have 5 000 trilogies made in 5 000 ways some focus more on this thing some focus more on

00:16:10.140 that thing some of them are even diverse and woke like you've got black aragon over there

00:16:14.520 everybody gets to make their own take on anything and everything that's how we liberate entertainment

00:16:19.980 and if it's good people play it yes it's now the fear is that the companies will take monopolies here

00:16:26.220 like that's the danger that they are the ones with the money so they go okay we're gonna make an ai

00:16:29.960 but only we're gonna be allowed to use it yes well it's funny that you mentioned that i wonder if

00:16:35.900 this is going to lead to new ways that fantasy universes can explode or be used because games

00:16:41.140 you know you know as much as as much as you know i'm not a fan of where warhammer has gone recently

00:16:46.140 what they did with their license in video games is very interesting they basically gave their video

00:16:50.980 game license to like any team that wanted it which led to this extreme explosion for a period i think

00:16:58.760 they've got a little more restrictive now of warhammer based video games where and i don't know

00:17:04.660 of any other brand or license that's been this loose with their license but it's led to a lot of

00:17:11.080 really high quality content and a lot of attention that the brand wouldn't otherwise see do you think

00:17:16.820 anyone else has learned from this do you think they're going to continue going in this direction

00:17:20.060 maybe it was a lot of exposure which was good it produced a lot of good stuff which was also good

00:17:25.840 it produced some hot garbage as well yeah and now they've got more productive protective because

00:17:31.720 one of the interesting things in like back in the day we used to have a lot of crossover stuff like

00:17:36.900 company used to do a lot of fun things like you would have a conan with howard the duck or whatever

00:17:41.660 whilst now everybody's trying to build their own walled gardens particularly with with streaming

00:17:46.880 becoming the next big entertainment thing yeah everyone wants to carve out their own market and then

00:17:51.940 protect it aggressively against all competitors so i don't know i i fear the day of like this like

00:17:59.620 liberal interpretation of ips is probably past at the very least unless we do some serious reworking

00:18:06.740 of ip laws but who knows i can think of one so so with streaming i know i don't know if you saw this

00:18:12.440 but it fell 23 year over year this last year in the united states which for that's insane that's like

00:18:18.440 a quarter less people watching so the streaming wars might already be over to an extent was them

00:18:24.640 eating each other but when we talk about people who have done a good job of building a universe and

00:18:29.520 letting anybody build in it scott cawthorne i i cannot sing this guy's praises enough if people don't

00:18:35.260 immediately know who that is that's five nights of freddy's guy when people would make fan rip-offs of

00:18:40.340 his game he would go to them he would fund them to make real games that they then could go sell

00:18:47.600 now of course anybody who knows the scott cawthorne story i might do the whole episode just on him

00:18:52.220 he's been pilloried by the left because he donated to conservative politicians he's got like seven kids

00:18:57.600 i don't know if you know this but anyway he's been very good at supporting the fan environment and the

00:19:02.140 the creator like circle environment and it's paid off very well for him but i haven't seen anyone else

00:19:07.880 play the scott cawthorne game in the way that he has yeah and i think that is a good idea you've

00:19:13.840 mentioned you're working on a game i'm working on a setting myself as well tell me about it tell

00:19:18.460 the fans very secretive at the moment as we're very early on but we i am too very much so interested

00:19:26.180 in having people come in and be part of it like i want to offer license to people where it's like okay

00:19:30.960 you want to write a story in my setting that's okay we're gonna have to approve it before it becomes

00:19:35.760 like official but if it has quality standard and it's up to like it's respectful to the setting i would

00:19:41.480 like to take that and publish it for you like bring in more enthusiasm oh my god yeah so hold

00:19:48.020 on i i have a question for you how are you because this is the other big thing right now if you're

00:19:51.980 creating something how are you using ai and what you're creating and and how are you thinking about

00:19:56.400 it as a creative tool i'm using ai to fact check myself basically i i basically ask it to find holes

00:20:03.500 in what i'm writing because the ai is quite good at that like discovering little things like because

00:20:08.760 it'll ask question like how does this work and i'll be like oh i haven't thought about that okay

00:20:13.040 i'm gonna have to write why and how that works now i love that yeah no i have found that even just

00:20:19.300 today i was really surprised to see this well i'll write something where like like if i was doing

00:20:22.920 warhammer it'd be like okay this is how like this space marine chapter works and then i put it in an ai

00:20:28.940 and i'm like what other interesting things do you think this space marine chapter would do or

00:20:33.020 traditions they would have and and while like 10 of its ideas might be junk like three i'd be like

00:20:37.680 that's good yeah that's the thing with ai it's not necessarily that clever one time but you don't

00:20:45.380 need to do anything one time you wanted to make a drawing for you okay maybe nine are shit but you

00:20:50.140 make it have produced for you a hundred drawings and 10 of them are going to be good yes yes okay so

00:20:56.680 as you move into this space are you looking at if you don't mind me prying a little bit is it

00:21:00.940 going to be a video game is it going to be like a tabletop game is it both we'll do tabletop first

00:21:06.240 simply because it's easier so we can have a product out quicker and then we can use the eventual assets

00:21:11.440 to digitalize it further down though because this these things do need to be digitalized in the modern

00:21:16.680 age nobody's going to have the infrastructure of games workshop with brick and mortar the stores all

00:21:21.540 over the place i'm really glad you're doing this by the way because you're clearly a lore nerd

00:21:27.860 and one of the things about the video gaming hobby that i remembered growing up is if i wanted

00:21:33.700 interesting and out there plots that were against the mainstream like not within mainstream narrative

00:21:38.960 video games is where i could consume those these days it feels like they're pretty isolated to anime

00:21:44.500 like it at all right like and if we saw was in tabletop and stuff like this and i know that you'll

00:21:51.420 create something like this genuinely interesting lore again i'd be so excited oh yeah like the the east

00:21:58.920 has had a almost monopoly on creative stuff for a while now because they'll do anything they'll do

00:22:04.440 like okay isekai is popular but the main character is a vending machine this is a literal show by the way

00:22:12.660 this is a literal show this is a thing and like they've lets them do crazy stuff like we we had this back

00:22:19.060 in the day too there was a video game called messiah where you played a baby angel who was sent to earth

00:22:24.420 oh and you would take over bodies so i wanted this game so bad i read about it in pc magazine

00:22:30.860 and then i saw it in stores but i didn't have enough money to buy it back then and then later when i

00:22:37.060 wanted to buy it there was no way to like go and find old games this is gonna be weird today for kids

00:22:43.920 but like if a game was like five years old or something at one point in my life there's just

00:22:48.360 nothing you could do you'd have to like go to stores that specialized in old video games and like they

00:22:54.520 would have any random specific game that you had missed yes continue sorry like that was just an

00:23:01.620 off-the-wall concept it's like okay how do we do an action game that has nothing to do with action

00:23:07.120 where you're basically helpless but you got to control people like okay well there you go baby

00:23:11.880 angel taking over bodies i i love it that is a really good point okay so

00:23:20.760 no well no i mean another thing that i think about i was telling simone about this and it's actually

00:23:27.880 really interesting and i don't think people have really internalized how big this is going to be

00:23:31.760 for the future of gaming as a medium and if people don't understand why are they talking about games

00:23:35.440 games are a bigger like money spent medium than i think tv and movies combined right now

00:23:42.160 and and so where gaming goes is where culture goes in the future and it's i was thinking about oh how do

00:23:47.560 i promote like my game when i'm ready to launch it i'm like oh i just need to piss off games

00:23:53.460 journalists and then reach out to people who i already know are my friends like you know side

00:23:58.440 scrollers who's what the number one gaming podcast or like grums or something like that i'm like

00:24:02.620 oh they'll all promote like if you are i think slightly centrist these days like like just not

00:24:09.980 captured by the virus and you want to create a game there could not be a better time in history to do

00:24:15.820 it right now yeah and i mean that's the thing too it's an easy accusation to level against the the

00:24:22.840 anti-woke quote-unquote that everyone's just really negative that hating on everything it's not really

00:24:27.900 true like we would like to promote good things and we do so when we can it's just that the mainstream

00:24:33.640 entertainment which is what most people know about and talk about is bad and the only way to get good

00:24:39.980 out of that is to criticize the bad until the company goes okay that's not what you want let's

00:24:46.040 try something else yeah so i'd encourage people to get on that because i think that they'd find more

00:24:52.740 promotion than they otherwise would expect at the beginning of this we we asked a question i want you to come

00:24:57.440 back to it what does winning look like to you ah yes it's a difficult question i mean i genuinely just

00:25:04.520 think it will look like an increase in entertainment quality again honestly a return to the the 90s

00:25:11.840 2000s where we were allowed to do more stuff it means both frankly straight up attractive people in

00:25:19.200 screenplays again and more adventurous stories as well like i would like to see both superman and

00:25:26.060 batman return to the old school and then we can construct off that again we need to kind of

00:25:31.640 reset a little bit because then you can have a batman beyond the darker batman while still also

00:25:36.720 having the hero batman instead of now where every iteration of him he's just darker and angrier and

00:25:43.080 more upset and depressed about things i hear that another thing that i'd like to see in terms of a return

00:25:50.520 is while we've had a lot of good indie games come out they typically make themselves work by being

00:25:58.900 very light on lore and we haven't had great lore in a long time i'd actually argue that maybe five

00:26:05.140 nights at freddy's represents somebody trying to re-inject a new lore environment into gaming because

00:26:11.780 people are hungry for it are there any games or properties that you felt recently where you're like

00:26:17.140 i've really enjoyed this lore and it's new um like a dense lore building setting in gaming

00:26:27.160 i would probably reach back to kenshi but that's not exactly a new game either uh because mostly

00:26:35.800 honestly i find it more in anime and manga as you mentioned that they have more uh freedom and ability

00:26:41.640 to build larger more interesting worlds whereas in gaming we're kind of stuck in a bit of a

00:26:47.860 you know quagmire of this um the roguelite era yes where you you haven't been able to like

00:26:56.900 build the large worlds either and it's also a thing to remember as well that if you're going to

00:27:02.120 build a large universe it takes a very long time too uh and if you're spending that time trying to

00:27:10.000 get a video game off the ground well that's not cheap like that's going to cost you tens of

00:27:14.000 thousands of dollars in years and years of your life you know well i mean how long did it take

00:27:18.560 tolkien to create his world this is a really good point well and one of the the the things was

00:27:25.180 tolkien's world is it has become so ubiquitous that alternate fantasy settings has struggled to

00:27:31.480 get off the ground almost yeah i mean one of the issues is that we are right now dominated by a

00:27:38.760 handful of cultural entities you've got both rings you've got star wars you've got disney marvel dc and

00:27:45.260 these have kind of created the the the fantastical canon of our time so trying to reach outside of

00:27:54.620 that is very difficult because it's become the orthodoxy like it's one of the reasons why i think

00:28:00.460 black myth wukong did very well because people saw that for the first time and like i've never seen

00:28:05.080 this before a monkey with a giant staff huh okay what are what are these weird gods that are popping

00:28:11.360 up everywhere now where's what's this mythology this is nothing like what i've seen really good

00:28:15.820 point well and you mentioned the orthodoxy and i'd also say here that the orthodoxy has been shifting

00:28:21.240 there's been a few properties that have had an outsized impact warhammer is one of them i think

00:28:25.940 that was in this generation especially among the dissident group warhammer is really big another one that's been

00:28:31.780 really really big and we sort of use as like the the one that our show references most is starship

00:28:36.500 troopers which has had a hugely outsized impact on like culture and tropes and world building of our

00:28:43.240 time and i would like to see more stuff built taking ideas from these shows and i think when people have

00:28:52.400 done riffs on these shows people have been very excited about it like hell divers obviously as a

00:28:57.880 star trek troopers ripoff and i think you could do more interesting religious people in space ripoffs

00:29:05.960 than warhammer like space crusades i mean it itself ripped off dune enormously for example yeah yeah well

00:29:14.540 in dune's another one that's come back now like people didn't rip off dune for a long time and now

00:29:18.760 everything's like dune yeah so i mean it's it's the old saying that creativity is a myth in essence like

00:29:25.940 new thinking you've got to find different sources of inspiration and build upon it i mean that's the

00:29:30.980 reason why blackrock started investing in 40k because they were looking at and thinking could

00:29:36.160 this be the next star wars maybe let's get in there on the ground floor i i by the way i think that we

00:29:43.140 as civilizationally are so blessed because it's such an unlikely timeline to be on that somehow somebody

00:29:49.820 destroyed the star wars brand like how did that happen why is it good i mean it's good because it

00:29:57.320 opens the door for other people i guess but yeah disney managed to destroy one of the biggest

00:30:02.980 entertainment industries ever like they had i did a video on this a while ago where an insider was

00:30:08.700 talking about how disney had basically only got ray left and they're asking them like how the hell

00:30:15.640 i thought that we take this setting and all we've got is ray

00:30:19.840 where's luke where's hana where's shibana this in like internal memos or something like ray is the

00:30:28.600 one character and they believe that's all they have left now actually they might have like

00:30:32.300 mandalorians could still be interesting or like but they can't see that because mandalorians are

00:30:37.060 fascist right you know where actually that'd be a pretty good setting i think that'd be really cool

00:30:42.700 if you did one during the mandalorian wars oh did the mandalorian wars even happen anymore or was

00:30:47.120 that wiped out with a new continuity i don't know i mean right now i think the latest thing was that

00:30:52.900 they were going to do a super prequel of the first jedi presumably rising up against the ancient sith

00:30:58.980 empires which oh it would be interesting all the lore if i remember correctly yes right like i mean

00:31:07.440 i'm kind of imagining almost like a jesus story where like the first jedi begins rising up against

00:31:15.780 the sith empires founding in essence a new religion beginning to explore the tenets of creating a new

00:31:21.180 faith that could work but i guarantee you the tenets of the new faith will simply just be diversity

00:31:27.060 equity and inclusion yeah oh yeah and you know what i would do if i was if i was running the star

00:31:32.520 wars franchise what i would do is i would go and look to see what star wars fan fictions are most

00:31:38.380 popular i would then reach out to those writers and hire them to do my show and my writing because

00:31:44.000 you know they've become popular in an environment where they're not financially rewarded and the fans

00:31:48.520 like them well one of the problem is they've all they also tried to destroy those like they had

00:31:52.960 thrown who was a very popular villain character and they put him in a soca and they made him an idiot

00:31:58.800 so yeah well and also how did they this is this is actually something i have a question of because

00:32:04.180 i loved clone wars like the original clone wars right like it was great and then the guy who did clone

00:32:09.960 wars wasn't he the guy who did like one of the more recent bad things i i think so but like this too is

00:32:18.320 like a people who are established in this kind of setting kind of thing the reason batman show with

00:32:24.240 harlequin being a fat asian psychologist that was bruce tim the creator of harlequin who did that to

00:32:31.140 her like really yep that was bruce tim the way and this is sorry i remember correctly harlequin was

00:32:37.100 created for that 80s batman cartoon right like that that epic version of her yep he was he was

00:32:43.500 created for batman the animated series by bruce tim so this this comes to we did an episode called

00:32:50.620 the wachowski effect where we're like why is it that you can have a good creator who becomes terrible

00:32:56.200 after they transition like i was like you know you hit the same guy who wrote like mass effect 2

00:33:01.560 is doing like dragon age veil guard like and i was like okay well maybe gender transition does something

00:33:07.260 to your brain but it's like maybe it's not gender transition maybe it's just like the woke ideology

00:33:12.240 more broadly makes you a shitty writer it definitely is at least in part because one of the things with

00:33:18.680 the clone wars because you've got the two clone wars the first cartoon animated series which was

00:33:22.820 incredible then the 3d cgi one which had its moments but it was definitely of lower quality

00:33:28.060 but one of the things george lucas really like imparted onto his people when he was doing that

00:33:33.460 was like watch world war ii documentaries i want this to be a war series about war things and a war and

00:33:39.620 conflict action whereas now like look at ahsoka look at their recent thing like it doesn't have an

00:33:46.860 authenticity to it anymore like the only reason why mandalorian game paint giving up english became

00:33:52.560 popular was largely because of grogu like little dumb babies like oh great babies are cute therefore

00:33:57.760 it sells whereas mando's own adventures i mean he's basically a spaghetti western character now who

00:34:04.800 wanders from place to place saving people for no particular reason did you by the way actually watch

00:34:10.920 ahsoka i did i got through that thing did you watch acolyte i did watch acolyte too i am so sorry

00:34:19.660 you're you're i cannot television i just watch cultural critics complain about these things i can't bring

00:34:28.040 myself no ahsoka was painful particularly considering ahsoka's one character that could have been really

00:34:34.800 interesting as she was always portrayed as um fallible you know that she didn't quite know

00:34:40.840 where she was that's a bit of an interesting growth story but she she never grew up that's that's the

00:34:47.860 issue that would happen in the show she never really uh yeah no she's basically the same character like

00:34:53.160 17 years later she's still this whiny brat who's looking for other people to save her and guide her

00:34:58.960 along the way like anakin has to show up and go like no ahsoka please you can do this dumbass

00:35:04.340 yeah gosh i was just thinking it would have been interesting to do a show that followed on that

00:35:11.520 character who betrayed her in clone wars she's still alive right because she was taken by a prisoner by

00:35:18.860 the jedi um yeah no they killed her off in tales of the jedi oh they did yeah they killed her but she

00:35:26.320 is she because i actually quite like that episode where they framed ahsoka for the bombing of the

00:35:31.360 temple because great at making the jedi look evil i was like oh i totally get this point here you know

00:35:36.820 like you know because she comes up like you've become corrupted and she's standing there in front

00:35:41.040 of the emperor going like the republic is no longer what it was yes yes correct that was such a way to do

00:35:49.580 the jedi are actually bad because the lokes always want to do the jedi are actually bad but that's

00:35:54.480 like a good way to do the jedi are actually bad like they're judgmental setting their ways

00:36:00.500 oh gosh what was the other just nerding out about shows here at this point which i like i like okay

00:36:08.000 so what there was another setting where i was like oh by the way other brand that destroyed itself is

00:36:15.660 star trek like what the heck there's so few brands left i i wonder if warhammer can be used like do

00:36:22.580 they do they catch on because warhammer could be great to be used i feel like starship troopers

00:36:28.080 somebody's gonna buy this and do something with it eventually shouldn't we just build new lore though

00:36:32.380 i mean i like the earlier point you both made which was hey this this leaves room for disruption i think

00:36:38.600 it's really sad that we've devolved into a world of cinematic universes and prequels and sequels and all

00:36:45.340 this because i want to see i want to see new ideas and you know we admire tolkien because he created

00:36:52.840 something now of course he was riffing on plenty of old themes i'm not expecting people to create

00:36:57.500 entirely new ideas and they shouldn't you know let's riff i mean wait malcolm and i've recently been doing

00:37:03.140 episodes and having a lot of conversations about the omega verse for example which i wouldn't say is

00:37:08.380 like this is not a universe i want to dive into but i think it's a really good example

00:37:11.480 of taking dynamics and presenting them in a novel way and creating all this lore

00:37:15.660 and having it be like genuinely weird and novel i want weird and novel let's talk about the pressing

00:37:21.440 issues or not but like emerging issues that are happening now like what is happening to our society

00:37:27.880 what is changing about the nature of humanity and what lore can we build around that that helps us

00:37:32.800 think about it and wrap our minds around it i mean a lot of what tolkien helped people wrap

00:37:37.860 their minds around were like the great wars for example what can we create with lore now that

00:37:43.080 helps us reason through the reality we live in absolutely like ideally we should have more

00:37:49.700 new stuff as well i think a lot of people are just like focused in on the established settings

00:37:56.820 because it's there's a degree of nostalgia there it's comfortable yeah and you know it's safe like

00:38:02.260 you know what you're getting and sometimes i think a lot of us now turn especially to more

00:38:06.640 passive media consumption or like when there's so much choice we're tired like we've spent the

00:38:12.080 whole day making decisions we're done making decisions just like i want to know what i'm

00:38:16.180 getting i want to have a good experience i get that it just and i guess yeah there's the question of how

00:38:21.460 do you break through the noise if you have a billion tiny game studios and a billion tiny creators

00:38:26.080 creating new universes you know how do you how do how do you get an audience how do how do people

00:38:32.760 even find it and how do you get here's a question because i actually want to look at where they've

00:38:37.320 somehow made good products like how did how did arcane studios oh yeah arcane how did that happen

00:38:43.740 yeah that was surprising and unexpected on how arcane happened i think arcane is an interesting

00:38:51.980 example of a a product that has just like a smattering of a little bit of current year politics

00:39:02.140 in it in that is i've got a very uh diverse cast all female etc but the quality of the writing is such

00:39:08.980 that it all becomes ancillary like you don't care anymore it's good enough to outweigh all of this

00:39:14.340 because there's also a fear of having your your gaydar your wokedar overtuned to the point where you

00:39:20.140 become the feminist like you can't enjoy anything yeah and arcane was just it was obviously a bit of

00:39:27.420 a labor of love they wanted to do this all of the characters are well executed they're beautifully

00:39:32.480 animated they have their own stories and histories and it makes sense i didn't like the ending of the

00:39:38.260 second season because it comes across as too much of a we need to have sacrifices that don't matter

00:39:43.260 because they're all actually really alive etc well i will say one thing that people don't know about

00:39:48.360 the league of legends or is a lot of people view it as like slop lore that arcane was working for

00:39:53.640 but one of my friends who i knew because i was supposed to be in his class at stanford and i delayed

00:39:57.660 for two years was aaron estevez and he was the creative director when they were developing most of those

00:40:03.640 characters at riot studios now people don't know what show was he the showrunner of the original avatar

00:40:11.480 the last airbender so a lot of the lore that went into arcane was created by the guy who created the

00:40:19.540 original avatar the last airbender which is one of the only good woke properties to exist in this era

00:40:26.400 yeah like league of legends has a lot of lore there's actually quite a lot of dense storytelling back there

00:40:33.100 yeah so okay so i'm very excited about this idea of creators going out there and creating content and

00:40:41.880 i love to hear that you're creating something now because when i've watched other popular creators

00:40:46.600 before something i haven't seen is the creation of video games or content that aren't just like a joke

00:40:53.540 like okay for example like zero punctuation created a game but the game was like a joke about zero

00:40:58.860 punctuation like angry video game nerd created a game but the game was a joke about like angry video

00:41:03.900 game nerd can we get people who have proven that they understand lore and content in a way that the

00:41:11.020 public likes to also want to create games well i i think it it requires a certain drive which i do

00:41:21.420 believe is quite rare because you there's a there's a lot of effort placed into this like creating a game

00:41:26.500 creating a universe it's a lot of work you need to write a lot you need to think a lot you need to

00:41:31.300 have a lot of money you need to be financially stable enough to pour thousands into this i mean

00:41:35.340 yeah just just on the idea of having the free time to do it as well you know if you're working a

00:41:41.620 regular job and you come home late in the evening you're then going to sit down and write for two or

00:41:45.720 three hours it's exhausting of course and there's also a degree of like being scared like it's easy

00:41:53.460 it's safe to make a joke game because your fans will play it and they'll love it and they'll be in

00:41:57.840 on the joke but trying to create something serious you are putting a lot more of yourself out there at

00:42:05.200 that point which of course comes with the risk of failure it's a great point actually zero punctuation

00:42:11.160 i should say that while he has created a joke game in the past right now he's creating a real game

00:42:14.960 which actually looks pretty interesting so we'll see if it ends up doing well i don't know if you

00:42:19.420 followed the drama with him and the like woke company he was working for like firing him and

00:42:23.860 then falling apart a little bit so they seem to have created their own little studio now yahtzee and

00:42:29.260 that crowd and they seem to be doing fine so i'm happy for them yeah i'm excited to see that well

00:42:34.640 uh anything else you want to what was the other topic here oh yeah what should we do now like if you

00:42:40.580 have an audience now and you were part of this fighting against wokeism now that the ranks have

00:42:47.080 broken what should you be doing to capitalize on this because i feel like if we don't the pendulum's

00:42:53.240 just going to swing back and hit us in the face well you need to stabilize the victory first and

00:42:59.300 foremost because we are getting a little ahead of ourselves like the the the left are still the ones

00:43:03.400 in possession of the levers of power in governance and in the industries and so it's it's all well and

00:43:09.860 good to pat ourselves on the back and say that we are winning because we are but like there's another

00:43:14.420 three four five years before we see the true fruits of what we've created yeah there's what i would say

00:43:20.420 there's still amazing consistency in all of these large studios the employees are still there and the

00:43:25.640 call is coming from inside the house so yeah and like you said like the the work has also started

00:43:31.240 like 20 years ago but we only saw it for like the last 10 it was like in 2014 where most people

00:43:36.520 suddenly went like something weird's going on here and then another three or four years before

00:43:42.160 we understood what was going on there like all of these cultural changes are slow and take a lot of

00:43:48.460 time and there's also of course the worry of the pendulum swinging too far in the opposite direction and

00:43:53.620 then we just have to chase after it and argue with those people as well so solidify the victory just

00:43:59.620 keep doing what everybody is doing and then start looking towards creating your own stuff

00:44:05.200 because you will eventually have to presuming we managed to win you will have to transition away

00:44:11.140 from criticizing the bad to creating something good yes and we've got to create our own things and i

00:44:19.540 think that's a big thing that i would really galvanize the audience to do is start creating there is room

00:44:25.520 now you know you've got a giant market and you've got the big game studios in retreat and unable to

00:44:31.600 compete against you this won't be the case in five years yeah you got to get started yeah and so i

00:44:39.440 really appreciate what you're doing on that front and i i appreciate your channel as well but yeah

00:44:43.880 it's great to have you on it was a pleasure thank you very much and by the way with you i mean for like

00:44:50.280 the five of our viewers who don't already watch both arch and archcast check them out on youtube

00:44:56.300 really really great content and really great annotation of like what's going on in both like

00:45:01.220 the gaming world but also sort of in larger culture but through gaming lens i really enjoy it like i am

00:45:06.740 completely outside of the gaming world i cannot play anything that doesn't like pay me money but i mean

00:45:12.240 i love your content to dive into for a modern audience if you don't know warhammer lore you should know

00:45:18.440 warhammer lore because it's one of what it's culturally relevant and it's becoming more

00:45:23.180 culturally relevant the same way tolkien's works were and it is really good lore

00:45:28.920 and the reason why i like it is lore and i've talked about this before i haven't heard any like

00:45:34.760 big warhammer channels talk about this but it takes a simple woke question when i was in high school

00:45:40.400 there were so many people that was like what if like everyone who believes any religion or something

00:45:45.820 like that they bring that religion into existence by believing it so like muslims get a muslim heaven

00:45:50.620 and christians get a christian heaven and warhammer's like yeah but if that was true you'd get power

00:45:55.340 spirals around really simplistic emotions really quickly that would then create gods that would

00:46:01.220 functionally be evil from our perspective and so the only way you could fight them was through emotional

00:46:06.300 control and like stoicism and and and that turning on the head of a common thought experiment i find

00:46:13.460 really fun oh yeah because of course they're the chaos gods themselves they're simple animalistic

00:46:18.800 creatures at that point okay rage fuels me i'm going to make more rage happen yes yes now it can

00:46:25.460 interfere with reality and create feedback loops i love that well it was great to have you on

00:46:30.760 here you go

00:46:32.760 i want popcorn too i'm really on an ice cream you sure are

00:46:44.760 i want popcorn too titan wants popcorn too i'll get you some popcorn

00:46:50.760 here you go i'm i'm really on an ice cream

00:47:02.760 hmm

00:47:04.760 hmm

00:47:06.760 hmm

00:47:10.760 hmm

00:47:12.760 hmm

00:47:14.760 hmm

00:47:16.760 hmm

Based Camp - January 10, 2025

Their Ranks Have Broken—Now What？ Arch Weighs In!

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