Save File Shattered, Resolve Restored

A trophy run derailed by a corrupted save can feel like a punch to the gut—especially when it wipes 89 hours and leaves you two steps from Platinum. We open with raw honesty about that loss in Final Fantasy VII Remake, then walk through the comeback plan: re-clearing chapters for the Dress to the Nines paths, unlocking hard mode again, and hunting the one ability that only appears on higher difficulty. Along the way, we rediscover what a second pass through a beloved story can reveal when the party is stronger and the pressure to min-max loosens just enough to enjoy the moments between boss fights.

From there, we dig into the psychology of trophies and achievements. A Platinum is more than a digital trinket—it’s a public signal of private focus. Some lists demand mechanical excellence, others demand patience, and the best ask for both. We compare platform cultures, unpack where completionism enriches play versus where it distorts it, and admit the boundaries that keep us sane when a PvP wall or unwieldy grind would force us to become someone we’re not.

The conversation widens to the shifting terrain of live-service games. Destiny 2’s player slump, delayed updates, and community head-scratching raise hard questions for creators who built their livelihood on a single title. We talk candidly about platform risk, audience expectations, and how to pivot your identity from “this game” to “this perspective” without losing the core of what your community values. Industry news adds weight: studio closures, corporate priorities, and the human cost behind polished launches and sudden sunsets.

We close with a creative reset: a brand-new, stream-only character in Final Fantasy XIV. No off-camera progress, no skipped cutscenes—just a shared journey the audience can follow from level one. That constraint becomes a feature, turning VODs into a living archive and gameplay into source material for deeper content tied to our book’s themes: the hero’s journey, resilience after setbacks, and building healthier habits around games. If you’ve ever stared at a blank save slot or a changing roadmap and wondered how to keep loving the grind, you’ll find both empathy and a plan here.

If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs a restart, and drop a review telling us your most painful save-loss story—and what it taught you.

Transcript

The Platinum Catastrophe

SPEAKER_00 0:01

I have experienced no I have experienced a unabsorbable catastrophe in my gaming life, Doritos. Oh no, what if what unabsorbable, huh? Wait, lay it on me. What you got? I don't even know if that's the right word. I'm so discombobulated because of how terrible it is. As you know, I'm two trophies away from the Platinum Trophy in Final Fantasy VII remake. And because I've been on a tear editing the show, we actually uploaded two new episodes this week. So our listeners have so much of us to listen to and a little bit of Marcus because the two of us show up every episode.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

We don't take trips to Final Fantasy VII is my favorite game of all time. I declared that on a recent episode. When I wake up in the morning, it feels true. When I go to sleep at night, it feels true. Actually, for Valentine's Day, my wife got me an Aerith figure to go with Tifa and Cloud right there. Yep. So I have the trio behind me now.

SPEAKER_01 1:14

And for those who can see right there, he's pointing at the his stat mini statues behind him on his bookcase. So right there is like behind his head over his left ear.

Grief Over A Corrupted Save

SPEAKER_00 1:24

Yeah, I call it the statue squad. It's basically an epic scene of statues and high-quality action figures that I've collected of different games that mean a lot to me. Plus Gandalf, because we need the wizard. Anyway, Final Fantasy VII remake. I was two trophies away from the platinum. And then a corrupted save file from my last stream that occurred last Thursday where I beat the game on hard. That save file corrupted and then uploaded into PlayStation Plus. Oh. Meaning that all of my 89 hours of progress into the game, including finding nearly every item in the game, every materia, all the leveling up of materia and abilities, all gone, including the ability to play on hard difficulty. So that means to get the platinum trophy when I was only two trophies away, I have to beat the game on easy or normal, and then beat the game again on hard. At least up to chapter 17 or whatever. That is a bitter pill to swallow. And I'm doing it, Doritos. I'm on chapter 10.

SPEAKER_01 2:51

You love it.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

Yes, I'm on chapter 9 out of 18. I think I I mistakenly said 19 earlier in the episode. I think there's 18 chapters in the game. I'm on chapter 9 of my normal difficulty playthrough, but they added a feature where you can play the game with a mostly leveled up party from the very beginning. That's part of the streamline features that they rolled out to welcome in the Nintendo Switch 2 and Xbox One or Xbox Series X players. So I'm taking advantage of that, and I'm basically blowing through everything, but I'm getting to re-experience the story. And I love it. I'm just I went through the stages of grief and loss over the save file. I was in denial. I tried to open my save on the other PS5, and it had saved a save from 2023. So that's not gonna get me anywhere. And then I just was sad, I was angry. I I tried to open the game different ways, open it through PlayStation Plus as a streaming game, delete it, download it again onto the hard drive. Nothing.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

All to no avail. Oof. But are you already done? You'd already gotten all the trophies on story mode. So do you now have to go back and do you have to go back and reget them, or does your PlayStation account remember that?

SPEAKER_00 4:32

So one of the trophies that I need to get is called Dress to the Nines. And there is a sequence in chapter nine of the game that looks at what conversation choices did you make with Tifa, how many side quests did you complete when the party was just you and Aerith, and how many side quests did you complete when the party was getting ready to rescue Tifa in chapter nine. And if you do full completion of everything, plus a certain dialogue choice with Tifa, then everyone gets their beautiful dresses, okay? And then Tifa has a sporty dress that she can wear, and she has more of a stylish dress that she can wear. And then Cloud has a ratty dress and like a mediocre dress. Aerith has like a less frilly, nice looking dress, and then a ratty dress. And so I'm gonna have to beat any difficulty of chapter three, eight, and nine three times because there's no save file. And then I have to I have to go through the whole game on hard to get to the end because there's one enemy that only shows up on hard difficulty, and I have to steal his ability from him. Oh boy. Yeah, so it just really stinks that I'm on a I'm on I'm in a spot where if I want those last two trophies, I have to play three of the chapters three different ways, and then I have to play the whole game twice in order to get it. And I'm gonna do it because I can skip cutscenes if I if I really feel like I'm in a rush.

SPEAKER_01 6:23

And I'm gonna have you haven't seen them before.

SPEAKER_00 6:26

Yeah, and I'm gonna have a high-powered party because I use the feature that lets you start the game at level 45 and max level is level 50 in that game. So, you know, because I have all the other trophies, I don't have to worry about using advance options that will block the trophies. I I still have to play the game a lot. And for people that maybe aren't in gamer culture, they're listening to this, you know, mental health professionals and things, you might be wondering why do I need to do that? And I think it's worth talking about what platinum trophies can mean to gamers that play on the PlayStation system and what that achievement would be on different systems. And have you ever done a game that you full 100% all the achievements from the list Doritos?

Why Platinum Trophies Matter

SPEAKER_01 7:19

Yes, I so I'd 100% because it's on Steam, Horizon Zero Dawn. So I went through and I've 100% all of the Steam achievements.

SPEAKER_00 7:30

Okay, so had you done that on PlayStation, it would be a platinum trophy because Horizon Zero Dawn is a PlayStation, right? But doing it on Steam, it's 100%. I have 100% on Elden Ring on Steam. So do I because I do I chose to play that as a comp. Yeah, we we covered that a couple episodes ago that you do have Elden Ring as as well. So the Platinum Trophy is this really uh cool looking trophy, it's silver and blue, it's just a little picture next to the game that you can get on any PlayStation game for completing every single achievement. And it's kind of a mark of mastery in gamer culture that if you're trying to explain yourself with gamer cred to strangers or people you just met in games, one way you could say that is I have 45 platinum trophies, right? It it's kind of a way of saying I'm a completionist, and the games that I choose to focus on, I become very good at them. I do not have 45, I think I have 25 or 26 of them. And the types of games that I do this for are The Last of Us, Bioshock Infinite, I know for sure I did it, Devil May Cry 4, I know for sure I did it. And then there's games that matter very much to me, but they didn't have trophies originally, and now they do, these little achievements, and I wish I would go back and get them, like Kingdom Hearts is one, for example. That that game means so much to me, and I've never done a trophy run through the game to just make sure I get as many achievements as possible. And I actually started that on my stream a couple months ago, but I only did it for one two-hour session, and then I never went back to it. And maybe maybe soon, you know. I I just I get a lot of enjoyment out of trying to get these achievements knocked out and talking about them. Yeah. You know, there's so many, there's so many different gamer types and gamer motivations. And I wouldn't say I'm a completionist for every game, but for the ones that really matter to me, I do become that. In fact, one of the things that bugs me sometimes is in Steam. I think there's three Star Wars of the Old Republic achievements that I haven't gotten.

SPEAKER_01 10:14

That was the only down to one.

SPEAKER_00 10:17

Yeah, I just I think all the time about booting the game up specifically just to get those. But I think they would push me into playing the game in a way that I don't feel like playing it. Like maybe they have to do with PvP or something.

SPEAKER_01 10:33

Probably. Because the only thing I'm missing is the Manhunter title, which is ranked 10 or rank 100 PvP. Yeah, see, I don't want to do that. I'm not a PvP, or I'm like, and I'll be with 99% close enough.

Completionist Identity And Limits

SPEAKER_00 10:51

You know, I did back in the day have a lot of fun with Hut Ball and some of those original maps before they had the 4v4 matches. It's still fun. Yeah. Have they added any new PvP matches in the last two years?

SPEAKER_01 11:11

Well, they've added some maps since they did do away with the whole ranked PvP system, but which I know it that was a blow to a chunk of the a sector of the community. But yeah, it's it could be worse. It's not the end of the world.

SPEAKER_00 11:29

That's the tagline for Star Wars The Old Republic. It could be worse, but not the end of the world.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

It's not like a Death Star blew up our game. Yeah, I could say some other things about some of the other games that are having some difficulties at the moment with their parent companies.

SPEAKER_00 11:44

But ooh, let's do that. That's what we're here to talk about. What's going on? Because I've been in my little work bubble so much, I have no idea.

Destiny 2’s Decline And Delays

SPEAKER_01 11:59

Since they did oh man, what was the last major not Edge of Fate, but I'll think of it in a minute. Final Shape was the last part of the whole witness arc. And when that concluded, I think that put a good closure on a story, but that's also when Sony had acquired Bungie, and there was a lot of things are going to be changing going forward. We're no longer gonna be doing content release in one way. We're going to be doing it in a slightly different way, and it has created some consternation, and that was geez, five, six years ago now. If you look at a lot of their uh content creators and stuff, and it's got a community that's scratching their heads going, what's next? When you know their peak player base right now at any one time, gonna miss the numbers. So Destiny 2 fans don't hang me out to dry on that one. But they're in the 35,000 range for a peak player time for a peak player base during prime time right now. It's like that's really when you go from millions down to hundreds of thousands down to 35.

SPEAKER_00 13:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:43

Yeah, that's a bit of bitter pill to swallow. And I know just the most recent thing that happened is they've now delayed their latest update by four months. It's not coming out till June, when I think it was supposed to come out in March. Again, not doing happiness. So with Sony being the parent company, there's what's Sony's take on it, how are they viewing it? So Marathon comes out in March, and yeah, that's gonna be a thingy thing that a lot of people within Destiny are connecting some dots about what which game's getting the preferential treatment from Sony. I played Destiny 2, enjoyed the heck out of it. My son got my son playing it. We did we got all the way through Final Shape, we played a little bit of Edge of Fate that put for both of us, it put a good conclusion to the story. Now we can move on with the next adventure. Sure. The journey will still continue, and it you know, for a lot of people, it's no longer including destiny. What do you do? I do feel for a lot of the content creators that that was their that's how they made their living was Destiny 2 content. Yeah, that's I feel like bad for them because this is not a good it's not growing, it's fading away.

Creator Risk Of Single-Game Focus

SPEAKER_00 15:23

It's really hard as a content creator to it's really hard to just make a living as a content creator. That's one. But the decision to make one game the central part of your creator identity, there's pros to that and there's big cons to that too. Because you don't control what the game decides to do with itself, and then what what draw do you have when you step out of that box and do other content? You know that one of the things that was really hard for a couple years for me is that the SWOTOR players that would watch my stream would not watch anything else. And so for a period of time it was really hard for me to grow because I wasn't growing with SWOTOR, but I had a very predictable number of viewers that was not very big, and then when I would play something else, I'd have virtually nobody except for the small number of inner circle type people, right? And and so that was ultimately why I stumbled on the name Dr. Gamology one night, and I realized it's available on Twitch, it's available on Twitter, it's available on Instagram, and once I saw that, I just switched it all over in one night, grabbed the name on every website that I could that I could think of. And then I was playing Persona 5 Royal as my game, and I think that changing my name in the middle of my playthrough of that game really started something for me. But if you're one of those Destiny 2 content creators and the maximum geek number of people wh playing the game is 35,000, that puts an immediate cap on how many people are gonna watch your content if it's live.

SPEAKER_01 17:35

Because you're not drawing in new players at almost at any rate, you it becomes now you are the that is your recurring standard viewers. Yeah, okay, these are the guys that are always there, it's my ride or die crew.

Studio Closures And Industry Fallout

SPEAKER_00 17:52

Yeah. We have had quite a range of topics in this so far in the episode. We had the catastrophe with my Sapile, why people go after platinum trophies, what it's like to love and support a game that possibly is allegedly dying. And even corporate takeovers of game companies. You know, the studio that was responsible for remaking Demon's Souls, which was a launch title for the PS5, just got closed by Sony today.

SPEAKER_01 18:29

Oh yeah, that was one of the ones that got closed. Oh man. Oh no, I did see that. I did see that.

SPEAKER_00 18:35

Yeah, and I love Demon's Souls. I love more the original, but I did buy the remake, and someday I planned to play through it. I guess I didn't support them while they were alive. Yeah, now I gotta support the big conglomeration. It's not like Sony is the only big game company that does this stuff, though.

SPEAKER_01 19:00

Right.

SPEAKER_00 19:02

And I'm sure the accounting people have their reasons that make them feel incredibly justified. When you close a game studio, you are causing loads of people to be unemployed and have to deal with the short-term anxiety of figuring out what's next. And also, I think in the gaming profession, the game developer profession, there's high turnover, and there is more of a I'm working on this game for X number of years, and then I will be moving on to work somewhere else. And only the people who are mainstays at companies, you know, name recognition type people, really have job security.

SPEAKER_01 19:45

So well, sometimes in with that, that vestures and other things where you may be a mainstay, but some you can be disenfranchised, those guys can leave and go start their own companies, go work for your their competitors because it's I'm trying to think of the fella's name that he was on. He he went on working class nerds a couple of times. I pid the Penn State grad who worked for Gearbox that he was working for was it Bioware before he worked for Gearbox. Those guys can big names can go other places. Uh even look at Broadsword when Swotor was developed. The lead went out and you know the game has come back to him now. Sometimes the universe is funny. Oh, the universe is always funny. There's a matter of is it funny to you or in front of you.

SPEAKER_00 20:50

Oh, well now we're just dealing with the philosophical questions.

Baldur’s Gate And Play Styles

SPEAKER_01 21:02

So where do we go from here? Exactly. That's an excellent. I had actually I had a topic I wanted to talk about, but uh I didn't write it down, and now I'm for regretful for not writing it down because I'm scatterbrained, and I if I don't write something down like that, I'll go I'm gonna forget. I might remember it here in about five minutes or when we get done. Oh, that's right, that's what I wanted to talk about.

SPEAKER_00 21:24

But I can't remember. You remember the week where Marcus made us do a fake ending to the episode on that topic? Yeah. Which time that is so much, so much extra editing for me. We're never doing that again. But the the way I decided to do it is I actually did put the end song in there, but I only played it for about a second and a half before I faded it out. Because I didn't want to risk people quitting the episode by playing it. Playing it for too long and making them think that's the end. I think that people will probably have a nice experience of that moment.

SPEAKER_01 22:09

It'll be it is chucklable, that's for sure. If that's a word. That's a word. Totally a word. I can make it up.

SPEAKER_00 22:16

It's all because you didn't play your obscure expedition 33. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 22:20

I not then. I still haven't gotten back to it, though. I've got I've gotten sucked into Baldur's Gate as my second game. How far are you now? I'm still at Moonrise Tower. I am a slow explorer. There's a lot to explore in that section. I go and I explore everything I can around first before I do anything.

SPEAKER_00 22:47

Have you gotten to go into the Temple of Shar? Yes.

SPEAKER_01 22:52

I've gotten to where I have to go to the other plane. I went through it in Balthasar. So I'm like, nope, nope, not ready for that yet. I don't want to go that far from the story yet. I want to do something else. So I'm trying to temper where I am in the story versus where I am location-wise in the game.

SPEAKER_00 23:17

Yeah. That section is a section that I've made it to on four of my playthroughs. I finished it on two of those playthroughs. And then, of course, I finished the whole game on one playthrough. But I have a lot of experience with the Moonrise Tower section.

SPEAKER_01 23:42

Yeah, it's entertaining. I've gone down to the dungeons, I've gone down to the lowest part of it and seeing Pope Winos in, going, no, I don't feel like doing that right now. I'm going to do something else. So go back up and do I want to free the prisoners? Do I not want to free the prisoners right now? I can't really say I do. Let's go see what else is here. Where's the story? Where is the story supposed to take me? And then I'll try to figure it out from there.

SPEAKER_00 24:11

I'm really envious of the way you describe that. Because when I'm playing games now, I feel like my time is so limited that I have to do my best to push through as much content as fast as possible. You're just describing such a nice, relaxed approach of doing what you want to do. Like the idea of doing what you want to do does not make sense to me because I'm so focused on doing what I have to do all the time. Does that make any sense?

SPEAKER_01 24:43

Oh, it does because the way you're having to play games is in a different mode because of part of it is that's what you part of what you do for your job, in that you're playing it, you're having such good discussions with the chat when you're streaming, and you're and you're choosing to play the games, some games only on stream. So it will definitely feel like I'm you know narrowly focused on that. And of course, Marcus will call you a prisoner because that's yours is your prison sentence.

SPEAKER_00 25:26

He would. On that topic, though, I did do something for the stream and the stream only this week that surprised even me because when I woke up in the morning, I was not planning on doing this. As everyone knows, I don't know what I'm gonna stream when I wake up in the morning. It's all just a feeling I get when I get the lights turned on and I sit down. I have streamlabs, I have to click the go live button, and then you have to pick your game, you gotta pick your category.

SPEAKER_01 25:58

How very Jedi sounding of you. Uh-huh.

Building Content Pipelines With Purpose

SPEAKER_00 26:02

Well, I decided to play Final Fantasy XIV online.

SPEAKER_01 26:08

You did.

SPEAKER_00 26:09

On Monday.

SPEAKER_01 26:10

And how'd that go?

SPEAKER_00 26:12

And I created a new character, which, by the way, in Final Fantasy XIV, you are not supposed to create new characters. The game really is designed for you to make one character and have all the classes on that one character, but never have to redo the story ever again because there's hundreds of hours of story. But I didn't want to play as Kyrie, my pink-haired, pretty human character, right? I wanted to play as a different race, I wanted to create a look for them, and so I decided to create an all-ra, which is a dragon-skinned girl. It could be a guy, but I always create girl characters. And instead of the pink hair, I went with blue, light blue, fading into black tips. And I just think she's cute, like so adorable. I love her. I think I named her Azima. And I picked to start out as an archer, which will become a bard at level 30. And of course, I'm gonna pick up other classes, but because I picked Archer, I get to start the game in Gridania instead of Ulda, which I don't think I've ever started the game in the forest city of Gridania. I always start in the sand and concrete city of Ulda.

SPEAKER_01 27:48

And because I know when you were trying to get your group going and I did the free character thing, my because I I really like the whole horizon. I am a ranged user by in most all the games that I play, if that's an option.

SPEAKER_00 28:04

So sure, because you're a sniper and SOTOR, right?

SPEAKER_01 28:07

Sniper and Sotor, give me a ranger or something with bows and a tabletop RPG, the horizon series. I really enjoy because it is Bows, but it has melee capability. So again, the Rodania is the only place I've ever started in the game.

SPEAKER_00 28:26

Haha. Well, I'm gonna have a lot of fun, but I made the chat and my community a promise on Monday, and this is where this character gets really interesting for my psychology because I don't know how hard it's gonna be to keep it.

SPEAKER_01 28:45

Most of it.

Footage, Book Themes, And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 28:46

All right, here's the reveal of the promise. I will not play the character for a single second off stream. Oh, yeah, no, I did hear you say that, yeah. So this character belongs to my Twitch channel. And what that's going to do is it's going to make this character about a decade-long project. Or it's gonna lead to me streaming more. Or both. Yeah. I mean, if if I end this podcast and I decide my work projects are in a certain spot and I can't stand the idea that I'm not making better progress with her, then I guess I gotta go on Twitch and do a random 11 p.m. game stream and see how many of my morning people are still up at night. I am yeah, like I don't know how often that's going to happen, but I made that promise because one of the things that feels really difficult for me to wrap my head around as a creator playing an MMO, and specifically Final Fantasy XIV, where the story is such a big focus of the game, is how do I get people invested in what I'm doing if I'm 19 hours further in the story than the last time they saw me play? So the way to get around that is I guess I'll stream more, or at least you know while I'm playing this character that there's VODs, and you can see every single thing I've ever done with this character. So I might even start a YouTube series where I talk about the footage of me playing this character and kind of explain like what it takes to manage an MMO game. I don't know. I I haven't put a lot of thought into this to really flesh it out, but I feel like with my content, my message, and the kinds of things in my book, did you know I wrote a book to read of?

SPEAKER_01 31:01

You wrote a book. Actually, I can see the book from here. I can see where where is my copy of the book? I have a copy of the book somewhere, and I also have it on audiobook too, because I will listen to it as I do with all my audiobooks on my commute to work in the mornings.

SPEAKER_00 31:14

Oh, that's so cool. I get to go with you to work. Well, my words coming out of a very energetic guy's voice.

SPEAKER_01 31:21

Yeah, it's not the same, but and I know Marcus has said it several times. When when the narrator's reading the book, all I hear is your voice and your cadence.

SPEAKER_00 31:35

Yeah. I I mean I've thought many times about recording myself reading it and maybe releasing that on Patreon or something. Not that I mean I don't do a lot on Patreon, but I think it would be good if I came up with something that I can give people that are hanging out with me over there. That seems like a good kind of thing to do. But like I alluded to last episode, I'm trying to figure out where the balance is between YouTube videos and using those to create an internet version of the book that people can get some of the ideas and then be like, oh, I could read a whole book about these kinds of things. And, you know, in order to do that, I need the game footage. And there is a way that I could record just the game using my capture card while streaming it with a decorated background and everything on Twitch. And I was thinking, you know, going back to that Kingdom Hearts trophy run, it would be a really smart thing for me to do a stream. And and even though I just did the beginning of the game two months ago, it would be really smart for me to restart the game and get footage of all the beginning of the game. Because in in one of the early chapters of the gamer's journey, I break down the stages of Sora experiencing the call to adventure to leave Destiny Island and become or take his first steps into the story of becoming the hero. And so I need that footage so I can put myself on green screen talking about it and connecting it to my book and the gamers' journey, the hero's journey, the monomyth. Like I need to uh just convince myself that that's my content. It's not full, it's not just plays, it's not full game playthroughs. It's I need to just go live on Twitch and say, here's what we're going after today. Uh I'm gonna play this game, I need to get footage of this, we're gonna talk about it, I'm gonna be with you in chat. Because it doesn't matter what I'm talking about when I record this footage, because we're gonna remove that audio track anyway. I just need the visual. Right? Because it's gonna be a speaker video where I analyze something with stock music that kind of matches the vibe of the game, because YouTube is so picky about copyright on video game music. So I just gotta do it. You know, I have I have these ideas, I just gotta do them. And if I did them, you know, I'd start to grow. And if I started to grow, I'd get more excited, I'd do more stuff, and then before you know it, you know what I would be doing?

SPEAKER_01 34:31

More streaming.

SPEAKER_00 34:33

No, I'd continue the journey.