Are Battle Passes Training Us To Confuse Fun With Engagement?

He lost nearly 100,000 runes in Elden Ring and didn’t even blink and that’s where our conversation starts: what changes in your gaming life when you stop treating failure like a personal verdict. We talk through a real mindset reset in Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree, why “who cares, I can farm it back” can be surprisingly freeing, and how lowering the emotional stakes can actually raise your skill ceiling.

From there we jump to Resident Evil Requiem on insanity difficulty, where the rules of success flip fast. When everything kills you in one hit, the goal isn’t to rack up kills, it’s to learn routes, manage pressure, and solve terrifying puzzles while your brain screams to panic. We break down why hard modes feel awful right before they feel amazing, and how that breakthrough moment rewires your motivation.

Then we go full video game psychology on monetization: WWE 2K26, premium editions, battle passes, engagement metrics, and why it feels different when a full-price game locks fan-favorite wrestlers behind tiers. We also connect MyFaction-style card packs to loot boxes and SWTOR cartel packs, including the gambling-like reward loop and why customization is such a powerful hook.

If you’ve ever felt ripped off, tilted, or weirdly compelled to grind, you’ll hear your experience in this one. Subscribe, share with a friend who loves games, and leave a review with your favorite Doritos flavor so we can pull more people into the community.

Transcript

A New Mindset For Losing

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Yes. So anyway, I that's why I wasn't here last week, which I was super bummed because I had a lot to say. But the big news I have to just say for the first time in my life I've changed. Completely and utterly changed. I'm a child. I do not believe you. I don't believe you. It's a minor change. But it's a mindset. Okay, but it's a mindset change. So let's yeah, minor. Like it'll be the it reminds me of Dr. Evil. But what was I gonna say? The the big reason is because I I want to beat Elden Ring. It's eating me away that I haven't beaten Shadow of the Earth Tree. So I went into Shadow of the Earth Tree and I said to myself, you know what? If I lose all my runes, who cares? There's a farming spot I can sit there for an hour and farm and get them all back. I don't actually care. So I yes, so I went into the game. I was hitting A as my dodge because I've been playing Phil in the Fantasy and like it took me a little bit. But now I think I have like four or five hours in the last two weeks, Steam says. Which for me, that's a lot of time. That's like a a lot of extra time I've gotten to put into it. And I just lost a boss fight to this stupid hippo that turns into a porcupine. I must have died 50 times, and every time I died, I laughed at myself and just told me it's a told myself it's a game, and who cares? And when I went back in the room, I didn't even try to retrieve my runes. Oh and that is gross. And I have enjoyed it so much in the sense of that that side of it, where my mindset is just like, you know what? I fell off a cliff today before the show, and I plummeted to my ground and I lost 97,000 runes, and I just stood there for a second. I was like, whatever. And I teleported somewhere else and did something else. I was like, I don't even care. And doing that has made me love the game, possibly more than I did the first time I played it.

SPEAKER_04 2:28

That's so great, Marcus. I really like positive Marcus. The one that shows up and overcomes things, doesn't run from games, doesn't uninstall them, just keeps coming back, dodging and rolling as ineffectively as he needs to to enjoy his afternoon.

SPEAKER_02 2:46

I still panic roll. There was this boss I found. So there's these like they're called mausoleums in the DLC, and you can't use a summon. It's one-on-one. Like you need to get good. And this mausoleum lady, she was in nice armor, but she had a great katana. Let me tell you something. Those things are long. Like I thought I could panic roll out of it in one hit, blood loss, you're gonzo. Literally two hits, and I was dead.

SPEAKER_04 3:17

Yeah, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 3:20

But I'm having an enormous amount of fun with it. Like right now, I'm on the whole like scadu tree fragment. So like I'm trying to get as many of those to like level up my whatever you call it. Your damage intake and damage negation.

SPEAKER_04 3:40

It's your level ups for the DLC area.

SPEAKER_01 3:45

Perfect, thank you.

SPEAKER_02 3:47

And I'm enjoying the hell out of it. And let me tell you, I can't promise I'm gonna, but when I beat the DLC and I did it before Doc, it's going to feel good. That is a small like motivation in the back of my head that I'm gonna do it before he does it, because he's so wrapped up in every other game, which is great. It's good for me. He can play games a lot more than me, but guess what? Like cooking. And I'm not saying he couldn't catch me, but I my goal right now is to beat him before I'm gonna beat Consort Radon before he does.

SPEAKER_04 4:24

And then there's Doritos, would you like to would you like to guess what listening to stuff like that does inside of me?

SPEAKER_00 4:32

Judging by your look. No, I don't want to guess actually. It's not my I'm not a good guesser today.

SPEAKER_04 4:39

Come on, I'm lobbying you the ball. You're supposed to slam it home, Doritos. Gotta be my shack.

SPEAKER_00 4:46

Yeah, no, right now. White man can't jump.

Rivalry As Motivation To Finish

SPEAKER_02 4:51

Well, I just passed you the puck in front of the net, and you're supposed to slap that baby home. But and and that is just a small, like, this is my little dig at Doc. And I'm not saying I'm gonna do it, but if I end up beating the DLC before Doc does, that's gonna be a milestone that like I'll probably I'm probably gonna like get a plaque made that says I beat the DLC before Doc and hang it right there, just to just so it's in the camera view of every podcast. It's just one of those personal motivations for me right now. On the topic, you can now literally throw the gauntlet down.

SPEAKER_00 5:25

It is out there now.

SPEAKER_02 5:27

It's because I really want him to play it, and I know the only way I'm actually gonna is if he gets on stream and goes, look at everybody, I have to beat this because Marcus says he's gonna beat it before me, and I can't let that happen.

Resident Evil Insanity Mindset Reset

SPEAKER_04 5:39

It doesn't have to happen on stream, right? Like I have gotten to the point where there are too many goals and not enough stream times. And I actually got an experience in Resident Evil Requiem today that really relates your Porcupine hippo problem. I want to connect with you on it. And I started my insanity difficulty run on Resident Evil Requiem this morning. Wait, you already beat it on normal? I beat it. No, I beat it on casual normal way, and then I beat it on casual collecting everything. That allowed me to unlock a bunch of extra items, including infinite ammo for my guns. And so then I decided to do insanity difficulty, where everything kills you in virtually one hit. And I was really struggling with the first section with Leon. There's just zombies on every part of the street and on easy. You can go and dominate and just be like power fantasy Leon. On Insity, I had that same mindset for about 30 minutes on the stream. And keep in mind, this is the first room of the game where you have combat. And I was dying repeatedly, and all I had to do was run down a street, and I had to change my mindset of this is not about logging kill points, because you use the points for killing zombies with Leon to upgrade your guns. So he's like an arcade style hero. Grace is the survival horror hero. And I was going into it like I'm gonna shoot all these zombies down, and you can't, because they're actually coming at you from multiple directions, and you can only look one direction at a time. And once I learned that the goal is not to kill them all, it's just to get to the end of the street. I got it. And then I'm in this horror section with this giant monster girl, and she just bites your head off, literally, if she grabs you. She's like 12 feet tall, she fills up the entire hallway. You have to run back and forth, you gotta find a screwdriver to unbolt the fuse box, take the fuse to a different fuse box, open a gate, and it is a terrifying segment of the game. It sets the tone for the whole game, and I was stuck and I told the stream, this isn't fun. But then 15 minutes later, I got that fuse. I got to the point where I understood the difference in speed and the difference in the logic of where I'm running. And I got in my head, I can't get bit on the shoulder. There is no bite on the shoulder on this difficulty. It's straight to biting your head off. And I got that fuse in the second fuse box, the gate lifted, and now I'm Leon. And then I did the Leon segment, and then I got back to being Grace, and I got to run around with my guns and shooting some zombies, and the items on Insanity difficulty are in different locations. So I'm figuring that out because I thought I knew where exactly where everything is, and that throws off your mojo a little bit. It makes the game exciting again. But I I went the full spectrum of I don't think I'm gonna do this, I'm stuck, I'm not good enough, and then I got good, and now it's like a drug, and I want to destroy this entire difficulty. Excellent.

SPEAKER_02 9:22

I'm telling you, man, it's it's one of those things where if you can if you can just calmly figure it out, or just say, I don't care, I'm gonna figure it out. It's a game and it's meant to be beaten you'll get it. That's how I feel right now in Elden Ring.

SPEAKER_04 9:43

Five years ago I said that to you on a phone call when I was gonna get away.

Learning The Route Through Fear

WWE 2K26 Premium Edition Backlash

SPEAKER_02 9:46

Yeah, you didn't I said F that This game's It was about Elden Ring too. Yes, of course it was. But you know You know what isn't satisfying is when you play the game the way the company intends you to play it, and you don't get enough rewards to be able to enjoy the game. Yeah, he is out of whack or something, everything. So I'm talking about WWE 2K26. I was thrilled to buy this game. My son and I have been talking about it for two months. We bought the best edition. We got like we got out of school, he got out of school. I mean, I'm sorry, yeah. Friday when he got out of school, we literally played it until he went to bed. I came home from work at 3:30 or 4 o'clock. I got out a little early. We played that game, and we bought the best edition, and we were scammed by 2K games. You purchased the best edition. I think you get seven or eight wrestlers, you get some areas like arenas and stuff that unlock in those packs. But now what they've done is they said instead of unlocking all the characters from their DLC packs, they had it behind a battle pass, and they basically tricked me into thinking that I'm getting the battle pass for free. And they've locked every like every character behind this battle pass. So no matter if you spend$70 and then you buy their$10 battle pass, which is$80, you have to do the exact same thing I have to do purchasing the best version of it, then on top of it, they make it so hard to earn points that it completely sucked the fun out of it. And I found a grind method where you had to scale the game back to levels of moron just to submit your opponent in eight seconds so that you could beat the battle pass. And even doing that, every like 25 to 30 seconds I was starting a new match, I still only got to tier 26 with the amount of time that I have. But what that has done has made me not want to play every other mode that they have because I have to continue to beat this battle pass because I got ripped off by buying the game. But what they did was if you want to skip the battle pass, each tier cost you three dollars and ninety-nine cents, four dollars to skip one tier. Now, tell me I'm wrong.

SPEAKER_04 13:02

You're not. I think in the past, what would happen is you'd buy that deluxe edition, you'd instantly unlock everything, and then there's no incentive to do any matches. And for my experience with 2K25, I didn't even really play it. I bought the best edition, and I did not finish the showcase. I did not do a full season of my GM. I didn't even stick with my faction, and I love my faction. It's just all the wrestlers got unlocked instantly, and there was no reason to keep playing. The I think that battle pass it's not as big a deal if you approach it the same way you approached Elden Ring in your talk ten minutes ago. Like it just is meant to happen organically in the background of however you plan to play the game.

SPEAKER_02 14:05

Yes, but the way I play the game is my son and I play the game, which you don't get XP going two-player.

SPEAKER_04 14:15

Yeah, you'd have to play the game without him so that you can bring in the new stuff for when you do play with him.

SPEAKER_02 14:21

And I don't have that kind of time. Yeah. So what I'm saying, I purchased the new one, the highest tier, because I thought like I was gonna get triple XP to be able to beat this battle pass. They were gonna give you enough because they want you to beat the battle pass, so then you can do the other things. Because doing my faction, if I don't win the my faction match, which I'm not great at the game because I rest I play the game against a seven-year-old and he whoops my ass. I don't I lose, and you don't get any XP in my faction for losing. So essentially, this game has completely ruined, not ruined, unmotivated me to play the game with my son, even though I do play it. But now, oh, I want to be Hulkan. There is none, you gotta unlock it in the battle pass. Can't be Hulk Hogan. Oh, you want to be mankind. Oh, you can't be mankind because you didn't get to tier 26 of the battle pass. Like, for me, I'm deflated, and I guess for me it's more of a greed. Like, I'm gonna use SWOTOR. SWOTOR, you pay a sub, you get X. If you stop your sub, everything that you've purchased it stays there.

SPEAKER_03 15:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:49

Right in Fortnite, they have a battle pass, but it's to unlock skins and outfits and cool like cosmetics. If you want those, great, but it doesn't change the gameplay, and it's not like mankind is coming out with his sock puppet, Mr. Sako. You know what I mean? It's just you're if you want to buy a skin, you buy the skin.

SPEAKER_04 16:19

I was going to say, how is that different than Fortnite? Your argument is in Fortnite, your characters are just the skin. Your character does exactly the same thing no matter what it looks like. Right. Your your argument about 2K is there's a fundamental difference playing a match as Jey Uso, who is available from the beginning of the game, versus being mankind, who you need to be battle pass level 26. Right. And also it's not just every wrestler's the same wrestler, they just look different. There's different styles. There's like the heavy style, the giant style, the cruiser style, and and then there's the movesets and the finishers and the entrances and all of the hoopla that makes the characters unique compared to each other, you know. The so there's a lot of nostalgia that WWE is weaponizing against players like you, saying, Oh, you want mankind, give us 26 times$4 when you just gave us 150. Right. Also, I swear on day one, though, of early access, I checked and to just buy the 39 levels of the battle pass, I thought my PlayStation account said it would be$78. Yeah,$70? Yeah,$78. But that's for 39 levels, so that's like$2 per level. Correct. But if you just buy one, it's$3.99. Oh, so it's it scales like in bulk. It's like I went for the cost scope. I didn't buy it either. I was doing this to find out. My initial reaction was literally, this is stupid. How much money do I need to spend to not deal with this? So then I remembered there's six of these battle passes in between now and next year. Right. It's usually four each season. Yeah, well, there's six because they made two of them unique just to the Monday Night Wars edition.

SPEAKER_02 18:27

So right now I'm on the Steam, and I'm sorry, Doritos, I haven't let you say anything because I'm that I'm fired up. That's all right. You you're you haven't been here so long. It's fine. Tag him in. Tag him in. I'm gonna ask Doritos a question about this in a second, but right now, boy, I could buy the I could buy hold on$69.99,$69.99, plus$10, 9.99, plus 14.99, plus 9.99. That's$104.96. I can buy all of the King of Kings edition, all of the editions packs right now individually, and then I can buy the the Kings like the editions, and then the next breath, not by the season pass, and I unlock the characters that I want, and I'm spending$30 more, and I get all of the packs and screw the battle pass. But the problem is, is you're gonna have a hundred characters or two hundred characters that aren't unlocked.

SPEAKER_04 19:44

Yeah, you would.

SPEAKER_02 19:45

I'm better off going in in it's uh really unfortunate because 2k26 is fantastic compared to 24 and 25.

SPEAKER_04 19:58

Yes, playing the game, it is a better wrestling simulator for sure. The weapons are better. I did a Hell in the Cell match, and I remember in past years you would have to go out of your way and throw people into that cage so many times to try to get outside the cage and do all the really cool stuff that Hell in the Cell is known for. In this game, I threw the person into one corner and then a different corner, and they busted through that second corner on the first throw. Right. And we were outside, we climbed to the top, I sent them through the middle of the cell, somehow they didn't die. They came back up, I threw them off the edge and threw the announcer table. Like it's it's fantasy wrestling because these things literally would be life-ending, but it's a video game, and they really embraced that this year, so you can do those outside of possibility stuff with your favorite wrestlers, but it still looks realistic, it's not like some of the superhero wrestling games that they tried out ten years ago, five years ago. You know, there were some that were very cartoony.

SPEAKER_02 21:13

The reason why is because they finally cut off the Xbox One and PlayStation 4. So this is the first time they've been actually able to focus on a uh a PC, a PlayStation 5, and an Xbox Series X or whatever it is, like the next gen. So they're allowed, they have the power to upgrade it. The game is actually awesome. My favorite thing is I get to dump tax on the ground. I slam Rhino on the tax, and this shows the tax stick it in. Like, obviously, it doesn't show a thousand tax, but it shows like 10 or 15 tax, and the commenters are like, look at the tax in his back, he's on the tax. Like the quality of the game itself is incredible. But the way I play the game, I can't unlock all the characters because they don't give it to you in two-player mode. And that's how I I play the game to play with my son. Now I'm gonna ask this question before you say anything, Doc. Now, Doritos, being the outsider listening to us talk about this, your son comes up to you tomorrow and says, Dad, I want to buy WWE2K26. What's your feeling about everything that we're saying?

SPEAKER_03 22:35

As an outsider. As an outsider outsiders. Yeah, that outside. Why I did it. It just seems like most of the other games.

SPEAKER_00 22:52

It seems to me like the honest economy of the current gaming genres. That you get a base game if you can convince a sucker to buy the premium edition and give them really nothing really big fancy extras that they're still gonna have to pay pay for the battle pass. I mean, what game has come out that you haven't had to pay for a battle pass?

SPEAKER_04 23:23

You only gave expedition 33.

SPEAKER_02 23:27

Oh, yeah, that's true. I was actually gonna say No Man's Sky. Like No Man's Sky came out five or six or seven years ago, and they keep dropping expansions and they're completely free.

SPEAKER_00 23:39

Okay, so so we have one exception to the current rule.

Why This Battle Pass Feels Greedy

SPEAKER_04 23:44

So actually, we we don't. I wanna, Doritos. You actually that's a excellent question, and more people in my world, the mental health world, that want to look at video games and judge them and try to figure out what's wrong with people that play them. They really need to understand this. The season pass model or the battle pass model is a way to it's a way to inflate engagement over time, and sometimes it's a way to generate addition additional earnings, revenue for the game company. And absolutely. And when you asked that question about who's the sucker, I felt instant shame inside because there's something about WWE 2K26 where Marcus is not just right, but his argument is airtight. I don't know if he hit it directly, but there's no way to disagree with what Marcus is upset about if we add this one. I I got it.

SPEAKER_02 24:58

I'm just I already hit screen record. Hey, I already hit screen record because this is being marked down in the calendars that I was infinitely right.

SPEAKER_04 25:07

You do not get to no sell the hype of my promo of Marcus's in-ring work during this evening's edition of Thursday Night Gaming Persona SmackDown. All right. The issue here is not just that there's a battle pass in 2K26. That's fine if it's other stuff that was not marketed as part of the premium editions. The issue is I walked into this game with the history of buying all these other 2K WWE games and thinking, oh, mankind is confirmed for this one. Sweet. I really love Mick Foley, and I wasn't sure he'd be in this game because he exited all relationship with WWE over some political stuff, which is fine, that's his choice, but he's still in the game because there's a cutoff date where if you were under contract with the company and they built all your assets into the game before this certain date, you're still in this one. So he's in it, and I love him as a wrestler, and I'm excited to play as him, and I can't play as him yet. But that's not what the real issue is. The reason Fortnite's battle pass is more ethical is because Doritos, Marcus, whoever wants to answer, how much is free to play? To play Fortnite, exactly. It is free to play. What we're talking about here is just greed. They monetized a game by selling it, and then they're monetizing the game to stay engaged with it. And there is there's really in order to get the things you paid for with the initial purchase, you have to also pay for it with your time. And you could argue that video games have done this a long time, like in Super Smash Bros. for the Wii, I believe that one was called Brawl. I remember it was the first game where there were a ton of characters in it, and you could either play the story mode to unlock them. This is the one with Sonic the Hedgehog at the end, right? And they spoiled that. That could have been a mind-blowing thing for people to realize when they beat that game is oh my gosh, Sonic and Mario can brawl. But no, everybody in the world knew Sonic is in this one. But in order to get him, you gotta play X number of hours in the story, complete the story, or you play 300 matches and then defeat Sonic that way to add him to your roster. That is sort of a battle pass, except you don't see the battle pass in a little battle pass screen that makes you feel bad for how you haven't done 300 matches yet. Okay. And so the the reason the battle pass is so infuriating is because it took stuff they marketed as being part of the deluxe deluxe super edition, and then you still can't touch it for like 50 hours plus of gameplay. And there's one other gripe that I have, it's not related to the battle pass. There are the standard edition. CM Punk is on it, the voice of the voiceless, the second city savior, you know, whatever. I'm not really the a punk head, but I did love his showcase. It was sweet, and I love what ifs. I love alternate realities. That was my jam. I love CM Punk so much more now, but he needs to lose to Roman Reigns. And we can argue about that later, Marcus. No, no, no, we gotta stay on 2K. Don't don't do that with your face. Forget that I said that. That's a different episode. Okay, CM Punk, CM Punk, CM Punk. OT. No, okay. No, no, no, you're not distracting me. No, no, listen. CM Punk is the standard edition. Triple H is the deluxe edition, King of Kings edition, and then there's the Monday Night Wars. No, no, the Attitude Era is the premium deluxe edition, and then there's the super premium deluxe edition, which is the Monday Night Wars, and it has the WCW wrestlers on one row, has the attitude era WWF wrestlers on the top. It is like my entry point into wrestling was Hollywood Hulk Hogan and the NWO on TNT and the Rock and Stone Cold in The Undertaker on USA Network on Monday night. That's what brought me into wrestling. And you know how much content in the game has anything to do with the Monday Night Wars? None. None. Nothing. It is just the cover on a particular edition of the video game. There's no mode, there's no place in the game that features to do a special brawl fantasy matchup with all your favorite wrestlers versus each other from that era. Like it's just they're they're in the roster, they blend in with everything else. There's nothing special about that edition. The only thing that's special about this edition is what's advertised on the standard edition, CM Punk. And he's great. His mode is great. It was fun. My issue is you're using people's nostalgia to get them to buy a certain version, and that nostalgia isn't even paid off in the game, not even attempted to pay off once you're inside the game playing it. So you're paying for tons of stuff, and they give you free virtual coins, right? So if you're gonna spend the virtual coins on packs in my faction or something, they could argue that's why you spent an extra$60. You get the battle pass for free, and you can buy a five-pack of cards in my faction for free with your purchase of the super premium deluxe edition of the game. So they're just doing lots of shady things to additionally monetize and inflate engagement metrics so that it looks like the game is more successful than previous versions.

SPEAKER_02 31:27

So I pulled up Steam, and right now there's 524 reviews, and they're mixed. The actual in-ring gameplay is noticeably a noticeable improvement over WWE 2K25, but almost everything surrounding that gameplay is a massive step backwards, starting with the absolute scam that is the new ringside pass and how 2K has completely abandoned the PC player base. And they go on and on. The next thing, before you buy the game, I feel like I should warn you ringside pass is much worse system than the old DLC model. Every single every single one I see is all thumbs down. The first ten.

Loot Boxes And Gambling Psychology

SPEAKER_04 32:11

Yeah, I mean, there's there's a lot of problems with the monetization of the game. And I get to talk about this at psychology conferences all the time because a lot of mental health professionals want to understand a lot of the gambling stuff that occurs to players inside video games. And 2K26 WWE has that too in my faction. They have packs, they list the percentages of how many superstars are in each card pack. And this is the same as opening a pack of baseball cards, right? You get a player and you get a tier of color on that player. So you get Emerald Ron Breaker, you get Sapphire Joe Hendry. And you want to collect the best cards because those become your team in this certain mode. And you have to spend real money to get these packs. Because your real money is converted into virtual currency, they call it MFP, my faction points. And there's also the island in this game, too. I have not gone to the island yet because I thought the island was terrible in 2K25. But that's another place where you convert your money into island MFP. And so now MFP is two different kinds of MFP. You can't spend one faction point in one place and transfer it to another. So they're making it so that all their choices are about making each mode more profitable. It's very much I wonder if 2K Games is in a financial bind and this game needs to save them. Because it really makes them look needy and impoverished to make all these decisions the way they are, or just the most one of the most greedy game companies there actually is. Maybe this is 2K TKO's fault, actually. You know, maybe there's an imperative for this game to be profitable enough to consider renewing a license in two years or something. I have no idea, but it really feels like every little corner in this game, the game is begging me to give it more money, and I'm just not gonna do that because I bought it with more money than I felt comfortable spending on it because I'm a fan. And this is going to be a big part of what I feel like next year when 2K27 comes out.

SPEAKER_02 34:49

I'm gonna tell you right now, the shitty part for me is I probably will buy the next one, but I will never buy a top-of-the-line tier again unless they go back to the old DLC model.

SPEAKER_04 35:07

So we're decades past the point where it's just about buying the game and playing the game. We're all just buckets of time and buckets of money, and the games are designed to get us to pour as much of ourselves into it and give it back to those companies as they possibly can, and they do not think about us like we're people and what it meant to pour that much into them. And just so everyone knows, this is all the elder scrolls' fault and that stupid horse outfit. We had a chance, we had a chance to say this is stupid, and never ever would we do that. And not to make this about my research, but the one thing that every personality group is motivated by in a statistically significant way is the ability to customize, and customization also goes with unlocking things and earning things and adding them to your player account. That is the one motivation that leads into all this nostalgia drip and this need to collect everything, unlock everything, pay for things to take the quick route to get it faster or pay for things because the only way to get it is to pay for it and get lucky with a pack unlock. And if your game is built on that stuff, people don't have the psychological inner world to say no to that if they're deeply engaged in the game.

SPEAKER_03 36:49

Yeah. Can't disagree with you. I just I keep coming back to feeling like I've been ripped off.

SWTOR Hypercrates And Buying Direct

SPEAKER_02 37:09

Yeah. And if I bought it on Steam, I would have returned it. And then I would have bought the standard edition.

SPEAKER_04 37:27

Doritos, I have a question for you with SWOTOR because I kind of have a story that I haven't told in a long time on the show, and it it kind of relates to how this works for players. Are there any items in the SWOTOR cartel market that you bought directly instead of opening packs?

SPEAKER_00 37:51

Absolutely. Yeah. There's plenty, there have been plenty of of you know, because because it is a Star Wars IP that as the shows came out through Andor, Ahsoka, Star Wars Visions, Obi-Wan, they've all they've come out with similarly styled designed outfits that I honestly got tired of playing the what's in the guess what's in the crate mode, and hoping that I would get the one thing I really wanted. I just said to heck with it, and just I'll go buy the individual items now.

SPEAKER_04 38:28

Yeah, and I think that that's something that this is not an option in the kinds of things we're talking about in the WWE game. But when you're putting things up to chance and you're saying, give us 15 bucks, we'll give you five of these packs, and there is a one percent chance that one of those five packs has the item you really want, and you open that, and you get the same psychology, the stew of chemicals that a gambler gets when you're opening those packs. And WWE has that in my faction, SWOTOR has it in cartel packs. So many games still have these, they're loot boxes, essentially, whether they call them that or not. And these are big ways to get additional monetization for your game and earn more money from your dedicated players. And back when the Force Awakens came out, so this is around 2015 or 16. The old republic added the unstable vented lightsaber. I really wanted it, I really wanted it. And I did buy a set of the the ultimate pack, you know, dark versus light pack or whatever it was. And was that 20 packs or 50 packs? Anyway, I I opened them all and didn't get it. A hypercrate believe it.

SPEAKER_00 40:04

I couldn't, yeah, hypercrates are are 20 packs.

SPEAKER_04 40:07

20 packs. Okay. I just I couldn't believe it. I I just I had had some success with a hypercrate in the past, and I just thought it's a really good chance when you buy that you're gonna get the thing. And then I looked, and I think at the time I calculated that the number of coins it would cost to just buy the lightsaber was like$49.99, you know, of coins.

SPEAKER_00 40:35

So it was a$50, it's a in out-of-pocket$50 item.

SPEAKER_04 40:40

Yeah, and I did. I bought it. I wanted it that bad. I wanted to customize my character with that lightsaber. It was part of my hype for the movie that was coming, it was part of my vision for the Sith Master called on, and and what he was gonna do in the expansion I was working on. And so I did it, and that stopped the bleeding, and it kind of set the tone for I'm not opening hyper crates anymore. I might have only bought a few more of them in my entire life in the game after that first time of not getting the item I wanted because it taught me you don't win this way. If you want something, just buy the thing that you want.

SPEAKER_02 41:37

And what I would do is I would stream live and tell everybody in chat to type in one item that they would want. Any item didn't matter, and if you typed it in and it popped up, the item is yours. And I remember Race Van, Rack Evan, said the unstable lightsaber and it popped up. He lost his shit three days or 36 hours later, whatever it was, he had the unstable lightsaber. And like that was like, I think out of all the times that I did that during my prison sentence, I three people won. And people asked for some wild shit. Yeah, I never won. Nope, you didn't, and you asked almost every time for the same. Yeah, you're right. You put Jawa Junk. I was like, well, Doritos is winning tonight, and we didn't get any. He was like, What the f but it proves the point.

Rate Us For The Book Raffle

SPEAKER_04 42:38

I don't know if he listens to the show, but you just saying Rack Heaven filled me with such a feeling of missing people. And whether you're Rack Heaven or somebody else who is on Death Star Troopers, if you're listening to this, can you reach out to me in Discord and just let me know you're okay or not? Like, I mean, still reach out. Like, you you can tell me you're not okay. I just want to hear from you. I miss all of you so much. Like, I had a weird crossing of paths with somebody that used to raid with me in Swotor, who does archaeology work in Tampa, and a random gaming psych person was trying to get people on threads to put a panel together for a con in Miami. And I said, I'll do that. And then this guy, I was like, Why do I know this name? I was like, Oh my gosh, that's so-and-so. And I I was just like, wow, the world is big, but also so small that like I can raid with someone, have no connection with them for six years, and then we just cross paths in a random threads conversation about academic gaming at a con. So I just I feel like I miss people. Um, also, there's something that we Need to start doing, and we're supposed to do it at the beginning of the show, but nobody's perfect. And if you are enjoying our unhinged rant about how greedy WWE 2K was this year, you need to go on your favorite podcast listening app and give us five stars and explain why in detail with peer-reviewed sources, not actually, but please rate us. It helps the algorithm decide that we're cool. And we totally are cool. We don't need their validation. They can go kick rocks. But it's always nice to bring more people in the community and share the idea of all the cool things we learn about ourselves in the way we play video games. That's what this is all about. That's why we talk every Thursday.

SPEAKER_02 44:41

And to give you an incentive, today is March 12th, 2026, which you guys will probably get this March 19th, which I'll give you guys until April 1st. Let's go April 2nd, because it's not an April Fool's joke. If you leave a review, whoever leaves a review, even if it just says everybody's awesome, Marcus is an idiot, it's completely fine as long as it shows five stars. I will put you guys in a raffle because if you didn't know, one of these hosts here wrote a book and it won an award, and I will purchase that book for you and send it to you.

SPEAKER_01 45:19

That's really nice.

SPEAKER_00 45:22

I'm not writing a book.

SPEAKER_01 45:23

Yeah, my name is in the my name in the show is didn't write a book.

SPEAKER_04 45:29

Yeah, actually, your wrestling name tonight is Marcus Didn't Write a Book. Yes, I I would love to get more readers for the book in our community. That's that's something we should have been doing a long time ago. Thanks for being my hype man, as always. That that's a lot of fun. Let's do it.

SPEAKER_02 45:51

So do that. You guys have two weeks to make that happen or three weeks, whatever it is. April 2nd is the cutoff. Get your five-star reviews. Make sure you say Doritos. Oh, actually, you know what? You know what would be a cool review is if you told us what your favorite Doritos flavor would be. Continue the journey.