742: MLB The Show 21 The Show and Age Of Empires IV

Larry Hryb: Hi, it's Larry Hryb, Xbox's Major Nelson. Welcome to the Xbox Podcast. It's another week. We took last week off. But I'm very excited because we're going here and we hit the buy button. I go like this. And we'll bring Jeff in. Here we go. Oh, whoa, we've upgraded.
Charleyy Hodson: Ta-ta–taa.
Larry Hryb: Ta-ta-raa, Charleyy.
Charleyy Hodson: It's I'm Jeff.
Larry Hryb: I tell you, you are... Iat's great to see you, Charleyy from Xbox UK. Charleyy, it's lovely to have you on the show. I'm so glad you're here.
Charleyy Hodson: It's so lovely to see you too, Larry. We've not seen each other in so long. I feel like I needed this just to catch up with you.
Larry Hryb: Well, I tell you, you and I have done a lot of shows together from before the world caved in, right?
Charleyy Hodson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Larry Hryb: And it's been so great to be able to... You and I have exchanged emails and you're working on some great things over there in the UK. And one of the things you started, we'll talk in just a minute, is this Xbox UK, Women in Xbox Podcasts, which is, I think, you're doing like six or eight episodes. And we're going to talk about that.
Charleyy Hodson: Eight episodes, season one. Yeah.
Larry Hryb: Yeah, so I want to talk about that. I want to talk about what you're playing? How are things in the UK? Like I said, we haven't seen each other since last year, a year and a half ago.
Charleyy Hodson: [crosstalk 00:01:06] 19, in the UK was the last time we saw each other, yeah.
Larry Hryb: And with those, we're doing the shows and it's like... The thing... I don't know if you find this, but when you're doing those shows like that or Gamescom. You'd never know when the last time you'll see somebody is, right?
Charleyy Hodson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Larry Hryb: Because it's just always running in seven different directions. And that's one of my regrets is I didn't say goodbye. Not that I'm leaving. But just that when we took this is year and a half or two year hiatus, we just didn't get to say a proper goodbye, so.
Charleyy Hodson: Yeah, it's one of those interesting things where so many people I know, in the industry, we always say, "Industry events are the best because you get to hang out and see people who you only really talk to on Twitter." But we always see each other in passing, because we always forget that we work at these events. And as you say, it's a quick high, you run past them. And then suddenly, the next time you talk to each other is, "Remember when we spoke to each other IRL, and now we're on the internet again." So yeah, making more time to actually spend time with people is definitely something I've learned sitting inside for the past 12 months.
Larry Hryb: The other thing is when we go do these inside Xbox events, or any of the videos, sometimes we don't know, like, "Oh, I get to do this interview with Charleyy and whoever the developer is." When they met, they kind of just figure out how they match us up so squeeze-
Charleyy Hodson: We just turn up.
Larry Hryb: We just turn up, and I'm like, "Oh, I get work with you so I..." When you guys are doing the great work over there in the UK for the podcast. I was like, I'll let you know Jeff's on vacation this week. And actually, he's so dedicated the show, he did one of the interviews that we're going to we'll talk about later on.
Charleyy Hodson: Oh, bless him.
Larry Hryb: Yeah. So he did that. But I wanted to get you on to tell us a little bit about the podcast series that you do with the Women in Xbox, tell us about it and where they find it?
Charleyy Hodson: Okay, I'm going to give you the long story of this, because I think it's really important to call out along the way the many people who I spoke to, to help make this happen. It started off last summer, I was having a phone call where we were like, "International Women's Day is coming up. We want to do something important for it's something impactful." And I remember somebody, I won't name who they are because I also can't remember who it was. Who said, "Oh, well, why don't we do a giveaway? We've got the new Series X console coming out. we could do a really big giveaway."
And I just went, "You know what? It's not doing anything. Women are not going to see a console giveaway and go, Wow, I feel empowered to join the industry." I have an eight year old, that's not going to make her want to do anything. I know she wants to be in the games industry but it wasn't enough. It wasn't tangible. No one could learn anything from it. So I said, "You know what, why don't we do something that-
Larry Hryb: It felt fake you just giving a console.
Charleyy Hodson: Yeah absolutely.
Larry Hryb: It's opportunistically.
Charleyy Hodson: Absolutely. It's like slacktivism and all that sort of stuff. And yeah, very performative. So I stepped back and I said, "We need to do something in which the KPIs aren't, reach and views but instead learning."
Larry Hryb: Some people don't know what KPIs are, explain.
Charleyy Hodson: Right. I'm getting all business. Okay, so it's the... Oh, god, what does it mean? I can't... All right, I've said it for so long, I don't even know what it means.
Larry Hryb: Key performance indicator.
Charleyy Hodson: That's it, which I will translate into dummy language which basically means what you want to get out with something that you do. So if you do something on social media, you might want it to reach millions of people. If you make a video, you might want to get millions of views, et cetera. And for me, I didn't want to do something that had any of those as our KPIs. What I wanted was something that someone might reference off-hands and like an interview that I would never be in.
Or in you maybe a podcast with you in three years time ago, you know what, "I listened to this podcast called the Women of Xbox UK Podcast and they said to do this in my CV and to go to these spaces and stuff." And that's why I really wanted to create. Exactly. CV, you're just going to translate me this whole time, aren't you? So yeah, that was the concept and we decided the best format to do that it was a podcast because video series happen all the time. But I couldn't remember Xbox ever making a podcast outside of yourself. So I thought, let's see if we can piggyback on Larry success and do something else here.
Larry Hryb: Do you haven't and you've had. Tell us about the guests you've had... First of all, where do they find it?
Charleyy Hodson: Okay, so you can find it on the Microsoft UK YouTube page is the visual version of the podcast where you'll see both myself my guest and any videos, or trailers that we're talking about as we go through-
Larry Hryb: Just like this you show.
Charleyy Hodson: Yeah, absolutely. But if you want the audio experience, for example, I love listening to audio podcast when I commute or commuted, I should say past tense.
Larry Hryb: [crosstalk 00:05:26] you commuting from your bedroom to this room or from the kitchen room.
Charleyy Hodson: Yeah, I'm listing for every 30 seconds I'm moving rooms in my house. I just got a little snippet. You can find it on Spotify, SoundCloud, Google Podcasts and Apple Podcasts, are hubs for them. But it's been a real learning experience. It's been one of the biggest campaigns I've worked on, and being at the very forefront of the idea and then reaching out to everyone. I tell you what, it's been very exciting just getting to know other people in the business.
There's traditionally my job is social. I run the social channels on Xbox UK and Ireland, in addition to working with hosting, figuring out strategy with Xbox on over on Twitch and on YouTube. So this was me doing something completely different. This was production. This was social impact. This was social good talking to lots of different teams. And yeah, it's been thrilling. And the fact they trust me to host it to Larry it's-
Larry Hryb: I do a great job.
Charleyy Hodson: ... mind-blowing. Oh, I just love it.
Larry Hryb: Don't you just feel that way, sometimes you're hosting a show and you're like, "Really, there's not any person better to do this?"
Charleyy Hodson: There's so many phenomenal hosts in the people in the industry that I could have pulled off immediately to say, "They should do this." And someone just went, "How about you do it." And I was like, "Well, if you don't mind, I'll do it."
Larry Hryb: But you've had some great guests tell us who you have had already and who you've got lined up for the future.
Charleyy Hodson: Okay, so first episode was with Louise O'Connor, from Rare. Executive Producer on Everwild. She is just a ball of energy. I adore her. And the reason we had her on the first episode was because she was already working on the Women of Xbox UK, a larger volunteer group where they actually work on mentorships. They have a couple videos out and I basically went to them and said, "I want to do this. But I've got some money, and I've got some production behind it. So let's go-"
Larry Hryb: And I have KPIs.
Charleyy Hodson: Yeah, we got all the KPIs, Larry. So we had her on the first episode to introduce the work that she's done with that group in addition to setting up the whole series. Episode two, was with Lydia Winters, who was the Chief Storyteller at Mojang.
Larry Hryb: I know Lydia. She's been there about 10 years, hasn't she's?
Charleyy Hodson: Right. Here's a fun fact, for anyone who hasn't listened to the podcast. These are fun little snippets you get. She was the first woman to ever work on Minecraft. She was also the first non-Swede to work on Minecraft and has been with the game ever since.
Larry Hryb: And discusses branding at length with her parents.
Charleyy Hodson: Absolutely. In pink wigs, nonetheless.
Larry Hryb: I don't know how to translate that. And then who do you move... Those are the ones that are available now, but moving forward you've got quite a guest list for the next few episodes. Tell us who they are for season one.
Charleyy Hodson: Oh, boy, do we? Yeah. Next week... This comes out Friday, right? The one we're talking?
Larry Hryb: Yeah, so this will be next-
Charleyy Hodson: Yeah, there you go. So next Wednesday is the word I need to use. That is going to be [Jen Panettone 00:08:20] who is the lead of Social Good at Xbox.
Larry Hryb: I know Jen very well. She's great.
Charleyy Hodson: She is superb. We have Shannon Loftis from Worlds Edge coming up.
Larry Hryb: Also, great. In fact, speaking of Worlds Edge later on you're going to interview Adam Isgreen from Worlds Edge. So we'll talk about that in a minute.
Charleyy Hodson: I know. Honestly, I'm living in a fangirls world at the moment talking to all these people from Worlds Edge. They don't know what they've let themselves into with me.
Larry Hryb: Yeah. And then who else? After Shannon, who do you have?
Charleyy Hodson: After Shannon, we got Sarah Bond is on the list coming up.
Larry Hryb: So good. I've been trying to get her on this show. She's doing your show? I'm try to get her on this show.
Charleyy Hodson: I know how absolutely dare, right? We also have Kiki Wolfkill coming up.
Larry Hryb: Also, great from 343.
Charleyy Hodson: She's going to be episode six. I'm just checking out. There we go. Honestly, there's so many names. Oh, yes. There we go. Episode Four is going to be with Haiyan Zhang, the Chief of Staff at Xbox. Who I've spoke to her already. And let me tell you some of the things she has done in her career-
Larry Hryb: It's freaking.
Charleyy Hodson: ... I can do a whole series on. She is...
Larry Hryb: So Haiyan is she works with Phil, Phil Spencer. And she used to work for Microsoft Research. And you're going to hear these... You have to listen. I mean, you're right. She's lived 10 lives. She makes me feel like an underachiever, right? You're like, "Oh, what am I doing?"
Charleyy Hodson: I feel like I'm just going to be sat in the corner of this podcast episode while she's talking, just going, "Wow. Yeah." I just feel like I'm fun talking to her honestly.
Larry Hryb: Anyway, you got some great folks lined up. Good for you.
Charleyy Hodson: Yeah, yeah. The one I haven't mentioned, which I absolutely must, because I feel like is going to be one of my favorite episodes. We've scheduled this to come out during June, which is a really important month for me during conversations because that is Pride Month globally. And we have Katy Jo Wright, the Director from Gaming For Everyone joining us for a special prize and Everyone episode. And my God, I cannot wait.
Larry Hryb: Just to give you an idea of what a family Xbox is. I know Katy Jo, I've known her for many years. Her sister was one of the very first people I met when I worked at Microsoft, they both worked at Microsoft. They are just an amazing, amazing family. So you are going to love her. They are fantastic. So great, great. That's great.
Charleyy Hodson: Just series one. And one of the things I really wanted to do when we set this up was, we wanted to go out with a bang and have a first series with some of the most impactful legendary women in the industry. But what I really want to do going forward is, I envision episodes where we're talking to animators and talking to Foley artists and community managers, PR, HR, everything. I want to go to all depths of the games industry. Because people don't just want to be like studio leads or coders, they might want to be animators or voice artists. And I just want to speak to everyone and get their opinions.
Larry Hryb: Well, that's the point that I always like to bring up, that I've done for years on this podcast is like, "Hey, just because you're not a developer, doesn't mean that it can't be a role for you in the games industry." There's people that you just said that the audio folks, or HR, or any type of engineer or writers. Clearly, so there's so many disciplines in the games that it covers now that it's pretty impressive so, good for you.
Charleyy Hodson: And this is a mentality I had growing up. I always knew I wanted to go into video games. And I quickly realized that coding just went straight over my head and I couldn't figure out so and right what am I good at. And I went to university here in lovely old England in Bournemouth, if anyone knows it. And I went and studied English language, and I went, "I'm going to be a video game journalist, or a writer or something." And something happened along the way. And now I'm a community manager and I run events and social media, but I'm not complaining.
Larry Hryb: You're using those language skills.
Charleyy Hodson: Hell, yeah.
Larry Hryb: Well, thank you for that. And like I said I'll put a link down below on how people can listen to the podcasts. Some of those episodes you heard are already available. The other ones are upcoming. So it's about every other week when you drop a new one, correct?
Charleyy Hodson: Yes, that's the one. Every other Wednesday they come out.
Larry Hryb: Good for you. Well, congratulations. But we're going to get you on the show. Because I said, Jeff's out of town. And I looked around I said, "What am I going to do? Do we do a show?" And then I said, "Let's get Charleyy on, because you've got this great project you're working on and I haven't seen you in forever." What are you playing, by the way? What are we playing right now?
Charleyy Hodson: Larry, can I tell you something that's really embarrassing about what I'm playing at the moment.
Larry Hryb: Please do.
Charleyy Hodson: You won't laugh, right?
Larry Hryb: No, no.
Charleyy Hodson: I haven't played Halo before. So I'm playing through all of the Halo games at the moment. In this order, we've done Reach, Combat Evolved 2, ODST. Last night I started three then we're going to do four and five. I'll probably have to do Reach again. Now I understand what's going on. And then fingers crossed, I'll be all ready for Infinite.
Larry Hryb: Well, that's not embarrassing at all. I actually kind of jealous because, when I played the original Halo, for instance, and that was on the original Xbox back in 2000, 20 years ago. And now you get to play with the remastered version. It's all-
Charleyy Hodson: It is stunning. I've been swapping through the buttons, so you can see the old visuals and the remaster, because of the Master Chief Collection. And it looks like a movie, some of the remasters that they've done. But also I love seeing how it looked before because that was the original game that got people hooked on Halo. And I think it's... I love that they kept that in there.
Larry Hryb: Do you know... If I recall correctly, I remember when they added that feature into Halo: Combat Evolved. I don't know if this is true through all that series is that when you've got... So what Charleyy is talking about is, when you play the Master Chief Collection, there's, I think, the view button you can switch back and forth between the original graphics and the remastered, or the up uprezed or the whatever they're calling it now. And if I recall correctly, I remember the engineers telling me that the console is so powerful, it is actually running two simultaneous versions of the game. So, when you switch-
Charleyy Hodson: You can just press the button, and it will switch, like at any point during a cutscene or gameplay, you can just switch back and forth. And it's so good.
Larry Hryb: There's so much engineering going on in here is that, "Hey, let's just run another version. We'll run the old version and the new version. And then the player can dynamically swap back or not even swap back and forth at all, will just stay in one another. It's entirely up to them." But I'm slightly jealous because you get to experience it in a way that, certainly my mind remembers it a different way. But it's good for you. I'm excited for you. That's going to be great.
Charleyy Hodson: I'm loving it, and I'm streaming it as well. And so the thing that you and I-
Larry Hryb: [crosstalk 00:14:53] sectional of the show?
Charleyy Hodson: No. I was actually going to say I'm not going to plug my stream because I don't think any respectful listeners of your podcast should come watch my stream. But what I will say is because of my affiliation with Xbox and Xbox On, is a lot of people who do watch my streams are huge Xbox fans. And so then they are reliving all of the Halos again and I'm seeing like the Jackal Snipers at the start of Halo 3. And the moments were realizing it's Nathan Fillion and ODST and all of them are just like, "Oh, I remember this bit." Or, "Oh, I really want to play this again." And I am feeling this warmth from people I've known for years come out because they've got Halo in front of them. And it's opening my eyes really, like, "I've worked at Xbox for four years. I've known Halo is the game, the granddaddy. But now I get it. And I love it."
Larry Hryb: Right. That's exciting. Well, good for you. Yeah, I was out last week. So I've really never had a chance to play too much, playing a lot of cloud gaming or doing some CPUs on the cloud which is fun. But yeah, we got a busy week going up. We've got some great interviews and I want to get into those because you and I been chatting for quite some time here. I'm not that I don't love it. By the way thank you for joining the show this week. I mean I know it's a little bit... Jeff and I record around noon, our time. So we're usually getting hungry for lunch. It's much later your time, sure over in the UK. So thank you for letting me barge into your family hours.
Charleyy Hodson: It's fine. It just means that the delay playing Outriders by an hour or two. It's absolutely fine.
Larry Hryb: But we've got two interviews this week. And now Jeff was... He's on holiday this week, because you all say in the UK. He's on holiday but we want to do this interview for MLB which is a huge game finally on Xbox. It's the most... I don't know if you've seen this or if I can add this in. Let's vamp for a minute Charleyy, I want to see if I can add this in because this video is... Yeah, here it is.
Charleyy Hodson: I remember everyone getting really excited about this when it was announced and I will plead my UK ignorance here. I don't really get it, but it's another one of those things where I could see the impact that MLB was having on Xbox fans especially with it being Game Pass as well.
Larry Hryb: Right. Well this is what a lot of people... Hold on a second let me back up. Because this part is people... Just like... [inaudible 00:17:05] second pause. Here we go. Is that when we when you saw the trailer for MLB, first it's coming in Game Pass too, which is a whole other conversation. But it's the Xbox logo and PlayStation Studios. People are like-
Charleyy Hodson: Things you love to say.
Larry Hryb: Wait, what? Let's play that again. Shall we? Xbox logo.
Charleyy Hodson: Go. Let's have a look.
Larry Hryb: I need to turn it into-
Charleyy Hodson: I'll look at that. Saw it next to each other being no lush. Love it.
Larry Hryb: It's a great, great thing. So yeah, it's interesting because MLB doesn't really... Baseball isn't really a driving force over there in in the UK and in many parts of the world, it isn't like in Japan and some other areas-
Charleyy Hodson: Oh, interesting.
Larry Hryb: But in the UK, it's not so much so maybe I should have gotten somebody on from from Asia, Charleyy, maybe we should boot you off.
Charleyy Hodson: Yeah. But then it's one of those things where there's absolutely niche for it here. They've started to bring American football over. I remember they do some matches in the big London stadiums.
Larry Hryb: NFL, Yeah.
Charleyy Hodson: That's it. Yes. And there was just a pocket of UK people who were just absolutely nutty for it. So yeah, I think it's great.
Larry Hryb: Is there anything more American than watching American football.. There's just grrrr. They're just pounding their heads together any way. But anyway, MLB The Show I just dialed Jeff in from wherever he was on holiday to do that. And then Charleyy, you were going to follow after that. You, you my friend got to talk to Adam Isgreen for about Worlds Edge. Let's get like 10 second preview of that.
Charleyy Hodson: Oh, god, I'm so excited. We basically just talked about Age 4, new gameplay coming out. We spoke a lot about elephants. And it didn't make it into the recording. But afterwards I fangirled because I found out because I found out that he also worked on Command & Conquer. So all in all, an amazing guy and amazing game. That was longer than 10 seconds, I'll stop.
Larry Hryb: But what did thinking about... And you and I made an editorial decision that we decided to leave, the beginning of his interview. And we're not going to tell you what we decided to leave that is. Let's go ahead we'll talk about MLB the show first and follow-up with the Worlds Edge in the Age of Empires news. Here we go.
Jeff: That's right, Larry, Charleyy, I'm on vacation mode, but this is something I couldn't miss. I'm just going to take these and put those aside for now. It's baseball time. Do you believe it? Jaws dropped last year when it was announced that MLB The show was coming to Xbox. Here we are opening day has recently passed. Digital opening day is here upon us now. You may have heard of the show. But what makes it such a big deal. That's why I'm very humbled and honored to be welcoming Ramone Russell, a product development communications and brand strategist at Sony San Diego studio and a friend. Ramon, welcome to the Xbox Podcast.
Ramone Russell: Oh man, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.
Jeff: Oh, man, this moment is just so awesome. I'm just very... Worlds colliding here but in just the best possible-
Ramone Russell: Worlds definitely colliding, yeah. Absolutely.
Jeff: So this is the show opening day for Xbox fans. And when that trailer dropped recently showing the first Xbox Series X G0ameplay, it was sort of mind-blowing to me to see the video start. First there was the Xbox logo, then PlayStation Studios, and San Diego studios after that, and then jumping into this footage. So for Xbox fans who have not had the pleasure of playing the show, you're getting over a dozen years of baseball SIM building experience by San Diego Studio. Ramone, can you talk a little bit about what sets the franchise apart in terms of realism and quality?
Ramone Russell: Sure, I think you kind of hit on it. We've been making baseball games here at the San Diego Studio for over 15 years is what we do every single year, year in and year out. And our whole development team, we're all baseball fans. We're all very passionate baseball fans that we take a lot of pride in our product. And so over those 15 years, we think we've came to a position to where we make one of the best, deepest, most exciting games that you can play at any time during the year.
And we're just so excited and happy to be opening up this baseball game to the Xbox family. And we're not only opening it up to the Xbox family, but we also have cross-platform play and cross-progression as well. So Xbox fans can play against the PlayStation fans and vice versa. And if you happen to own both systems, you can take your progression across all systems. It's really seamless and we're really excited about being able to include those features.
Jeff: And I think gamers are going to be very excited to hear the magic words, people love to hear that. So for those Xbox fans who maybe are more used to playing arcadey type of baseball games, now that they've got the show it's a deeper SIM. How do you onboard those players to get used to the way that The Show works?
Ramone Russell: Great question. So when you download MLB the show for the first time on an Xbox, we're going to ask you a few questions. And just make sure you say, "I'm a beginner. And I want to start on casual mode." If you do those two things, it's going to open up our entire onboarding process. And so what we do now, and we've been thinking about this for a while. We're going to throw you into a game. And the whole focus of the game will be for us to teach you how to play MLB The Show.
And some of the more nuanced things about a baseball and just baseball in general. So we've run you through all the different ways that you can play the game. We let you try them out automatically, you don't have to do anything. And then as you continue playing, you'll continue to unlock more and more onboarding. So we'll teach you how to pitch, how to hit, how to field, other nuance things. And then eventually you can turn all of those things off, or you can keep them on. And specifically with MLB the show 21, we've added so many new on-field aids to basically help people understand what's going on.
So we have a base for play icon. So if the ball is hitting play, we'll say "Hey, you need to throw it to this base." We have a route to ball indicator, which says, "Hey, here's the straight line you need to take to be able to play this ball perfectly." So there's a lot of things in onboarding on beginner mode and casual mode that will help any veteran, or any person who has never played MLB the show understand baseball and MLB the show better.
Jeff: Yeah. Don't come in there and say, "No, I'm great. I know all my stuff." If you've never played before, there's no harm, there's no dishonor in choosing beginner mode to get your feet wet, and then move your way up to The Show. So this isn't just the first time The Show is going to appear on Xbox. But this is a generational jump. And in my opinion, sports games, those are always the first things I love to pop into... It's when I'm showing off a new console of a new generation, because the visuals always look amazing. So talk about how San Diego Studios leveraging the Xbox Series X and Series S and really making it shine. I mean, it looks amazing. Look at this footage here right now.
Ramone Russell: Moving on to NextGen, it's finally allowed us to do the most requested feature ever in the history of our franchise, which is stadium creator. We've been working on it for quite a while. And I've been thinking about it for about five or seven years, doing some prototyping. We've been actively in development on this feature for over two years. And it's finally coming to NextGen consoles. And it's something that we're also just not possible on the previous console. So stadium creator is a neck and only feature. Past that we got 60 frames per second locked Gameplay. Gameplay is buttery smooth. We've also updated all of our textures on our uniforms. Uprezed our faces. And all the audio in the game, every single audio file is now at a higher bitrate. And that's thanks in part to the added horsepower of the new next generation console.
Jeff: I've been watching this video... You had put out video of the stadium creator pretty recently. And it's pretty wild to see all the sort of fictional things that you can add to a stadium. And I think I'm going to be spending a lot of time with that particular mode. So let's talk more about modes. I think people coming in that maybe are familiar with sports games, but maybe not the show. Sure. They expect things like franchise mode, playing a single game, playing against friends. But there's other names that I've heard over time like Road to the Show or Diamond Dynasty. Can you tell us about sort of the full package that you get with MLB The Show?
Larry Hryb: Yeah, we're going to actually pause here for a second, Ramone. I noticed your video has frozen completely for us. And so I'm going to ask you... Yeah, I don't know what happened maybe your browser... But if you can just go ahead and disconnect and redial in and we'll do a quick pickup. Jeff, if that's alright with you.
Ramone Russell: Okay.
Jeff: Yeah, yeah.
Larry Hryb: So we'll just wait here. Yeah, [Joella 00:25:41], thank you for calling that out. I noticed that as well. So I was trying to cover with Gameplay. Usually when it does that. He comes back in but here it comes back in and standby. There he is. Hello, my friend.
Ramone Russell: That has never happened before.
Larry Hryb: All right. So Jeff, do you want to pick up with that question? And we'll just continue on here.
Jeff: Sure. Sure.
Larry Hryb: Okay, standby. Let's do it, anytime you're ready.
Jeff: Okay.
Ramone Russell: Well, did it happen again?
Jeff: It did happen again.
Larry Hryb: Your audio is fine but for some reason the video keeps…
Ramone Russell: Darn it. That's weird because I use this program all the time and that has never happened. Okay, let me dial back in again.
Larry Hryb: All right, we'll be here. Guys, Jeff, while he's dialing back in I brought up the stadium creator when he was doing that, when he talked about that.
Jeff: Yeah, I saw all of it. I've got it another in another window. That actually was really perfectly done. I see, Ramone is back.
Larry Hryb: And he's moving.
Ramone Russell: I'm moving.
Jeff: All right let's hope that-
Ramone Russell: It doesn't stop.
Larry Hryb: All right, here we go.
Jeff: You have always been very calm and cool. And I mean, sometimes I just don't even see him move. All right, here we go.
Larry Hryb: Okay, standby. Just putting the slate up there anytime you're ready, go ahead.
Jeff: And three, two, okay. Let's talk modes, in addition to stadium creator, just looks amazing. I know, I'm going to be spending a lot of time with that. If you're just coming into the show, I'm sure you're expecting as a sports fan. Things like franchise mode, playing online exhibitions, things like that. But over time, there's modes that I've been hearing about with MLB like, Road to the Show, Diamond dynasty. Can you talk a little bit about those and sort of everything that encompasses the MLB The Show package?
Ramone Russell: Yeah, I think you mentioned it, as with any sports games, we have exhibition where you can just play a random game, we have a season mode. But we also have a few really interesting modes. The first one, as you alluded to Jeff is called Road to the Show. Baseball is a very unique sport. And what's really unique about baseball is what happens when you get drafted. You just don't start in the Majors, you actually have to start at AA and AAA and work your way up and earn that spot to play for a Major League team.
And so we have a mode in the game that mimics that where you start out in the minors, and you're trying to become the best player you can to eventually make it to the Majors. And we've done a lot of work over this mode over the last 15 years. And it's changing a lot this year with the addition to be able to be a two-way player, like Mr. Ohtani, where you're pitching and hitting. We also have franchise mode, like you mentioned. We also have a mode called March to October. Baseball is a very, very long season, and we March to October, you only play a handful of games but the impact on what happens in those games, impacts what happens in the games that you don't play. So you can get to the end of the season and March to October, in about 12-15 hours. And baseball is a game it's 160 plus game season, and not everybody has a lot of the time. So March to October is a great way to experience a franchise mode like game setting, but you can do it in a lot quicker amount of time.
And the last mode you mentioned was Diamond Dynasty. Diamond dynasty is our fantasy baseball mode, where you're basically trying to collect all the baseball cards you can. And fill the best team you can and basically climb the leaderboards, or just collect all of the cards. And we have interesting ways to play diamond dynasty with like programs and missions that allows you to unlock a ton of content for the game. And all you have to do is play the game. We call it grind 99, you want a card, you see something you like, just play the game and there's a way for you to obtain it.
Jeff: I love to hear that. So let's talk about your cover athlete. You're based in San Diego, of course. And on the cover Fernando Tatis Jr. from the Padres. What was it like putting a hometown guy on the cover? And I'm sure you got to meet him and do mo-cap and all that cool stuff.
Ramone Russell: It was great. I mean, it was a little weird because of everything that happened last year. But baseball is getting younger, more youthful, more exuberant. This new crop of players are not afraid to show their emotion and passion for the game. And we think Fernando Tatis Jr. really exemplifies that, where baseball now it's a young man's game. And these young kids, they're so good at the game and they let you know it and they let their emotion so. And that's what we think people want to see in baseball. Is being able to really see the personalities from our superstars.
Jeff: All right, last question perhaps the most important, as we record this Phillies are top of the NL East, they're safe against the Braves. Yesterday, I don't think that can be debated at all. But I don't make the calls here. I just live with them, especially when they go in my direction. But you're the experts, so how do you see the World Series shaping up this year? Who do you think the EL and NL are going to make it to the finals Series?
Ramone Russell: It's going to be interesting. It's going to be really, really interesting. I think you know, Tampa Bay is going to be a team that has to be dealt with. New York is going to be another hard out. The Phillies are playing great. I think you're going to see a lot of the same teams that made it to the playoffs last year, make it to the playoffs again. And then they're just going to have to fight it out. Who I see coming out? I don't know, the Dodgers are still a monster. I think they're going to be really hard to beat in the series. And I also think the Padres are going to be really hard to beat in the series. We're just excited to have baseball back and can't wait to see how it all shakes out.
Jeff: And that's the best part about April baseball, is everyone feels-
Ramone Russell: Everybody's in it. Everybody's-
Jeff: [crosstalk 00:31:27] got a chance. Exactly, exactly. So, Ramone Russell, thank you so much. And MLB The Show, the Jackie Robinson Edition and the Digital Deluxe Editions, they're out now, so you can play those. And if you've got the standard edition coming out real soon, Tuesday 4:20, we'll be playing that. So thank you so much for joining us. And I just got to say as a representative of team Xbox it's great to have the show on Xbox.
Ramone Russell: Feels good to be on Xbox too. Thank you so much for having me Jeff.
Jeff: Of course. Major Nelson, I'm back on vacation mode you can take it from here.
Charleyy Hodson: I am joined with Adam Isgreen, the studio creative director from Worlds Edge. How are you Adam?
Adam Isgreen: I'm doing very well Charleyy. How are you today?
Oh I am excellent and all the more so for talking to you. I mean, Age has been a big part of Microsoft gaming history for many years. And with the preview this just happened I could not be more excited to talk to you right now. So I'm actually going to dive into my first question which is... Oh.
Speaker 6: Hi.
Adam Isgreen: Oh, my goodness.
Charleyy Hodson: Hey.
Adam Isgreen: Well, as you know, we're doing things from home means that sometimes children miraculously appear.
Charleyy Hodson: She like, "I've got this one. That's our field, this question."
Speaker 6: All my stuff is even the bed even-
Adam Isgreen: Okay you got your stuffies off the bed.
Speaker 6: And also have all-
Adam Isgreen: And now you get the dog.
Speaker 6: All my stuffies in my closet and also on the ground because I want to have stuffy battle with you after your meeting.
Adam Isgreen: Okay. Well let me do my meeting and then we can have a stuffy battle later.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Charleyy Hodson: Oh, I want to come.
Speaker 6: I h ave every stuffy on the floor-
Adam Isgreen: Yes, see we have stuffy battles here at our house.
Charleyy Hodson: I love that.
Adam Isgreen: [inaudible 00:33:07] munchkin.
Speaker 6: No, no.
Charleyy Hodson: Hi.
Adam Isgreen: [crosstalk 00:33:11] say hi.
Speaker 6: Hi.
Charleyy Hodson: Hello.
Adam Isgreen: All right, [inaudible 00:33:16] I got to do my meeting. Okay? You can mess up my Rubik's Cube later.
Speaker 6: No.
Charleyy Hodson: Oh, kids.
Adam Isgreen: All right. Come on.
Charleyy Hodson: I have that's nine next week and she is just same energy. Yeah, absolutely. We don't have the dog and we don't have stuffy battles but she's constantly like, "YouTube, this. Roblox that." She's [inaudible 00:33:40] Torchlight three at the moment with [crosstalk 00:33:42].
Adam Isgreen: I've heard that one's okay for the Torchlight series. I haven't played a lot of it. Yeah, she's five.
Charleyy Hodson: Torchlight II was my favorite but III is a great jumping in point perks. We've played a lot of Minecraft and dungeons.
Adam Isgreen: Yeah, that's a super fun one. And the kids love playing in our house too. Okay, sweetie, I got to do my meeting.
Speaker 6: Brother.
Adam Isgreen: Okay, no brother is upstairs. I'll see you later.
Charleyy Hodson: Brother.
Adam Isgreen: Yeah, fortunately, my kids are complete opposites to my son and my daughter just like polar opposites. But yeah, so that happens about once a day. Just to let you know.
Charleyy Hodson: Perfect.
Adam Isgreen: I apologize.
Charleyy Hodson: Feel free if she wants to get back to answer any questions, then, I'm always happy talking about the franchise.
Adam Isgreen: We can pull her, and she would have a lot to say.
Charleyy Hodson: Perfect. Okay, so returning to question number one.
Adam Isgreen: Yes, we'll see.
Charleyy Hodson: We'll see what goes from there. So firstly, I want to know more about the new civilizations that you revealed. In specific, I do have my eyes on the Delhi elephants as I imagine most people do.
Adam Isgreen: So the elephants are a funny story. When we first started talking about what we were going to do with Age of Empires IV and where we're going to set it. I'm a huge fan of the other Age of Empires games, especially the Persians and their elephants in Age II. And one of the things that I had asked when once we arrived on the time period was like, because I didn't want to dictate any of the civilizations that would be in the game. Because we wanted to look and try to take a more broad approach as to what civilizations we're going to offer in this as we launch Age IV. And I was like, "Look, if the time period allows it, I would love to have a sit with elephants. Can we please sit with elephants."
And this time around, the really great thing with the sultanates they actually... In previous Age games, there's only one elephant. We actually have two types of elephants now on the Delhi Sultanates, they have war elephants and tower war elephants. And both of them have very different roles. And they're great. I mean, the Sultanate is an incredible civilization in that, they have a lot of very different ways of researching technologies, and they play a little differently. You have to be in a different mindset, when you're playing as them.
Charleyy Hodson: Oh. Okay.
Adam Isgreen: Yeah, it's you will start playing and then you'll be like, "Oh, wait, I'm playing these guys. I need to think differently." But the thing that I love about them is that they're a CIV, they can really defend themselves and until they get elephants. There's like this, the Sultanate's cool until the elephants. And then they just take over and rampage across the board. And they're very hard to stop when you have a good mass of elephants backed up by troops. So yeah, they've been a delight to work with and really explore the nuances. It brings a lot of difference to the battle when you rally around the elephants, it's like a centerpiece.
Charleyy Hodson: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I imagine, this is coming from someone who back in the day, you're putting like, the cars in the game with the machine guns with the lasers on and everyone rallies around that. I'm just really keen to see more large mobile vehicles sort of in the game that you're letting us use.
Adam Isgreen: Yeah, I mean, it is literally the tank of the Middle Ages, right? There was nothing like it.
Charleyy Hodson: I love that.
Adam Isgreen: The reason they were so terrifying is so many of these other cultures that were attacked by civilizations, elephants had never even seen them before. So they didn't even know what they were looking at, right?
Charleyy Hodson: Yeah.
Adam Isgreen: It's just an incredible thing in history that we're really fortunate to that the one of the animators that worked on them is Indian, and his uncle has elephants. And so he was just... Yeah, believe it or not one of the animators that-
Charleyy Hodson: What a coincidence?
Adam Isgreen: And he was like, "Oh, yeah, elephants. Yeah, no, that's no problem. I've been around elephants my whole life."
Charleyy Hodson: [crosstalk 00:37:23] That's amazing. It also like, it gives me this idea of when I play I'm absolutely going to role-play when the elephants come in Lord of the Rings, and I'm just going to do that fight.
Adam Isgreen: Oh, yeah, epic. Is epic battles with them. But yeah, as you can see in the footage, they're great at taking down walls. They are great take down buildings. And then the tower war elephants are great at covering infantry and just providing like a really big, kind of like shield for your troops. So yeah, it's a great combination. And really fun to play and really sad when they die. I mean, you kind of hurts. It really does, actually-
Charleyy Hodson: [crosstalk 00:38:01] but, yeah.
Adam Isgreen: Yeah, it's even all the units now because we've imbued a lot more personality and humanity into the units. So when you lose them now you feel it a lot more, which is-
Charleyy Hodson: Means something-
Adam Isgreen: Yeah, means something. Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Charleyy Hodson: I love that. So as well as the elephants, you also revealed the new Norman campaign, one of the four new playable campaigns coming in Age IV. Can you tell us what makes this particular campaign so special?
Adam Isgreen: Well, I mean, the Norman invasion basically changed all of England, which is where our language and everything else came from. And so many things flowed out of that change, that we thought it was a really great piece to start with, when we were talking about the campaign's that we were going to do in Age IV. One, of the things we really loved about it, too, is the approach that we've taken the history and Age IV is very different than anything we've done before and in previous Age game. But also, I've made a lot of RTS games in the past, and I've never seen a game do what we're doing with the story and with the campaigns. And part of that is because we have history as our backdrop. And, man, I mean, they're not a lot of other games that can say that. But it's also the approach we've taken to try to... This is going to sound funny, but what I like to call it internally is humanized history. And what I mean by that is, like, "How do I get someone today to connect with history that happened 500 plus years ago, right?"
Charleyy Hodson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Adam Isgreen: How can we bring those two together? And we did a lot of talks. We're really inspired by, Cosmos with Neil deGrasse Tyson and even Top Gear. In how it's car culture and just made it this thing that was so accessible. And we wanted to do the same thing with history. And so the campaigns are a great way to experience that where you're kind of narrated, it's interesting. So here we have one of the first missions in the Norman campaign. And it's fascinating because you're narrated, so you'll hear things like, "Harold knew he would need to gather wood in order to build up defenses." And then you'll hear it then you're objective will appear like, "Gather 500 wood or whatever it happens to be."
And so you get to play as history. And it's a very, very different approach. And [crosstalk 00:40:12], I mean, we're super nervous about it when we did it, and we were like, "Is this going to work?" Like, "Are people going to like this?" So different. And fortunately, everyone we put it in front of so far, it's just been like, "Wow, I can't believe what you've done. This is like, I'm playing a BBC documentary, but it's more engaging. And I feel like I'm connected."
You probably saw in the footage, we've got scenes of the real world with these golden light buildings and soldiers projected over them. And to me, I love that kind of stuff because it's like, "Hey, here's present day, but this is what it used to be like." And there was, "By the way, did you know if you happen to live outside this town, there was a massive battle that decided the fate of England, right outside of your town home?" And it's crazy to think about all the things that have, take, transpired especially in Europe and Asia. And what they've meant for human civilization. So it's super fun to be able to do that and present the campaigns that way.
Charleyy Hodson: Yeah, you guys aren't strangers to put in new things in each of the new Age games as they come along. And we saw plenty in this way. The six minute peek are like exclusive Age for Gameplay. And I was wondering if there are any other Gameplay mechanics players can expect to tackle when they when it's their turn to have a go on the battlefield?
Adam Isgreen: Oh, man, I mean, we've done a lot of... What we wanted to do is really preserve what was great about Age of Empires. We didn't want to break Age of Empires. It'd be very easy to take it in a different direction and turn it into a different game. Yeah, that's important. I think the things we wanted to do is, is we looked for avenues where we could say, "Hey, where can we improve this? Or where we could make this more interesting, or realistic to medieval times in terms of how battles were fought, and things that were important."
And so things like, improving siege combat, and having battles on walls was super important to us. It was like, "Oh, this is cool. We can have units. Now you can siege walls, you can fight on the walls, you can hold the top of walls. And everyone thinks walls are great until somebody else gets on top of your walls. And then they're just shooting raining down arrows and everything onto your troops. And they say, "Oh, crap"
Charleyy Hodson: [crosstalk 00:42:25] that changes everything for my Gameplay style. I'm very much someone who turtles themselves in and then I will build watch towers all along the inside. And then I will use that to defend myself. But yeah, now knowing that my walls can be used against me will absolutely make me change the way I play.
Adam Isgreen: Oh, yeah. And there's great fortifications you can put on the walls as and as well as behind them. So you have a lot of strategy options there. Another thing that we did that you got to see a little bit of in the fan preview video is the stealth forests. And what we wanted to do is, the idea of cloaking and things like hiding information is the key thing in real-time strategy games. And what we decided to do is, is make a new type of forest patch that we can place down on map strategically or and... What it does, is it lets you hide your troops.
And so your line of sight crushes to almost nothing. And when you're in them, you can see out of them though. So if you're near the borders, you can see out. So in the video, you'll see there's a sequence where the Mongols ambush the Chinese. And what they do is they move all of their troops into these stealth forests, and they can't be seen. And the other team didn't have a scout, and scouts can see in the stealth forest. Now, in order to counter that, so they have a use later in the game. But the thing I love is, we could have just made stealth forests and made your units look a little different. But now, they whisper. So, when you move your units in the stealth forest all your unit responses become whisperers.
Charleyy Hodson: I love that.
Adam Isgreen: Because they're hiding, right?
Charleyy Hodson: [crosstalk 00:44:01] attention to detail.
Adam Isgreen: Yeah, I mean, the language changes. I mean, we've done so much every Age you go through, this is something that hits people pretty hard when they experience it too. Sorry, you got me on all these crazy tangents.
Charleyy Hodson: No, [crosstalk 00:44:16] tangent away.
Adam Isgreen: So as you're going through the Ages, the language will actually change. So if you're playing a CIV like the English, when you start off in the dark age, they're speaking like in a language you can't really understand today. You're like, "Okay, I guess this is what they spoke." But as you go through the four Ages in the game, and you get up to the Castle Age at the end, they're speaking Old English, and you can actually understand them.
Charleyy Hodson: Wow, that's so cool.
Adam Isgreen: Yeah, so you get a language lesson as well.
Charleyy Hodson: [crosstalk 00:44:47] a lot to research as well. Just on that one idea alone. The amount of man hours I imagine went into researching that was phenomenal.
Adam Isgreen: It was... I know the relic team, they put in a ton of effort and they did a ton of work on... Because it's easy for us who speak English to be like, "Wow, English really evolved and we can see it. It's one of the newer right languages in some ways." But then we were sitting here going, "Okay, what's the ancient Mongolian sound like? And did it evolve?" Right. And what do we do with that. And so it was a lot of fun. And it involved us talking to a lot of cultural experts from those actual cultures to really dive in and try to understand how the language went and how it evolved over time, so that we can make the right choices in representation and make sure we were doing it accurately. But it's been a blast.
Charleyy Hodson: I love that. I mean, that does really naturally bring me on to the next thing I wanted to know, which was during the preview, we also saw a behind the scenes look at relic. And I was curious, if you could give us more information about what it is that Worlds Edge are bringing to Age IV. And also what it's like working with the RTS experts? That must have been, I mean, bucket list for me, I can tell you that for a start.
Adam Isgreen: Well, I mean, like our job at Worlds Edge is to kind of be the caretakers and shepherds of the Age IP. And so what that means is, we have a full staff of people that do game development, everything from, design, like me, my background, to programming, and artists, and narrative and audio. And we contribute to every project that's being worked on at all of our studios. So, Age I, II, III, Myth, Age IV, all of the things that we're doing. We're always in the mix on a day-to-day basis, guiding and making sure that the games are going the way that we want for the overall franchise.
And Relic, Oh, my gosh. Relic has been such an incredible partner. So full disclosure, when we first had the project and internally, we were talking about it. We were, "Hey, could we bring back Age? What would we do?" And myself and a couple others came up with this kind of presentation for Phil and every one about like, "Hey, this is what we would love to think about. This isn't a pitcher for a game. It's, it's like the things." And they're like, "Well, who do you want to work with?" We're like, "Well, Relic."
Charleyy Hodson: Well, them. Yeah.
Adam Isgreen: That was the conversation. Was literally, "Well, is there anyone else would?" "Yeah, there are others, but relic." Relic, is we want to work with and we would love to go. "Can we have your permission to go and talk to them about this?" And it was great. Relic brings so much to the table in terms of expertise for RTS games. And they've been continually making them for over 20 years, which is incredible. I made RTS games for years back at Westwood Studios. But then I kind of went on to do other things and have to be able to come back to it and be able to sit down with a team that understands real-time strategy games. And immediately hit the ground running on, "What are we going to do? How does Age...? Great. How do we keep RTS? And we didn't have to have all these conversations like you would with a new developer on? "Well, this is what an RTS is like and these are how they playing. Let's learn." They were just like, "Oh, yeah, got it. Got it. What do we do? How do we get this rolling?"
Charleyy Hodson: And they we're off.
Adam Isgreen: And they we're off, And they've been great. It's what's been really fun is how much they value the Age IP in terms of making sure it's an Age game. I know there are a lot of people will read, "Oh my gosh, it's going to feel more like Company of Heroes, or like Donald War or something." And it's like, "No. No, that this is really an Age game." And the funny thing was, there were times or even us at Worlds would be like, "No, you can go further. Let's explore what this could mean." And they're like, "No, no, no, this is Age. We're not going to do that."
Charleyy Hodson: I must stop you there. This is not my Age anymore.
Adam Isgreen: Yeah. Yeah. And it's great. Because having that kind of relationship is wonderful when you know, Relic has taken on so much ownership and pride in making an Age of Empires game.
Charleyy Hodson: Yeah, absolutely. And I guess this sort of naturally brings us to my final point, which, I mean, I mentioned earlier, this is my own personal gain, this question. By the way, FYI, it's got nothing to do with Larry. I'm want to know more about that naval teaser. I mentioned that I like to turtle myself in and hide. And I'm curious how the naval combat is going to shake things up for veteran players, or people who don't often fight on the sea.
Adam Isgreen: Well, the funny thing is that when we were approaching... I'll give you some backstory here that I actually haven't said this to anyone yet, so this should be fun.
Charleyy Hodson: Scoop, scoop.
Adam Isgreen: Oh, you got to scoop. Yeah. One of the fun things is when we were going and looking at Age IV, we were looking at... We have data on all the other Age games and what people play and what they don't. And a lot of people don't play with naval in Age II, specifically. On Age III, obviously, they did a great job with naval and it's a big part of the game. But Age II, a lot of people like, "I'd like, kind of play on try Arabia and other maps, blackforest, things like that, that don't feature water."
And so we were having this big debate, "Do we put naval? Do we not? Do we focus on it later, like have a big naval thing later?" And what it came down to is that naval was so important to Age of Empires as a part of the game. And even if it'd been like, "Well, the data says no one used it." It doesn't matter because it's such a component of Age of Empires that we weren't willing to just walk away from that and not do it.
So what are we doing differently this time around? Well, the big thing that we've tried to do is bring more interesting tactical play into naval. In a lot of ways… And I'm not doing this... I know some people at Age, the previous Age he going like, "Oh, I can't believe you say this, but it feels naval can feel like tank battles on the water, right?
Charleyy Hodson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Adam Isgreen: They're just kind of like, shoot, shoot.
Charleyy Hodson: Yeah.
Adam Isgreen: And that's not to say it's not bad. But it's to us, it felt like that could be more interesting. So the big scoop I will give you is the thinking that we've been doing around how to mix up naval is the difference between order ships and sail ships. And what that actually meant in terms of maneuverability, and combat ability and all that kind of stuff. So that's the big difference that we're going to explore and play with in Age IVfor naval combat.
Hopefully, that will be an interesting, impactful change for people. Naval is one of those things that we're still constantly tweaking and adjusting right now even along with all the other stuff we have to do for the CIVs. But that's our goal, is to get it to a point where it feels like there's really great tactical decisions you can make based on the types of ships that you're fielding.
Charleyy Hodson: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I'll make a note then to not just use my port for fishing ships then.
Adam Isgreen: No, although, yeah, they're really good for that too.
Charleyy Hodson: It's the easiest way. I always whenever I pick a map, I pick somewhere that I know it's going to be near a body of water. Because food is always an issue at the beginning to make sure you're building new people to go do [inaudible 00:51:35], just fish a bunch that'll do.
Adam Isgreen: Yeah, well, actually, deep water fishing is the only resource that renews itself in Age IV. So it's one of the things we've done to push people to fish more and use more naval is that you have an unlimited food supply. You can still run it out, but it'll come back over time. So yeah, it's made the play very interesting. And the people really do rush to try to secure the dock areas so that they can plop a dock down, get fish, but also drop food off.. It's a food drop off for land too. So if you can find Gaia and harvest, there's a whole bunch of things you could do. I'm giving away too much.
Charleyy Hodson: You are but I'm loving every single second. I'll stop you there though. Thank you for giving me your time and your passion and your energy on this call. But in general for this Series, I cannot tell you how excited I am many, many players are about Age IV. And I'm looking forward to see what the rest of this year is got lined up for us.
Adam Isgreen: Oh yeah, we've got a lot of exciting things leading up to launch. So stay tuned. It's we've got four more CIVs to talk about. We've got three more campaigns, a whole bunch of stuff. And yeah, it's just game just gets crazier and crazier, the more you know about it.
Larry Hryb: All right, great set interview there. Charleyy, again, awesome interview with Adam. You were really, really, really, really good there. I mean, I knew you were going to be great, but you were phenomenal. And what I... We had to leave that part at the beginning of the interview-
Charleyy Hodson: We absolutely had to. It was the moment of like, not only the daughter coming in, but then the dog trotting. If any eagled people noticed. The dog stays in the background and has a full clean down. I couldn't keep my eyes off it.
Larry Hryb: I didn't know if you noticed that. But yeah, it was something wasn't it?
Charleyy Hodson: It was brilliant. And yeah, like I said, to talk about Age with someone so influential. My gaming childhood, it was an amazing opportunity. So Larry, thank you. In general, thank you.
Larry Hryb: It's great to have you on the show. I mean, we've got actually a lot of a lot of interviews coming up but also we've got some changes. And next week, and a tease, we have somebody new joining the show on a permanent basis. I'll introduce her next week. Very excited about that. And Charleyy, you are always welcome to come back on the show anytime you'd like. It's just a delight to have you in here .
Charleyy Hodson: Oh, just let me know I'm sat on the doorstep waiting to be let in.
Larry Hryb: Tell us, we talked about your podcast, the Women of UK... Is it the women gaming. Let's get the proper name, shall we?
Charleyy Hodson: Is the Women of Xbox UK Podcast, which is slightly ironic judging the only one person on it is from the UK. But it's because the UK team made it and we're talking to the world.
Larry Hryb: Yeah, so that's the way it goes. I'll put a link to that in the show. Jeff and I'll be right back next week. I want to thank everybody who likes, subscribe, drop a note in the comments and do all that stuff. But you know, Charleyy, will you come back on the show sometime in the future?
Charleyy Hodson: Absolutely. Literally, let me know. I will clear my schedule to do so, Larry.
Larry Hryb: I believe it's your diary.
Charleyy Hodson: Well, that too.
Larry Hryb: But anyway, all right we'll let you go.
Charleyy Hodson: [crosstalk 00:54:46] you ask me about diary or schedule wording. I just told you I do anything for you, and you're over there corrected me? I'm not coming back on, no.
Larry Hryb: Just flip it up. You're done. You're done. All right my dear. Well, listen, stay safe over there in the UK and congratulations on launching Season One of the Women in Gaming Xbox UK Podcast. I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of those interviews and all the great work that you've done over there. And how do people actually know… Let me bring it up. I have a little button here. That's how people follow you on social right there.
Charleyy Hodson: That's the one is it's Charleyy though, with that ridiculous spelling. Any platform, that's me.
Larry Hryb: If you want to try to find I'll put it in the show notes as well. Yeah, it's Charleyy. There you go. All right, Charleyy, we'll talk to you next time. Have a great day. Have a great time. And hopefully we'll see each other in person soon.
Charleyy Hodson: Fingers crossed, Larry. I'll do everything I can to make it happen.