763: Back4Blood and The Vale: Shadow of the Crown

Larry Hryb:
Hey, welcome to the Xbox Podcast. If you're new or returning listener, welcome. This is the only podcast you get straight from Xbox where we recap the most important news of the week. Trust me it is. We drop interviews with industry insiders, you won't find anywhere else. We drop new episodes every Friday on YouTube, on Spotify, Google Apple podcasts, all the great places. So if you like what you're hearing, you're seeing, subscribe.

Larry Hryb:
Jeff, was that better?

Jeff Rubenstein:
Larry, is this Episode One of the Xbox Podcast? Because this is the first time it's actually started off properly in 600 episodes. I'm very proud of you.

Rebecca Gordius:
You did a nice job.

Larry Hryb:
It sounds nicely. Okay. Anyway, welcome guys. I'm your host Larry Hyrb, Xbox's Major Nelson. Right there is Rebecca over on your right if you're looking at the screen and on your left is Jeff. Hey guys.

Jeff Rubenstein:
He's doing it. He's doing the thing.

Larry Hryb:
What? I'm just saying.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Let me hit a button and something happens. And you people, this is good. This is growth.

Larry Hryb:
We can take the show only up here. But for those of you who don't know, as I said, I've been working on the Xbox team since 2003. Rebecca has been working on Minecraft for a few years now, right, Rebecca?

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah. But I've actually been on Xbox for just under nine years now, too, so it's been a while.

Larry Hryb:
Jeff's just been here almost how long? Almost 10 years?

Jeff Rubenstein:
Almost eight. I'm the junior member of the show.

Larry Hryb:
And here's the most important thing. Jeff works on this hot new thing called influencers. So if you're an influencer and you want to reach out to Jeff, that's how you find him, right there.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Rebecca does, too. In fact, we're basically here to contain you. You're the influencer, Larry.

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah. Why do you think we're here?

Larry Hryb:
Not even close. Not even close. Anyway, but it's great to see you guys again this week. Rebecca is in New York. Jeff and I are out here in the Seattle area. By the way, we talked a little bit about it off the air, Rebecca. How is second summer in New York? That's what it's called.

Rebecca Gordius:
Okay. Yeah, it's been pretty nice. I went back to Seattle a few weeks ago and it was nice and chilly. I had to bust out a jacket, but it's been really warm in New York which is nice, getting the last of our outdoorsy stuff in before hibernating for the rest of the winter. But it's okay, there's a lot of good games coming out, games and movies.

Larry Hryb:
There absolutely is, right, Jeff?

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah, it's cold as heck. I'm barely leaving the house and I'm fine because I've got a treadmill. So I play games on the treadmill, games that we don't have to use the camera control because I have fallen off the treadmill playing games that sort of throw with your balance. But if you're playing a 2D RPG, still playing, Octopath Traveler, perfect treadmill game.

Larry Hryb:
Where is the treadmill? I've been to your house. I don't remember where the treadmill was.

Jeff Rubenstein:
I got a really slim one that fits under the sofa right over here. And I can just pull it out and play games.

Larry Hryb:
Rebecca, I don't know about you but I know that myself, as well as everybody else, would like Jeff to do the entire show next week on the treadmill.

Rebecca Gordius:
I think that would be great.

Jeff Rubenstein:
It makes you really think that that rattled me in the slightest? Yeah, we're definitely doing that.

Rebecca Gordius:
Just set up the mic.

Larry Hryb:
Let's do it. Let's do it. Anyway, we've got a lot of gameplay this week. Rebecca, you started last week. So, Jeff, we'll start with you this week. What do you plan?

Jeff Rubenstein:
Still playing Far Cry, still playing Octopath Traveler as I mentioned. But I'm playing with you so go back to the three-shot, Larry. We're playing Back 4 Blood, three of us. This is not the Dream Team right here. This is the At Least We Tried Team and we did.

Rebecca Gordius:
Yes, yes.

Larry Hryb:
Shall we show a little bit? These are some of the clips in Rebecca's POV, point of view, captured last night. And we played Back 4 Blood. We have an interview coming up later on. Back 4 Blood is now on Game Pass. And this is us playing a little bit last night. I got the nice little rifle there. And we had quite the time, didn't we?

Rebecca Gordius:
It was pretty good, yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein:
I don't what happened. Yeah, go on.

Rebecca Gordius:
I felt like we were doing so well when we were in recruit mode, perhaps. But then toward the end, we have that death fog and it was impossible for us to get past. But I think it was good. We did this tutorial, figured out the different controls, figured out how to heal each other, how to share ammo.

Larry Hryb:
There's a lot of this.

Rebecca Gordius:
I remember Larry distinctly calling for help right around this point. So, I was like, "Okay, let me see if I can." Yeah, it was nice.

Larry Hryb:
It was a lot of fun. If you've played, you're going to hear more about it later on in the show. But if you played Left 4 Dead, it is the same team that did that. So, it was a lot of fun last night. And yes, Jeff?

Jeff Rubenstein:
I think we took away lessons from our time playing here together on Back 4 Blood. I would love to hear from each of you your biggest teamwork takeaway?

Larry Hryb:
I think for me, you just constantly keep using the left bumper to mark health, mark ammo. You'll hear about this, Jeff, in the interview. Drop your ammo because you can hold all this ammo but the two weapons that you have, only take one kind each. So I may have a rifle and a pistol. And if I've got a bunch of shotgun ammo then I can go over to my inventory and pull the right trigger and drop everything for Rebecca or Jeff.

Larry Hryb:
So that's the key is to keep marking things and keep an eye on what ammo you have and if you need to mule any ammo for any of your squad mates.

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah. I think for me, I don't know, I feel like I ended up being the team healer toward the end of it. So, at the beginning when we all get the option to shop for things using the copper that we pick up, I tended to buy a lot of the health packs and then go around healing folks which was fitting because I picked the mom character.

Rebecca Gordius:
But aside from that, I think that maybe in the first like our first run-through, we were scattered. We talked about how Larry tends to run off on his own. I think he did a pretty good job last night of sticking with the team though. But I think that our fourth player, too, she ran off a few times. But once we stuck together, it was a lot easier to defend each other.

Rebecca Gordius:
I feel like the, what are they called, the Ridden, they would pop out from pretty random places. And so, it was good to stick together so that you can actually help defend each other although you can see it doesn't work so great here and someone knocks me down by a friendly fire.

Larry Hryb:
Jeffrey.

Jeff Rubenstein:
I think we had on a hard level. I had one big takeaway, stop shooting the damn birds. That's what's happening. There are flocks of crows just roosting in different places. And if you leave them alone, it's fine. But if you shoot them or you bundle into them, they fly off and it calls in a huge horde of zombies that is completely avoidable. We did it every time.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Every time. We disturbed the birds and we made it very hard for ourselves.

Larry Hryb:
If you remember Left 4 Dead, there was the concept of the witch. And if you scare the witch, she'd scream and there was a couple of mechanisms. And it's a similar situation. And again, of the three of us, I know, Jeff, after we played last night, you went on and played with another group and got a little bit further than we did.

Larry Hryb:
But as far as we went, the birds was the only mechanism that triggered the horde. Is that accurate?

Jeff Rubenstein:
There's also alarmed doors which we probably also just run right through.

Larry Hryb:
And alarmed cars.

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah, car alarms.

Jeff Rubenstein:
And we did it all. If you could stumble into it ... we stepped on as many rakes as they placed onto the battlefield. So after we quit playing because we hit a wall a little bit in Act One, and I ended up getting an invite. I ended up playing with Andrea Rene and Riana and her fiancé Danny Pena Godfrey. And we just were flying. We just blew pass it.

Jeff Rubenstein:
In fact, after we get past Act One, Part Four, it shows the title. We didn't get to the part where they showed the title and say this is what you're playing.

Rebecca Gordius:
Don't rub it in.

Jeff Rubenstein:
We were in the prologue. And after that, you can start from that point. You don't have to do the beginning. It gives you a checkpoint where you can start from there every time. So, I am convinced, we are not that enough.

Larry Hryb:
So your point we're not in easy mode and we were playing it on a little bit more challenging.

Jeff Rubenstein:
I'm pretty sure. You should start this game on recruit mode. I think we were playing on veteran or something like that. And we are not veterans, we are not hardened. Despite all of our FPF history, we were just not. We were not there.

Larry Hryb:
We were ill-prepared, weren't we?

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah, I would love to play again with you all.

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah, for sure.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Because I feel like from a teammate perspective, we were sharing, we were caring. Thank you, Rebecca. You were the healer because you were the last one standing. You were like de facto. We were all dead. You got no choice but to heal, so thank you.

Jeff Rubenstein:
But I feel like we'll try it again. And let's triple check we're on recruit mode. And then we can go a little further because there are some really cool set pieces, one on a ship, one on a church that we didn't even get to that are really fun. I would love to take another run at this.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah. We don't want to talk too much more about it because Jeff's got an interview with the executive producer of Turtle Rock later on in this show. And you're going to hear all about this, about building your deck. She's going to talk a little bit about ... there's an interesting term she'll bring up in the interview that she'll talk about the Director.

Larry Hryb:
And the Director is for those of you again from Left 4 Dead, remember it's the game. It's the game trying to randomly do different things. I remember when we were playing last night, the Director had put a flock of birds in an area that we had to sneak by and we didn't do that well as Jeff pointed out. But the next when we died, we came back, there were no birds there, they were elsewhere.

Larry Hryb:
So, the Director is this amorphous thing that randomizes elements in the game. There you go. That's what explained that, Jeff. You'll hear about that. Anyway, actually, so we talked about what you're playing. Rebecca, what are you playing?

Rebecca Gordius:
I haven't been playing much else. I started The Vale this morning. I actually did an interview earlier today with Dave and Lukas from Falling Squirrel, the team behind the game. So, for those who don't know, Thursday, October 14th is actually world sight day.

Rebecca Gordius:
And so, The Vale: Shadow of the Crown is a game designed for both low vision and also just able-sighted gamers. And it's an audio experience, so put a headset on, try it out. It's pretty cool. You can learn more about in the interview.

Larry Hryb:
Depending upon how you're listening to the show. Just like this, it's an audio experience.

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah. But they were cool guys, it's a good shot.

Larry Hryb:
Jeff seems so mildly abused by my comment.

Jeff Rubenstein:
No, I keep thinking this show needs a director. That's what I just kept thinking. But The Vale ...

Rebecca Gordius:
That's fair.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah. I've been really want to try it. I've had it faved on my pins onto my dash for some time. And I just need to find the time so I think that your interview will push me over and will play it because the concept is really interesting. And I think audio games have been around, just I don't know that you've really seen them in the console space until The Vale.

Larry Hryb:
Right. Yeah, so I have to check that out. We'll do that interview later on. As far as what I'm planning to play, we talked about Back 4 Blood. Jeff and I jumped in a little bit of Far Cry 6 and tried to get each other a tank or helicopters. It's just silly fun with coop, that's the only way I can describe it.

Larry Hryb:
One that I am playing is in it's in Game Pass is Procession of Calvary. Have you seen this game? It's the one with the medieval paintings and medieval music, this minstrel music and whatnot. It's essentially like a point-and-click game but it's very funny. I don't want to give too much about it and it gives up the achievements pretty well.

Larry Hryb:
Check it out. It's a relaxing game. It's essentially a point-and-click. You got to use your controller to move the cursor around.

Rebecca Gordius:
Minstrel music game.

Jeff Rubenstein:
That whole genre.

Larry Hryb:
Based in the Renaissance with some religious overtones. So it's high concept.

Jeff Rubenstein:
It's up there with the Pillars of Eternity, actually it's really not, or Pillars of the Earth was actually another middle aged ... anyway, kind of important clicks. It's the whole thing. It's the whole thing.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah, this has been out on PC for about a year-and-a-half but it's now on console. It's in Game Pass. And it's very relaxing when you got to figure things out. And some of the writing is rather as they say in the UK cheeky. So, enjoy that.

Jeff Rubenstein:
It looked as appealing to other locales.

Larry Hryb:
Well, this show does have international reach. I think I've shared with you some of the stats before. I think we're the number 10 in Norway for quite some time, so hello, Norway.

Jeff Rubenstein:
What do we do to appeal to the Norwegian audience? I actually live in a neighborhood that's has Norwegian heritage. We have the Leif Erikson Day is actually coming up here soon. So, shout out to our Norway audience.

Larry Hryb:
I don't know what you do to celebrate that.

Jeff Rubenstein:
We have a statue over by the JoAnn Fabrics.

Larry Hryb:
Like you do.

Jeff Rubenstein:
I don't know. I think we're doing a whole thing. We're actually is a big Scandinavian neighborhood. We have an Iceland Festival coming up as well.

Larry Hryb:
Well, Jeff lives in Seattle. And like I say, Rebecca lives in New York which is the great melting pot so talk about everything over there.

Rebecca Gordius:
Well, being a little bit spoiled with Swedish goodies coming from the Minecraft Studio though, I think there is either some kind of Swedish holiday where we had a couple of folks who would bring in like the Swedish ... there's like a princess cake. It has strawberry filling and it's really light and fluffy. And then there'll be a lot of blue and yellow flags.

Rebecca Gordius:
So, yeah, lots of good stuff coming out of Scandinavia. But, yeah, I know there's a lot of different Scandinavian neighborhoods in Seattle in particular.

Jeff Rubenstein:
You know what I'm going to say now, Rebecca.

Larry Hryb:
Go on.

Jeff Rubenstein:
There's a dad joke that you told me that this reminded me of.

Larry Hryb:
Can you tell it? Can you share it?

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah. Jeff, do you want to share it or do you want me to?

Jeff Rubenstein:
All right, this is with you. I can't take credit for your jokes.

Larry Hryb:
We're going full screen on you. It's all yours.

Rebecca Gordius:
Okay. It was, why does the Norwegian Navy put barcodes on their ships?

Larry Hryb:
Gee, I don't know about that.

Rebecca Gordius:
So they can scan the Navy in. But it's a good one. I like that one.

Larry Hryb:
Scan the Navy in.

Jeff Rubenstein:
That's the only one of your dad jokes I can reliably remember. I think I said it was the Danish Navy when I said it.

Larry Hryb:
You screwed it up?

Rebecca Gordius:
It works for any of the Scandinavian countries.

Larry Hryb:
Fair point.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Now, I'm going to have to double check. Is Norway technically Scandinavian? And I honestly don't know the answer to that.

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah. I thought it was Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and then maybe Iceland.

Jeff Rubenstein:
All right, now, I'm on a mission to not offend our Scandinavian audience moments after discovering that they exist.

Larry Hryb:
All right, well, we're going to let you guys take it. We're going to go full screen on me so I can get you guys introduced. We got a couple of great interviews that we talked about just the beginning of the show. We're going to hear about all those. So just listen, we got a bunch going on. We got two great interviews this week from Rebecca and Jeff. Here we go.

Rebecca Gordius:
October 14th is World Sight Day which calls attention to the challenges of those facing visual impairments, one of which can typically be gaming. So we thought that this would be a good time to bring on the folks from Flying Squirrel to tell us about The Vale: Shadow of the Crown which is a game designed for both low vision and sighted players. So, welcome, guys. Thanks for joining us today.

Dave Evans:
Yeah. Thank you, Rebecca, for having us.

Lukas Hosnedl:
Hello, everybody. Thanks.

Rebecca Gordius:
Do you mind just each telling us a little bit about yourselves and your work with Flying Squirrel?

Dave Evans:
Yeah, sure. It's actually Falling Squirrel but it's a common misnomer.

Rebecca Gordius:
I'm so sorry.

Dave Evans:
That's okay. I was going to let it go but I thought we'll let people know. So, I'm the creator of Falling Squirrel, the owner of the company. And I'm also the game director on our first game, The Vale: Shadow of the Crown. And yeah, it's an all-audio game primarily made for the visually-impaired community.

Dave Evans:
And Lukas, do you want to tell us a little what you did?

Lukas Hosnedl:
Yeah, sure. Well, my name is Lukas Hosnedl or you can just say Lukas. I'm from the Czech Republic. I was born totally blind. When I actually first started working on the game, I reached out to Dave's Falling Squirrel myself. We had no previous contact or experience with each other.

Lukas Hosnedl:
I initially thought I would just help test the game because I wanted to do as much as I could to help out because I had a lot of feedback. And I thought it would be worth it. But the collaboration went so well, if I can say so myself. That Dave let me say or talk about much more than I originally thought.

Lukas Hosnedl:
And I daresay I helped in the end to shape the game, not just talk about bugs or the usual use of testing but I have quite a footprint in the game and myself as well in the end.

Dave Evans:
For sure.

Rebecca Gordius:
That's awesome. So, Dave, can you tell us a little bit, in a world of retracing and next gen visuals, what inspired you to create a game that leans away from a visual experience?

Dave Evans:
Yeah. I mean, initially, there was a desire for me to explore bigger stories that I could probably afford to tell being an indie developer, having worked in Triple A in the past, how was I going to do this on my own. I thought I'd seen or heard of games like audio-based games which played to some of the strengths I carry with me in narrative design and directing voiceover.

Dave Evans:
And very quickly, I realized that not only was this a novel idea at least for most sighted players that there was a novelty to it. There was also tremendous amount of intimacy in having visuals being pulled away and totally relying on sound. The world you inhabit becomes much closer, much more intimate. And you're relying on little details in the world. So, it actually to me was a completely different focus when it came to gameplay.

Dave Evans:
And then, I also realized there was an added benefit that this game was also going to be accessible to a community that did not have a lot of accessible content.

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah, that's awesome. I only started playing with a gaming headset in the last five years, but it's pretty cool like having to listen for those different clues and then following the game in that direction. How's the reception been within the community? Have you heard from any gamers who are visually-impaired or low vision?

Dave Evans:
Actually, Lukas, we haven't talked too much about this. Was there any specific things you've heard from the community? It's been very positive for my angle anyhow.

Lukas Hosnedl:
I've actually stopped being engaged in the community as much as I used to be before because I have a lot of other things, other projects and not too much free time. But I started running a blog in Czech though. It does have an English name. It's called 4Sense Gaming but it's written just in Czech.

Lukas Hosnedl:
And I've covered the game there. I've written articles about it. I've actually finished shooting a complete Let's Play and Check two days ago. It's not uploaded yet. But that's actually quite a hard job because there are no subtitles. And I have to interpret everything simultaneously as the characters speak.

Lukas Hosnedl:
But what I'm trying to say is that I have no idea about international reception as much as I used to once upon a time. But in the Czech Republic, the reception seems to be pretty. Not the reception, there have not been too many players from the Czech Republic yet because they're waiting to see the Let's Play first to have an idea about the story because the game is so story focused.

Lukas Hosnedl:
But they're very much interested. It's a novel to them as well because one barrier to gaming for the blind is lack of content as Dave said. And the other barrier if you're not a native English speaker or don't come from an English-speaking country is the lack of games to play in your language. So they're glad for having at least a translation or an interpreted Let's Play.

Dave Evans:
Actually, that brings up one of the biggest comments I get from the blind community or requests is this is a game that's in English, translated only in English right now. And it's probably something that I should consider and that the reception across the board in the English-speaking countries has been incredibly positive within the blind community, and is a novel game for sighted people as well.

Dave Evans:
And the idea that once you have something that's introduced that's potentially relatively rare, it becomes even more interesting in other parts of the world. So the fact that this is fully blind accessible is exciting. And then everybody wants to be able to play it in their language. So, it's the most common request I get. And it's a matter of expense ultimately for me. And it's hopefully something I can remedy in the future.

Rebecca Gordius:
Well, you mentioned you have a background in narrative design. I'm curious, how can you choose the medieval setting following this story in particular?

Dave Evans:
Yeah. Initially, there's two main aspects. One is I wanted something relatively familiar to base it on. I didn't want to pick a setting that was too unusual for video games. So I actually picked a fairly trope-filled place to start mainly because I wanted to have nice, comparable conventional aspects of gameplay that I could then translate into sound. So I wanted a familiar place to start.

Dave Evans:
And the other aspect of the medieval setting was the soundscape itself was perfect for all-audio combat anyway. If I'd set this in let's say a setting where people were wearing like or they're ninjas with cloth or something, it wouldn't be making as much sound. Whereas male warriors with plate mail and that sort of thing, the starting point at least could be a very obvious soundscape starting point.

Dave Evans:
And it also warranted the combat itself being close-quarters and noisy. Obviously, medieval combat would be the height of noisy close-quarter combat. You get less out-of-range combat. Even though we do have some range combat, it wasn't an obvious thing at least for me to have people running around with revolvers in a Western scenario or something like that.

Rebecca Gordius:
It's very cool. That makes a lot of sense. So I know, Lukas, you mentioned you have your plug and the Let's Play coming out. I'm curious what's next for Falling Squirrel. Any other projects you can talk about or a piece or a game?

Lukas Hosnedl:
I think this is more of a question for Dave actually because they have ... for me, personally, I can say no possible finalized yet. I'm sorry. I don't know of any plans here.

Dave Evans:
Lukas, should I just talk about this. Now, he's careful not to give away any company secrets. But no, we have talked about a collaboration in the future where we start looking at ... I mean, the obvious places to go would be something that continues this storyline with the main character picking up on things that people liked about the narrative of the game.

Dave Evans:
But I think that probably the most interest that we get from the visually-impaired community is to expand on combat and to have an experience that actually ... I mean, I would love to pick up on narrative. But I think in the meantime, maybe the summer, is expand combat in a way that we give an experience that has more replayability.

Dave Evans:
That was one probably short-sighted move on my point is as much as I'm comfortable working in narrative, and I wanted it to be a game that had a very strong appeal as a first or as a single play-through narrative experience, that the demand from the blind community having so little content was how can I replay this many times. And it's just not the type of game that you would replay more than probably twice.

Dave Evans:
And so, creating some sort of arena fighter for medieval all-audio combat is probably the next step and then potentially looking at other genres we could bring this to. And I just recently spoke to Lukas about being a partner and researching and figuring out what to do next. But certainly where the community would lead me is to more replayable material for them.

Lukas Hosnedl:
Yeah, right. And for myself, I can definitely say I'm eager to keep working with Falling Squirrel. I'm not going anywhere. I'm not stopping anything. And I do believe that if I become a part of the new project since the beginning and not just only join later, we can do a lot in terms of design to come up with ways to not only to make even like ranged combat or free-roaming combat not only accessible but also highly enjoyable.

Lukas Hosnedl:
Because The Vale is really intuitive, you just pick up the game, you instantly know how to follow the sound cues. You don't need to learn a lot of fancy keystrokes. And I am actually convinced this can be done in the same intuitive way even for the combat with more freedom of movement.

Dave Evans:
Yup, for sure.

Rebecca Gordius:
Awesome. Well, where can people go if they want to follow along for updates or hear about what's to come from Falling Squirrel?

Dave Evans:
Yup. Well, obviously, the game is available on Xbox One and on PC as well. But our website is probably the best place to go. It has the links to all the things that we care about. And I'd say Twitter is probably our most active social media platform right now. So, Falling Squirrel, that's our Twitter handle. And fallingsquirrel.com is our website.

Rebecca Gordius:
Got it. Not Flying Squirrel, right.

Dave Evans:
Not Flying Squirrel, right. That was the only point where it matters. It was toward at the end here, I could have corrected it in the end.

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah. All right, well, thank you guys for joining us. Like you said, The Vale is out now on Xbox One and Windows PC. So, check it out and let us know what you think. Thanks.

Dave Evans:
Thank you.

Lukas Hosnedl:
Thanks for having us.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Left 4 Dead and its sequel carved out, indelible, coop horror memories from the Xbox 360 era for so many of us. A feeling of barely holding it together as an unending torrent of zombies threatens to and often does overwhelm your squad of friends is it's back in form of Back 4 Blood, a first-person coop zombie shooter from the creators of the Left 4 Dead franchise. And it's now available with Xbox Game Pass on Xbox Series X and S, PC and Xbox One.

Jeff Rubenstein:
And to talk all about it, I'm very proud to welcome Lianne Papp, Executive Producer of Back 4 Blood. Thanks for joining us.

Lianne Papp:
Happy to be here.

Jeff Rubenstein:
So, I stayed up very late last night playing a number of games. We've just talked about it on the show. I'm just curious, how's the reception? The game has been out for now a week. A lot of people get to play it via Xbox Game Pass so I'm sure you're hearing a ton. How's it been going?

Lianne Papp:
I think it's been going really well which is really exciting because, of course, one of the scariest things about making games is hitting that launch and actually sharing it with everybody else. But I think we were feeling pretty good about it because one of our big focuses at Turtle Rock in particular is to ensure that we playtest the game internally and we have a lot of fun with it.

Lianne Papp:
Because if we're not having fun, we know that the rest of the world, the public, the community isn't going to have fun either. So, we're keeping a very close eye on feedback. And it sounds like people are having a lot of fun which is just really thrilling. And we're seeing the criticism as well and getting ready to react to it, make changes towards that. But overall, it feels amazing.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Awesome. So, I want to ask a little bit of advice. We played a couple of games yesterday. Some of them, we did really well. Some of them, we didn't do as well. What's the hallmark for the team? What do good teams do well in Back 4 Blood?

Lianne Papp:
So, I'll start with the obvious piece which is communication. I think if you want to coordinate a group of people, you have to have really solid communications. You have to be calling out targets. You have to be letting people know what it is that you're doing. Wait until everybody indicates they're ready before you start something that initiates a horde. So that's the obvious stuff.

Lianne Papp:
I think the not so obvious thing is coordinating your decks. In a way, you don't have to really assume a role like most games. But I actually find that you end up filling certain archetypes with the decks that you create. I personally love playing a support-style role. So, I'll go for cards that increase healing, that make it so that when I heal a teammate, I also get healing. And so I always tell people, "Give me your med kits. Let me do the healing so that you don't have to."

Lianne Papp:
So, getting each person to fulfill a role a little bit like that is going to help out a lot. So, you have to do that coordination even leading into getting into gameplay. And as you earn and unlock more cards, create different decks that satisfy those different things. And then pay attention to those corruption cards.

Lianne Papp:
Before you're jumping into gameplay, you're going to be told what the Director is going to throw at you. And there are little things that you can do to help counter those things. So yeah, those are three big pieces I would say will help a lot.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah. You've touched on a few things here. You mentioned calling things out and communication. And so I just want to call, you hit the left bumper and it gives you a context sensitive first aid box here in this room or there's one of the giant zombies or Ridden that's going to be coming at you. Please, focus your fire in that direction.

Lianne Papp:
Exactly.

Jeff Rubenstein:
I think everything else we probably did wrong in terms of especially starting one of those major events I think there was sort of turning on a grinder or something like that before everyone's ready and set up. Yeah. I'll be thinking about that for the near future.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Let's dive into the cards though. I think that's where there's a tremendous amount of depth in things that you can do. You start off with the starter deck. I would love to know what are things that people should just keep in mind in general, especially when you're first starting and you can choose from those first five cards? In terms of prioritizing your cards, what should you really have at the top do you think?

Lianne Papp:
I think it will depend on a little bit your playstyle and maybe looking at the kinds of issues that you tend to run into. So let's say that you feel that you run out of ammo a lot, well, maybe you want to focus your cards on the things that boost how much ammo you get. Or maybe you find that reloading is really tedious, well, there are things that increase your reload speeds.

Lianne Papp:
Very big pro tip that is not super obvious to everyone is that the order that the cards are in your deck is important. That is the order in which they're going to be played to you. You're also guaranteed to get that first card in your deck. So if you realize that let's say there's a card that changes your bash into a knife stab, let's say you consider that a must have, pop it to the top of your deck and you're guaranteed to always get it.

Lianne Papp:
But I 100% agree with you that one of the things that excites me the most is about the untapped potential of the card system. And we're really excited to see what kind of decks people build. I am confident the community is going to break some stuff. It's going to highlight some problems that we want to address. But it's looking at the kind of problems that you're having and what you want to solve.

Lianne Papp:
Now, something you are going to find is there are cards that disable things so they make it a little bit more challenging. So, we had a couple of people, it's not super well communicated, we want to fix this. But they were like suddenly, "I can't ADS anymore. I can't aim down sights." And that's really confusing and it was because they went for one of the cards that has a massive perk. I think it was plus 75% ammo, but the downside was disabling aim down sights.

Lianne Papp:
So there are some tradeoffs in there. We don't want to make everything super obvious as to what it is that you're supposed to do.

Jeff Rubenstein:
I feel like that card would pair very well with the shotgun.

Lianne Papp:
Absolutely. Yes.

Jeff Rubenstein:
I don't know that our ADS could do once after a night of that. I wouldn't miss it. So, a couple of things, first of all, that card that lets you turn your melee into a knife shot which lets you one hit most grunt Ridden, highly recommend. That is my number one card use. But then again, it's only a couple of minutes in. Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein:
So, we talked about teams but I think with back for bringing in Game Pass, there's going to be people that might not have the luxury of necessarily a lot of friends. They might just be jumping in and coming in solo. So, what do you recommend for solo players and how to find a good time in a game that does rely so much on great teamwork and collaboration?

Lianne Papp:
I think if you're not comfortable using voice which not everybody is, definitely utilizing that ping system that you mentioned is going to help out a lot. If you do that, you'll actually find that people can pay attention to it and know a little bit of what you're talking about.

Lianne Papp:
Something that is an easy way to endear yourself to your team members is you can actually drop ammo. You can also drop copper. So if you pop open your inventory, you're able to click it and share that. So some people might be like, "Hey, suddenly, you're my BFF because you're a source of rifle ammo and I always need it."

Lianne Papp:
And then, you can also consider it with the decks that you're using. So, a lot of the decks have cards that benefit the entire team. That's something I actually really love about the game because I think it keeps it approachable for people who haven't been playing a whole lot, they can jump in and be fairly close in terms of footing with the people who do have a lot of cards unlocked.

Lianne Papp:
So, I would pop in. Make sure you play that first mission. You want to make sure that you get used to what the game is. Understand how the cards are. And then you could quick play because you'll get matched into matches pretty quickly where you can jump in and you can help out a team that maybe had a bot there and they want to get some assistance. But, yeah, just jump in and have fun.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah. And I think with the game available on Game Pass like you said. That quick plays and it'd be real quick. It's going to be very easy maybe to talk someone else into trying a game out because I feel like in the old days ...

Lianne Papp:
That's what I love about Game Pass, for sure.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah.

Lianne Papp:
When we found out about the deal, I was like, "Oh, maybe people will find a new favorite game that they wouldn't have assumed." Because I know a lot of people who are like, "You know what, zombie shooters aren't for me." And I'm like, "Well, have you tried it?" Because now suddenly, there's no barrier, I mean, there's a download.

Lianne Papp:
But if you can do the download, jump in, check it out. And maybe you found your new favorite game for the year.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah, I think that's right on. You don't all have to rely on, "Is this the game we're buying together?"

Lianne Papp:
Exactly.

Jeff Rubenstein:
So, we are playing last night and it's pretty ... especially Acts One, Two and Three are very lengthy experience. There's a Fourth Act which I haven't gotten to yet so I can't speak too much to it.

Lianne Papp:
No spoilers.

Jeff Rubenstein:
There's one circle there. And I think that's going to be very intimidating whatever that's going to end up being. I'm sure people are going to figure it out, they're going to get their great deck and they're going to be able to run through it. How do you see the game being [inaudible 00:37:41] in the ... what's the long game here to keep people coming back and keep making those runs over time?

Lianne Papp:
So, we do have our annual pass where we are planning on adding additional content. We're not going into too much detail about what that content is. But I do think there are a lot of things that feel very natural to the game. I mentioned earlier that the card system is a massive fountain of untapped potential. And I think that's somewhere where we have lots of plans for new kinds of cards that we could be adding both for players, as well as corruption because we want to make sure that the Director stays interesting as well.

Lianne Papp:
And so, that's one area in particular that we definitely want to add a lot to. But I think what we're looking for is people trying those different decks, playing through the campaigns, and then increasing the difficulty. You want to jump in. Try it out at recruit first, get through it. And you might die a lot and that's okay because part of the intention is that we want you to be able to earn those supply points, jump into the supply plans, buy more cards to make your deck better, and then keep trying and push.

Lianne Papp:
And then once you've mastered that one difficulty, pop into the other difficulty and work through that. And that's the challenge and the fun is finally overcoming that one mission that was really, really beating you. So that's what we're looking for.

Lianne Papp:
And I feel that with the different corruption cards and the fact that you can try different decks, that replayability comes very naturally. We even found internally there were a lot of people who were like, "Hmm, I wonder if I can get through this whole mission with just melee. So do I stack up a bunch of stamina so that I can just like run through and I'm healing myself and I'm moving quickly and I'm just thrashing things down?"

Lianne Papp:
And then other people might be like, "Well, I want to do just shotguns." And so you can create little games for yourself and your friends where you create a challenge and jump into it.

Jeff Rubenstein:
By the way, almost all of the things that you've mentioned in the last few minutes, there's an achievement attached to it. You give some money to someone to help them buy one of those bigger team-wide upgrades. Highly recommend by the way, there's an achievement for it. You give someone some ammo, there's an achievement for it.

Jeff Rubenstein:
You get 50 melees in a round, there's an achievement for it. Don't kill any Ridden in a round then there's an achievement for it. I had a lot of fun. I'll talk about it in the rest of the shows, one for going early on in the first round. I was like, "Wait, what my daughter end up unlocking that one."

Lianne Papp:
So, that actually is in one of our past tests, our closed alpha. We actually had this bug where if you were going down the ladder, it killed you. That was not intentional. And so, it was a very deadly ladder and this is a little bit of a callback to that and anybody that experienced it and noticed it. And if you actually look around that ladder, there's a little bit of graffiti there, too. That's a callback to it.

Jeff Rubenstein:
I was wondering. There had to be a story there so thanks for sharing that.

Lianne Papp:
Why do you guys care so much about a ladder? That's why.

Jeff Rubenstein:
So, last thing I want to talk about is PvE is the core of Back 4 Blood, but there is a competitive multiplayer mode which is a lot different than a lot of what's out there. So, can you just talk about this PvP mode?

Lianne Papp:
Yeah, absolutely. When we were developing the PvP, we went through quite a few different ideas. And what we were trying to do was make a mode that was fun for people to jump in. And I stole this term from someone else in the game industry and I like using it a lot because I think it needs to be a thing.

Lianne Papp:
We wanted something that was more snackable. We wanted you to be able to jump in, have some fun and then take a break because I find that there's a lot of competitive PvP out there where you're signing up for 45 minutes to an hour of gameplay and your hands are sweating and it's very stressful. And you're like, "I was supposed to have fun tonight but now I'm super stressed." Like, "Did I have a good time? I'm not sure."

Lianne Papp:
So, our plan was we wanted Swarm to be something where you jump in, it's super intense but it's fun. And then, you're able to take a breath and go, "Okay, are we jumping in again and doing this," or, "What strategy do we want to try?" Because we found that what's really fun with PvP at least in my opinion is taking on the role of the Ridden. You spend so much time in PvE. Those stupid tall boys are coming after you and you're trying to dodge and you're not necessarily able to.

Lianne Papp:
Well, then the tables have turned in. You get to have some fun and see what it feels like to be like Ridden like that. And so, we wanted to fulfill that fantasy and do it in such a way that it wasn't like a total slog or very long. And now, I recognize some people are into the longer PvP sessions. We just didn't find that it made sense for us or felt right for us in our game.

Jeff Rubenstein:
And those PvE sessions could go on for a really long time as well.

Lianne Papp:
You can keep going as long as you want, yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Exactly.

Lianne Papp:
But the nice thing is we do have a checkpoint system where you can pop out and then resume it if you want to keep going, so no pressure.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yes, that was one thing that we didn't realize because we were having trouble. I think Major Nelson put the difficulty up because we were having quite a time. And then when I put in the other, I'm like, "Oh, it's from here after the ship." That's great.

Jeff Rubenstein:
You also see the title sequence there. And the fact that we did not get to the title sequence yesterday is a mark of shame that it is going to take a long time to scrub away. But that's for us to worry about, not for you, Lianne. I want to thank you so much for joining. Having such a great time with Back 4 Blood, it's available now on Xbox Game Pass, for console and for PC.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Get out there and play it. You see me on there. Jump into my game. We'd rather have you than a bot. So, thanks so much.

Lianne Papp:
Thank you so much for having me.

Larry Hryb:
Thank you to Dave and Lukas and, of course, Lianne. You'll learn a little bit more about their games here. It's a great job on those interviews, folks. You guys are right on it. It's great to connect with folks talk about their games and learn about them, especially when they're on Game Pass. So, thank you.

Jeff Rubenstein:
I got a text just now from Sid who runs PlayStation Blog. And he's like, "I just got Back 4 Blood." And so, it's got cross play so that will be fun.

Larry Hryb:
So, it would be you, maybe Rebecca and Sid.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah, or whomever. But let's keep it going. I want to keep playing this. I want to get to the title screen. We can do it. We can beat the prologue.

Larry Hryb:
All right, we're going to wrap up things a little bit but we usually cover the news. And I know, Jeff, you've got some news, or Rebecca. So Rebecca, why don't we start with you because you've got some fun news from the Minecraft world, right?

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah. So this is actually the busiest week out of the year for the Minecraft team. On Saturday, October 16th, we have the Minecraft Live Broadcast taking place. This is our one big annual community event where we look back at the last year of Minecraft content with our community leaders, influencers, artists, things like that.

Rebecca Gordius:
But then we also look ahead at what's to come. So obviously, we have Caves & Cliffs Part 2 that's coming up pretty soon. We're also going to talk about the next big update to Minecraft and do another vote on one of the new mobs that we're going to add to the game.

Rebecca Gordius:
So, if you're curious to learn about what's next in the year of Minecraft, stay tuned. It's going to be October 16th, 8:30 a.m. Pacific Time. I think that's 5:30 p.m. CEST. And that will be on the Minecraft YouTube, Twitch, Facebook. But if you want any more information, you can head to Minecraft.net to find out.

Larry Hryb:
Of course, if you miss it, it will be available on demand. You can go back and watch it later and enjoy everything they talk about, right?

Rebecca Gordius:
Yes, of course.

Jeff Rubenstein:
The votes. I have a perfect zero percent record of voting for the mob that wins, like never. But Vegas if you're setting odds, I'll let you know.

Larry Hryb:
Bet against Jeff.

Rebecca Gordius:
Bet against Jeff, yeah. I know last year, the mob vote got a little bit contentious. But this year, we have three mobs that are really cool. They all add really unique utility to the game so we're pretty excited to see which one the community picks and eventually gets implemented.

Rebecca Gordius:
But in other Minecraft news, we kicked off the Spookier Fall Event in Minecraft Dungeons this week. So, last year, we had a seasonal event that we called the Spooky Fall Event. So this year, it's Spookier Fall Event.

Larry Hryb:
We've got some screenshots here that we're showing of your fall. That's cool.

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah. So I think that was the Phantom Bow that looks like the Soul Jack-O-Lantern armor. So basically, if you sign into Minecraft Dungeons, there are some different trials that are taking place between now and November 2nd. If you complete the trials, you can get unique and kind of halloweeny-themed items and armor, face mobs in Night Mode which is like a hardcore mode.

Rebecca Gordius:
And just as a reminder, Minecraft engines does have cross platform play across all the different versions, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, Xbox, you name it, also recently released on Steam. And there's cross save enabled as well as long as you sign in with your Microsoft account. So, check it out. It runs until November 2nd.

Larry Hryb:
All right. Cool. Jeff, you got a little bit of news over there on your side as well?

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yeah, while I'm doing that, turn up your mic, Larry. You're a little low. And you're the reason we're here. You're the moneymaker.

Larry Hryb:
I don't know about that.

Jeff Rubenstein:
So, we need to hear you. Speaking of Halloween, Xbox partnered with MAC cosmetics. If you've in the mall, you've probably seen the MAC counter as I believe they call it. And so we work with three MAC artists, did I get that right, to create what it looks basically for Halloween based on some of our characters.

Jeff Rubenstein:
And so, one of the artists used MAC cosmetics to look like Milla from Psychonauts 2, another one to look like Cortana which is very bold look. And also, one of the artists took on Sea of Thieves and went full on. Actually, it's really cool. So you'll want to check out Xbox Wire to basically inspire you if you want to go for a gamey look ...

Larry Hryb:
Wow. Look at that Cortana one. Holy cow.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Right? So you don't want to do it ...

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah, it's pretty intense.

Jeff Rubenstein:
I've seen the Master Chief sort of onesies they have for kids. They get Costco and stuff like that. But if you're going to take on Sea of Thieves, you'll want to look and see, be inspired by the looks and go all in for it. I think we all have some Halloween, pent-up Halloween, wanting to go out and dress up and do things like that safely.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Larry, I feel like you want to talk.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah. I'm looking at that. If you go to news.xbox.com, you'll see all the information there. But what's interesting is they've all got tutorials as well. So if you want to recreate this look like Jeff was talking about, then you can just go over there. I like the Sea of Thieves one. Maybe I should do that.

Jeff Rubenstein:
You got to grow the facial hair. We've been, off camera, asking you for a long time. We want to see gruff Larry.

Larry Hryb:
What's funny is, and, Rebecca, I don't know if you know this because you're out in New York and I see Jeff a little bit more frequently like we got to go out last week. But I actually usually shave this every Wednesday morning because we record the show on Wednesday. And so, if you catch me on a Tuesday, I'm looking pretty rough.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Completely different guy. Completely different guy.

Larry Hryb:
Anyway, but that's really cool. Thank you for sharing that about MAC. Rebecca, you got anything else? Do you have any other news over on that side?

Rebecca Gordius:
No, I think back to game news with Jeff.

Larry Hryb:
All right, back to Jeff.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Larry, we need the director. We need the director. Over here, we got a few more stories. So, do you remember the meme when the Xbox Series X was announced? Not the fridge, that's a whole other thing, that some people photoshopped to make the Series X look like SpongeBob.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Well, there is no mem we will not lean into because how, we have revealed some Series X consoles including a SpongeBob console to celebrate the launch of Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl where we had a reveal last week.

Larry Hryb:
Yeah.

Jeff Rubenstein:
And highly recommend you look at the pictures of this. I don't know if you have it handy.

Larry Hryb:
I don't have it handy.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Alright, well, the visuals are great. And what's the best part about it? Yes, SpongeBob is a square or is a rectangle, that works. The controller is amazing because one of his eyes is the A button and one of his eyes is the right stick. And it just works, Larry.

Jeff Rubenstein:
The other one is for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles who are, of course, also in the Nickelodeon All-Stars Brawl. Leonardo, the leader I guess you could say of the Ninja Turtles, the one less tempted by pizza and really staying on task if I recall correctly.

Larry Hryb:
All right, hold on a minute.

Rebecca Gordius:
I can't relate.

Larry Hryb:
There you go.

Jeff Rubenstein:
There we go. The SpongeBob one is phenomenal. I think I saw Axios did a full breakdown of each one. But look at the controller, look at the eyes. The elements of the controller, that's really good. I do like the bold look of the TMNT one as well.

Larry Hryb:
That said, so I think it's important to point out what these consoles and what they are. And can you buy them? You can't buy them. We're giving them away, right, Jeff?

Jeff Rubenstein:
Yup. So there's a sweepstakes. There's a sweepstakes tweet that's out right now. You can enter now if you're hearing this all the way up through 8:00 p.m. Pacific Time on October 24th. Just look for on @Xbox. It might be pinned. It's got a lot of retweets and a lot of likes. And Jake Baldino called it Sponge Box which is ... he's a smart guy, smart guy.

Jeff Rubenstein:
So, I'm a big fan of Jake actually, the guy from Gameranx. Anyway, that's the before [inaudible 00:51:32]. He's certainly on Metroid. I will get Metroid Dread because of him.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Okay. Gamenet actually got tremendously great ratings. But it's new to Xbox. It was Game of the Year on PC. I want to see 2019 Disco Elysium. I just want to call out, that's available now for $39.99. It has won so many awards. I'm very interested in checking it out.

Jeff Rubenstein:
It's sort of a zoomed-out RPG but not like a JRPG, not like a typical I don't know how much combat takes place in this. It just looks really interesting. Watch the trailer. It got enough awards that that alone is enough for me to give this one a try. Hopefully, I can talk about it next week.

Jeff Rubenstein:
And lastly, our next big release that we've announced coming to Xbox Game Pass is Age of Empires 4, and of course known for its campaign and multiplayer. I'm scared to play multiplayer. I'll be playing the campaign. The achievements are out so I'm already starting to plan what I'm going to be able to accomplish.

Jeff Rubenstein:
And sort of gives you an idea of how many different civilizations are in the game from the Mongols to the Russians, to the Holy Roman Empire which you'd expect, the Delhi Sultanate, Chinese. There's a Chinese class or age that you can play through. There's just a ton here. So, I was having fun looking at that, plotting out which ones I'm going to try to get because that comes out on October 28th.

Larry Hryb:
Thank you for giving us an update on age. That's a game that has a massive following.

Jeff Rubenstein:
It's older than Xbox. It's almost 25 years since the first one.

Larry Hryb:
We say a quarter of a century. If you put it like that, you're like, "Wow, that's a long time." Quarter of a century, yes.

Jeff Rubenstein:
That works.

Larry Hryb:
Okay. That's fun. That's fun. I'm sorry, I'm still giggling at the Nickelodeon All-Star Brawls, at those consoles.

Jeff Rubenstein:
It's genius. Good luck winning it. I don't think I'll ever see it in person because there can't be too many of them out there. Look at that.

Larry Hryb:
By the way, I want to point something out. And I'm sorry, Jeff, do you have anything more because I have a little bit of something to talk?

Jeff Rubenstein:
No, of course.

Larry Hryb:
There was a little bit of concern a couple weeks ago because I've got my console back here that it was too close to the edge. Do you remember seeing that in the comments?

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah, I saw those comments.

Larry Hryb:
So, I just want to let you know that I had to move it over. I don't remember why I had to move it over so it was teetering precariously on the edge, but I have since pulled it back along with my Psychonaut's goggles there. But I just want to let you know that we've avoided a crisis.

Jeff Rubenstein:
The nation exhales.

Larry Hryb:
So close. Anyway, all right, gang, we've got some more work to do in our regular jobs. This is not our regular job. Rebecca has her job. She's working on the Minecraft team and with influencers. Jeff has his job working with all influencers and a bunch of other stuff as well. And then I've got my regular job which I don't really know what it is.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Which is what exactly?

Rebecca Gordius:
Yeah, this is your regular job.

Larry Hryb:
But we've got to get into our regular job. I appreciate the fact that Jeff and Rebecca, you guys, find time out of your busy week to come in here and obviously help out with the interviews and other things. But I just want to thank you because I know that this is not like extra. I don't pay you extra for this. So thank you for coming in here and help and talk to the community because I know they enjoyed ...

Rebecca Gordius:
That is a good idea though.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Getting paid? Was that on the table?

Larry Hryb:
Well, it's funny because, Rebecca, if you lived out here then I would come to your house and help you with your home network and I do all those on-call stuff that I go over to Jeff's house. Although I will be honest with you, I have zero problem coming in New York and helping you out over there.

Larry Hryb:
I mentioned to get back out on the road. Jeff and I haven't been out on the road in quite some time. Well, you haven't either. So, it's fun though.

Larry Hryb:
Anyway, all right, well, that's the show for this week. You can follow us on the social media accounts there you're going to see right at the bottom of the screen if you want to follow us. We'd love for you to do that. Also, as Jeff likes to say, like and subscribe on the YouTube channel. Give us the feedback on Spotify and Apple and Google, wherever you listen and/or watch the show.

Larry Hryb:
Do you guys have any final words before we wrap up?

Rebecca Gordius:
Minecraft live October 16th, 8:30 a.m. Pacific. Check it out.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Please vote for whatever mob I vote for. Help me have happiness.

Larry Hryb:
Help him break the streak. Alright everybody, we'll see you guys. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next week. Bye-bye, everybody.

Jeff Rubenstein:
Bye.