Sea of Thieves 2022 and more

**MACHINE TRANSCRIBED**

hi it's larry hryb xbox is major nelson welcome to the official xbox podcast uh we're kind of chugging on through january we got the whole gang here jeff and rebecca hey gang we're chugging there's gangs are we building a railroad what's happening here larry are we are we in the gang well you guys you guys are the posse the gang the crew whatever you want to the fire team what kind of criminal enterprises do you get all right all right all right then to make then to make it more thematic action schemes you're you're my operators okay oh there we go to make it more thematic anyway welcome back everybody welcome back hello rebecca in new york city how's it chilly out there still yeah we're expecting a big snowstorm this weekend wish me luck um but it sounds like a good time to curl up on the couch and play some games so it's not a good snowstorm in new york city unless someone's going down fifth avenue and cross country skis i'll tell you that okay i'll keep an eye out for that keep an eye out for that as well uh but jeff and i are still uh tucked away here in the northwest where well it's sunny today i don't know about you over there jeff jeff and i live a few miles apart but it's sunny here it's really disconcerting there's a ball of fire in the sky give me my rain please thank you all right hey gang we it's it's great to see you guys we had a good week of gaming we're going to talk about our our operator experience in just a few minutes a good week he says good it good experience yes bad result right well we had fun that's all that matters that's true yeah it was a good time yeah it was it was it was a learning there was opportunity for learning let's say that that's a good good way to spin it larry uh but anyway it's uh it's uh well i guess we should just jump right into it jeff i see you know i see something in the back there that i don't recognize on your screen there what are you playing over there yeah so uh a good friend of ours uh friend of the show andy lunique you remember andy oh andy yeah i love andy the official unofficial uh culinary artist of the gaming industry it seems like and uh we used to work very closely with with andy used to be on the team actually uh if we go back a few years and he tweeted out last week just gameplay of a game called chorus so chorus was getting affiliated with that game is that what he's doing now i don't know i know i don't think he works for it or anything it was just like showing gameplay and it was like everybody and myself included that replied was like how did i not know more about this game is the game that came out on uh on xbox december 3rd so it you know a couple days before halo might have we might have just sort of like been focused elsewhere right it's an open world space shooter game uh with some again sounds like halos

like literally in a spaceship

maybe they pretend you were the pilot and the whole game is about the pilot wait a minute we're getting something i remember hearing about this we revealed this game back in 2020 when we first showed the first batch of sort of like different games indie games although i guess assassin's creed valhalla was shown for the first time it was like spring of 2020 so almost two years ago and uh like the the pilot of the ship uh she's got some sort of um sort of psychic abilities she's above and beyond just a normal pilot and so she can sense things and i'm pretty early in the game but it's really interesting uh now is it fps expansive environments it's no it's a third person again you're in the ship the whole time so does it have a vibe like like dead space again not in the ship as in like isaac clark is like like like running around the whole house you're controlling the ship i see i see i see so you're playing like if you've played like everspace uh but but different because it's really it's an open world game like where you're picking up side missions and you're visiting people uh escorting uh going headlong into into battle like going through sort of warp areas and the map is like really cool in 3d and there's a lot there i'm pretty early on but it's definitely captured me yeah go on rebecca you're you're battling other ships typically yes yeah yeah yeah and again pretty early on so they're introducing me to new you know new types of ships and some that are armored and some aren't and uh so dog fighting i guess the nearest thing i would say is if you enjoyed uh the star wars game that came out was it last year i don't i don't even remember a rogue squadron um so if you enjoyed rogue squadron that type of game it's obviously not in the star wars universe but if you are looking for more in a single player adventure i would say check it out in fact the game happens to be on sale because this week there's the deep silver and friends sale so uh chorus is 25 off so if any of those things sound interesting open world space shooter uh dog fighting adventures i would say check it out this is uh so this is as you said published by deep silver and it's developed by fish labs and they've got they've been around for about 10 years or so they've done some mobile games i'm just looking on their wikipedia they've done interesting they've done some of the saints row ports for for switch so that was so interesting yeah so they they've who knows something like they're from germany so good friends in germany uh anyway we'll have to check that out so so it's captured you has it jeffrey is is space travel your thing uh it is here there's sort of a you're inside this cam you're the main character's name nara you're in her head a lot there's actually a little bit of like um you know the sort of like internal monologue that that reminds me of hillblade a little bit where uh you were sort of speaking to yourself so anyway if you found that disconcerting then maybe not your thing but can i can i read the synopsis go for it nara pilot with a checkered past and her sentient starfighter forsaken must work together to defeat the circle an oppressive cult led by the great prophet who seeks to dominate the whole universe so it's a sentient ship so are you like do you communicate with it or is it like an ai yeah tell us about that jeff you've just got you've got more abilities than uh like a normal captain in a normal ship to the extent that those things exist in real life so um just think of like being able to do above and beyond what a normal spaceship might be able to do and i'll leave it there okay i'm just reading i'm writing about it yeah anyway so check that out and uh if you want to we'll put a link to that in the uh in the show notes if you'd like that jeff thank you for the thank you and thank you andy it's first of all it's good to hear andy's name again second of all thanks for the tip yeah uh it just shows like sometimes uh the right post at the right time like showing off some footage it makes you look at a game that you knew existed but didn't know anything about it i forgot it completely was yeah wasn't what i expected and in a very pleasant way yeah that happens to me a lot when i go back after you know whatever the big aaa tentpole title comes out and you're like oh what was this something came out six or eight months ago like the pedestrian that i was playing a lot of a few weeks ago that which came out you know a year and a half ago so you never know there's there's always something there for you so so that's that's been your latest jam uh rebecca what are you playing if you don't mind me um i haven't been playing a ton this week um obviously we played rainbow six extraction last night which was awesome oh we've got video on that in just a moment yeah um i finished invincible on amazon prime a superhero animated series but pretty dark highly recommend it it was really really good um but yeah aside from that i've just been playing kind of casual games with my friends like over cook two here on couch co-op i love couch co-op on overcooked too um but yeah we should talk about rainbow six extraction that was really fun so so yeah as rebecca said i've been playing that and jeff and i've been playing halo rebecca you we still need to get you into our fire team in halo for some reason the timing quite hasn't worked out but yeah we went into rainbow six we talked about it last week we had the interview last week and we're like we need to play this we tried playing it last week but timing didn't work out but we finally got to do it and well how should we set it up jeff how should we talk about this rebecca why don't you why don't you let us know your experience because this is your first time playing um i really liked it but i will say like out of the three of us i was the least experienced so i had the benefit of kind of coming in and being told what to do which is great like it's awesome when someone else already figures out these are the rules these are the objectives there is no health go quiet yeah like oh you took the only health pack oops my bad um but i actually really liked it i think i would just need to play with someone like jeff who can kind of uh very politely guide me in the right direction but larry it didn't seem like you were so keen on the game you know larry think here's the larry thing and this is not reserved for rainbow six extraction this is the anything where it's like okay we're going here and then uh larry want to where's larry oh he's clear across the map setting off traps alerting the enemies and and you and you know with mixed results well well to be fair and and that's a fairly accurate representation of some of my gameplay with the new game it's you know you're kind of like a new puppy in the house where you're kind of walking around trying to poke things and figure out what's what's the game what's the environment the problem is or the the the different element with rainbow six is once you lose your operator your character they're out of the game and yeah and for it could be for a significant amount of time because they just don't respawn they kind of you go back to the charac there's a about a dozen character uh operators that you can choose from and there's a big x over them and they're they're kind of their health is regening rather slowly um yeah so they come back i did feel the game was a little bit severe or like harsh in that sense like i i don't know i i feel like in most games if you get revived by your teammate there's usually not too much of a penalty maybe you lose some health but you can only be revived like once in a in an excursion i don't know what we call them um so you know my first match that i played online with other people um i died pretty fast it got revived and then i died again and then i was spectating for like five minutes so um i don't know i guess it was a little i found the consequences to be a little bit too harsh well they and that's exactly i mean i think i've downed i think i've already taken out five operators so they're all in icu right now trying to come out but what what the funny story was is is we were we were playing it and i i'm down i think i did i go down first did you go down first rebecca i think i did yeah and then i went down shortly thereafter and then jeff now for those of you who have not played rainbow six there's a mechanic where you have to pick the the the player who's now knocked out and get them to an extraction point and put them into um uh essentially a back to machine jeff colin kept calling it an oven or it's like a dumpster you're like throwing them in the dumpster but but they've got they're kind of covered up and they look like a mummy and so jeff made a choice i'm gonna have to agree so here's the here's the thing about this game is is you there's risk reward all the time yes how much do you do before you say i don't think we're gonna be successful because it's not just finishing the mission and it goes to black and everyone's like yeah you did it you know it's you need to escape and if you don't then there's consequences as as you said rebecca and i feel like larry you've you're an optimist let's just put it that way and it's like if we were going to a buffet you'd be like i'm eating six plates man i've got this and and after like two plates i'm like i think we should stop i don't know and you're like let's do it and so there's chances to turn back or to keep going and we wanted to keep going it didn't work out so at all at all so you you two go down and and i have five hit points by the way i'm like and we haven't we're gonna show the video in a moment it'll all be there and and and i'm like that's it we're getting the hell out of here so i'm just gonna pick pic you know we are leaving and let's get no i'm not doing it so you can roll at this point if you want to roll the footage and what you're going to see now is just let me set this up this is footage from rebecca's point of view so this is rebecca is basically in her death cam and jeff is going through it so let's go ahead okay so i i pick you up and i'm like let's just sneak around and then i find the exit and uh by the way watch this here we are oh you you are you want to you got to show the one where we see a little bit more all right let me let me go yeah let me show you um this is i'm sorry this is yeah that was way too short so let me just cut straight to the punch line all right let me let me let me go right let me let me try this this is rebecca's pocket so i'm like okay we're gonna get out here we made it i'm gonna get rebecca and i'm going to evaluate if we can pick up let's roll this person in this safe zone this is the safe zone and by the way fans the hammer there we don't know how do you know what i'm doing i'm freaking out i'm like okay great now i gotta wait for that gas to disappear you see i have five xp then another dude shows up one shot one kill okay fine now let's close the door shall we then another one i'm like effort i'm shutting the door and that guy steps in the elevator the door should have squished him but no it's like well this could be a person it opens back up and then they promptly and the scream that i let out of like just like it was very much like the cliche like no no like my wife came down and she was like what are you doing and i thought you had made it but if you had you had you had the right thought of closing the door but apparently the ai ripped it apart bam and you know what i will say is i don't react that much to a game you know that often the game this game rainbow six extraction has stakes the stakes are high the risk of reward is real and uh failing right there was so painful and then what we didn't record and it's a good thing we didn't is the next mission we tried to go back and rescue oh yeah and and we were not successful in that endeavor that was a disaster wasn't it yeah i feel like that one was kind of on me i was like not really understanding that we were supposed to shoot the like sparkling things that we're like wait a minute that's not do not take that responsibility because jeff and i because we had played a couple more matches than you we had never gotten to that point where we had to express so we didn't even know what the game was we're like we were like oh we got to get back to the regular area where i died or you died no no no no no your character is kind of transported into this like kind of like an alien where they're stealing they're brought to the to the hive they were brought into this hive thing we're like oh okay we finally figured it out but we still didn't know what the minigame was to your point it was like god it was like gears of war where like dom was like captured and you know you had to like cut them out and and i mean and spoiler alert that didn't work out so well either so um yeah it happened anyway so that but it was a lot of fun and i again i love playing co-op games that are that are unpredictable and this one was highly unpredictable i agree i think this is probably my my favorite co-op game that we've played like as a team so far so i liked it i would do it again yeah it was uh it was a lot of fun and we should probably try that again we just need to get good i think it would be helpful if we watched because i did on twitch i was watching um people that knew what they were doing and it looked like a whole different game can i can i yeah can i show you this okay those are my operators that are dead that i yeah i no longer have operators oh the rest are going to reside

they know what they're walking into so it's it's it's unpleasant but anyway so that's a lot of but you know it's it's and it's on game pass now uh so go ahead and download it on game pass and you can check it out just you get a couple of friends together and you can kind of see what's going on here come the invites jeff on the ubisoft invites coming here um but yeah it's it's a lot of fun if you have again and and you know i've been playing co-op games for for a better part of a vast majority of my life and they're always they're always you know a lot more fun when you when you play with friends so i want to thank you rebecca thank you for jeff for that for those those uh lulls thanks thanks for the memories oh boy anyway uh what i guess i mean other than that i mean jeff and i have been playing we talked about a moment ago playing a little bit of halo we're we're marching through i think the event is almost over now right jeff uh yeah we we're this close to getting our mohawks uh very much neon mohawks mister neon mohawks like up advisor all that stuff really like the the stuff in the shop uh and the and all the battle pass for this particular event and it goes on i'm sure by the by the time you hear this you'll be in the last couple of days yeah to get that there was we were not quite as under the gun i thought we had to get them all in one week and uh i didn't get i think i just got to the visor but now uh a few more times really enjoy uh this new this new mode attrition have you played it yet rebecca i think you said you did play it right no i don't think i have okay you said it's a new mode like in the last like week or two do you want to explain it larry yeah it's it's actually specific to this event the attrition and it's it's it's really interesting because in in normal halo multiplayer there is no concept of revive and in this one they've they introduced it for this mode only so you have you know a set number of lives and once you go through that you're the team for the two shares each team has a set number of lives and as they're whittled away once you reach no you'll hear the voice you'll hear the mr announcer no more revives uh then you can then you can go and your your your character if you're if you're down will go into a little ball your ai will be there and then a co-worker excuse me a co in this case a co-worker but a teammate can go over and revive them and of course you leave yourself to expose because it takes a second for it to go through so it's it's a really interesting mechanic uh we played a game last night against was it last night it was last night jeff against a pretty good uh a pretty good team and we were like okay we've got him it's 1v1 and all of a sudden that person went the team uh the opposing team went and revived essentially everybody and it was it was we were out and then it was one v4 it was going to be four and it was game over so uh but yeah it's a lot of fun and and and to get you in there they've got a whole series of special with a special event you can as jeff said you can unlock the screen right now you can unlock a series of things from visors and some some armor coatings and things like that but we've had fun in that if you if you like that concept of a revive but it's definitely it's definitely a nice a nice change of pace um to have that so more risk reward i think because it takes a little bit of time to revive well not only that but you're much more on this week you're much more careful about dying because you're whittling away at the team's resources so that's yes that's one of those things you don't want to be that guy yeah you don't want to be you don't want to be that person taking that the only health on the level

i know i after like one or two matches of rainbow sex extraction i was like okay i need to be a lot more careful and a lot more stealthy so okay maybe it's a nice warm up for attrition then and jeff's jeff's tip which i think you gave on on the on the show last week when we were reiterating last night when we were playing this make sure your loadout has a suppressor going oh yes good tip good tip yeah yeah so cause i i ended up i think it was i think i ended up at one point because i didn't have an operator left i had to pick a shotgun and i was like all right here we go boom boom boom boom jeff kind of got in the way of some of those shotguns so much for stealth yeah all right i like there was one of the exploder guys like right in front of me and you just were like pull and you just you blew them up and took half my health off in one go i'm like shoot the bomb when i'm standing right next i think i think it was actually that particular moment that's what got your health down if you that because that might have been yeah you know you remember in that clip guys jeff jeff i mean you can see down in the lower left hand corner yes yeah hit points left here don't make me relive that moment anyway uh all right well we should probably we got some news here we got some interviews jeff i don't know if you've got everything in front of you why don't you set us up so we can get us into the interviews all right yes we're gonna be speaking with two folks first of all uh rebecca's gonna be speaking with uh someone who has joined uh the team and has a really interesting role his name is albert dankwa and then you're gonna see a very familiar face joe three sheets neat from rare to detail a whole bunch of new stuff that's going to be coming as we've seen the road map for 2022 for sea of thieves i'm very excited today to welcome to the show albert dankwa who's the content developer on the xbox team welcome albert thanks for joining us ah thank you thank you so much for having me here uh i really appreciate it and i'm excited to be an xbox podcast rebecca of course well it's always awesome to speak with another xbox colleague so first if you don't mind do you want to just tell us a little bit about your role and what you do as a content developer sure so as a content developer i sit within um the team for xbox support and and my job is to well my first job was to create xbox support videos uh to you know be educational uh and informative for our gamers and fans around the globe which i found much joy in and then along the way uh my boss was like hey could you describe how you would present this video in 250 characters or less i'm like uh okay uh so i uh i made my first video well i didn't make it myself but i i managed the process to freelancers uh and it was on the xbox mobile app and i i wrote a a uh a sentence within the character limit and then he goes great how about why don't you be our xbox support social media lead i'm like uh okay sure so started out making videos and now i also are manage uh proactive not the reactive but uh i manage the proactive xbox support twitter as well as the youtube okay very cool very important job support interacting with the community love it um are you a gamer yourself i kind of assume so but since you know there are a lot of folks who work at xbox who aren't personally gamers but what do you think yeah i absolutely love gaming i grew up gaming uh it's it's been a part of my life actually wouldn't be here if it wasn't for gaming i can i can go on and on and like list all the the games the um the heroes the characters the worlds the franchises that i love but gaming is it's life do you did you think growing up that you were going to work in the gaming industry

initially no and i i don't want to sound like i'm not optimistic in a way but i just i just thought it was just too much of a long shot you know just growing but just growing up in the south bronx i was always under an impression that you know people had to go to like a high visibility college you know where you can see the recruiters get an internship and then make it into the industry so i never thought that i would be here until i had an experience that changed my life and then i thought you know what i think this is possible that's cool yeah i feel like a lot of people i talk to have kind of an unconventional route to gaming or like they don't really grow up thinking like i'm gonna be a game developer or like work in games marketing or something and then that's where they end up like me personally i didn't even think about xbox until um you know i was already in college like i've been planning to like work for like the government or something and then someone was like oh there's this opportunity with xbox there's this internship and i was like wow that sounds like way more fun and i love games so yeah um so how did you get into this specific role i feel like you've held a few different roles across the xbox team if if i'm not mistaken sure sure so where it started first like you i was looking at a different industry and i wanted to pursue a career in media communications and i was working for a a media network company and through an event that was sponsored by microsoft and it ended up changing my life and i got an opportunity to help with the xbox one launch where i got to help um employees in our third-party uh partner stores so best buys and walmarts and game stops and i'll teach and train them on the uh on the xbox one through a third-party um partner marketing company and it was a temporary program but it was enough to give me that that slice of gaming that slice of the life of what could be and it was enough to propel me to take a chance and i i went and applied for the microsoft store physical stores and i was turned down twice but the third time i actually got hired and i started out six and a half years ago at our um well what was our microsoft retail flagship store in uh in fifth avenue new york city and that's where i began my journey as a product advisor so fancy way of saying sales associate and there but i loved it because it was just so it had so much range i was able to you know help help a helper grandma set up solitaire on her surface all the way to helping somebody set up their business for the first time using microsoft 365 so it was a really rich range in which i can help uh customers in my community as well i really realized their dreams and empowered them using microsoft's technology our products and services and uh and then from there i was able to get promoted to a learning specialist in which i was on boarding field employees teaching and training them the same way it was done for me uh and and that was the last title i held before coming to team xbox very cool well i'm glad you didn't give up after those first two times you were turned down um yeah i feel like you know not that many people that i work with like this was just their first job straight out of college like i was also a vendor like working with microsoft but not at microsoft for like five years before i got my job on the xbox team so you know it it's a journey right but it sounds like you had a lot of experience like working with people like kind of getting to know the needs of like like players and customers and so hopefully that i would assume that kind of helps inform what you're working on today so that's that's a pretty cool journey yeah i i was very fortunate uh to to be in that location because it's because it was a very high traffic high visibility place and we had like a lot of visitors so i was very fortunate to meet people such as our cmo chris campusella uh ivasaty himself met me which i which i thought was crazy but it um it happened but the one thing that really set the ignition on this journey was back in 2016 when we had our very first midnight launch in the store and we wanted it to be big it was tom clancy's division the first one uh and we had a um what was called a community specialist and and they pretty much helped set up events uh internally externally uh and one of them had grabbed me and said hey albert we're gonna do this launch i'm not really big into gaming can you just help you know help me along with this meeting and this walk so that you can answer any xbox questions so i said sure no problem i'll go ahead and do it and all the names all of the people coming through the door and lo and behold the last person stepped through is larry herb himself and i'm like wow major nelson uh and we do the walk we do the tour everything's great and then larry goes wow this is a lot i'm going to do this but i need one thing and my team is like what do you need larry what do you need because again it's the first launch and we want it to be big and what's bigger than having major nelson you know be the host so he goes oh i need that guy to be my chaperone and i'm i'm looking me and he's like yeah you and then they're like albert sure sure just have him just have him uh and it was great you know i got to work with uh larry and you know this pretty much hey you know five minutes till the stream ends uh we're gonna do a giveaway here so this kind of helped managing him navigating the building and through the event but the key there and that night was i got to talk to larry for about 15-20 minutes during one of the breaks and i told him everything i wanted to do i said hey larry i want to be on t-max box one day uh i love gaming i want to you know stay in new york too and do it he looked at me and he said a lot of things um he gave me a lot of advice but the one thing that stuck with me he was like hey i want you to be persistent i want you to be consistent and above all you got to be patient because it's going to be a journey there's no blueprint for this but if you believe in the vision and you believe in yourself you can achieve it and he had prompted me to go ahead and create something he said you know make sure you work on a portfolio something that shows your talent uh and i went home that night and um

i made my first internal digital magazine and and that helped propel me to uh to this role today so thank you larry that's so cool yeah i love to hear that i mean obviously i'm a little bit biased i have also very strong feelings for larry is my co-worker but that's so cool i'm it's it's awesome like some people like so early on have such a profound impact on our careers and so i'm i'm really glad to hear that larry was able to help you and meet you like years back um it is it is quite the journey um but so now then i guess so you okay so you work in gaming but i mean are there any other fields that interest you do you think you want to stay in gaming forever oh oh definitely um well i still want to stay in gaming i love xbox it's always been my calling i believe it's my calling i am looking at you know maybe other areas i really like social i love i love xbox social and comms i also love xbox uh brand uh brand lifestyle and partnerships i think that's also a good uh a good area to be in uh funny enough over the summer uh aaron greenberg had and and i'm not sure if he's joking or not but he had commented on one of my tweets and he had called me like the best dressed man in gaming and it just spread like wildfire uh and i'm like oh larry um and then i'm like hey oh aaron stop you know you're too kind and you know people people kind of took to it you know it was like well is albert going to buy this or hey if albert has this you know this xbox swag or this xbox gear then i know it's good because you know he he goes out and gets this stuff so it kind of propelled me and like pushed me to like think about uh the brand and lifestyle part of it as well because it was only you know i only got our products i only get our swag and stuff because i like it and i generally love it and the fact that people were taking stock into that it had me thinking and that's also that's also a lane or also an area that that i also am pursuing so one of my goals i do have a lot of stuff on the bucket list but i actually want to be one of the models on the xbox gear shop site so um well it seems like you're able to do whatever you put your mind to so i might be saying you know what i believe it uh i i'm gonna see it and i'm gonna work towards it manifest it make it happen um right i hope that i'm gonna meet you someday uh mr best dressed on the xbox team uh but thank you so much for joining us today no problem no problem yeah it's been a pleasure see thieves fans you've got a big week this week we uh we heard some great news from rare and joining us today is joe neet executive producer sea thieves joe great to see you as always and you it's always a pleasure to be back here it usually means we've got something to talk about isn't it so it's great yeah it sure does tell us about what you guys announced this week i know there's a blog post that came out depending upon when you're listening to this very recently either yesterday or you know a few days ago tell us about the blog post and what what you guys have announced coming to see thieves yeah so very much you know for the last year we've been running seasons um and we did season five in uh kind of december uh which was not really cool tools not rules approach with the fireworks with like a million things burying treasure like there's so much stuff in there um but we were very much looking at the the previous year and kind of looking at seasons and almost how do we level up how do we level up this approach and so we loved what seasons brought it always brought in new mechanics at the start of the season um gave you that progression that ability to play the way you wanted but what we really looked at is how do we kind of give you more interesting things in between the kind of launcher seasons how do we bring more emotion and more narrative into our world and make it feel like the world's kind of ever changing and evolving and so we announced that alongside seasons we're bringing in adventures and mysteries so those those will be kind of the three pillars of our of our ongoing kind of world and live services you know the seasons that everybody knows and loves but then these adventures which are these time limited kind of narrative-led events that will really drive the world forward they will herald the introduction of new mechanics and they also have that ability for our community to kind of influence them as well the way players choose to um you know side with different kind of sides or factions or something as you go through things like this will help um influence the path that are that our world takes and the story takes so there's some really interesting stuff there and then mystery is a another thing all unto themselves very mysterious you can't talk too much about mysteries because otherwise it won't be a mystery indeed yeah but you know we we've been open that um our first mystery which will begin kind of during uh season six does i have to be careful not to say the wrong thing here but but um starts with the the murder of a well-known character from the sea of the universe yeah and so yeah so you know we um we're really excited by the prospective mysteries and by this unfolding um mystery within the game but also with clues and and and things unfolding out of the game as well so you're gonna be progressing it forward within the game our community is but also there'll be clues and things released out and it's something we see you know we're really interested to see how that plays out it kind of takes things from from args um that we're gonna be kind of folding in but with stuff in game two um but yeah it's all about solving um solving this mystery which is the murder of a character and um so the character is yet to be revealed who that's going to happen to but um you know it's like it's like a um an actor that reads the scripts like oh i've got like i've got to film that scene that's how that character's feeling right now right there they know their scene they know their future well before you know we've got some we've got some game play that we're going to show in just a minute um that you guys sent over which is great but i want to talk a little bit about your extraordinary year last year in 2021 i mean it was i mean it it just felt like you guys were on a roll and then we hit june and we had this your great tie-in with it with the pirates of the caribbean which i as you know because i i was so proud that i finished the entire thing 100 i sent you an email personally um but let's talk about last year because it was it was really it was really an amazing year for sea of thieves wasn't it yeah no it was incredible right like if we if we look back the fact that we launched even just that we began doing seasons within that year right like we started 2021 with season now seasons are just how we do sea of thieves right but that was where we started it at the beginning of last year and then hidden away in the background very much so was the um us working on a pirate's life and a dream a dream for everyone at rare right to be able to work on um something like that in collaboration with disney who were an amazing partner as well honestly just a it was a dream to work with them and the alignment we had around what we were doing and why uh but to keep it secret as well like we've talked about in the past like to be able to do that and surprise people in the way that we did um you know on that on that virtual digital stage at e3 was was incredible and i think that only got us halfway through the year right like yeah um but yeah it was it was an amazing moment i think you know a career highlight i think in a lot of ways for um for so many people because it's not often you get to work on you know such a beloved ip like that and also one that's but that's also within our own beloved ip that we're getting to bring that to that it's just like that's that's really cool right yeah i mean it's it is cool and it's and again this is if you're just watching now or you're just getting in to see thieves this content's there you can go back and can and play it again or enjoy it or bring your friends in and play it again so it's not like it's and you know you talk about some of the time limited stuff but in this case the pirate's life is not it's going to live on no no it's cool it's it's which is lovely so but you know you had a massive year for c thieves i saw this topping 25 players life to date and you had five million copies sold on steam congratulations on that that's that's no small feat again it's it's amazing right and you know and both both of those numbers were announced a little while ago they're a bit higher now i can't quite reveal what they where they are but um but but it wasn't and actually if we look year one year so we're in our fourth year now of of sea of thieves like like nearing our fourth anniversary actually and senior

and but each year has been bigger than the last and that's not just in terms of what we've released but like by by looking at the data looking at the player numbers in terms of and so not just that like 25 million a total player number going up but it's actually how many people turn up each year so like 2021 was categorically our biggest year yet in terms of player numbers the people that played sea of thieves during that year and that was 25 bigger than 2020 and that was bigger than 2019 and then bigger than 2018 so this you know our community our player base the buzz the excitement the kind of this this this world this um this game is continually growing from a feature perspective but it's also growing from a player-based and community's perspective and that's just an awesome sort of trend to be on and you know we we kick off the start of each year saying this year is going to be the biggest year yet and so far we've not been proven wrong so hopefully i'll be back here next january saying the same thing um but you know we'll someone will clip that and we'll see if it's true let's yeah let's see what happens there now i want to talk a little bit about some of the some of the uh

these are our gameplay sea forts which are coming in uh as part of season six and so these are kind of like similar like in terms of the the forts themselves so the forts that you have in sea of thieves are these big kind of shared world tries to drive multiple crews together this brings that fort experience but in a more compact smaller thing that's maybe more suitable to solo or to small single crews and it doesn't advertise its kind of active state when people are taking it on so it's trying to kind of give people that shorter session for experience maybe for um for kind of smaller crews but really like delivering what people love about it but as you can see you may stumble upon these as you're kind of cruising through the world as opposed to when you're playing seeing some of the skeleton forts which have a clear indicator that something's going on exactly that and so there are six of these now in the world and these have like if we think about the the narrative that our adventures will tell and will kind of unfold and and what you've seen previously in the narrative including kind of uh the pilot's life tool tales and everything like this all is interconnected and follows on so the reason for these thoughts appearing and where they've come from um is going to be explained as part of that that ongoing narrative as part of adventures so it's all kind of tied together you know that that the new the the new features that we want to continue to grow like introduce into our world as uh as part of seasons will tie together with that ongoing narrative so it's all connected it all makes sense um but yeah but these like this is such a beautiful architecture as well it's that kind of spanish colonial kind of architecture that you that you recognize but again we've seen this in the um in the sea of the damned we haven't seen this um in the in the kind of in the real world um so far so it's it's a nice kind of break from stuff that you've seen before as well and as you can see each each part of the world has a slightly different style as well in terms of these forts where they show up so you can see they look quite quite unique and quite different yeah that's the great thing about these is that you'll be able to kind of stumble upon them as you said solo or maybe with a duo and you got you you can take on this fort without frankly attracting a lot of tension from that reaper ship that always shows up at the last minute to take all your stuff right so this is exactly this kind of addresses that i mean those will still be there but this is kind of a more this is more of a quiet uh subtle conservative way of participating takes takes away some of the risk but not all of it so joe there's a lot of stuff in this update uh in it this is just january you have an entire year ahead of you we do indeed yeah um and we're kicking off with well the first adventure starts february 17th and then march the 10th is when season six starts uh which introduces the the sea forts it introduces the pirate legend quests um and then we roll into the kind of monthly cadence of adventures that we are having on um kind of on top of our seasonal delivery yeah i mean it's it's you guys continue to roll on there and continue i know you've got a lot of plans this year for sea of thieves this is just the beginning right i mean every year you like you said a moment ago every year you want it's your biggest year ever but i know you've got some pretty big plans you're not going to talk about them now because we're just excited about the next season and what you've brought into it and focusing on just really bringing great experiences for players it's it's got to be great to have you know 25 million pirates around the world joe that's amazing it's honestly it's it is it's amazing like it like we when we started this and um you know when when we set off with this i don't think we ever realized or even hoped really that we would reach that many people with this right um and it's a it's a privilege to be able to do it it's a privilege to work on sea of thieves it's a privilege to basically go and build our plans based around what cool content do we want to go and add to the game how do we want to grow this in the way that's going to delight our players and you know of course at the back of our minds we're always thinking about like we need to continue we want to continue to be a successful business we want to continue to make sense to kind of do this but it's always been about how do we like lead with the creative how do we lead with the game experience how does that be always the thing and always the player experience is the thing that matters to us the most and so um we're lucky that we've got a game and we've got a you know a way that we work in a way that we grow and evolve this that continues to lead to kind of it being successful in bringing more players in and everything so it's just it's just it's great but it's a privilege and it's um an honor to be able to work on something else well it's it's a little it's that but it's you know when you when you have the ability to build what you want to build is amazing and i know that this is a testament to your boss uh you know craig duncan who's ahead of rare and then his boss you know matt booty and then it just goes right up to phil because they're just like just go build what's gonna make sense and what's gonna make gamers happy right that is absolutely it right like it's that that culture and that that kind of culture of empowerment and of trust and of like you know even just this all of the different studios that we now have as part of um uh part of xbox that's that's the approach right it's like hey we're we're we want great studios because we know that they can go build great experiences for our players and it's like so go do what you do best right and and we trust you to make good decisions just keep us informed as to what you're doing and let us know why and let us know how we can help but um but yeah it's it's an amazing this amazing culture and a place to be part of right like you couldn't ask for more uh as a games developer so you kind of feel like the best funded indie developers in the world because you get to go be independent and feel that way and make your own decisions and um you know it's not like yeah kind of having to submit milestones every three months to kind of go just that okay it's not good you just go hey this is what we're doing and after you're doing it and yeah it's great right so it's like i said it's a privilege to be in that position because i've worked at different companies different places different cultures and nothing's felt like this well i got to tell you uh you know you know i'm a big fan of what you guys do the game you personally you know everybody there rare it's one of my favorite studios to come out and visit so i want to thank you for another amazing year last year cts and what we have to look forward to i'll put a link to the blog post down below in the show notes so that people can go kind of go through it and i'm sure there's all sorts of threads you have an amazing community that are going to go through this line by line and moment by moment and syllable by syllables so again congratulations to you and the team joe it's i know it's it's been a great uh last year been great four years and i'm looking forward to like i say having you back in a few months talk about more fun stuff indeed always a pleasure i'll i'll let you get back into your cool pirates then there we'll talk to you later my friend cheers see ya thanks rebecca for that very illuminating discussion with albert dankwa and of course larry bringing joe knee back to talk about uh a really exciting year of 2022 with new adventures this whole mystery thing for sea of thieves uh season six like a lot a lot of stuff coming up uh yeah it was really cool to see them share everything and by the way if you want all the details on that if you want to watch the stream that they did last thursday uh they've captured that it's on uh xbox wires of course on sea of thieves.com as well you can uh you can watch that there's a lot of there's a lot to be excited about pull link there also i want to thank albert he was he was just so overly generous and kind in the words he said about me it was it was slightly embarrassing but i want to i want to thank you you can edit all that out what no he was very he was very nice he was very and i it was unexpected and and thank you for your kind words as well rebecca so anyway it was great to see rebecca i love you know hearing voices uh the different voices around the xbox organization because we've got so many interesting stories and albert is just one of many we'll be telling a lot of those stories in the in the coming shows because there's there's such such amazing people that work with us that have gotten into the games industry specifically at xbox through very unorthodox ways right it's just been crazy i mean you know jeff was working i was working at a newspaper in central florida now he's you know running a team for microsoft in seattle you know rebecca you've got a fascinating story from you know you told a little bit of it during your during the interview you know so everybody's got an interesting story to tell so yeah but the one thing we all have in common is we all love games but yeah there are so many different unique roles across the team so i love getting to meet other colleagues on xbox and especially with albert being in new york i think he and i are probably going to meet up and maybe chat with some other local new york folks so it was it was really great to get his uh get introduced to him plus he also grew up in new york you know you're you're kind of a temporary he feels like long-term

uh but yeah you know you're you're so i'm sure he can show you where that where the where the better pizza is and and you know what not and all the other good stuff there so looking forward to seeing what happens there anyway uh jeff you got some news and then rebecca we're gonna we're gonna talk about wordle starting words because we asked that question last week yeah right how's yours how's wordle going for you this week folks

i mean i've solved them not not three turns or two turns but yeah yeah i've i've had some three i've actually been having dreams about wordle and my roommate said this too like are you talking in your sleep no i um we both had dreams that we like solved it super fast like in my dream last night actually i dreamt that i got it on my first guess and the word was spleen which is kind of hilarious because that's actually a six letter word and not

yeah so my dream is never going to come true um but yeah i got i think i got them this week on like my third and fourth try um it's kind of funny like i i like playing this game because it's it's helping to expand vocabulary a little bit like we talked about how like shire was kind of an unfamiliar word and then this week one of the words was null k-n-o-l-l which is like a grassy hill or something and a lot of my friends were like i've never even heard of this word before and i've never seen jfk yeah like okay but it's fine how about you guys oh i know i'm i'm i'm playing it with you know we we're on this internal teams channel where we post every morning or every day and jeff every morning jeff chided me i'll do it right away for sharing too much information i guess more than once and and i i'm always i think just about the last person to do it and i always look because i wake up and i have all these notifications and it's usually like 3 37 am today larry so someone from london at 1 48 a.m that makes sense because it's like 10 a.m for her and then you're you're 3 37 a.m pacific like i i was reading an article that back in the middle ages before we had like electricity and uh like clocks like people would go to sleep at sunset and they would wake up around midnight and they'd be up for a couple hours and then they go back to bed and sleep again so it was like sleep was segmented it's a whole thing that's interesting and i feel like that's you larry except you know they used to get up and i don't know where they would do chores you get up and you do wordle and then you go back presumably i hope you go back to bed i do i do there you go you're just you're living natural sleep well you know you talked about that but i was actually i was reading another unrelated article i believe about how um some of the native americans what they would use for an alarm clock water because water it took so long to go through the body so they would drink a lot of water in at a certain time during the night and they would all wake up at the same time because their bodies were like i gotta go to the bathroom and then they would well that's interesting right

so there you go so that's part of me like i said last week that's kind of why i get up because i go up and you know drinking a lot of water but uh yeah i like to i like to keep my mind going 24 7. always learn jeff always be learning i love it that's what i do i i i okay not 337. i hadn't learned it it sounded like it was going to be an acronym like always be learning

i couldn't go there always i couldn't do that much but anyway we're going to talk about your world awards because last week if you listen to the show on spotify and we we're in video and we have this new feature where we can ask a question if you scroll down you'll see it so we'll talk about that um no do it now about it let's do it we might as well so uh rebecca i think you've you've got a bunch of the responses there if you can uh maybe talk about some of what yeah the question was just to remind people what is your wordle starting word that was the question yeah so some pretty good answers um so my favorite was from papa giorgio who commented also that like he watched wheel of fortune um which i also watched wheel of fortune and so we have a similar starting word my first starting word is depending on the word of the day previously is usually steel so s-t-e-a-l um but papa giorgio put in tears which is also a good one that's a good kind of similar similar vein with wheel of fortune letters um i also liked orate o-r-a-t-e from jacob morgan 12-21 yeah three vowels in one word that's nice touch i might steal that one kind of similarly is honey from infinite eight john i thought that was a good one too um also flash from alex o'connor using a lot of those same wheel of fortune words um and then also lastly we have xbox from tommy falconen which is i love the spirit but it needs to be five letters the rules my friends is it x b o x x like how to see no okay okay yeah i love the effort but um but yeah so we love getting yeah i mean we love getting the answers through spotify so please continue to send them to us i think this week we wanted to know just since we've all been playing rainbow six extraction yes if anyone has any tips or things that you know you recommend for other people who are playing we would love to hear them because if you couldn't tell from the clip that we took we kind of sucked so your homework uh your assignment should you choose to accept it is your game pass member and i know if you listen to this show you're a game pass member go download rainbow six extraction uh either matchmaker it'll put you with some folks or get some find some friends that are also uh you know also on xbox and want to play game uh play rainbow six and kind of play around and then send us your tips we'll put that go go to spotify and you'll scroll down and see what's the question so give us your tips doesn't matter what it is small large we'd love to hear it right help us play better help everybody play better and then next week rebecca will read them on the show we'll give you full credit for all of us maybe we will go play according to those tips yes and see if they see if we get better so oh wait no sorry next week i won't be here so i'm actually flying home for uh lunar new year might know it as chinese new year it's february 1st what is it is it a new is it's a new animal what's the animal of the of this year of 2022 yes uh we're going into the year of the tiger um i can't really tell you any of the horoscope stuff about it but it's just you know in a lot of different asian cultures it's a really important holiday it's for some it's the biggest holiday of the year um like vietnamese call it tet um obviously the chinese new year i think they have another name for it too but um usually just a really good time to get together with family or eat certain kinds of foods so what kind of food what kind of food will you eat i'm curious yeah so um there are different uh there's different like traditions between different asian cultures so for koreans we eat what's called dukkuk and so it's like rice cake soup um i think that the rice cakes are supposed to be like maybe symbolizing coins i can't really remember i just know that we always eat like rice cake soup and they're kind of like circular rice cakes um and i know that my chinese friends i think that they eat like noodles like like they're long for like longevity long life um i know that they eat like fish and then also dumplings i think for the same like it's kind of shaped like a coin or like money reason so those are usually the things i eat cool yeah well thank you that's that's i appreciate that we'll enjoy your week off and jeff and i we're working on a special show for next week we may have a special guest in stay tuned if not it'll just be you know so we'll figure it out but it will be a very not special show not it'll be the most done special show but jeff you got a little bit of news over there we talked about rainbow six excuse me we talked about uh sea of thieves and joe talked about that and you did some headlines we got some other stuff wrapped up there as well this week right that is correct there's a few things uh new releases things to be playing things that have hit game pass so the first one i want to call attention to um is a game that really caught my attention uh made by a team called 40 giants entertainment out of brazil i don't feel like we've seen a tremendous amount of games coming out of brazil and this one really caught my eye it's called reverie knights tactics has that word tactics it has tactics in it i will play it if it was tax preparation tactics by hr h r block i would probably play it uh but this one looks really cool uh they've got a really nice bold art style um uh reminded me of banner saga a little bit oh yeah and so if you were ever into that uh it just definitely is catching my eye so i've downloaded it i'm gonna be playing it this weekend and we'll talk about it next week but there's a great post on how it all came together over on xbox wire as to games that we talked about recently that are now available uh taiko no tatsujin that's a tough one the drum master the the sort of those taiko drums that game is now out on game pass i'm looking forward to trying that out seeing what it's like and um there we go there is larry's you've been playing it already clearly he's ready uh and i want to talk about on free play days so free play days are uh games that you know you can buy but sometimes for a short amount of time usually the weekend uh like thursday night through sunday night pacific time if you're an xbox live gold or an xbox game pass ultimate member you can download and play the full game for free during that time it's gonna be a hard time maybe beating the game yeah but the goal being it's usually uh on sale as well and i want to call this week so for honor game from ubisoft that's been going on for uh for years and season after season so if you've never tried that out uh you can try it out for free and if you want to buy it the standard edition is four dollars and fifty cents so not exactly a huge commitment yeah and i want to call it one of my favorite i would say unsung games of uh the last couple of years at valkyria chronicles four is a game that uh another sort of tactical rpg but definitely like way more expansive and it's uh thinking outside the grid loved this game i must have put in 50 hours into it when i played it last year so that is available now if you like what you've seen definitely recommend you pick it up the standard edition is 12 bucks which is 60 off the complete edition which i picked up highly recommended because if you get into it you're going to want to play all the dlc missions is 15 uh so definitely if you like these types of games support them uh try it out the curio chronicles 4 and for honor free for now but only until sunday night all right that's that's and then uh last thing just wanted to mention uh games with gold so we announced february's games with gold which uh will become available starting february 1st so we have broken sword five the serpent's curse that'll be available all through the month of february from the first to the 28th also at that time through the magic of backward compatibility xbox 360 game hydrophobia that's from february 1st through february 15th and then our second half of the month games we have a game called aerial knights never yield and then band of bugs which is another xbox 360 game that i think uses your avatars if i recall correctly it's been a long time oh that's a good i think that might have been a tactical game yeah it is that was like a ti i remember playing that back in like 2006 or seven it's been a long time but i remember having fun with that ah the golden age of gaming right this is the golden age larry it's been through many ages uh anyway thank you for the news roundup jeff lots lots of news you can always go over to news.xbox.com and check that out uh you can also as i've been flashing up here throughout the show you can follow us on twitter you know rebecca works on the minecraft team so she'll frequently tweet about minecraft things and also noodles um and then and then jeff will uh well i think he's still under the contract for yakuza right you're still you're still supporting whenever there's news affiliate yeah i may have been typecast as like the yakuza guy but um there's things to be done i appreciate i appreciate the passion i mean when we all find these i found certain games over the years that i just completely gravitate towards to rebecca i know you found certain and that's that's the beauty of gaming is you there's something for everybody and something just really really you know flips your switch yeah so i'm just glad that we've all found our games and i'm sure you have too so all right gang well we're gonna wrap it up rebecca i wish you a uh is is it appropriate to say happy new year happy lunar new year i don't know how do you say can you tell me how you say it in korean yeah either is fine um in korean it's it's really long in korean um

does that just translate to happy new year or something else like happy new year and good luck

it's like have good luck in the new year yeah thank you thank you for that well i wish you and your family is a wonderful celebration and whoever else is out there uh celebrating it i wish you a happy lunar new year as well jeff anything you want to say before we roll uh which is in uh there we go and if you've seen ronnie chang stand up on netflix uh he dives into that which is uh i recommend it all right well yeah it's pretty good happy lunar new year jeff and i will be back next week hopefully with a special guest otherwise she's just gonna be he and i so we'll see you next time bye everybody