it's not that story though is it because this happened before it even came out and there are extent there are circumstances that are quite unique to this studio given like the legal stuff that's going on between the owners and stuff so yes yeah if if if people didn't read our blog or or your full story on game file if you could fill people in on this like surprisingly bizarre story

Sure.

And I'll tell it to you in a little bit of a different way than it's told in the story for people who did read it so they're not just hearing the same thing again.

And I'll just give you guys a sort of truncated version of how I found out about the story.

I got a tip earlier in the summer about how there was a lawsuit going on between two co-founders of Bitreactor.

Bit Reactor is not a super well-known studio.

It certainly wasn't before Zero Company because they're a new studio.

Felshi.

So what is it?

it?It's a puzzle game that, like a lot of my favorite puzzle games, doesn't tell you the rules.

It teaches you the rules by you trying to solve the puzzles, getting stumped, suddenly realizing there's this one kinda weird thing I could try.

Wait, that's opened up my mind to a whole new way of solving these puzzles.

This one is all about creating this winding dirt road through a forest.

How does it work? Picture an overhead view of a forest, pretty graphically simple.

You can see trees.

Yeah.

I think there's still a question of is it a compelling enough event? I, I looked on Ticketmaster to see, and it seemed like there w- it was almost all sold out.

Uh, I saw a couple tickets available.

So they do seem to have filled out the seats, unless Ticketmaster weren't the right place to look, 'cause then I've heard it was a different service.

No one else had been selling tickets.

But, like, as a, as a journalist, it doesn't really make sense to go 'cause everything that is gonna happen there largely is gonna-

Um-

That was always the weirdest part of E3, right? You'd go to a game demo and they would s- have some brutal kill set up in the demo.

From your perspective, Stephen, do you think that the, it, like, struck the right balance of the, the big hitters and the smaller stuff that Geoff's shows are usually pretty good for showing off?

It would seem more in tune with the mix of what people play, right? So you had new updates around Among Us, for example, which are much more a mass market, you know, kind of game that people play.

It wasn't just sort of the hardcore stuff.

But before the event, Geoff had posted on Twitter or X that he'd heard the feedback, and he was gonna end the show with a single player, um, uh, narrative-

Yeah.

I think there's still a question of is it a compelling enough event? I, I looked on Ticketmaster to see, and it seemed like there w- it was almost all sold out.

Uh, I saw a couple tickets available, so they do seem to have filled out the seats, unless Ticketmaster weren't the right place to look, 'cause then I've heard it's a different service.

We've also been selling tickets.

Can you just clarify how you see the difference between criticism and reporting?

Sure.

One of the simplest ways to think about it is I think about reporting as finding out truth that's outside of you and criticism as finding out truth that's inside of you.

It is how a piece of artwork may have impacted you in sort of assessing and analyzing or just articulating that to people.

In the field of reporting about video games, there's a lot of blurriness between being a games reporter and being a games critic, in part because the history of it and the heritage of it really began with criticism.

People were writing reviews of games far more often than they were interviewing game developers or doing any other sort of journalism at game companies and studios.

But also just the logistics of it.

And then the other is of course, being part of recommendation network on sub stack, but I'm curious if there are any like pivotal moments or articles you publish that suddenly a subscriber is flooded in, whether for free or for paid, have there been any particular moments, things you published that just pushed up your audience?

Very nice guy.

Exactly.

So, uh, I had covered...

Well, first of all, you're, you're, you're correct.

Some of the, the different platforms, and there's this...

What's helpful if you're an independent journalist is there is a marketplace for platforms to publish on.

Uh, so I publish on Substack, but, you know, the, I...

Specialist media, I would say.

Because what it turns out is there is, like, a, kind of a decade-long fight underneath this game coming out.

Right, and that Dong Nguyen had not quite fully walked away from Flappy Bird the way it had appeared publicly, or at least that people affiliated with him hadn't.

So yeah, when...

Same experience that you just described.

When the press release came out S- August, September of 2024 that it's coming back, that was from the Flappy Bird Foundation.

Okay, well, who are they? Why are they not just saying they're Dong Nguyen? Like, wha- what could the, what could this possibly be? And I started digging into it.

I was long gone from Kotaku at the time, uh, and had my own newsletter, Game File, and so kind of juggling that with other things.

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

And then they can build on that.

So if there had been an early and successful demonstration of what kind of game experiences actually work well with this, then you at least have a chance of getting some iteration in the design of games for it that can lead to some pretty good games potentially.

We've seen with Microsoft's Kinect, we've seen with Sony PlayStation's Move, that sometimes you do get launch software that is made with a peripheral and that it still isn't enough to prove that the tech is good enough, or that the experience you can play, in those cases with motion sensitive gaming, is going to be worth the investment to buy a Kinect or to buy a whatever.

So, it's not to say that, that this would've been proven to be great technology.

Perhaps it, the idea is so limited that even the best game designers couldn't have made something that would've justified the, all of the idiosyncrasies and faults of, of the tech.

But to not launch with something like that puts everybody, including other game developers, behind.

Sure.

I'm hoping Legend of Zeld- Zelda: Wind Waker gets re-released." Stephen, what else have gamers been asking for from the Switch 2 for the last, uh, few years? What did that wish list look like?

like?Well, first of all, good news for that listener, The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker will be playable on day one on the Switch 2.

Betsy Jordyn: Okay, there we go.

Thank you.

(laughs) The con... (laughs) Well, the con...

The new machine has a, you, y- this is a subs- subscription service that you can get, uh, Nintendo Switch online.

So, you have to pay a bit extra, but it will play older GameCube games that they offer through that plan, and Wind Waker is one of the first ones.

The launch date of June 5th, 2025 is unchanged." Steven, how does the company move forward? Like, what are the options on the table here? What do we know about that?