So, we need to have a chat about Mind's
Eye and I'm going to share some of my
thoughts on what I've seen
and there's a lot to get through and I'm
not exactly impressed. Now, for those
that don't know, very quickly, just for
30 seconds, I'm going to go through what
Mansai is. So, Leslie Benzy's, former
head of Rockstar North, works on some of
the best games in the gaming industry
over time. He left Rockstar Games, well,
officially in 2016, but technically in
2014, and he started a new studio called
Builder Rocket Boy. Now, Build a Rocket
Boy are working on a few different
projects, but one of their key projects
is something called Minds Eye, which is
kind of a mixture between Mafia, Grand
Theft Auto, Cyberpunk. You get the idea.
It's like a futuristic game with a hint
of Grand Theft Auto sprinkled over the
top. Now, this is a game that myself and
many others have been extremely excited
for. In fact, I reached out to their
team probably about 6 weeks ago to ask
if it was possible to interview their
developers and actually talk about the
game because there's one thing that
stood out to everyone more than anything
else. The marketing for Minds Eye sucks.
Now, I actually got an email from a
company, a third party company that are
doing the marketing for Minds Eye. They
are, well, not the marketing, but
they're doing the influencer creator
outreach for Minds Eyee. And they
reached out to me and offered me the
opportunity to join one of their kind of
like early preview events where you can
watch all the gameplay. And I was
excited by this cuz I thought I'd see a
load of really unique different things
that we haven't seen from the very
limited marketing material that we've
been given from Minds Eye. So, I engaged
with this. I was really excited and I
jumped on the call. Now, for me, this
kind of preview event was bizarre to say
the least. In fact, myself and a few of
the creators that jumped on these calls,
they've had conversations about it. It
was beyond weird. So, the way it worked,
it was kind of like a team's call or
like a Zoom call. I think it was
actually done directly on Teams. And
rather than like there was only four of
us on the call at the time. rather than
anyone getting to ask any questions or
say anything or have any conversations,
they basically kicked it off and then
spent 40 minutes to an hour just bolting
through everything. The first 20 30
minutes was predominantly cutscenes.
Then they went into a bit of gameplay.
Then they finished off by talking about
Arcadia, which is kind of like their
mission and world building system that
they built for the game. Like you can
build your own locations and areas and
stuff. And it was pretty cool. Like I
was that was the bit I was most excited
for. But the first thing was there were
a lot of issues and bugs and they kept
reiterating and understandably if this
is the case, but they kept reiterating
that they were having to go back over
stuff and they're just fixing some of
the issues and that the build they were
working on I believe was from the day
before, but some of the issues had been
fixed that day. And this is all stuff
that's fine and it's believable. They're
giving us kind of like early access to
the game to to see what's going on. But
the game comes out well 3 weeks time and
they're still fixing those bugs. And
there was quite a few a few of the
creators, you know, as I'm recording
this, no other videos have come out cuz
we are under NDA, but a few creators
have said that they're going to do
dedicated videos to the bugs and
glitches that they saw. Um, look, as a
fan, I was really excited for Minds Eye.
Not because it was going to be a
competitor to Grand Theft Auto 6, and
everyone knows that's not going to be
the case, but it was the fact that
Leslie Benzees has put his mind behind
something like this project. Leslie
Benzes has been responsible for my
favorite games, like period. He is a
genius of his craft, and I've heard a
lot of people from within the industry
have really positive things to say about
him. So, of course, for me, Minds Eye is
extremely exciting. It's an opportunity
to delve into a new world with someone
who has the same mindset as the team
behind Grand Theft Auto 5. But
everything I saw from the game play and
and just to be very clear, it is not
this, but this is my comparison. It felt
like a rushed and Real Engine 5 asset
flip. And that's fine if you're an indie
dev with maybe 10 employees. But if
you're a company that's received
hundreds of millions of dollars worth of
investment to produce this game, it
shouldn't just in my I mean I'm not a
games developer and I'm well within my
right to be criticized for my
criticisms, but the game doesn't feel
like it's that. Now, like I said here,
I'm not I'm not saying that Build a
Rocket Boy is a bad games developer. I'm
not saying that the game will even be
bad. All I can talk about is my
experience going into that preview event
and my thoughts and feelings on going.
And the biggest red flag for me, and I'm
not even sure if I'm allowed to talk
about this. I believe I can. We'll find
out when I get the email. Originally, a
lot of us creators that joined this
early access preview event to see this
game play. We were told that we'd get
the opportunity to actually send in our
questions to um one of their heads of
development. And this for me was the
main bit I was interested in because I
wanted to actually ask questions about
the development cycle, what it's like
building this game, what challenges they
faced, and what new technology maybe
they're bringing to us as an audience.
Well, I thought originally we'd be able
to ask these questions during a live
stream, but it turned out that wasn't
the case. It was more a case that we
could email some questions over, but it
wasn't until a week and a half later
that we were actually told that we can
send in some questions. And at that
point, I was in the middle of moving
house, so I didn't actually bother
sending in any questions cuz I would
have liked to have done it on the call
that we were given the opportunity to,
which then kind of begs the question,
was that live stream call even a live
stream? Was it even
pre-recorded? I don't know. And at this
point, I thought something's not right
here. It feels kind of like we're
getting pushed out to the point that
maybe they don't want to be answering
questions, which is a red flag in
itself. Like that's a huge cause for
concern. I need to say this
categorically. I don't think anything
nefarious or weird is going on with this
game. But the the lack of transparency
is fine if you're Rockstar, when you're
one of the biggest games developers in
the world and you've got the chops and
the history to be silent, to be
mysterious, to be weird about it. And
even at that point, it still annoys us
when Rockstar do it. But when you're a
new games developer releasing your first
publicly available game that comes out
in just a couple of weeks time, being
silent to the point where no one can get
hold of you, there's one person that's
done interviews publicly. This isn't me
trying to to [ __ ] on Build a Rocket Boy.
I I believe the potential is Z. And I do
think this game with the right support,
with the right development, and with a
longer time cycle, could be genuinely
incredible. I don't think it will be a
cyberpunk competitor by any means, but I
do think it will be an amazing game that
we'll all enjoy, but it's not ready to
come out in a couple of weeks. It's no
way is it ready to be coming out in a
couple of weeks. Now, this is the part
of the video where I have to eat humble
pie because when I did my initial
mindsai videos, there was a few causes
of concerns that I raised. But overall,
my general sentiment was excitement. But
that was, you know, a few months back.
That was when, okay, we've got months
before launch yet. So, there's an
opportunity for them to start marketing
and to start pushing this game. And
things like bugs didn't even cross my
mind cuz I assume that that would have
been tackled not within the, you know,
the last 30 days before launch. So, now
it's a bit weird. So now I feel a little
bit uncomfortable with what the game's
going to be. And like a lot of people
have asked me if I'm going to cover the
game on the channel, if I'm going to
play the game on the channel. And the
truth is I will play the game. I will
buy the game. I will give it a go, but
I'm not going to cover it on the channel
because I don't want to start a series I
don't think I'm going to finish. Um, so
I'll play the game for a bit off camera.
If I do think that it's got some weight
to it and it would make a great video
series on the channel, I'll finish it.
But everything I've seen so far is kind
of leaving me to believe that it's not
going to be the game that we all thought
it was going to be. A lot of the
criticisms that we had from early
development were the way the running and
animation stuff looks a bit like it's
Fortnite when Fortnite's great as a this
to be honest predominantly children
focused game. But when it's a game
that's involving like this sort of hand
to hand combat realistic world approach,
it seems a bit comical. Like it's like
the wrong style for the game. And it's
little things like that which I thought
were just like early footage. They're
things that I thought would have been
addressed and fixed longterm in the
game, which of course isn't what has
happened. Now, Builder Rocket Boy, if
you do happen to see this, please
understand, I'm not hating on you, and
I'm not [ __ ] on the work you've
done. I'm just saying that your release
timeline is a bit optimistic, trying to
get the game ready for June. GTA 6 has
been delayed. You've got time to release
this at the end of summer. Delay it.
It's better to release the game late,
maybe annoy some investors, maybe even h
have investors pull out. But if you get
this game right, if it if you get it
right and it performs well, people will
enjoy it and people will buy it. If the
game does come out and it's absolute
perfection and there's only one or two
little bugs or glitches and it's not the
end of the world, I'll eat humble pie.
But at the same time, I can only base my
opinion on what I saw in that early
access footage in that preview event.
And it it wasn't impressive. For
example, let's just talk about the NPCs,
or should we say the lack of NPCs, the
NPC density was so thin whilst the
preview event was taking place, some of
the YouTubers that were in these preview
events, you know, I've spoke since spoke
to YouTubers that were on these preview
events and they were all messaging each
other at the same time saying, "Right,
well, the world seems a bit dead, and it
does." And we have things like the draw
distances, stuff popping in from the
distance. And there is technology that
can account for things popping in. So
rather than things popping in in the
distance, they fade in. Or you use
clouds to hide distant objects. Or you
use like world-based artifacts to hide
where objects pop in. Or you change it
from a single texture to an object. Like
there's different technology that I know
games developers that are working on
their own little mini projects and
they're using this tech to get around
these issues. And a game like Minds Eye,
which has had hundreds of millions of
dollars of investment, shouldn't have
these issues. I don't know. I'm going on
a bit of a rant at the moment. I'm not
angry at Minds Eye or like Build a
Rocket Boy. I'm I'm not angry. I'm just
disappointed. But yeah, I am bit
disappointed. I was so amped for this
game. And now I'm just like I I still
will play it. I'll give it a go. But it
didn't have the same flare it did when I
saw the first trailers. And this is
becoming a common occurrence in the
gaming industry, isn't it? Oh dear.
Don't send any hate to build a rocket
boy in mind's eye, but hopefully they
see this. And I'm I'm not trying to
attack them as a games developer. Like a
lot of people try to boil games
developers down to just being
corporations. They're not. They're
people. They're developers. They're
people that work hard on their games.
And I have no question about the
integrity or the work ethic of anyone at
Builder Rocket Boy or the team working
on Minds Eye. I am sure that they are
some of the most capable games
developers, but something somewhere has
gone wrong where this has been allowed
to happen and the game is going to be
released to in my opinion way earlier
than it should be. Um, this is it. If
this game gets delayed, no one's going
to kick off. The anticipation for this
game is there, but it's nowhere near
like River Rockstar Games. People kicked
off about GTA 6 being delayed and then
they forgot about it a week later when
we got trailer 2. People are over it.
And it will be the same with this, but
way less worse. The impact is not there.
So, just delay the game, get it perfect,
and release it when it's ready. Thanks
for watching, and I'll see you all in
the next one. New
beginnings. Not too old to adjust. Old
dog, new tricks. Remember, I was just a
pup, something dirty in my cup. my cup.
Clean soul, good karma is a must. Still
my shooter in the cut. I was stuck
inside a rut. In a rut, played the game,
made bank, move G. Anything to get a
buck, you won't find me in the club. In
the club. I'm in the lab.