 Hey everyone, welcome back to Nintendo Prime and look, we're not gonna get into a typical Prime 5 today. Look, this whole Bayonetta 3 boycott, Helena Taylor situation, has sort of taken over the internet, at least for Nintendo's stories over the last handful of days. And we made a couple of videos yesterday and did a live stream talking about it. And for full disclosure, for those that didn't watch my live stream, I sort of made my stance pretty clear. I recapped the entire situation. I went over her side of things. I went over Jason Schreyer's report over on Bloomberg about it and gave reasons on both sides of the fence to believe whatever you wanna believe. And I sort of concluded that, hey folks, at this moment, and I'll say this now, I am leaning towards that Helena Taylor either lied or if she didn't lie, she misrepresented the full truth because the $4,000 final offer was a thing, but she didn't mention it was for potentially just a cameo for one session and that there was another offer that was significantly more for the entire game and that she did a counter offer and all this stuff, we might get into a little bit of it soon. But the reason I wanted to make another video on this is because I obviously care a lot about the conversation around gaming. And the conversation around this particular thing has been lighting the internet on fire. And it's been lighting it on fire in ways that I find quite interesting because look, if you're someone who fully buys into everything Helena Taylor said, you're going to obviously think everything else is slander and a lie and come up with a million reasons why Jason Schreyer, as an example, is apparently not credible. He is nothing because he claims he has documents and he didn't present those documents forward because it would also cause Bloomberg to get in a lawsuit if he did that, but that's neither here nor there, doesn't matter. Bloomberg is grabbed by a corporate billionaire who is a whole bunch of evils. So the fact that Jason Schreyer has a job there makes him complicit and also evil. It's really interesting the way the internet will twist things to want to support something that doesn't necessarily have anything backing it up. To this day, since Helena Taylor put those videos up, well, there have been other voice actors who have supported her in saying, yeah, voice actors need to be paid more because voice actors do need to be paid more. There's a real issue with voice actor payment across the voice acting industry. None of them could actually provide any evidence to the fact that what Helena Taylor said was true and Helena Taylor herself never provided any evidence to back up her claims and there hasn't been any other third party people around this situation than have been able to verify her claims. Jason Schreyer, on the other hand, claimed he had two sources plus an actual physical document. And then you get into, well, that's a he said, she said. Like we just gotta believe what Jason Schreyer said. But there's more to the story and this more is what I want to get into. And this is because Jennifer Hale has pointed out a few things that I didn't need to be understood. Jennifer Hale is the current voice actor, is currently the voice actor in Band-Aid 3 and retweeted some things and said some things I think are important. And kind of scroll down here and we'll see a few things. One, obviously the message she left before she went to bed last night, there are lessons in this, so many lessons, let's just be good to each other, let's start there and sleep, sleep is nice. Because there's so much vitriol going on around this situation. But she retweeted some things earlier that I think are important to note. As an example, Jason Schreyer's Twitter thread on this where he talks about all the details that are in his article over on Bloomberg, Stefan Totillo comes out and says, I recently heard from a good source about the 15K offer to Taylor, Platinum's second higher offer, I believe, but wasn't able to second source it, hadn't heard about the counter, Jason Schreyer's got more details. So Stefan Totillo, independent of Jason Schreyer and Stefan Totillo works for Axios, not Bloomberg, said, hey, I actually already heard this, but I don't report it without a second source. Jason Schreyer had the second source and had the physical document. So there's somebody else backing up Jason Schreyer's claims. So now that's two people backing up the claims of what Jason Schreyer had to say, but we're not done there. Andy Robinson from Video Game Chronicle says, I can corroborate at Jason Schreyer's reporting over the ban of a three pay dispute and a sad, messy situation. So yet a second journalist from a completely different outlet. So we have Stefan Totillo, who people can point out, he used to be the boss of Jason Schreyer over at Kotaku. Hey, he works for Axios now. He corroborated the story with only a single source, but then Andy Robinson came out from Video Game Chronicle and also corroborated. So now we have three different outlets and three different independent journalists, basically saying this whole story is true. The entire contract thing, the 15K offer, the counter offers, all this stuff is true. We have three different people verifying this. And Jennifer Hale is retweeting all of this stuff because obviously there is context somewhere in the middle of all this, but she also retweeted this thing by Ben Diskin. And this is all about the Bayonetta story. And he says, I feel like critical thinking is a skill that needs to be taught as its own subject in school. If you only hear one side or part of one side of a story, you haven't heard the whole story spreading an opinion based off a partial information can spread misinformation. Three, get all the information. Four, then ask yourself, where is this information coming from? Five, if the sources seem too biased or unreliable, seek better sources. Six, hear people out and give them the benefit of the doubt. But remember, people lie. People omit. People make mistakes. People misremember. People exaggerate. People misconstrue. People misrepresent. People get confused. People change their minds. People are fallible. Seven, we don't live in a world of good versus evil or right versus wrong, et cetera. We live in a world of nuance and details that matter. Familiarize yourself with as many of them as you can before broadcasting your opinions all over a public platform like this, real people can get hurt. And again, this was something that Jennifer Hale wanted to retweet that clearly had to do with this Bayonetta Three situation after she already made her own response here on the Bayonetta Three situation. This obviously is pretty devastating in general to everything going on. And in general, what we're kind of getting from Jennifer Hale who was hired for the role is that there's clearly a lot of truth in these contract talks, at least from her side of things. And there's just a lot of overreaction over people who provide things that clearly have a bias in the situation. And both sides have a bias. You know who doesn't have a bias? Jason Shryard, Stefan Tatillo, Andy Robinson. They don't have a horse in this fight. It's almost better for them if they were able to uncover more corporate bull crap that they have covered in the past. It's almost better. It actually would go with the history of their reporting. But the facts are what the facts are what they uncover and the evidence right now is heavily slanted at the moment. Now that we have some context against what Helena Taylor said where she either misremembered things, misrepresented or omitted key details that would have made her not necessarily sound so great. And it does make Helena Taylor come off as if she was just hurt. And I made a tweet yesterday last night that I wanna be careful here. I don't want people attacking Helena Taylor. I know what's happening already, right? People were attacking people for the opinions on Helena Taylor and the opinions against it. I've been attacked. I'm not gonna sit here and pretend. The videos I made yesterday, there are several comments in those videos attacking me for the opinions I have for the stances I took on this situation because I personally think a certain way. I think we have some context. And I've mentioned, I've mentioned many times for those who don't regularly watch my content that context matters. A lot of my regular viewers can tell you how many times I've said context matters. In every situation, every decision you make in life, everything that happens, there's some sort of context. It might be bad context. It might be weak, but there is some sort of context behind those decisions, behind those remarks, behind the things that happen. And that context is ultimately what paints the reality of what's happening. So when I made the decision as an example to wear this bucks sweatshirt, again, it's sort of inconsequential, right? I'm wearing this for two days in a row. You know, it's sort of inconsequential why I'm doing it. It's not that big of a deal, but the real reason, you know, the context is, hey, I've put on a little weight and my other sweatshirts don't fit right now. And I'm a little chilly, so this is what I'm wearing. That's the context of this. Is it a context that matters for you guys? No, is it a context that matters for me? A self-realization that I've put on a little extra weight? Yeah, that's something that matters for me. It might not matter for you, but the context still matters. Why am I doing it? Oh, because of this negative thing that I need to correct. And that's what matters in situations like this, is why was Helena Taylor painting things the way she does and saying the things the way that she was? And it's because she probably legitimately felt hurt that she got replaced. Getting replaced for a role you feel you have ownership over is something that is going to hurt and cut you deeply. And when you go to present that to the public, it's going to be deeply slanted. It's not, this is not someone who could step away from the situation and look at it with an objective viewpoint. It is somebody who is dealing with the personal feelings they have about this seeping into what they wanted to say publicly. And yes, that final 4K offer might have been insulting and maybe from her perspective, that 4K offer was for the same five sessions they were originally negotiating, but the context of the situation was that the offer was actually for a smaller one session cameo appearance. And chances are that maybe she even knew that but felt even deeper hurt that that's what she was being offered from being offered voicing the whole game to being offered just for one session for a cameo that probably cut her even deeper. Platinum Games probably didn't mean anything by this. They wanted her to be the full voice but since that fell through and they already went ahead and hired somebody else it was a, hey, we still want you to be part of this and it just wasn't good enough for her. So look, Helena Taylor is running from the situation. She told Jason Schreier herself. I don't even want any part of Bayonetta anymore. I just want to go back to my life, go back to the theater and leave this all behind me and that kind of means the story is probably dead. Bayonetta itself has risen up the charts and has been blowing up on Amazon and I'm sure a bunch of other retailers as well. I think I saw some GameStop employees mention that several people have been coming in the last couple of days to pre-order the game that really surprised them because they wasn't getting a lot of traction before this story broke. So I've heard that from some of my friends that work at GameStop, at least around in my area where the pre-order seemed to be increasing and I live in a pretty small area in Wisconsin. So if that's happening here I can only imagine what's happening in bigger, more densely populated areas with pre-orders. Look, this situation is sad. You have someone who's legitimately hurt, presenting things in a biased selfish light because in the moment all they can really think about is how hurt they are. And then obviously you have more context coming out and then people yelling at the context saying calling Jason Schreider a corporate shill which just directly goes against his actual factual track record as a journalist. And then obviously they'll probably find excuses to call Stephen Titillo another corporate shill or call Andy Robinson another corporate shill and just come up with excuses in their minds to defend somebody who has never really provided any proof of anything they've said. If Helena Taylor wants to come out and provide evidence and provide the contracts herself and they state something different. Yeah, we're free to change our mind as the information evolves but reality is at this point she hasn't presented any context to her statements and there's context from the other side and that context seems to be she's wrong and it's unfortunate and it sucks about the vitriol that's gonna be spewed both at me and at other people and at Helena Taylor over this but that's life. And hopefully after today we can maybe put this story to bed. I just wanted to provide that further context that other people are actually now supporting what Jason Schreyer said. So that's not just Jason Schreyer versus Helena Taylor. It's multiple independent journalists from different outlets now supporting this and then obviously Helena Taylor hasn't provided any other independent sources. No one else has really come out in defense of her with actual proof and Helena Taylor herself doesn't seem willing to back up her claims at all. She's running away from the situation which obviously doesn't look good. I wish her nothing but the best in whatever her career currently is. Apparently she works in theater. Maybe she does some acting. I really wish her well in that career path if that continues or whatever she does in the future and I kind of hope she could step away from this and maybe learn some lessons about calling out companies and calling out things and asking for boycotts of situations that affect so many people. The boycott actively could have hurt voice actors, could have hurt developers. I know there's been a lot of talk about royalties and whether or not people are getting royalties or not. It's not just that if this game doesn't sell well and they don't make a sequel people could lose their jobs. Factually people could be let go. Also, if a bayonet of four doesn't happen that's less voice actor work out there as well. So there's a lot to consider here about not just people who've already been paid but getting paid in the future. So anyways, I'm Nathan and Robert Jansson from the Nintendo Prime. You guys can tell me what you think about this down in the comments below. I'm sure it's gonna be a hot mess down there like this whole situation has been the whole time. I really ask you guys, remain kind to each other and respect our differences and opinions. Please don't attack each other. I know it's probably already too late for that but we'll talk about this one more time in the podcast with Mike Odyssey who is friends with several voice actors to get his thoughts. And other than that, after today I think we just kind of put this to bed. All right guys, we'll be back to our regular content tomorrow.