Should You Buy A Switch 2 Before Prices Go Up? [Mailbag]

Jason, Maddy, and Kirk open up the mailbag to take some of your questions on all sorts of things. How do you deal with a creatively unfulfilling job? Why don't more game studios allow employees to work remotely? And is it worth buying a Switch 2 now before it inevitably gets more expensive, even if you're on the fence?

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Jason Schreier?

  According to Kirk Hamilton, everyone is 37, except for TripleClick, which is now 300. Welcome to TripleClick, where we bring the games to you. For this 300th episode, we are opening up the mailbag and taking some questions. We talk about our finances, about creativity and work, and much more.

• 0:31Jason Schreier?

  I'm Jason Schreier.

• 0:32Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm Kirk Hamilton.

• 0:33Speaker 02

  And I'm Maddy Myers. Hello.

• 0:35Jason Schreier?

  We are at episode 300.

• 0:40Kirk Hamilton?

  I just kicked a guy into a well and I shouted, "This is TripleClick."

• 0:46Jason Schreier?

  Well done.

• 0:47Kirk Hamilton?

  We always celebrate that particular number in my household.

• 0:50Jason Schreier?

  Wow, what a milestone. What an accomplishment. We've been doing this for nearly six years, about to hit our six-year anniversary, which is pretty wild.

• 1:01Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, just a little over 60 more episodes and you will be able to listen to one episode of TripleClick for every day in a year.

• 1:07Speaker 02

  That is obviously something someone would want to do. And it's important that on our 365th episode, we remind them that finally, they can listen to one episode every day.

• 1:19Kirk Hamilton?

  Every day.

• 1:19Jason Schreier?

  If you listen to one episode every day by the end of it, for a year, then by the end of it, you will have written a book.

• 1:25Speaker 02

  Here's the thing, though. Let me tee Jason up here. I actually think we might almost already have enough episodes for a year if you happen to be a Maximum Fun member.

• 1:37Jason Schreier?

  Oh, yeah. Well, that's a good point because we are a listener-supported podcast and you can support us by going to maximumfun.org/join or the new maximumfun.org/jointripleclick, which is a nice, easy way to join us to help support the show. And if you do, you get bonus episodes, not just from us, from a whole bunch of shows on the Maximum Fun Network. But ours are every month, including one we just ran about Resident Evil Requiem, a game that we all finished and talked about. Very fun game. To play through and discuss and so much ridiculousness in that game.

• 2:15Speaker 02

  It was fun to spoil it all.

• 2:16Jason Schreier?

  Involving Leon and Grace and all of the other supporting cast along the way. Next up this month at the end of April, we'll be running a bonus episode about The Sopranos, season two and season three, two for the price of one, as Maddy continues to watch the show for the first time and Kirk and I re-watch it. Kirk for the second time, me for the impossible to count the number of times.

• 2:44Kirk Hamilton?

  Enough times that any scene that I text Jason about, he immediately replies with a verbatim quote from that scene.

• 2:50Speaker 02

  Jason has been watching The Sopranos every day of each year from when it came out up to now.

• 2:56Kirk Hamilton?

  He never really stopped.

• 2:57Jason Schreier?

  Well, if you watch The Sopranos every single day for a year, you become a gangster.

• 3:03Kirk Hamilton?

  You actually become Polly Walnuts.

• 3:04Jason Schreier?

  You get a tracksuit.

• 3:07Speaker 02

  You start getting income, but it's like really stressful terms by which you're collecting it.

• 3:13Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. You get some free income, but your life turns to total garbage.

• 3:17Jason Schreier?

  Maddy is on episode Fortunate Son.

• 3:20Speaker 02

  You can really tell what episode I'm on based on that. I'm so upset for Christopher, but hey, you'll have to listen to the app to find out why. It's, I'm worried about him.

• 3:28Jason Schreier?

  Welcome to the NFL rookie, as Polly says. But that'll be really fun. And once again, you can listen to that by becoming a member, maximumfun.org/join or maximumfun.org/join. Triple click, a new, new little feature we got here. All right, episode 300. And to celebrate, we're going to be answering some listener questions. That's right. It is time for some burning questions. Opening up the mailbag and taking some of your finest emails and lighting them on fire. Once again, as always, you can reach us at [email protected]. If you want to send in a question, that is [email protected]. We get so many

• 4:09Jason Schreier?

  good ones. We're really, listeners are really, really delivering for us to the point where we have way more good ones than we could possibly answer, but we'll, we'll try to get through them as regularly as we can. Let's start with this first one from Lily. Maddy, why don't you read this one?

• 4:25Speaker 02

  Sure. So Lilly writes, hi, long time listener, first time emailer. On the latest episode, Kirk mentioned his theory that everyone is 37. This kind of caught me off guard, so I wanted to let you guys know that I'm actually 26. Not sure if it's just me, or there are others. Love the show, Lilly.

• 4:45Jason Schreier?

  Interesting.

• 4:46Kirk Hamilton?

  So here's my response to Lilly. Have you considered the possibility that you are actually 37 years old? You might think that you're 26, but have you had yourself carbon dated? It is possible that you're 37 and you just don't realize.

• 5:01Jason Schreier?

  Well, Kirk, I have a counterpoint, which is that if you were 37, you wouldn't be in so much body pain all the time.

• 5:08Speaker 02

  You'd still be...

• 5:09Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. I suppose the theory here is, well, I remember I mentioned that I've gotten the body pain under control.

• 5:14Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 5:14Kirk Hamilton?

  Part of being in your 40s is getting in shape.

• 5:17Speaker 02

  And that you are in fact better than ever in your 40s. But that also kind of...

• 5:20Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm talking about better than ever, but...

• 5:22Jason Schreier?

  Well, now you're 37.

• 5:23Speaker 02

  Kind of undercuts your theory, though. Right. It's as though you're 37 again, perhaps?

• 5:28Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. So let me explain the actual theory. Here's my theory. Lilly, I acknowledge your actual age and I validate and see you. No, the theory of everybody being 37 is, it's kind of a joke theory, but it's the fact that I think when you're at that point in your 30s, somewhere between 36 and 38.

• 5:45Jason Schreier?

  Somewhere in there.

• 5:47Speaker 02

  I was trying to say exactly where.

• 5:49Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, because you can be 38, you can be 36.

• 5:53Speaker 02

  But if you were between them, for example.

• 5:56Kirk Hamilton?

  37, though, comes to mind. When you're at that point in your 30s, it seems as though, in media at least, you reach a point where you start making the kinds of shows that I listen to, at least right now. Like, that particular age of millennial is this kind of dead bullseye center millennial who is, you know, making Pokemon references and talking about other things that I don't totally follow as an elder millennial slash exennial, and is just in a position to be making podcasts about politics or the internet. And there was a period of time where I just kept finding that on every podcast I was listening to, the host would say, "Oh, how old are you?" And the guest would say, "Oh, well..." Well, I'm 38 and the host would say, yeah, well, I'm 37.

• 6:37Kirk Hamilton?

  And I was like, I just feel like everybody I'm listening to is this exact age. And all of culture, at least all of the culture that I interact with is being defined by this age. And so because the internet tells us that whatever we're seeing is universal and is true for everyone, I've extrapolated that out to a theory that everyone in the world actually is just 37 years old.

• 6:59Jason Schreier?

  It's funny you say this, Kirk, because I was having a conversation recently with someone. This is a little spicy, but I was having a conversation recently with someone in the games industry who was like, you know, the problem of the games industry right now is that the Gen Xers are in charge of everything and the millennials have not had a chance to like step up and run game studios and lead teams. So maybe if everyone in the games industry was 37, things would look differently.

• 7:23Kirk Hamilton?

  This is classic generational stuff, right? Where every generation will blame the other generation for whatever is going wrong. And there's usually an element of truth to all of it, right? But, uh, but yeah, I mean, generations kind of just don't exist to begin with.

• 7:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's all fake.

• 7:37Kirk Hamilton?

  You'll hear that from both sides.

• 7:38Speaker 02

  It's all completely made up.

• 7:40Kirk Hamilton?

  The problem is that all these stupid millennials are in charge. Like, that's probably what the Gen Xers would say.

• 7:44Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, 100%. Well, the Gen Xers, they want to make stuff that is like, oh, remember the 80s? I'm going to make all the things that I loved back in the 80s. But meanwhile, the millennials, if they were in charge, it would just be like, hey, we're going to remake Doug.

• 7:56Speaker 02

  Y2K era stuff. Yeah, Doug, he had a journal.

• 8:01Kirk Hamilton?

  It's all like Disney Channel originals.

• 8:03Jason Schreier?

  It would be like BuzzFeed quizzes turned into video games.

• 8:06Speaker 02

  None of us have any nostalgia for BuzzFeed quizzes. I reject that.

• 8:10Jason Schreier?

  No, no, no, no, Maddie. The BuzzFeed quizzes are the millennial nostalgia. Like, those are all just millennial nostalgic quizzes, is the idea.

• 8:17Speaker 02

  Right, that's a good point. Yeah, they were, they were banking on millennial nostalgia in and of themselves.

• 8:23Jason Schreier?

  Yes, and it'll be like, which Rugrats character were you? That's the sort of...

• 8:28Speaker 02

  That could be maybe the next AAA game is...

• 8:31Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, exactly. Or like, yeah, AAA Rugrats game where it's like dark and gritty versions of Tommy Pickles and his baby, baby crew.

• 8:42Speaker 02

  He's got nothing but a screwdriver and he knows how to use it.

• 8:45Jason Schreier?

  Could you imagine? And your inventory is your diaper.

• 8:48Speaker 02

  And she is your diaper. But you only have a screwdriver. That's it. The entire screen is blank. Kirk doesn't get these references because he's a few years older than we are.

• 8:57Kirk Hamilton?

  For what it's worth, that is true. This is one of that, that micro generational divide. I don't know if this answer actually helped Lily understand my theory. But like I said, when I first mentioned it, this is a work in progress. I'm chewing on it. I'm, uh, I'm feeling it out. Thank you for writing in and, uh, and sharing your perspective as a 26 year old on this theory.

• 9:16Jason Schreier?

  I want to, can we do a whole episode about Rugrats triple A?

• 9:20Speaker 02

  Can we do a whole episode where Jason and I talk about the micro differences between

• 9:25Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, we talk about our millennial nostalgia.

• 9:27Speaker 02

  Between us and Kirk.

• 9:29Kirk Hamilton?

  That sounds fun. You guys record that, just send me the audio files. All right.

• 9:33Jason Schreier?

  You'll be like, I'm going to talk about Ghostbusters.

• 9:37Speaker 02

  And I'll be like, that's okay. I mean, it's, it's fine. I just don't have quite as strong an emotional attachment to it. So, no, nothing against Ghostbusters. Please don't write in. It's, it's just, I didn't grow up watching it. I'm so sorry.

• 9:47Jason Schreier?

  For us, it's like the Sandlot and like the mask.

• 9:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, great pull.

• 9:52Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, I love the Sandlot. I love the mask. So, you know, there are things that we have in common and things that we don't. It's weird.

• 9:58Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, there we go.

• 9:58Speaker 02

  It's true. It's true.

• 9:59Jason Schreier?

  All right. Next question. Kirk, you want to read this one?

• 10:02Kirk Hamilton?

  This next email comes from Samuel, who writes, hi, triple click. I work as a technical artist in a double A game studio. I really love my job. I get to solve interesting problems with creative people in a studio with a healthy work culture. My coworkers are all incredibly passionate about the game we're working on. Here's one thing, though. I'm not. In fact, I dislike almost everything about the aesthetics, mechanics and narrative of the game that I helped create five days out of the week. While I have no intention of leaving my job in the near future, this situation is pretty creatively draining. As three creative people, have you, how have you balanced enjoyment of the creative process with passion for a final project? Is this dissonance something you felt in your own work?

• 10:49Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 10:50Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I mean, I have some thoughts. My immediate thought is that I think there are some benefits to working on something you're not super passionate about. One is that you can actually treat your job like a job and not get super attached to everything to the point where you'll come in on weekends to get a feature, to prevent a feature that you're working on from getting cut because you love it so much and you really want to see it in the game. You can kind of treat your job as a job as more of a nine to five, which I think can be beneficial to you. The other thought is that I think a lot of the creativity, a lot of the great creativity, a lot of the great works of art come from people who are bored during their day jobs and just can daydream and think about stuff all day. Granted, it's a little tougher when you're doing art for your day job and so you have to do art even though you're not inspired about it,

• 11:35Jason Schreier?

  inspired to do it. You might feel burnt out at the end of the day and not feel like you could be creative about other stuff. But, I mean, boredom and kind of lack of inspiration during the day can lead to more creativity at night and weekends and like during your own, during your spare time, which can, you can channel into personal projects or like projects you want to be professional projects. It can be, it can go anywhere, or channel it into your family. I don't know, it could go anywhere.

• 12:00Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it's tricky because Samuel, it isn't just that Samuel is sort of ambivalent about his job. He seems, he says he actively dislikes it. He dislikes the game that he's making and finds it creatively draining. And that's a little tougher than, you know, if you're just going in to clock in at some kind of job that you find not that engaging and then working on creative stuff at night. You know, going into a creative job that is really engaging and, you know, challenging. And he describes it as this really kind of interesting problem solving, really engaging job, but then everything that he's making is sort of aesthetically repellent to him. That seems like a pretty serious, long-term problem to me.

• 12:39Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, you're right. I hadn't thought about it that way. I guess I've never really been in this situation because when I'm kind of, over my career as a journalist, when I'm kind of forced to do something I don't want to do or like put in a position where I don't find something super satisfying, it's over so quickly because articles are ephemeral and you generally do them pretty quickly, that I don't really have to linger on it too much, which I guess is very lucky that I haven't been in that position.

• 13:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was how I thought about the question the first time I read it was I was like, "Oh, wow, I'm so grateful that even when I have to cover something that I'm not really passionate about or write about a game that I don't like, it doesn't last for very long. It's it's over and then I can move on to the next thing and embrace something I'm passionate about." But in reading this again now, I did remember some of the odd jobs that I took on after the Boston Phoenix went out of business before I got hired full time at the Mary Sue and I was just freelancing on top of those jobs. And some of them were like, social media manager and technical writing jobs that were totally outside of the games industry because I wanted to keep writing about games. So I found jobs that were unrelated and I hated

• 13:44Speaker 02

  them. And getting myself to write about things I did not care about, I found to be just anathema for me personally. So that was part of why I was like, "Okay, it's really important to me to, even if it's not in games, to get a journalism job of some kind about a topic that I'm passionate about because I have so much trouble motivating myself to write over and over again." Like, a couple of times, I found I could do it. But the longer it went on, the more I was like, "Wow, I do not have this ability." So, Samuel, unfortunately, my solution was to eventually work at a place that was intellectually stimulating for me. But hopefully, that's not the case for you because you said you have no intention of

• 14:29Speaker 02

  leaving your job.

• 14:31Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I think there is something there. I mean, I've had experiences somewhat like this. There were certainly times writing for Kotaku where I felt like, "This isn't really what I want to be doing," you know, since what I really want to be doing is like, playing saxophone. It's like playing and teaching music. And writing about video games was a lot of fun and especially at its best, you know, when I was really getting to dig into some creative video game review or something. Or certainly, podcasting has been really fun. Like, those were all really fun parts of the job. But there were definitely parts of the job that weren't really what I wanted to be doing or that could feel a little bit draining.

• 15:07Jason Schreier?

  Managing people.

• 15:09Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, well, sure. And even, and writing, I guess, like, you know, there were, there were times where I was just kind of churning out articles, especially in the early years. And that's like, not very inspiring to me and actually led to me doing kind of mediocre work sometimes because I was hitting too many deadlines and I wasn't proud of what I was doing. And I didn't really care about most of the video games like that much, like it was fun and interesting, but not something I was super passionate about. So it was draining in that I would finish and it wasn't like I was wrapping up my shift at Kotaku and then going and practicing and writing music. I was like, playing video games or just sort of burned out and tired. And so I do know that feeling. And I know a lot of people who do similar work in music, actually, you know, who are maybe studio musicians or professional composers.

• 15:53Kirk Hamilton?

  I'll fictionalize it, I guess, and talk about Jason Segel's character in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, who's one of my favorite depictions of a musician, where he, he like composes for Law & Order, essentially. And I believe his, his line is, it's just ominous tones. It's not even really music. He's just going dong when the killer, you know, leaves the new body. And like, people who work in those fields really struggle. It's a challenge, you know, to, to like, show up every day with your guitar at work and then play music that's going to be in some movie or like be really high profile, but it's not actually very interesting. And then find the energy to still write your own music. So I'd say, I guess, my advice is, whatever you're doing, it does play a role in your

• 16:37Kirk Hamilton?

  broader artistic self and in the vision that you have for what you want to make long term. You know, if you, if you're thinking of yourself as an artist. And even if you're working currently on a project that's like, not what you would be making if you could just make anything, you're still building skills that you're eventually going to be able to apply toward that work that you want to do. But it is important to keep your eye on that work that you want to do because as we've kind of said a few different times, you can only do this for so long where you're making something that isn't what you want to make because it is fairly draining and it's hard to get around to the thing that you want to do. So think of it as kind of a step on the way toward where you want to be and just don't lose sight of where you want to be.

• 17:17Speaker 02

  That's good advice. And I think as I hear you, I can say that I did actually learn something at all of those little odd jobs that I had. And all of those things helped me improve at different kinds of writing, even if at the time I was like, oh, this is so boring, or I can't see what the value is in this. It's usually true that when you look back on it, you're like, I actually did learn something from that. And I'm sure that's true of Samuel. And also, eventually, the studio will work on a different game, I'm sure. And maybe it'll be something with a totally different aesthetic and vibe, and something that Samuel can contribute to in the process, hopefully, and be like, hey, what if we did this or that? And by building skills now, working

• 17:59Speaker 02

  on something that you don't like, Samuel, you might have a better sense of how you could contribute to something that you do like, and what that would even look like at your job.

• 18:08Jason Schreier?

  Can I also, can I say something a little bit contrarian here, which is that Samuel writes that he gets to solve interesting people, problems with creative people in a studio with a healthy work culture. There are a lot of cases where you might be working on a game that's really cool and interesting, but you are working in a very toxic environment with an awful work culture. And I don't know, after talking to many people in this industry and hearing a lot of stories, I think I would rather be working on the boring project with the healthy work culture and the good people than the other way around. So try to cherish that part of it, at least. It sounds like you are. But I think, like, having a good boss and having good coworkers and getting to hang out with them all the time can help

• 18:50Jason Schreier?

  make up for things. And grass isn't always greener on that, that aspect of work.

• 18:56Speaker 02

  That's so true.

• 18:59Jason Schreier?

  Okay, let's get to the next question. This is Dusty. Dusty writes, hi, y'all. Long time. First time writing from Australia and hoping for a triple click live world tour someday. Maybe. I don't know. Kirk is very famous in Australia.

• 19:14Speaker 02

  It's true. It's true.

• 19:15Jason Schreier?

  In the state of video games episode, Jason made the point that game budgets are predominantly made up of worker salaries and ballooning costs are in large part due to increased cost of living in major American cities. So my question is this, why are major studios forcing employees to return to offices in places like LA when many were happily working remotely in less expensive cities slash states slash countries?

• 19:41Kirk Hamilton?

  Why indeed?

• 19:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, why? Do we know?

• 19:44Jason Schreier?

  Okay.

• 19:44Speaker 02

  Why?

• 19:45Jason Schreier?

  I mean, I guess I kind of know in that I've asked companies this, or I've asked the people who are making decisions at companies this, and they say, and I'm curious if you guys believe this, but I've talked to people who are in management roles and they say that they have data that shows that people are less productive working remotely and more productive working in the office. And maybe that's true, maybe it's not, I don't know. Maybe it's a case by case thing. Working remotely seems to work for a lot of people. Maybe for some people it doesn't. Maybe for some people they do tend to slack off when nobody's watching them. Maybe they're spending more time on Twitter because nobody can see their monitors, or they have Netflix on in the background while they're like, doing stuff. I don't know. And I say this all as someone who has been a proponent of remote work since before COVID.

• 20:28Speaker 02

  And has been working remotely for a long time.

• 20:30Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, and I work remotely. So, and I think remote work can solve a lot of problems. I actually think it's kind of immoral to make people move for a job in the games industry, given how there's no guarantee of security, of job security in the games industry. So, to make someone uproot their family only to potentially lay them off a year later is just obscene. But that said, I mean, that's what these companies believe. So they're not calling for return to office for no reason. I do think, I think there's a, obviously a lot of people see it as like, oh, it's just managers wanting butts in seats just for the sake of it. And maybe that's, that's true to some extent. But I do think and have heard that these companies like genuinely believe that their workers are more productive

• 21:14Jason Schreier?

  in the office and that they see more gains when they have people in the office.

• 21:19Speaker 02

  I wonder what that data is based on and if COVID was part of what the data was taken from, because...

• 21:26Jason Schreier?

  No, this is more recently. This is more like...

• 21:30Speaker 02

  Okay, that's reassuring.

• 21:30Jason Schreier?

  Like...

• 21:30Speaker 02

  Because I just want to say, I don't know that COVID is a great indicator of anybody's ability to work from home.

• 21:34Jason Schreier?

  No, because that was so long ago at this point, that I think companies have data of like the last two years or so. And so there's some companies, I don't know, like I've talked to people at Blizzard, for example, because I wrote a book about them, obviously, and they had a pretty strict return to office policy implemented in like 2023.

• 21:53Jason Schreier?

  Or 2024, something like that. It's been relaxed a little bit and now it's a little bit like turning a blind eye and at least on some teams. But it was a little stricter and back then their management said they had data showing like, hey, we see productivity gains of X, Y and Z when people are in the office. And maybe there are other factors there. I don't know. Maybe there's a lot of variables there.

• 22:15Kirk Hamilton?

  I do kind of think that, I mean, there's something to be said for working in the same room with people too, like even just going to meetings with people in the same room. Like we're talking in terms of productivity and I think that makes sense, especially because this question was asked in terms of the economics. Which, you know, when you're forcing people to all live in a really expensive city and then paying their salaries so they can afford to live there. That's like a whole systemic issue in the video game world, but I do find, you know, I, recording a podcast in the same room with people, for example. Just to go with something that I'm very familiar with doing, it's a whole different world. I mean, if you just sit with one other person and two microphones in a room and record, like I'll do that and then I'll go and edit it and it requires essentially no editing.

• 22:59Kirk Hamilton?

  Because people are so much more effective at communicating with one another when they're in the room together. So that makes podcasting in person easier than podcasting remotely, the way that we all do, even though the three of us have learned how to do it remotely. But more broadly, it kind of, it's like a way of documenting communication, right? Because what is a podcast? Other than just a conversation that you're having with someone? I can look at the recording and show you, like, I can understand the ways that people are communicating differently when they're in the room versus when they're on a Zoom call. And it's remarkable. I mean, it is really noticeable. We have not crossed that technological gulf to make, you know, in-person meetings remotely on the same level. Or sorry, to make remotely meetings remotely on the same level as in person.

• 23:43Kirk Hamilton?

  So like, I think there's something there. I mean, I can certainly understand why someone leading a team of creative people would want to get them all in the room together. Now you have to weigh that against the many upsides of letting people work remotely. It's a really great thing for a lot of people and I don't know that this outweighs that at all. And then more to the topic of the question, you know, if you're asking them to move across the country, you're putting Them in an expensive city, these are all kind of separate factors. But I do at least understand why someone might make the argument to just like, we're going to do better work. It's going to be more fun, we're going to communicate better if we're all just sitting around together and actually in the same space. I get that.

• 24:18Jason Schreier?

  Especially someone who had done it that way successfully for a long time and then suddenly that way was changed on them. I mean, we were talking about Gen Xers before, right? Like, that's a lot of people who have been charged with these studios and they were making games for, I don't know, 10, 15, 20 years a certain way. And then suddenly it got upended and they're like, no, actually it was pretty, we were much more successful doing it that way.

• 24:39Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. And it really isn't to say that, you know, you can't make games well remotely. We've seen games that have been really, well, made really well remotely. And we make a podcast well remotely. It's possible. It just requires a different process. And I, yeah, I can definitely see preferring one or the other because they are different and they have different strengths and weaknesses.

• 24:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I strongly prefer working remotely and I have my own years of personal data that I've collected in my own life to prove I work better remotely. And I think some of that is the mental illness cocktail that I have. I really appreciate being able to control my own environment and an office is often overstimulating for me. And I think that those kinds of conversations have become more prevalent now, especially in the post-COVID era where sometimes people are like, whoa, I'm actually way more productive remote. And I had no idea. And now I can talk to my manager about that. And then maybe the manager doesn't have the ability or means to accommodate them. And then we get down the accommodations road, which I only mention because I do think it's a piece here that's worth bringing up.

• 25:43Speaker 02

  But that is part of why my take generally is, I would encourage and hope that most companies could approach this on a case by case basis. And just be like, okay, so maybe the data at large says everyone's more productive in person. But I have a couple of members of my team who were actually way more productive when I let them work from home or do three days from home or whatever it is. And getting the permission to do it that way, I would hope that that would be possible. There is also just the piece of things where I just feel so drained going in and out of an office sometimes, like socially. And I know, I mean, my wife's job deals with this a lot more because they have a lot of very outgoing people.

• 26:27Speaker 02

  It's just part of the company that she's at, the culture there. And a lot of those people are like, Really upset that some people are remote because they're like, I just miss talking to you in person every day. And those people who are remote are like, I don't know that I want to talk to you in person every day. And so like, there is also like the social minefield piece of things that I think is, maybe doesn't really fit into accessibility conversations in quite the same way, but it's also a factor where it's like, some people just sociability wise are like, I feel better in my brain when I'm like in an office that's buzzing and full of people, you know, your classic extroverts. And then there are people that are like, I would rather never do that, actually.

• 27:06Kirk Hamilton?

  And there's like a whole gray area in between, which is, I think, really important to acknowledge. And like, I do a lot of things better on my own and I work from home. I, I am pretty much working for myself. But then there are things that I like to do in person.

• 27:22Speaker 02

  Same.

• 27:22Kirk Hamilton?

  And so, you know, it's like, it requires a level of flexibility that most modern workplaces have not really figured out how to do because that's a really tricky challenge. I don't know, the cost of living thing seems like such a big issue. And it, I don't get the sense that game studios are like taking that into account when they're asking people to come back to the office. Or are they maybe, Jason? Like, have you heard of game executives thinking in these terms? Like, well, if we worked remotely, actually, we could dramatically lower our overhead because we wouldn't have to pay quite as much money if people weren't living in this expensive city?

• 27:55Jason Schreier?

  Well, I mean, that opens a whole can of worms there, too, because would you feel like it was fair to be paid 30% less than your coworkers just because you're in a different city than they are? Like, just because you're in, I don't know, Tennessee, you think you should be making, getting a giant pay cut over your coworker in Los Angeles?

• 28:16Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, don't ask me that. I mean, you're turning around on me, but I'm asking if you like have heard of any game developers?

• 28:21Jason Schreier?

  No, no, no, no, no.

• 28:22Kirk Hamilton?

  Like, I don't have an answer. But are game, are people making games like thinking this way at all? Like, are they thinking that they can lower their overhead by, by going remote?

• 28:29Jason Schreier?

  Yes, there are. If you look at, if you look at salary listings for salary ranges for job listings, not just in the games industry, but all around, sometimes it'll be like, for New York and California, this is the salary for other cities. States like this is a salary. So it does happen. As of right now, I mean, most game companies, maybe not most, but a lot of game companies are pushing return to office in some way or another. Usually it's like three or four days a week. We want you in the office. In some cases, like Naughty Dog has been pushing hard on five days a week, at least for certain amounts of time throughout this final push shuttle next like year and a half as they try to finish intergalactic. Then on the flip side, you have companies like Insomniac,

• 29:11Jason Schreier?

  one of the most prolific game developers that is entirely remote first and people can choose to go into the office or not, depending what they want to do. But they have plenty of people who live all over the country. So we're seeing a wide variance in what companies are doing. I don't know how much overhead is taken into consideration for that. I would think that a big factor would be the rent of an office. And so like to just use Insomniac as another example, I believe they had multiple offices and then they consolidated to one, which I'm sure helps them save some money. I believe they had a North Carolina office that doesn't exist anymore. And so they just have those people working remotely. So yeah, I mean,

• 29:53Jason Schreier?

  I'm sure it's a factor. But again, I don't think that they're thinking like, oh, we're gonna really save money on people's salaries by letting them live wherever. Because I just don't know how practical that is. But I don't know. All right, let's get through some more questions. Maddy, it's your turn.

• 30:12Speaker 02

  It is. This next question is from Morgan who writes, hi, Jason, Maddy and Kirk. I know Jason always says to keep it short, but where would we be if I didn't start by saying, I love the podcast. My friend got me into it and chatting about the new episode on Thursdays is a crucial part of our routine. Thanks, Morgan. The same friend.

• 30:30Jason Schreier?

  Now they get to talk about themselves this Thursday.

• 30:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, the same friend and I try to make big financial gaming decisions together to help prevent impulse purchases and are currently struggling with one that we were hoping to get your insight on. We both eventually want to get the Switch 2, but it doesn't have any exclusives that interest us right now. So we've been holding off. However, we've been getting spooked by the looming Shortage and rumors that it will lead to big price hikes or limited availability of products, which might then impact us by the time there is a game we really want to play. Can you think of anything similar that has happened in the video game industry in the past? It might give us an idea of what to expect. If you were in our position, would you buy now to avoid these potential issues or continue waiting?

• 31:14Jason Schreier?

  I don't think there's any precedent for this. We've never seen a console generation where the consoles get more expensive.

• 31:20Speaker 02

  This is just hell. We just live in the worst time, I guess, for that. And for other reasons, but also this.

• 31:28Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I mean, I feel like if you, I don't know. I don't really know how to give good advice here. I don't think any of us do because we all received, correct me if I'm wrong. Did we all receive our Switch 2s from Nintendo?

• 31:40Speaker 02

  Oh, no.

• 31:43Kirk Hamilton?

  I just bought mine with my own money.

• 31:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I bought mine.

• 31:45Jason Schreier?

  You just bought yours. Okay. Well, I received mine.

• 31:47Kirk Hamilton?

  Jason got his for free.

• 31:49Jason Schreier?

  I didn't have to buy it in the first place, so I don't really know what I would do if not for that. But I think just as a long-term investment, I would probably buy one now because the price is only going to go up from here. We already saw PlayStation 5 just raised their price. I believe Switch 1 has raised their price. Xbox has been raising their prices. I expect Switch 2 will raise their price imminently, like within the next year, because this RAM shortage is not going away and the supply all across the world is only getting worse by the minute. So, uh, yeah, man, I don't know. It's, it's bad out there.

• 32:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, speaking for myself, a person who did buy a Switch 2, that did play a role in my decision. And I know I talked on the show about how I rebuilt my computer about six months prior to that because I was so worried about the incoming tariffs and also just general supply chain issues that I knew were coming. And that I have not regretted at all. I have opposite regretted that. I have been so grateful to my past self for making those decisions. Of course, I also host a video game podcast, so. In my mind, I was like, I'm gonna need a Switch 2 eventually. This is an investment, in a sense. I can write it off on my taxes. That's probably not true for Morgan and their friend.

• 33:13Speaker 02

  But I knew I was gonna need it eventually, so it made sense to go ahead and just get one right away.

• 33:18Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 33:19Speaker 02

  But the, the example of my PC is maybe a better one in the sense that I was like, it's not going to get easier. I may as well get the parts now.

• 33:27Jason Schreier?

  I think what you're getting at is the question to ask. The question to ask is, will I get one no matter what? Or will I always be on the fence? And like, if you are someone who has traditionally enjoyed Nintendo games, like if you know when there's a big new Zelda game, you will be there no matter what, then there's no reason, oh wait, you should get one now because it is cheaper now than it will be in a few months or in a year or wherever things go out of control. Whereas if you think you'll be on the fence, even in a couple of years, even after Nintendo has released like new Mario and new Zelda and whatever, then that's more of a question and you'll just have to kind of figure out if, if it's worth getting now, if you think you'll like, because that's the question to ask. Will I get one no matter what at some point in this console generation?

• 34:12Jason Schreier?

  Or am I just gonna wait no matter, like, wait and see? Because if you're gonna wait and see, then maybe you can afford to wait just a couple of years and see what happens in 2029 or whatever. But that's the question, I think.

• 34:24Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I guess so. I feel like we're sort of telling Morgan to buy a Switch 2, but I actually think maybe they should.

• 34:30Speaker 02

  No, that's good. Go against us.

• 34:31Kirk Hamilton?

  Like, if there aren't any games that you want to play on it, you know, it'll maybe be $50 more by the time you want to get one, but that might be in two years if you're waiting for a certain game that you want. And also-

• 34:44Jason Schreier?

  Or it could be $200 more. We don't know that.

• 34:48Kirk Hamilton?

  Uh, yeah, I mean, I guess that's true. The thing is-

• 34:50Jason Schreier?

  The PS5, let me look up the exact numbers. Because the PS5, it is not a 50, we're not talking about a $50 difference here.

• 34:59Jason Schreier?

  Okay, the PlayStation 5, just to give context here, the PlayStation 5 launched in November of 2020 at $500. Today, you can buy one for $650. Like, we're talking about a $150 price difference, not an insignificant price difference.

• 35:13Kirk Hamilton?

  No, it's true. It's just like, at the same time, like, that mentality of, oh, it might get more expensive, I better buy one. Like, part of me instinctively pushes back against that for a number of reasons. I think it's just, it's a mindset that's pervasive everywhere. We were just talking about it with AI recently. Every AI company in San Francisco is selling that same mindset. Don't get left behind. You gotta act now, you know? And, I mean, do they have to act now? Like, I mean, yeah, they're gonna wanna play a Switch game eventually, but at the same time, something in me urges caution there. And also, it's hard with technology, in particular, something like a game console, because Nintendo will also release a better version of the Switch 2 at some point here. And it might be that maybe a price increase kicks in and they release an OLED model with

• 35:58Kirk Hamilton?

  a better screen. And like, there's a lot of variables. And technology like this does just kind of depreciate over time, even though these price increases are like throwing a monkey wrench into that. It's still true that like, in general, a console you buy now in 10 years will be worth less than you paid for it, just because there'll be better technology that's like supplanted it. So, I don't know, part of me says, urges caution, because there aren't any games that you wanna play on it. And it's a big chunk of change, since I bought mine too, and it was a feeling of like, damn, I just paid a lot of money for this console that pretty much plays all the same stuff as the Switch I currently have. So, I don't know. I think I would at least just add that perspective for Morgan,

• 36:39Kirk Hamilton?

  that you could also just wait. I mean, yes, you may have to pay upwards of $150 more, and maybe you'll feel bad about that, but also, I don't know, maybe you'll wait long enough that there'll be a better Switch 2, or somehow prices will come down. Who knows what the future can hold. What you do know right now is that there's not actually anything that you wanna play on the Switch 2. And I think that's an important thing to keep in mind.

• 36:59Jason Schreier?

  Man, yeah, you've kinda swayed me too.

• 37:01Speaker 02

  Yes, same. Don't buy it, Morgan. Here's the other reason. Of all the consoles, I feel like Nintendo is the one that is Is most likely to support Switch one the longest because historically they tend to do that with other consoles where they just keep, keep the e-shop or whatever it may be going for a long time. And there are still so many great games on the Switch one that it's not like you're gonna fail to have things to play. It might be that you end up waiting out this entire generation and you don't buy something new until the Switch three. Like you could be like all those people that got a Nintendo Wii and not a Wii U. So in that sense, maybe it's fine. Maybe you just wait it out. You'll be fine. You don't know it's a video game podcast.

• 37:42Jason Schreier?

  Maybe a good, I mean, we don't know when the price is gonna go up if it goes up. It could be in the next month, but maybe a good kind of benchmark will be whenever they have their big summer direct, whether it's May or June or whatever. Traditionally, I think they do a big June direct because that's when they'll announce what's coming to Switch two for the rest of the year. And there's a lot of stuff they've announced so far, like a Fire Emblem, a new Fire Emblem that's supposed to be out later this year. There's stuff that's been rumored, like a Zelda Ocarina of Time remake and like a new Star Fox. By the way, hilarious that Ocarina of Time remake is reportedly coming the year after we all replayed it.

• 38:19Speaker 02

  I know.

• 38:20Kirk Hamilton?

  Pretty exciting. I'm glad we played the original.

• 38:22Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it'll be fun to talk about the remake too. But anyway, when you see that, like when they announce their, their big guns for the rest of the year, maybe it'll give you a better idea of whether you want one now or you can wait and you don't mind paying that extra whatever down the road. So yeah, maybe do, do exercise caution and maybe wait a little while. If nothing has you excited right now. Okay, let's keep going. I'm gonna read this next question. Actually, no, Kirk, you read this next question and I'll, I'll give us an answer to this next question.

• 38:52Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, okay. This question comes from Neil. Neil writes, last mailbag, you all, mostly Kirk, talked about his theme song for the Distraction Podcast. Frequently at the end of that very good podcast, host Drew McGary would say that the theme song was written by the immortal Kirk Hamilton. But in more recent episodes, he just says Kirk Hamilton. Is this cause for concern for TripleClick listeners? Did some malevolent eldritch being break the wards that were set up to prolong Kirk's form? Is there a ritual that we should be performing to restore Kirk to his immortal form? I've got a whole bunch of spare goat entrails and consecrated salt if someone wants to organize a meetup on the Discord. I would prefer East Coast, but a trip out west is always fun.

• 39:38Jason Schreier?

  So I emailed Drew to get an answer to this question.

• 39:40Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, great. Oh, great.

• 39:41Jason Schreier?

  And he says.

• 39:42Kirk Hamilton?

  I don't know what he said, so I'm looking for.

• 39:44Speaker 02

  We're hearing live on the air.

• 39:46Kirk Hamilton?

  Why I'm no longer immortal.

• 39:47Speaker 02

  Scoop, guys. This is a scoop.

• 39:48Jason Schreier?

  He says, he says, ha, no, there's no explanation. Sometimes I give Kirk an honorific, sometimes I don't. But if you want to tell your listeners that we had to downgrade Kirk because he stole my sneakers one time, go for it.

• 40:01Kirk Hamilton?

  I do have Drew's sneakers over here, so I didn't, I didn't think he knew it was me.

• 40:05Speaker 02

  Wow. Drew knows all.

• 40:07Kirk Hamilton?

  Just goes to show, I got busted, didn't even realize.

• 40:09Jason Schreier?

  Is that an actual, is that an actual thing that he stole his sneakers? Or he just improvising?

• 40:13Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, they're right, they're right over there.

• 40:15Jason Schreier?

  Oh, my goodness. They're with your, they're inside the bucket.

• 40:18Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, they've been keeping them in this bucket on my desk.

• 40:22Jason Schreier?

  So there you go.

• 40:23Speaker 02

  Not wearing them.

• 40:25Jason Schreier?

  All right, next question. Derek writes, hello TripleClick, I am a relatively new listener of your podcast and have really enjoyed catching up on the backlog. I particularly enjoy the Mailbag episodes. Oh, thank you. As an actuary and someone who is very interested in personal finance, I would love to hear more about your own personal finances. I know this is a topic some people shy away from speaking on, but I think it's very important for, particularly for young people, to be comfortable talking about money and to hear about the various ways they can sustain themselves. You all have multiple streams of income, and I wonder how you value each of those and what they bring to the table. If you're comfortable sharing hard numbers, that would be extremely interesting, but I think relative terms would be helpful as well. How do you decide what endeavor is worth your time and what's not?

• 41:10Jason Schreier?

  Are some things like TripleClick a passion project, or do they provide you with material income? What have been your most lucrative projects and what have been your least?

• 41:21Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, this is a great and very like, complex question. I guess we could spend a long time answering this just because we all, I think, have very complicated finances.

• 41:30Jason Schreier?

  Well, it's tax time, so.

• 41:31Speaker 02

  It is tax time, so it's really top of mind.

• 41:33Kirk Hamilton?

  It is front of mind.

• 41:36Speaker 02

  How specific are we intending on getting with our answers?

• 41:39Kirk Hamilton?

  I don't know. I can go first. I mean, I don't want to get into like specific hard numbers or anything, but I can sort of explain how my current situation works. So my two primary income sources are Strong Songs and TripleClick, both of which are listener-supported, so it's all just listener donations. But, you know, Strong Songs is on Patreon, TripleClick is on Maximum Fun. The three of us split TripleClick, though unevenly. I make more from it because I do more work, like producing the show and everything. And then Strong Songs just all goes to me. And those are my two main income sources. They're pretty similar in terms of size, though Strong Songs is way more work, but also something that, you know, I'm sort of differently passionate about. Like, it's like a whole personal thing that I'm building out into live shows

• 42:24Kirk Hamilton?

  and maybe a book I'll write. And like, it's a kind of a whole separate thing that I put a lot more into.

• 42:29Jason Schreier?

  Ah, just sneaking that in there, maybe a book I'll write.

• 42:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe a book.

• 42:32Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, yeah, man, after I finish this live show, first live show.

• 42:36Speaker 02

  After you finish the full-length musical that is the live show that you are composing.

• 42:40Kirk Hamilton?

  Which is kind of what the live show is, my god. So anyways, it's like those two things kind of come together, and then that's most of my income. And then I'll take jobs, you know, composing music for something. I did that game, Iridia, a couple of years ago. I'll write a theme song for a podcast for somebody. A lot of times I'm doing that because I think it would be a fun challenge. It's not essential, like I'm making enough money from the two podcasts to basically be okay and for me and Emily to cover our expenses. So I choose those projects a little bit more based on, do I want to do it? Because it's always kind of having an extra project on top of these two things is like a lot of work, so it has to be something that I want to do. And I think I would resent it, even if it paid a whole lot of money.

• 43:24Kirk Hamilton?

  If I took some composition gig that I wasn't really feeling, that like I was kind of grinding out to do, it would be really draining, kind of in the way we were talking about with that earlier question. So then last thought, I guess, just to mention a couple of other things. I have health insurance through the ACA marketplace. So I rely on that every year. So does Emily. We both have ACA healthcare. That's something that has gotten more and more expensive every year. And as someone who's self-employed, I definitely feel it. Like, health insurance has gotten so freaking expensive and it covers less and less. And that is a significant part of my calculation. So I'll just mention that. Like, I'm someone who is just doing independent work for myself. The ACA made it possible for me to access healthcare in a way that made things a lot

• 44:09Kirk Hamilton?

  easier. And it's gotten harder over time. And the more, you know, Republicans try to slash it or get rid of it, the more concerning that is, just because that's a significant expense.

• 44:18Speaker 02

  All right. I'll go next, because I'm pretty similar to you, Kirk, nowadays, although a year ago, I never would have thought I'd be saying that.

• 44:26Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, you were a salary woman.

• 44:27Speaker 02

  I was a salary woman a year ago, and I intended to be one for the foreseeable back then. And at Polygon, I did pretty well. Any unionized journalistic enterprise is going to have generally salaries that start at 60K to 70K is like the lowest end. So you can imagine one works up the ranks and where I might have been at the top of the food chain, running the game section of Polygon. And one of the decisions that I made in voluntarily deciding to quit that job was to look at my finances and be like, can I afford to do this? Triple-click making money was a big reason why I felt like it was possible.

• 45:11Speaker 02

  But also, I'm on my wife's health insurance. She's gainfully employed and has always made more money than I do. It doesn't matter what she does. It's not relevant to the question at hand, but it does mean I didn't have to worry as much. And we had that whole conversation, and she was very encouraging of me launching mothership, which I had expected at the time to not necessarily do well immediately. But I'm happy to share subscriber numbers because I think they're a good metric for how we do, and I think being transparent about them is useful. So for the listener's sake, at least when it comes to how much independent publication usually garner about 1,000 subscribers is about one person's income.

• 45:51Speaker 02

  That's like really rough math, but because it, there's a lot of variation in how much people do their monthly charges, but based on all the other indie pub people I've talked to, that shakes out to be about right. Cost of living, blah, blah, blah. Lots of qualifiers, you guys can imagine, but that's around where we are. And so for Zoe and I, we have a huge freelance budget as well. So we kind of think of that as like an extra person that we're trying to save up to get to. Right now, we're at about 2,300 subscribers. And so we'd love to have more, but we're comfortable. And we're, we still have the freelance budget being as big as it is and pay ourselves less

• 46:32Speaker 02

  because that's just what we've chosen to do. And because we really want to publish a lot of writers that aren't just ourselves, because that's part of the mission of mothership and that it's a site that's publishing marginalized people a lot. And we are marginalized people and that's just who we want to write for. But it also means that we hope to continue to grow. And that's exciting. It's exciting that we have as many subscribers as we have. I feel really great about it and great about how much money we're making, but it also means that I still think about growth and how we can continue to achieve it moving forward. So that's like a healthy income stream.

• 47:06Jason Schreier?

  How many hours a week are you putting into mothership?

• 47:09Speaker 02

  Um, hmm. I don't like set a clock every day on that. At this point.

• 47:17Jason Schreier?

  I asked just because part of Derek's question was like, how do you decide what's worth your time and like how much time you're putting into things?

• 47:24Speaker 02

  It's a good question. I

• 47:25Kirk Hamilton?

  It's probably hard right at the start of a project, the way that mother, that mothership is still fairly new and you're like, ah, like in that, in that early stage.

• 47:33Jason Schreier?

  It's more of a baby ship.

• 47:34Speaker 02

  It also super varies. Like there are definitely weeks where it's easily 40 and there are weeks where it's 20 and there are weeks where it's 30 and there are weeks where I feel like I'm thinking about it 24 hours a day because I'm stressed out about something. And do we put that on the calendar? I don't know. But obviously I have time for triple click and I have a life somehow and I play video games in it. I also have something that I consider just a pure passion project that doesn't really make a significant amount of money, which is the X-Men podcast I host with my best friend since I was 12. It's called The Mutant Ages. It doesn't have a ton of listeners. It's extremely niche and the goal of it is that I talk to my friend at least a couple of times a month.

• 48:15Speaker 02

  And that is like a project that I also think is really important and meaningful to me, but it is not necessarily something like mothership or even triple click where I really rely on the income, but also am extremely invested in it continuing and growing. And I care a lot about our subscribers and listeners and that they are paying my salary right now. So Kirk and I are in the same boat and our taxes are probably not too dissimilar in certain ways because of that. And it's weird. It's a weird way to live. Jason, you're more like how I used to be, right? You got a salary.

• 48:50Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, well, I have a day job at Bloomberg that pays most of, most of what I make because that's significantly more than what I'm making from triple click or what I'm making from books, which I guess I can get into that part because that's the part that's most unique for me and what people might be curious about. Once I like tried to do the math, I'm like what the hourly wage should be on the books.

• 49:13Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 49:14Jason Schreier?

  It's very depressing.

• 49:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, that that was a depressing note. This is part of why I'm like, I don't know if I want to know how much I'm actually spending hours on anything. It's upsetting.

• 49:24Jason Schreier?

  I mean, it's, it's a useful exercise. But yeah, with books, you don't go into books to make money. And I've been very fortunate. Like my books have been, all three of them have been bestsellers. Like they all still sell very well. They, numbers wise, I don't want to get into specifics, but like they all do much better than most books that are out there. Like I was meeting with my agent and my editor a couple of months ago and they're like, yeah, man, like, not a lot of people are buying books, but a lot of people are buying your books. I was like, oh, wow. I, I should be making more money from them then.

• 49:55Speaker 02

  Hey, leverage, leverage the next time around.

• 49:58Jason Schreier?

  The books, I mean, maybe one day we can talk about the economics of the book business and how crazy it is. Cause like sometimes I'll be talking. Talking to indie game developers and they'll be talking about their publishing contracts and recoups and how that all works. And the book business is really designed to just kind of be very weighted against authors in some ways. But all that said, I mean, it's, it's nothing to sneeze like it's not. The amount that I make from books every year varies drastically, but it's a combination of like advances for projects or future projects. Actually, let me break it down for a sec. If you guys want to hear a little bit of the nitty gritty, essentially when you sell a book,

• 50:37Jason Schreier?

  you get an advance and that advance is non repayable. So you never have to repay that advance, which is nice. But what that means is that you don't start making money on the book and on royalties of the book until you've paid out that advance, until the publisher has recouped 100% of that advance. And what really makes you screwed over is that the money that goes into recouping the advance is based on your royalty rate, not based on total revenue of the book. It's based on specifically your royalty rate, which typically is like 15% for hardcover book sales. So.

• 51:11Kirk Hamilton?

  This is very much like a record deal for what it's worth.

• 51:13Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 51:14Kirk Hamilton?

  Similarly difficult to deal with once you've released the thing.

• 51:17Jason Schreier?

  Do you also get like an advance on a record deal? Is that how that works?

• 51:21Kirk Hamilton?

  You do. And it's paying back is like different depending, I guess, but royalty rates and like all of that stuff where it takes you forever to dig out from your advance.

• 51:28Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. So like, I've been lucky in that all three of my books have earned out their advances and so they are making royalties, but it's not a significant, it's not like enough that I could quit my day job or anything like that. That said, it's, it's nice to have.

• 51:43Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice thing is it's passive though, right?

• 51:45Jason Schreier?

  It's passive. Yeah.

• 51:46Kirk Hamilton?

  Which is pretty great.

• 51:47Jason Schreier?

  It's funny. It shows up. One of my royalty chunks shows up in April, just in time for me to use it to pay my taxes.

• 51:56Speaker 02

  I feel like what we should just say is all of us have, don't get money back from our taxes. Right? Like I don't, I haven't gotten money back for years.

• 52:04Jason Schreier?

  Absolutely not. And I pay quarterly estimated taxes.

• 52:07Kirk Hamilton?

  I actually am getting money back this year. I've been paying estimated taxes and for whatever reason.

• 52:12Speaker 02

  So you did a great job paying your estimates.

• 52:14Jason Schreier?

  Good job overestimating.

• 52:15Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, yeah, we I pay so much money for taxes.

• 52:19Speaker 02

  It's so upsetting.

• 52:19Kirk Hamilton?

  Knowing especially that I'm paying taxes to these fucking people to like.

• 52:23Speaker 02

  We can't even get into that.

• 52:23Kirk Hamilton?

  I mean, my God, like, yes, we can't even get into that. It it makes me so angry.

• 52:27Speaker 02

  The money is not being spent according to how I would choose to spend it.

• 52:31Kirk Hamilton?

  It sure isn't, but I do pay taxes and yeah, and I'm actually getting some amount back. That could be due to expenses too, you know, because I have a lot of a lot of work expenses.

• 52:40Jason Schreier?

  If you're creative about writing things off, you know what we should get? We should get, you know how when you sign up for Maxim Fun, you can choose which shows to support? We should have that for taxes where we choose which government.

• 52:49Speaker 02

  Yes, like ticky boxes. And I can like tick off all the social services and like leave the military off, for example, just as a for instance.

• 52:59Kirk Hamilton?

  That would be great. I would 100% do that.

• 53:03Kirk Hamilton?

  I know that's not like really how a republic works, but it would be, I would still love it.

• 53:08Jason Schreier?

  And I would say triple click, both triple click and books are just like a nice supplement that helps me pay for my children. And and I don't know all the other like whims, house mortgage, whatever. Then rather than like the my main income, but that said, I enjoy both the books and triple click so much that it doesn't really matter to me, the amounts that I'm making on both of them, especially the book part. Like I said, if I calculated the math, it would really not make sense for me to be spending any time on the books. But I get so much satisfaction out of the process and out of getting to interview people for them and having an excuse. Like I'm doing, I'm working on my next book right now, very, very early days. So like, don't get your hopes up for a while.

• 53:51Jason Schreier?

  But one of the reasons that that I'm doing it in the first place is just to have an excuse to call people up and like ask them questions about like this topic that I'm really interested in and want to know more about. So that alone is like what drives me for the books rather than the money part of it. I think there's some mythical world where you can like turn your book into a Netflix series and then make some more money out of it than you would before. But even that, I feel like these days is not life changing amounts of money. It's more like, oh, this is nice to squirrel away or this is nice to like make extra payments on my house kind of money. Or help put a down payment on a house kind of money, but not like you don't have to work again kind of money.

• 54:31Kirk Hamilton?

  You know, in terms of how I value different streams of income, and I'll relate this back to when I was working at Kotaku, one thing I will mention is I greatly value anything that I own, that is mine, that I'm making.

• 54:42Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 54:43Kirk Hamilton?

  You know, that is, that has my name on it and is mine.

• 54:45Jason Schreier?

  Triple click included.

• 54:47Kirk Hamilton?

  I think that almost goes, it kind of goes without saying, to the point that we didn't say it, so I'm just saying it.

• 54:50Speaker 02

  That's true, though. I think it's worth saying because it's like, Jason gets to own Triple Click and his books in a way that Bloomberg and, in my case, Polygon and, in all our cases, Kotaku, it didn't work that way, and that's, that's fine. They were great salaries and the stability and times in our lives that I was grateful for and still am, but there's a benefit to owning projects and owning work.

• 55:14Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes.

• 55:14Speaker 02

  It's just cool.

• 55:15Jason Schreier?

  100%. I know we're running long, but I want to hit this next question, so I hope that's okay with you two.

• 55:22Kirk Hamilton?

  All right, let's do it.

• 55:23Jason Schreier?

  Maddy, you want to read this?

• 55:24Speaker 02

  Okay. We're all the way to Josh, or we're doing Shane? Okay, we're just doing Shane, okay. Shane writes, "Hey cubed." It's a good way to greet us, just as-

• 55:36Jason Schreier?

  It's like three hey's.

• 55:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, get it? Three hey's. Anyway. "In your most recent episode, you spoke about the increased expense of making games and the yawning chasm of time between blockbuster releases. Developers have more advanced tools and can achieve greater fidelity, but has the technology not also enabled developers to more quickly achieve the same fidelity as before? I did not upgrade from a rake to a leaf blower so that I could tidy more leaves than ever before. I did it so that I could clean as many leaves more quickly. In the same way, couldn't some budding Ken Levine crack out a game just as beautiful as Bioshock Infinite, but not one hair more, in a few short months with a lean workforce? Cheers cubed," is how this ends.

• 56:22Jason Schreier?

  Well, a budding Ken Levine, I hope nobody out there is a budding Ken Levine.

• 56:27Speaker 02

  We only, we can only handle one. We just need the one.

• 56:30Jason Schreier?

  Just the one, just the one. One is fine. Okay, so two answers I have to this. One is a short one for me, which is that I think it's kind of a misconception that fidelity is the biggest reason that games are taking so long. I think it's, it's a lot of reasons. Fidelity is only one of them. Another one is just scope increases. A third one is mismanagement and the increase in like game publishers pushing games as a service, which sends all sorts of projects awry. So that's just one thought is that like, even if you were making games lower fidelity, and even if that part of it took less time, I think that that wouldn't necessarily solve the problem. For the other part, I was curious as to like technically whether it's true that these more advanced tools like Unreal Engine 5, for example, allow

• 57:14Jason Schreier?

  you to make lower fidelity stuff at a, at a faster pace. So I texted friend of the show Brett DuVille and I was like, hey, can you like, give me the technical perspective on this.

• 57:26Kirk Hamilton?

  Bing. Kirk here, editing this show with just a little update since Jason didn't actually really identify Brett, which is understandable, given that longtime listeners probably already know who he is, but I'm sure some of you don't. So just in case, Brett DuVille is a programmer who has worked in the video game industry for a long time. He worked at LucasArts back in the day. He also worked at Bethesda Game Studios where he was a lead on Skyrim, among other games. Now he works on indie games and he hosts the really great podcast Dev Game Club, which is all about video games. He and Tim Longo make that show. And incidentally, I actually wrote the theme music for that show. So Brett is a longtime friend of TripleClick and just friend in general. He is a helpful person to ask about things like this. And I wanted to let you all know who he is. So, okay,

• 58:11Kirk Hamilton?

  back to Jason, who will relate what Brett had to say. Bing.

• 58:16Jason Schreier?

  And essentially. He was like, yes, on the art front, there have been enough improvements that that is probably a win. You could spend less time creating like PS2 quality art, but there's so many other factors, like animation is probably a wash. You're probably spending just as much time on your animation pipelines. On the coding side, you still have to write all the gameplay code, even if you save some time on not having to write like a renderer and stuff like that. One big save would be that the new hardware has so much RAM that you could store a lot more stuff in memory. And so optimization is like going to be a cinch. If you were making like a PS2 fidelity game on a PlayStation 5. So that's a pretty big win. But for the most part, I mean, it's like more of a slight

• 58:59Jason Schreier?

  to moderate increase in speed if you were to go that way from the actual process point of view, than like a big like shaving years off of the production sort of win. So in practice, it turns out it's not quite the equivalent of going from a rake to a leaf mower.

• 59:18Kirk Hamilton?

  I mean, so my thought on this is just that tidying your lawn and making art are two very different things and that.

• 59:24Jason Schreier?

  Well, unless you're unless you're drying things with the leaves in your lawn. That's so true.

• 59:29Kirk Hamilton?

  Sure, I guess. But I think, I think based on the way that Shane is describing this, he's thinking of making a video game as just, you know, assemble the widgets into the thing and then you have the game at a certain level of fidelity. But making art doesn't work like that. Art is a container into which you can pour an endless and infinite amount of time and energy. Every project I've ever made will accept as much time as I'll give it and I will obsess and rework and reimagine and listen back and go back to it again and tweak it and then decide I want to throw something out and change it. I mean, that's just kind of how the creative process works. It's just very different than like, okay, I've got this, you know, one acre plot of grass and it's covered in leaves and I need to get the leaves off it as efficiently as possible. Like, there

• 1:00:13Kirk Hamilton?

  are steps of making art that are like that, but the process itself, like the broader process is just an endless vacuum for time and energy. And that's just kind of how it works to make things, at least for a lot of people. And then it's probably exponentially worse. With a large group of people.

• 1:00:29Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:29Kirk Hamilton?

  Because the more people you have doing it, the more they're all gonna want to to put in input and and just take time. So I think also like it's just important to keep that difference in mind when thinking about this.

• 1:00:39Jason Schreier?

  I've had that experience with editing my books where you're working on something that is 350 pages long and that you could just continuously polish and edit forever. Like if if someone wasn't telling me, hey, you have to submit this, you could just do it, work on it forever.

• 1:00:53Kirk Hamilton?

  Every episode of Strong Songs that I make, I will, if I finish it way in advance, sometimes I'll be working way in advance. And then I just work the entire time that I started in advance because I'll just kind of keep working on it. Even when it's done, I'll be like, well, this could be better. Oh, what if we did this? What if we added this? And it just like, it can go forever. You just kind of have to stop. It's one reason that deadlines are useful because it forces you to just say, okay, it's done. Take it, get it away from me.

• 1:01:17Jason Schreier?

  And we're talking about linear media with games, it's even more pronounced and exponentially.

• 1:01:22Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. Linear media made by like a single person, right? A book or a podcast made by one author.

• 1:01:27Jason Schreier?

  And just adds to the complexity and to the amount of time you need.

• 1:01:30Speaker 02

  And games have the additional factor of like, okay, maybe you made this perfect game on paper, but then you actually play it and you're like, this is just so unpleasant. Like, for some reason, it feels really bad. What do we do now? So like even the idea of speed, applying it to every single other piece of the process is perhaps irrelevant to that final step.

• 1:01:51Jason Schreier?

  And even, I mean, to bring up Mina the Holler again, I know I've been talking about that a lot recently. I think because I'm really excited for it, but that's a, that's a 2D game that's been in development for, I think, almost six years at this point, more than six years at this point. Despite having Game Boy Cool Fidelity graphics. And a large part of that is just because they could keep working on it and polishing it and tweaking things forever if they really wanted to.

• 1:02:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, like Team Cherry did with Subsong.

• 1:02:17Jason Schreier?

  Game. Yeah, that's another game that's like a 2D art anime, a 2D game that just took a very long time. So yeah, there are a lot of variables here, but short version is, I don't think anyone could just crank out a like high quality, 3D, open world, Bioshock level game in just a few months, just because the tools are better. I think all of. The obstacles that prevent art from being made quickly will always still be there. But I mean, we got our technical answer. So thanks to Brett for sharing that. Yeah, that's great. The answer is slight to moderate gains, but not, not as significant as you would think. All right, that was a long one, but hey, 300 episodes. Let's take a break and we'll be back for one more thing for the 300th time.

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• 1:04:42Jason Schreier?

  And we are back. It is time for our 300th more thing.

• 1:04:49Jason Schreier?

  I'm sorry. I was distracted by Kirk highlighting everything.

• 1:04:52Kirk Hamilton?

  It's because like my fucking text keeps disappearing in its window. Highlighted to make it appear.

• 1:04:58Speaker 02

  By highlighting the Google Doc repeatedly.

• 1:05:00Kirk Hamilton?

  It's killing me. I don't know why. It's like Safari or something. Like, I'll be looking at it and then it just goes blank. And I'm like, why are you doing this to me?

• 1:05:07Speaker 02

  Well, for the record, it is distracting to see you repeatedly.

• 1:05:11Kirk Hamilton?

  No, I know. I know. I know. I had this thought when I did it and then I was like, no.

• 1:05:14Speaker 02

  It's fine. I forgive you.

• 1:05:14Jason Schreier?

  Go back to buckets. Kirk, what's your one more thing?

• 1:05:18Kirk Hamilton?

  My one more thing is Weapons, Zach Craig's 2025 horror movie that recently won an Academy Award for Amy Madigan for her performance in the film, playing a role that I will not talk about since I'm guessing that some of you haven't seen it.

• 1:05:31Speaker 02

  Including us, I think. I haven't seen it yet.

• 1:05:34Kirk Hamilton?

  Including both of you. But I just wanted to say that I watched this movie last week and really, really enjoyed it. I have not seen Craig's other film Barbarian, which is also a horror movie and also, I gather, pretty great. And it has some kind of major like twist or something that, and I don't know what it is. I find myself kind of shocked that I'm still unspoiled on it and I should really watch it. This was a reminder of how fun it can be to watch a horror movie. Though I watched this by myself. It's on HBO right now and I just saw it there and Emily was out and I decided I would just watch it. And that was an okay way to experience it, but man, this movie would have been way better to see in the theater with a bunch of people. I can only imagine.

• 1:06:16Kirk Hamilton?

  Seeing this opening weekend with a packed house like the Hollywood Theater here in town, I really wish I had done that. I actually saw Sinners that way and that was a great way to see that movie. See, man, people would have been losing their minds at this movie. Okay, so let me describe it, like the setup for the movie a little bit and then talk a little bit about what I thought of it. So this is set in a modern day, small town. The premise is relayed to you via the voiceover of a child, kind of telling you the story in the way that a kid might tell you about something that happened at a town one town over. Oh, everyone knows this thing happened there. So it's got this kind of folk story quality right from the beginning with the narration.

• 1:06:57Kirk Hamilton?

  The setup is that at one school in this town, a group of, I want to say it's like second graders, it's around that age, second or third graders, entirely vanished, except for one student and the teacher. The teacher walked into class and the whole class was gone except for one student. And what happened was at 2:17 in the morning, the night before, every single kid in that class got up and ran out the front door of their house into the night. They all ran away and no one knows where they went. And that's kind of the premise of the, of the story. That's where we begin. So the first parts of this movie are really interesting because it's kind of looking

• 1:07:38Kirk Hamilton?

  at, you know, moral panics and parents freaking out about what's happening in a school and like a community coming together around some kind of horrible, school-based event. And it just channels the energy of, you know, a school shooting or an abduction or just some kind of horrible tragedy that would bring a bunch of parents together. And all of the kind of awful and difficult anger that comes out of that. In particular, it starts by focusing on the teacher, who is played by Julia Garner, who's not an actress I'm super familiar with, but she's kind of a young, nice, cool teacher.

• 1:08:15Jason Schreier?

  She's in Ozark. She does a great, a great performance.

• 1:08:18Kirk Hamilton?

  That's right. She's in Ozark, which is not a show that I've watched, but that's.

• 1:08:21Jason Schreier?

  And also that Anna Delvey show, the show about that.

• 1:08:25Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, OK. I did watch that. I didn't love that, but not because of her. OK, that makes sense. I knew I recognized her.

• 1:08:32Jason Schreier?

  She's great in it. And she's, she, yeah, she's great in everything she does.

• 1:08:34Kirk Hamilton?

  She is, yeah, she is fantastic. She plays the teacher and she's kind of this hip, young teacher who clearly really cares about her students. And all of the parents think on some level that she knows what happened or that she was teaching them something and that she did something that caused the students to. So it begins with this really nightmarish experience she's having where everyone is so angry at her. It's this, you know, in this huge meeting with all the parents and they're yelling and they're like really upset in the way that you can only imagine they would be. All their kids went missing. And so it's this really kind of nightmarish and really sort of naughty, difficult setup that feels very current, even though it's not expressly about, you know, any one current event.

• 1:09:14Kirk Hamilton?

  So that's where we begin. Then the story kind of plays out in a really interesting staggered way where it tells her story for a little while. Then it jumps to another character, a father of one of the children played by Josh Brolin. And it actually rewinds in time and then it tells another story from his perspective that overlaps with the teacher's story in the first part. And you kind of start to see how, oh, okay, the timelines are going to stagger and then come back together. So then maybe at the end of one timeline, something crazy will happen and then it'll jump to another character and go a little further back in time. So then you get to see that crazy thing that just happened from yet another perspective. And it, it kind of fits together a series of different perspectives from different characters all around this community

• 1:09:56Kirk Hamilton?

  to present a view of this kind of small town and of the community and the way that the, the whole like social fabric is fraying because of this thing that happened. And just because everything feels frayed in general, there's this kind of undercurrent of just wrongness and anxiety that I think just kind of fits with how the world feels right now, even outside of some, you know, mass unexplainable events. So that's all just like really well done and really exciting. It's a pretty long movie. It's like longer than your average horror movie. It's like more than two hours, I think, but it doesn't feel long because of this sort of episodic staggered timeline. And also because you spend the whole movie just being like, what happened?

• 1:10:37Kirk Hamilton?

  Like what, and what is going on, you know, as, as like creepier and weirder things start to happen and they, you start to learn more.

• 1:10:43Jason Schreier?

  Is it, is it more of, it sounds like more of a thriller than a horror movie.

• 1:10:47Kirk Hamilton?

  No, it, I mean, it's not as scary as The Descent or like some of the really scary stuff. It is pretty scary. Like, there are scenes, there is imagery that really scared me. I was watching it at night one night and um-

• 1:11:00Speaker 02

  And you're alone, which, wow.

• 1:11:02Kirk Hamilton?

  I was alone, watching it at night, and I'm sitting there and she's having a dream. There are some dream sequences that are scary. And I was like, uh, this is actually, this is too scary. And I like turned it off and I was like, I'm gonna go play video games. I'll watch the rest tomorrow during the day. So it got a little too scary. Now that I've seen the whole movie, I'd say it's actually not as scary. It's not that scary. And even those sequences weren't really that scary. But there's some horrifying stuff. There's definitely like violence and things that you see happening that are like gnarly and hilarious. Like, you're kind of laughing or like being like, oh my god, you know, that. It's the stuff that's so fun with a big group of people, like with whenever, it's just mayhem in the theater because no one can believe what's happening. And my

• 1:11:42Kirk Hamilton?

  final thought is that the ending of this movie, which I will not spoil, is incredibly effective, I think. And I was so knocked out by, I loved the final five minutes of this movie. And just, I've, it kind of tied the whole thing together and made it all make sense in a way that really raised it up above just a fun thriller. So I like, loved this movie. It knocked me out. And Amy Madigan really is great in it. I think it's kind of hilarious that she won an Academy Award, just because it's such a weird performance. But like, she's really good, so it's super cool that she won. And um, you know, she's been doing it for a long time and deserves it. So anyways, that's a, that's my recommendation for Weapons. A real wild ride of a movie that you should watch with some friends if you're gonna watch it, because it would be a great time with a group of people.

• 1:12:25Jason Schreier?

  Sounds cool.

• 1:12:26Speaker 02

  Wow. Yeah, it sounds great.

• 1:12:27Jason Schreier?

  All right, Maddie, what's your one more thing?

• 1:12:28Speaker 02

  Uh, my one more thing is an episode of The Anthony Bourdain Show, Parts Unknown, which I've seen random episodes of in my life, but have never really sat down and watched all of. But a friend of mine was sharing this episode today because it's the Iran episode. And I think every episode is him going to a different country. That's the premise of the show, and trying their food, and also learning about the culture of the country in as much as one can by being there for a few days. With a camera crew and this episode is from 2014, which is relevant because I think it's because it's also a very political episode. It's really dealing with the politics of Iran in 2014

• 1:13:09Speaker 02

  specifically. For example, there are a couple of journalists that Anthony Bourdain talks to as part of the episode and talks about politics with the politics of the oppressive regime that they live under and report on and they get arrested after the episode finishes filming, but they include that context in the episode as part of their lives. But the interesting thing about this episode and why it's famous, I think, is because during a time period when Iran was like described as the axis of evil, remember the 2010s when people still said that? That is something that I think, I think it was kind of revolutionary to just show regular people in Iran who don't necessarily agree with what's happening, but are just living their lives and

• 1:13:54Speaker 02

  being restaurant owners because of course this is a food show. They're simply trying to own small businesses. And in the case of this episode, Anthony goes to people's homes because everyone tells him like, oh, the best food is actually going to be a home cooked meal. So he manages to like finagle and invite someone's home and like learn more about like the, the significance of different types of home cooked meals and that humanizing effect that it has of just hearing people joke around and like describe their completely normal mundane lives, living in an admittedly oppressive regime that they have very little freedom to describe as such, but find their own roundabout ways to describe as such is a really fascinating part of the episode. And I think it's

• 1:14:39Speaker 02

  why people still talk about it today. And yeah, I think it's worth watching. I think it's really fascinating. It's just a portrait of 2014 in particular in Iran. And also I think Anthony Bourdain, he wouldn't have described himself as a reporter, I don't think, but in watching this, I felt like he was doing a reporter's job in a certain way by just being a curious person and asking good questions of people that he met and repeatedly saying to them how conflicted he felt about the politics of Iran and also just feeling like all the people that he met.

• 1:15:16Speaker 02

  Didn't reflect what he thought they would. And I, I don't know. I, I thought it was, uh, really good. So it's called Iran. It's, I'm not sure where it's specifically streaming. I actually watched it on CNN's Facebook page of all places to watch it for free. But if you Google it, you can watch it in a whole bunch of different places. Uh, parts unknown is, is streaming for free in many various bizarre corners of the internet, including Facebook for some reason. So you can definitely find it and watch it if you want to. And I recommend it.

• 1:15:46Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice. Yeah. I'll watch it.

• 1:15:48Jason Schreier?

  Um, all right. Uh, my one more thing is a video game called People of Note. And this game just came out this week. It is a musical JRPG. And by that, I mean musical in both senses of the word, that it's like a very music heavy and music inspired JRPG. And also, it's literally a musical. There are interludes where the characters sing songs about their feelings to try to express themselves. Um, I really like it. It's got a lot going for it. Um, there are some, it does some things better than others, um, which I will describe. Um, so it's got turn-based combat, very heavily Final Fantasy inspired. And this game, I

• 1:16:33Jason Schreier?

  feel like would fit in very well in like the PS2 milieu of Final Fantasy games slash Square JRPGs that were released back then. In fact, maybe this game is, is a PS2 graphics fidelity, graphical fidelity, uh, game that we were leaning to earlier, although it took many years to make. So another example of why that's not, that can't actually make games for, in less time. Um, and, uh, it's got a really cool combat system that has a rhythm, a component to it in that you have to like hit these kind of circles like you're doing a rhythm game, um, in queue with the beat for every attack you do. But that to me is much less interesting than the customization aspect, which is that each of your characters you get, you get a bunch of abilities that you can equip with, equip them with, and

• 1:17:17Jason Schreier?

  then modifiers for those abilities. And you can play around with like different abilities that impact the, the battlefield in different ways. So like one viable way of beating enemies is to like put your super powerful, a super powerful ability on one character and then have other characters be supportive of them and like do abilities that buff up the next attack and just like set up your turns in a way that allows you to do one ultra powerful ability on your enemies. And it's very cute. It's got a lot of, it's chock full of puns, like to, and, and to an excessive degree, I would say, the puns are pretty out of control.

• 1:17:57Jason Schreier?

  Everything in the game is a pun, including a dog you can pet who is called an accordion. And it's a, it's a corgi made out of an accordion.

• 1:18:06Kirk Hamilton?

  They're all like music puns?

• 1:18:08Jason Schreier?

  Almost all of them are music.

• 1:18:09Kirk Hamilton?

  I need to play this game.

• 1:18:11Jason Schreier?

  I mean, it's even the name is a pun. It's called People of Note, right? Note is the name of the world that they live in and like every town, every city in the game, they're like these four or five different countries and cities that are each based around a specific type of music.

• 1:18:28Kirk Hamilton?

  When you said this to me, I was like, this is like, it's, it's Troll's World Tour.

• 1:18:33Jason Schreier?

  So the second city you go to is like the Rock City, but the Rock has been broken down into genres. It kind of looks like Mad Max. It's like a big desert with like, like these kind of like huts and stuff made out of like garbage and stuff. And you have your metal area and they only listen to metal. And then you have your punk area and your grunge area. And they all each only listen to the, the music that plays there. And your characters will be like, hey, this kind of sounds like this metal. It kind of sounds like the punk. And they're like, how dare you? No, it doesn't.

• 1:19:04Kirk Hamilton?

  That's funny.

• 1:19:05Jason Schreier?

  There's one guy at the beginning is like, hey, I just heard about this thing called ska. And someone's like, no, there will be no ska in this game. So yeah, and then there's like another character I met who's like talking about jazz and someone's like, maybe someday down the road, like hinting at a sequel, then it'll involve jazz. So no jazz in this.

• 1:19:23Kirk Hamilton?

  If they want to sell five copies of their game, they'll make, they'll make the jazz.

• 1:19:28Jason Schreier?

  Well, the thing about Jazz's absence is that it's all about the music that isn't featured in this game.

• 1:19:34Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. It's the NPCs that aren't in the game.

• 1:19:35Jason Schreier?

  So it's really fun and it's short and sweet. I'm almost done with it and I've only been playing for, I don't know, five or six hours. So if you want like a nice, compact, short and sweet, I think it's pretty cheap. I think it's only 20 or 25 bucks. PS2 style, very Final Fantasy heavy, very pun heavy JRPG. The story is cute. It feels a little compressed. They have these big ambitious swings. I don't know about some of the musical numbers in this game. They're trying to do, the developers are trying to put a lot of ideas into this one game. So like each character has their own arc.

• 1:20:13Jason Schreier?

  So one character might, I don't know, be trying to deal with the pressures of show business and like fame and pursuing fame and fortune and prioritizing that over working with a team and helping other people. And they have to learn to get past that. But it's all done in such a compressed period of time that there isn't really an opportunity for these characters to have like real, proper story arcs, narrative arcs. So the story is a little bit hinares, I would say overall, but it has some fun elements and the characters are fun and the art is fun and the puns are nonstop. There's also a lot of good puzzles. There are a lot of good environmental puzzles throughout the game that I enjoyed with one exception,

• 1:20:55Jason Schreier?

  one section where I got so annoyed by the puzzles that I just turned them off entirely for that section, which by the way, in this game, you can turn off the puzzles if you want. There's a lot of accessibility options.

• 1:21:04Speaker 02

  I love that.

• 1:21:05Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, that's cool. It has a lot going for it. I really recommend it. I think you would both enjoy it and largely because it's just an easy game to play through and just you'll be done with it in a few hours and you'll enjoy it. The combat part, like I said, it's all about the setup and like customizing your abilities are called song songs, song, song stones, sorry. And yeah, it's just fun. I really enjoyed it. I recommend it to people.

• 1:21:33Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice.

• 1:21:33Jason Schreier?

  It's short and sweet and very, very musical.

• 1:21:38Speaker 02

  Cool.

• 1:21:38Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, I have it installed and it sounds like I should probably play it.

• 1:21:41Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it sounds fun. Yeah, I'm curious. I mean, you should definitely play because I'm so curious to hear your thoughts on the musical numbers, the music in general, just how this game explores music. There's just so much to it. Man, there's so many puns that I'm just... The first area, it's like, there's a subway, there's a train you can go on, and the options are like uptone or downtone. So just to give you an idea- I like puns, I gotta admit. I'll probably like them all. This game is like, it has so many puns. Every line is a pun. But it's creative and clever and like, unlike other games I've played, it's very distinct, and I appreciate that about this game, that it's just like, it's trying to do its own thing. It's very clearly influenced by those old PS2 jetergies,

• 1:22:24Jason Schreier?

  but it is also very much in its own category, and I appreciate that. So yeah, it's all people of note, and I do recommend checking it out.

• 1:22:34Kirk Hamilton?

  Awesome.

• 1:22:34Jason Schreier?

  Cool. All right, 300 episodes in the can, that's it.

• 1:22:39Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, here's to 300 more.

• 1:22:40Jason Schreier?

  Here's to more than 300 more. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:22:45Kirk Hamilton?

  300 more and onward into infinity.

• 1:22:48Jason Schreier?

  Ever upward. Yeah. Kirk, Maddy, I'll see you both next time.

• 1:22:54Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I will see you both next week.

• 1:22:56Jason Schreier?

  Bye.

• 1:22:59Kirk Hamilton?

  Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddy Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network, and if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join. Email us at [email protected] and find links to our merch store and our Discord server in the show notes. Thanks for listening, see you next time.

• 1:23:57Speaker 02

  Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network- Of artist-owned shows- Supported- Directly- By you.

• 1:24:04Jason Schreier?

  That was the 300th bye.

• 1:24:06Speaker 02

  You did it.