And The Winner Of The Console War Is... PC

The console wars are over. The winner? PC gaming! This week, the Triple Click gang gets into Maddy's recent quest to build a new PC and some of their favorite PC building experiences. Then they talk about the recent explosion of PC gaming, what's caused it, and what it might mean for the future of games.

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

• 0:04Speaker 00

  The best things in life take time. Baking cookies, finding the right partner, letting WD-40 work on those stuck screws. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we talk about PC gaming because I built a PC for the third time and because it's on the rise. Console Wars, who? Xbox and PS5 games keep coming to PC.

• 0:30Speaker 00

  I'm Maddy Myers.

• 0:31Jason Schreier?

  I'm Jason Schreier.

• 0:33Kirk Hamilton?

  And I'm Kirk Hamilton. And hello.

• 0:34Jason Schreier?

  Hello.

• 0:35Speaker 00

  Hello. It's us.

• 0:36Jason Schreier?

  Hello, my friends.

• 0:37Speaker 00

  We're back again.

• 0:38Kirk Hamilton?

  Here we are.

• 0:39Jason Schreier?

  We are back.

• 0:40Speaker 00

  Yet again.

• 0:41Jason Schreier?

  It is Super Bowl week, and we're here to talk parlays.

• 0:44Speaker 00

  Oh, no. You know what? I don't know a lot about those, Jason, but everyone that I follow on Blue Sky has just the most depressing things to say about football, except you. Jason is out here with the positive takes. He enjoys it no matter what.

• 1:01Jason Schreier?

  Why? Because they're mad it's like Eagles-Chiefs? Is that why people are depressed?

• 1:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just cursing, cursing the Eagles is all I see.

• 1:09Jason Schreier?

  I love watching greatness and the Chiefs of this dynasty of greatness.

• 1:14Speaker 00

  I thought that was really nice. I thought that was nice.

• 1:17Jason Schreier?

  And if you too love greatness.

• 1:19Speaker 00

  What was the Triple Click version of football? Triple down? Triple field goal? I don't know.

• 1:25Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, triple down, triple yards, triple.

• 1:28Speaker 00

  One could imagine Jason forcing us to do a bonus episode on that, but how would one go about even listening to such a thing if it were to exist? Well, you would have to go to maximumfun.org/join in order to listen to any bonus episode that we have because that's how you go about joining our wonderful legion of supporters. You go over there, you sign up, you support the show, you ensure that we continue to make this wonderful podcast that we make, and you get our monthly bonus episode. Right now, we have a Beans cast about Metaphorie Fantasia, which all this played, and we just spoiled the heck out of it. Really fun episode.

• 2:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Really fun conversation on that episode.

• 2:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, really, really cool. Uh, definitely a game I'm still thinking about. It was great to talk to you two about it. Uh, so I definitely recommend people check that one out, but there's a whole backlog in there. So go to maximumfun.org/join, check out all the bonus apps and support the show. Get the worm fuzzies, bonuses and worm fuzzies.

• 2:26Jason Schreier?

  So Patrick Mahomes is currently going for a three Pete, which is like the triple, uh, triple Super Bowl.

• 2:32Kirk Hamilton?

  There you go, the triple ring.

• 2:34Jason Schreier?

  Triple Pete, triple Pete. They should call it a triple Pete instead of a three Pete.

• 2:37Speaker 00

  That's good. Triple Pete? That sounds like something you do in like a Pete bog or I don't.

• 2:44Kirk Hamilton?

  It seems like a good name for us to suggest the week after we told everyone we were good at suggesting names. Now, three Pete, forget that. Triple Pete.

• 2:51Jason Schreier?

  Well, it's, this is a sequel to Pete and Pete, the Nickelodeon show.

• 2:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, Triple Pete sounds like three hosts named Pete are, are a show. And that's what our show is. We're changing it. We're all named Pete now.

• 3:05Jason Schreier?

  Welcome to Triple Pete.

• 3:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Okay.

• 3:07Speaker 00

  That's right. Uh, you know what? I don't have a transition. Normally I'd throw to one of you with the topic, but I have to throw it back to myself. It's kind of like I'm throwing a football in the air and catching it. And here we go. What are we talking about today? We're talking about the state of PC gaming, folks. Because hey, PC gaming, it's bigger than ever. Where in my house where I built a new computer?

• 3:34Kirk Hamilton?

  Today on Triple Click on Trend Watch in Maddie's house. PC gaming is on the rise.

• 3:39Speaker 00

  PC gaming is huge here.

• 3:41Jason Schreier?

  We spoke to Maddy Myers, who says.

• 3:43Speaker 00

  If I were to, if I were to like pivot this chair slightly, which I'm going to do so you guys can see this. You would see this pile of crap in the background that I've carefully hidden.

• 3:53Kirk Hamilton?

  A big pile of, of musical keyboards.

• 3:56Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 3:56Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, that's the most noticeable thing.

• 3:58Speaker 00

  A box with my old video card in it.

• 4:00Jason Schreier?

  I think I saw some fans.

• 4:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:02Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, GPU in there. Yeah.

• 4:03Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, the old box of parts. I have a few of those where you take your fans and you're like, I might need this. I might need this heat sink, this weird stock heat sink. I was going to put it in this box.

• 4:13Speaker 00

  What's really stupid about it is that there are actually two boxes now. One of them is my computer from. Two builds ago, where I saved all of that stuff that you're never gonna believe it. I didn't reuse any of and I'm still continuing to save for some reason. And now I have a secondary box that is the previous parts from the computer that also I don't need.

• 4:36Kirk Hamilton?

  You know, can I tell a quick story?

• 4:37Speaker 00

  Please do.

• 4:38Kirk Hamilton?

  So I did a PC build, what, two, three years ago, maybe two years ago? Jason, when did you build your PC?

• 4:44Jason Schreier?

  My most re- well, I did a rebuild last year.

• 4:47Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, okay.

• 4:48Jason Schreier?

  But my, or 23, 23.

• 4:50Speaker 00

  Because we talked about it on here.

• 4:51Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it was ahead of Baldur's Gate 3 is when I did my most recent rebuild. So it's summer of 23.

• 4:55Kirk Hamilton?

  Okay, so I rebuilt my PC right around the same time, because we have very similar PCs now.

• 5:00Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, we have the same graphics there.

• 5:01Kirk Hamilton?

  We built them at the same time. And I think like-

• 5:03Speaker 00

  And I'm way ahead of you guys, because it's been a whole year.

• 5:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, Maddie, you've now got the, the superpower new Nvidia card, right?

• 5:10Speaker 00

  I do, they mailed me one. You can't get one unless you're a journalist.

• 5:14Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, right. Unless you're either independently wealthy or a journalist.

• 5:18Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 5:19Kirk Hamilton?

  So my story is that I also took my PC apart and finally took apart this huge case. I had a case that was the Cooler Master Stormtrooper. Some listeners out there will probably know of it. It is the size of a Star Wars Star Destroyer.

• 5:36Kirk Hamilton?

  An absolutely massive case.

• 5:37Speaker 00

  It's called what it's called? It's a pretty embarrassing series of words to say.

• 5:41Kirk Hamilton?

  It does kind of have Star Wars Imperial energy.

• 5:43Speaker 00

  Is this an episode about how PC gaming's kind of embarrassing?

• 5:46Jason Schreier?

  Well, do you remember, we did a split screen back in the day about the names of like PC fans?

• 5:51Speaker 00

  Republic of Gamers?

• 5:53Jason Schreier?

  Oh, my God.

• 5:54Speaker 00

  We can't allow that to go on.

• 5:56Kirk Hamilton?

  But now it's just Rog. Now it's just Rog Ally. Rog, it's like Raj, it's short for Roger. Roger Attenbury, it's a very sophisticated name. It never stood for Republic of Gamers.

• 6:06Speaker 00

  No, it never did. They definitely didn't mail me a sticker with a passport, like, that said Republic of Gamers on it.

• 6:13Kirk Hamilton?

  You're now a citizen.

• 6:14Speaker 00

  That happened, I'm not joking, they did send me that sticker.

• 6:17Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, you're now a citizen of the Republic of Gamers. I mean, enjoy it, there are many benefits that come with citizenship.

• 6:22Jason Schreier?

  Well, the United States is falling apart, so we do need a new republic.

• 6:26Speaker 00

  To become sovereign citizens.

• 6:28Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, yeah, I mean, I've been talking about, for many years, I said, if Trump wins again, I'm gonna, I'm gonna emigrate to the Republic of Gamers.

• 6:34Speaker 00

  You know, they have a good visa policy. They were willing to just mail me a passport. All I had to do was buy a motherboard.

• 6:40Jason Schreier?

  If you, if you can prove, if you have a high enough achievement score, you get free citizenship. Like you automatically become a citizen if your gamer score is above 1000.

• 6:48Kirk Hamilton?

  It's, it's, it's not the Republic of non gamers. It's the Republic of gamers. We need to reward quality gaming.

• 6:55Jason Schreier?

  If you have at least a hundred games in your Steam library, then you can join.

• 6:59Speaker 00

  There's like a few ways to get in, but they're all accessible and it's very inclusive.

• 7:03Jason Schreier?

  And your passport is made out of Cheetos.

• 7:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Okay. So I'm, so I get rid of this massive tower and all the stuff that was in it and replace everything. So this is now, I have replaced my hard drives with M2 chips with the much, much faster

• 7:20Kirk Hamilton?

  solid state drives, which are the size of a half of a credit card, which I didn't think I realized when I went to build them.

• 7:27Jason Schreier?

  They're terrifying. It's very nerve wracking how flimsy they are. And you have to like bend them to get them in. It's a little nerve wracking.

• 7:33Speaker 00

  And you feel like they're gonna break. It's stressful.

• 7:35Kirk Hamilton?

  They're smaller than RAM and yet they hold, you know, two terabytes and access that memory very quickly. So, okay. So I take the whole thing apart and I've got this kind of classic 2010s era PC and all the parts for it, which means that I've got the mix of hard drives where two of the hard drives are really big hybrid drives. So there's like a solid state cache, I think. And then most of it is a physical spinning drive. And then I've got the solid state drive, which was quite expensive and I believe is 256 gigs. And that's where I had my operating system installed because that was kind of the way 10 years ago, 15 years ago, you would do this because then you would get a really fast boot and then you maybe had room for The Witcher 3

• 8:18Kirk Hamilton?

  or Cyberpunk, one game that you're really mainlining that you could move over to the solid state drive to get faster load times. So I have this little bitty solid state drive, but I didn't reinstall it in the new PC just because it's still a fine drive, but it's pretty small. And then I am playing on the new PC and the Elden Ring DLC comes out last year and I realize I no longer have the save states that I had preserved so that I could, you know, I was in New Game Plus in my current save, but I had saved the game before New Game Plus so that I could, you know, go and do the DLC without having New Game Plus difficulty. So I had to go find it and that meant I had to plug in my old solid state drive, which I did using a serial cable, like plugging it into the actual PC itself.

• 9:03Kirk Hamilton?

  And I kind of went and dug it up.

• 9:04Speaker 00

  Oh, as opposed to opening it.

• 9:05Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. So I actually went to the box of old weird PC parts that was sitting there, completely gathering dust. And I pulled out the little solid state drive and I plugged it in with a little serial cable. And, uh, and there was my, there was my save state and I pulled it off. So I actually did access my box of old PC parts.

• 9:22Speaker 00

  I mean, saving a hard drive makes sense. I, I still have all my own hard drives. Maybe for no reason. I've.

• 9:30Kirk Hamilton?

  I have some really old hard drives.

• 9:32Speaker 00

  Kirk, you're now convincing me that I should save them forever. I have some incredibly old ones from like the first.

• 9:38Jason Schreier?

  Matty, they probably don't turn on anymore.

• 9:40Speaker 00

  I don't think they do. Jason, I'm not going to throw them away.

• 9:44Jason Schreier?

  No, don't. I was gonna say a good rule of thumb, if you're ever like reorganizing your closet or something, a good rule of thumb is that if somebody has data on it, you should probably keep it. Cause why not? You might, you never know.

• 9:53Speaker 00

  Also, you know.

• 9:54Jason Schreier?

  If something is like a power unit, a power source unit from like 20 years ago, you probably don't need that.

• 10:00Speaker 00

  It's like.

• 10:00Jason Schreier?

  Probably, probably get rid of that. Probably go recycle that one.

• 10:03Speaker 00

  Completely unusable.

• 10:04Kirk Hamilton?

  If it's a firewire cable or some kind of scuzzy plug, you probably don't need it.

• 10:09Jason Schreier?

  Before we talk about big picture state of PC gaming stuff, Matty, I want to hear a little bit about your build. Cause like I find PC building, I've done it twice now, once for scratch and then the second as a rebuild. It's so satisfying and so much fun to do, right?

• 10:22Speaker 00

  I love it so much.

• 10:23Jason Schreier?

  Cause I remember you were a little like nervous when you thought about it.

• 10:27Speaker 00

  This was my third time building a PC, but the previous two times I had another person there, just like a friend who.

• 10:34Kirk Hamilton?

  A spotter.

• 10:34Speaker 00

  A spotter, if you will.

• 10:36Kirk Hamilton?

  You always kind of want a spotter for your first build. I did the same thing. My brother in law.

• 10:39Jason Schreier?

  When you're bench pressing your PC, you need someone to help you.

• 10:42Speaker 00

  You're both looking at the parts together and you're kind of like, ah, is this where this goes? And okay, yeah, that's it. And like somebody else is there watching you judgmentally while you're like putting a fan. And almost breaking something.

• 10:55Kirk Hamilton?

  Maybe judgmentally in your head, at least. Probably just helpful.

• 10:59Speaker 00

  Watching you non judgmentally, it's a safe space. And so this time around, I was like, okay, I'm building it completely alone. I mean, technically, Dina was also in the house, but I don't. She she had other things to do that day, actually. She was working that day and I I was not. So I was like truly alone in my office, building my PC for 12 hours or whatever it was. Took longer than I thought it would because it always does.

• 11:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, I like had a time estimate and Dina was like, wow, you were off by like four hours. And I was like, yeah, I don't know why I said that other thing to you. But the main issue was, so I use PCpartpicker.com. Great website. You can just enter all the parts in there and it tells you whether they're going to be compatible or not. You can also put in your tower. And in theory, it's going to tell you whether everything's going to fit physically inside of that tower. But it turned out that I had not realized that there was, you know, those like old school hard drives. They have like a metal bracket that you stick them into. So my my PC tower still has one of those. And I actually had a Blu-ray player in there because for my last build, I was like, I'm going to want a Blu-ray player. Don't think I've ever used it.

• 12:09Speaker 00

  I don't know why I I just I just stuck that in there in that in that place where you can like put extra stuff. So I had that in there and you can also put a hard drive in there. There's all these little brackets on the front of the PC you can just put stuff in. And the fans that I bought, they're huge fans. I have an all in one cooler now, so it's massive. And I just couldn't figure out where to put the fans. And I was like, am I going to have to buy a new tower? Like, I put everything in here and now I can't put in the fans. But no, I had to just take these brackets off. But the screws were so in there that I had to do WD-40 overnight. Wait forever in order to take these freaking brackets off.

• 12:51Speaker 00

  But when those screws came undone, it was like the most satisfying moment of all time. I I took off the brackets. R I P to the Blu-ray player. Obvious R I P to ever putting in a hard drive that's that size in my life. Don't need those brackets, guys, I just don't need them. So now the fans fit in there. I closed up the PC. Perfect. It was so satisfying. It felt great. It was amazing.

• 13:13Jason Schreier?

  Nice work.

• 13:14Kirk Hamilton?

  That moment, the moment when your screws stuck and you couldn't get them out. I feel that that moment is a quintessential PC building moment. I wrote these two articles for Kotaku forever ago. The 10 best things about building a gaming PC and the 10 worst things about building a gaming PC. I still think about them a lot. They're apparently two of the things that I at least like the most that I ever wrote for that website. And one of the things, the worst things about building a gaming PC is the thing you need that you don't have. Because inevitably you will come to a point where you need a screwdriver for some kind of weird hex screw that you didn't realize you were gonna need that isn't in your PC toolkit. Or whatever else, you know, you need some kind of piece of hardware that you don't have.

• 13:55Kirk Hamilton?

  And the moment of patience that that requires, for you, Maddie, it sounds like it was putting WD-40 on and then just

• 14:01Speaker 00

  Waiting.

• 14:02Kirk Hamilton?

  Waiting, which is so hard because you wanna just, you wanna just muscle it. And then you strip a screw and then you can't get it out and then nothing and you're so screwed.

• 14:11Speaker 00

  I like waited an hour. It wasn't ready. I was like, what if they never come out? What am I doing? But then, next day it was okay.

• 14:19Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, the moment of patience or, you know, your order of the part you need and you have to wait for it to come. And it just, it is, it's a, it's a real psychological test when building a PC. And I think that it kind of happens every single time that you build one.

• 14:32Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, that happened to me with my first one where I got a faulty PSU out the box. And I couldn't figure out why the computer wasn't turning on. And then I had to wait and go buy it. I knew when it was a whole thing, but then finally got the boot and it was like, hell yeah, that was the best moment of my life.

• 14:47Speaker 00

  Yeah. This time I built it outside the tower first, which I somehow didn't do the previous two times, just to make sure everything worked. And boy, people should do that. I don't know why I wasn't doing that the other times. That's my hot tip. Build it outside.

• 15:01Kirk Hamilton?

  I've never done that and I've watched PC building videos where they do that and it does seem like a much better way to go.

• 15:08Speaker 00

  It is.

• 15:09Kirk Hamilton?

  Just because it's a lot easier to get at everything and if something isn't working or isn't seated properly, you can see it. Light winds up being a major problem for me when I'm building a PC. I wear a headlamp the whole time and even then, it's so shadowy inside of a box.

• 15:22Jason Schreier?

  You wear a headlamp, you're like a miner, like in a coal mine.

• 15:26Kirk Hamilton?

  Look, I'm in my 40s, I just wear a headlamp all the time. I just can't see in the dark anymore because my eyes are deteriorating.

• 15:32Speaker 00

  I wish I had a headlamp. Instead of a headlamp, I have like this huge desk lamp that's like clips onto things and it has like prehensile lights on it, has four prehensile lights. So I use that a lot and then I also use my phone flashlight a lot for like smaller crevices, but yeah, it was a pain. I mean, being able to see properly. Anyway, we could talk about this for 45 minutes, but.

• 15:53Kirk Hamilton?

  Let's keep talking about it. Wait, I want to talk about one more thing related to PC gaming.

• 15:56Speaker 00

  And we will.

• 15:57Kirk Hamilton?

  Then we can talk about some trends.

• 15:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:00Kirk Hamilton?

  I think, so I'm curious, so you're using an all-in-one cooler?

• 16:04Speaker 00

  I am. This is my first time doing that.

• 16:05Kirk Hamilton?

  Jason, what's your cooling, what's your cooling solution for your CPU?

• 16:10Jason Schreier?

  Uh, I don't remember. It's a fan.

• 16:12Speaker 00

  It's just a fan. When you put it together, it's just one fan.

• 16:15Jason Schreier?

  I don't think it's a liquid one. No, it's a fan.

• 16:18Speaker 00

  You'd know because it'd be fricking huge because that's why I had to make so much space for it.

• 16:22Jason Schreier?

  The first one I ever got was liquid and then I replaced it with a fan and it was much better.

• 16:27Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I had a liquid all-in-one cooler, which an all-in-one is you buy it in one unit. So for anyone who doesn't know this, this is one of those units where there's a heat sink that goes over the CPU and then these two hoses that run off of it that then go to a big, bigger heat sink that you usually like clip to the top of the case and then the liquid kind of runs through that and theoretically cools the CPU. And liquid cooling has always seemed really cool to me, for lack of a better word. It seemed really neat, you know? Oh man, this is a liquid cool PC. This thing is super hot rodded.

• 16:59Speaker 00

  It like reminds you of like antifreeze or something like you're like driving a hot rod, but it's your freaking gaming PC.

• 17:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Where then I've learned, I use Noctua stuff now. So Noctua makes a heat sink. It is a heat sink the size of a car. It's so big. It's this piece of metal. It looks like, I don't know, a structure from a Ridley Scott movie or something. It's this giant metal, you know, heat sink that just clips on to the side of the motherboard. And it goes sideways. It feels crazy. You have to brace it onto the back of the motherboard. There's a whole kind of contraption made for this. It feels like it's going to pull the entire thing off because it's so large. And then two huge fans go on it. And I've really found, first off, I can overclock my CPU with just this regular, you know, air-cooled heat sink. It totally works. And then I've really gotten into the airflow,

• 17:48Kirk Hamilton?

  managing the airflow through my PC, because I would have temperature issues back when I used to overclock my CPU. And it's kind of a really pleasing process. I would recommend anyone who's built a PC and has never really sat and like cleared up all the cables, for example, pulled them all out of the way to make it so the air moves a little more easily through the inside of the case. It really makes a big difference. And it's kind of pleasing to see those temperatures drop just because you tidied up, basically. It's, I guess it's kind of the same feeling as cleaning up your room and then realizing that your room functions better, I guess. Or cleaning dust out of a vent and realizing that the airflow through your house is a lot better. Same kind of feeling.

• 18:27Jason Schreier?

  It sparks joy. Can I just say, real quick, and then we should get to like bigger picture topics, but if anyone is listening to this and has ever built a PC and is like, what is Kirk talking about with overclocking and Liquid? It's actually, you can also do what I do, which is just like you kind of build a PC in the most rudimentary way and then you just play it. And you just move on? It's actually much simpler than, like, you don't have to make it complicated if you are thinking about this.

• 18:50Kirk Hamilton?

  And I want to say that I, that's what I do now, too. I actually am not overclocking my CPU.

• 18:54Jason Schreier?

  I'm not either.

• 18:54Kirk Hamilton?

  There was a period where I got into it just sort of for fun. I just was curious what it was about. And there was a kind of a period where I just felt like all the games I was playing were just slightly out of reach of my GPU.

• 19:07Jason Schreier?

  Oh, yeah.

• 19:08Kirk Hamilton?

  And nowadays, it just doesn't feel that way. And I especially don't feel quote-unquote CPU limited, that cursed term that you'll find in PC gaming. Forums where you're getting, you know, 43 FPS in a game and you can't tell why and they say, "Oh, you're CPU limited." So I don't really feel that way anymore. I have, I don't remember what kind of Intel CPU, but it overclocks itself. It has a boost, which I think is very common among current day CPUs. And yeah, I just, I have that big heat sink on it, but I'm not even bothering to overclock. I thought I would when I bought the PC, but now I just don't. And like you said, Jason, it's fine. Every game I have pretty much runs pretty well, unless the game itself is fucked up. You like a Jedi Survivor or something, and then there's nothing that any amount of overclocking would do.

• 19:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm in the same boat.

• 19:51Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, and so you always have to wonder if it's a game or your computer.

• 19:54Kirk Hamilton?

  And more often than not, it is the game and not your rig.

• 19:57Jason Schreier?

  But I will say, and we said this before on our last PC episode, which I think was a few years ago, it's really easy to do this. And like, I know it can be intimidating to even think about, but if I can do it, I feel like anyone can do it.

• 20:11Speaker 00

  That's kind of how I feel about it. It was definitely easier and more fun than I thought it was, but I also know we've had listeners say it was hard for them. And for those people, I did find out this year, if you've got a Micro Center in your neighborhood, first of all, Micro Center still exists as a business, even though many other hardware sellers do not. Apparently they do a program where you can just pick out the parts or even bring them the parts and they'll build the PC for you. So if you want to pick out the parts, but you just want somebody else to do the heavy lifting of, you know, doing the thermal paste and all the other slightly stressful parts of putting together a PC, apparently Micro Center does it. I can't speak to the quality of it, didn't do it myself, did briefly consider it, but ultimately did it myself and had a great time, and I'm glad I did

• 20:52Speaker 00

  that. But that's another option. They did not pay me to say this, Micro Center. I do like them as a store, anyway.

• 20:59Kirk Hamilton?

  Not brought to you by Micro Center.

• 21:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, as we always say, we don't have ads on this show. Everyone knows that. So. The larger question that I had heading into this was, is PC gaming becoming more popular and why is that? And I downloaded the 2025 GDC industry survey. The survey is always really cool, by the way. There's always some fun facts in here and anybody can download one if you want, even if you're not a reporter or a game developer and you just want to know about gaming trends. And the thing that I thought was interesting about it was how many more developers are making PC games as compared to previous years? And that number's been going up pretty steadily every year. Like in 2024, it was 66% of developers were saying they

• 21:44Speaker 00

  were working on a PC game. And that, again, had been climbing from the previous year bit by bit. But this past year, it's 80%. And I just thought that was like a wild jump, first of all. I was prepared to come into this episode with the 2024 data and just be like, hey, this is a pretty big number. But then I looked into the most recent survey that just came out in January and I was like, what? It's even bigger now. So I was wondering what you two think about this and just kind of how this ecosystem is changing and whether you feel like you've seen this trend or not. And Jason, what do you think about this?

• 22:19Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I have another number to share, which is that so we've talked about this before. Console growth has pretty much plateaued. The Xbox has shrunk for a lot of reasons and the PlayStation, the PS5 is like just barely keeping up with the PS4. It might be like a tick higher, a single digit percent higher these days, but it's like about the same. You kind of, you have your, your limited sphere of console, people who will buy consoles. But PC, so Steam, the major PC platform, we don't have, like, they don't share numbers on daily users or monthly users or sales or anything like that. But we do have concurrent

• 22:55Jason Schreier?

  users and Steam peaked at 39 million concurrent users in 2024, a leap of over 6 million or around 6 million from 2023. So 2023, the record was, this is according to

• 23:17Jason Schreier?

  Um, this uh, uh, research on game world observer that I'm looking at. And last uh, 2023's record was 33.59 million concurrent users and 2024's was 39. So a leap of nearly 6 million concurrent current users. Um, and then I think also just kind of like anecdotally, uh, I have heard from a lot of people, a lot of game companies and people who sell games, indies, that um, they are selling a lot on PC and PC is a way bigger market share for a lot of them than console is. Um, Helldivers 2, I think is a good example. That game was more than half of their users were on PC and considering it's a Sony published game.

• 23:59Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 23:59Jason Schreier?

  You wouldn't expect that.

• 24:00Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. Yeah, it's been interesting watching Sony's foray into PC gaming where, you know, Helldivers was this massive hit for them as a simultaneous release coming out on PlayStation and PC at the same time. Where they've also been re-releasing or I guess delayed releasing their big, you know, third-party uh, single-player games Spider-Man and God of War on PC. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. They just released Spider-Man, Spider-Man uh, 2. Yep. And yeah, right. And then third-party exclusive stuff like uh, Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy VII Remake is coming out on PC as well. And so watching the, the delta close between a console release and a PC release, that's kind of a separate thing, I guess, from the Sony question.

• 24:43Kirk Hamilton?

  But I wonder, I mean, I, one of your predictions, right, was that Sony will release day and date a, a big PC game at the same time. Was that you, Jason?

• 24:51Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, within a couple of months. Yeah, yeah. And it, it seems like, well, so Square Enix, they were kind of the, the, the lingering last player in the exclusive business with their Final Fantasy games that were PlayStation exclusive. And they came out last year and were like, we're not gonna do this anymore. And I think you're gonna start seeing all of their games go multi-platform, especially on PC. And Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Matt Piscatella at Circa, he's a, a big analyst uh, in the gaming space. He said just a couple of days ago that Final Fantasy VII Rebirth has been performing quite well on Steam. So yeah, we're seeing. Seeing a lot of trends like this where a game isn't, might not be performing quite as well on play, as an exclusive on consoles and then does really well on PC, or just PC.

• 25:36Jason Schreier?

  It just seems like you can reach a lot of, a lot more people on PC than you can on consoles these days.

• 25:41Kirk Hamilton?

  A couple of other trends or trend lines or whatever that I've noticed are, one is Assassin's Creed Shadows, when it was delayed, was also then announced with a simultaneous Steam release, where Ubisoft had been delaying the Steam release and putting things out. I think they were on Epic and on their own store, or maybe just on their own store, trying to get people to buy it there. They did that with Star Wars Outlaws, and that game kind of met with crickets on PC. There was a feeling, you know, just, I don't know whether this is true or not, but there was a feeling that if it had been on Steam day one, it could have gotten more people playing it on PC, which would have just helped it make a bigger impact when it launched. And so them doing that feels like a concession. Also, Monster Hunter Wilds is coming out on PC at the exact same time as console this month,

• 26:26Kirk Hamilton?

  which is the first time that's happened with a Monster Hunter game. I'm really psyched about that because I always wind up playing, or at least the last two of these games, Monster Hunter World and Rise. Those both came out on console first. I played the console version and liked it. And then with World, I got really into the PC version, but it was such a huge time commitment. You can't transfer your save over. It sort of sucks. And then Rise, I played on Switch and it was great, and I just couldn't do it again on PC, even though playing it on Steam Deck at 60 FPS was so cool. So the fact that more and more games are coming out on PC simultaneously feels like, you know, another move in that direction. You know, a publisher kind of contorting themselves around the demands of PC gamers. Oh, and one more is that Sony, I believe this is right, tell me if I'm wrong here.

• 27:10Kirk Hamilton?

  Sony has backed off their requirement for PlayStation Network for their upcoming games, which again is something that they clearly didn't want to do. They kept trying to impose PlayStation Network membership on this huge new audience of players that they were finding, starting with Helldivers, then God of War, and now Spider-Man. And then they just, PC gamers don't like that kind of thing. There's a big, loud pushback from people who play games on PC. And they apparently have, you know, kind of kowtowed to that. They've said, okay, fine, fine. It's optional. There will be some rewards. If you want to become a member, you can, but we're not going to force it on you. So it's just a lot of signs of people sort of adapting and pursuing PC gaming more aggressively.

• 27:51Jason Schreier?

  So a lot of, so there's a lot to unpack in all of the examples you just brought up, but one that I want to kind of stick on for a second is that move from other people's launchers, like the Ubisoft launcher, the EA launcher to Steam, because that speaks to, those games are already on PC. So it doesn't speak to the PC's dominance. It speaks to Steam's dominance.

• 28:11Kirk Hamilton?

  Right.

• 28:12Jason Schreier?

  Steam, for as long as I can remember, you have this loud, very vocal, significant group of people. You've always had, for years and years and years, I've always been like, I will only play PC games when they come to Steam, because that's where my trophies and achievements are. That's where my wallet is. That's where I get discounts. That's where my friends are and so on and so forth. And that I always found really interesting because part of me is like, who cares? But now, in today's world, we have the Steam Deck, which really changes the equation. And I wonder how many of this kind of, or how much of this kind of rise in PC gaming is a result of that. So the Steam Deck, we don't know. Valve has not said how many units they've sold. I did an interview with Lawrence Yang, who was one of the architects of the Steam Deck a couple of years ago, when they

• 28:56Jason Schreier?

  were announcing the OLED version. And he told me they had sold multiple millions at that point. So you've got to think that at this point, it's at least 10 million, let's say, units of those. So that's a significant portion of the market and might help add to that kind of hunger for Steam versions of everything and kind of add to Valve's monopoly of the PC gaming market, which may or may not be a good thing.

• 29:21Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. And I would quickly add that Steam also has some other great features that set them apart. I mean, family sharing, which Maddie, you talked about a little while ago. I love family sharing. Is really great. And I could see, I mean, it's such a good value. And especially if you have, you know, multiple people in your household playing games, I could definitely see saying, well, no, I'm getting it on Steam, because then we can both play it, or I can play it, you know, and, and sort of share it with my family. They've also added- A game recording recently. I don't know if either of you have messed with that.

• 29:48Speaker 00

  I haven't tried it yet, but it's cool. Yeah.

• 29:50Kirk Hamilton?

  It's really, really cool. It doesn't always work on every game, but when it works, it's like Nvidia's Shadow Play. It's, you know, perpetually running recorder. But you can access it with a just, I think, a much better GUI, like in game. You call up this interface. You can scroll back through your play and just grab a screenshot if you want. You don't have to save all the video. You can clip the video right there while you're in game. And it's all kind of integrated. So it feels somewhat like Apple's ecosystem, where the more features they add, the more locked in people are. And it's a good thing, as long as you like using those features. But yeah, like you said, it also, it starts to feel more and more like a monopoly almost. You know, everybody is going to be, be using Steam because they're, they're just so preferred.

• 30:34Kirk Hamilton?

  And then that reinforces their dominance over PC gaming.

• 30:38Speaker 00

  Yeah. And it kind of reminds me of some of what we say about like, oh, console exclusives are going away. And Sony is, and Xbox are both becoming more open minded about having things on PC. Like Avowed is also going to be on Steam, for example. That's just one random example. But it's also on PC on the Xbox Store. And that's kind of interesting to me. Like, when are, when are these publishers deciding to do that or not do that? But also, even though I could argue potentially that Steam is this walled garden, where there are the Steam fans that Jason described, who are like, I just want it on Steam. And the Steam Deck agreeably contributes to that. The Steam Deck also lets me play PS5 games. Yes, it's onerous to set up, but you can do it.

• 31:19Speaker 00

  I can play Xbox games on there now too, through the XB Play app that I've shouted out many times, because it's awesome. I, I mean, I can't deny, I can play a lot of other things on there. And you can also very onerously get Xbox Game Pass to work on there. I haven't tried to get Epic Game Store on there, but.

• 31:35Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it's just much easier. If you want something, like, chances are.

• 31:38Speaker 00

  But that's the PC gaming mindset of like, everything's modular.

• 31:42Jason Schreier?

  Well, I don't know. I think there are a lot of people like me who are like, you know, I don't have a ton of time to be fiddling around with everything. I just, I would rather even spend a few extra bucks to get something on Steam, so I can eat very seamlessly transferred and have the Steam Cloud save, which is essential for, if you're playing on your computer. And then you also want to play on your Steam Deck lying in bed or something like that. So I can see why people are so militant about wanting it on Steam, after being like an extensive Steam Deck user for the last couple of years.

• 32:10Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, and I think that the possibility of being able to modify your experience is actually appealing just on its own as an abstract concept. If you just like playing games the way you're describing. As an additive, yeah.

• 32:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:23Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, you can just play it, whatever, play it on Steam, don't really adjust your settings and just play the game. But then if something goes wrong, you can go find mods for it. Or if you really get into a game, you can go find other types of mods for it. Or, you know, and so on. And you can set up, you know, if you wanna really get into streaming from your PC to your Steam Deck, you can stop using the Steam built-in streaming and you can start using Sunshine and going and like set up a sort of Moonlight/Sunshine thing. And if you wanna get into any of that, you can. And it's possible, even though Steam is, you know, DRM and it is its own enclosed ecosystem, it's also on a PC, which is much easier to get inside and change on a software level and on a hardware level.

• 33:08Kirk Hamilton?

  And so I think that possibility, just that it exists, is a nice thing to have. You know, it feels like an additive when you compare it to a console, even if you don't use it.

• 33:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, and it's, it's, it makes me feel like it is more console-like because I'm able to give a Steam Deck to somebody like Dina who isn't gonna install all that other stuff. She's just playing Steam games on there.

• 33:27Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 33:27Speaker 00

  And that's fine, there's a bajillion games on there that you can play. And you don't need to do the, whatever I'm doing, where I'm trying to install a million other things and get all of this additional software onto my Steam Deck, go into the desktop mode, go and, go and hog wild on all these additional little nibs and knobs that I, that I'm enjoying adding. Like, you don't have to go, I mean, I wanna call it the PC gamer mindset, but even that is kind of exclusionary of me to imagine it that way. Because there's many PC gamers who are, don't even consider that something they think is fun. And it's, it doesn't have to be something you get into at all. It's very easy to be a PC gamer now. You can just play Steam games.

• 34:09Kirk Hamilton?

  I got a really cool email recently from a listener who had gotten back into gaming, listening to TripleClick, which was very cool to hear on its own. But he had gotten into gaming by buying a Steam Deck.

• 34:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:21Kirk Hamilton?

  And that was his only gaming platform, which I haven't, I know there are people out there, obviously, who do that, but I haven't heard from them about their experience. But that is a very cool experience to use the Steam Deck either as just a dedicated handheld, well, that's where your Steam library lives and where you're logged in. I guess you could plug into the TV as well. I've done that. It works for some games, but you could just play it and that's your gaming PC. And then there are also a lot of people who play PC games on laptops. I think that that sort of is a different type of PC gaming, only because when we picture it, or the three of us talk about the way that we play PC games, we build a tower, you plug it into a monitor, you know, you get a big Alienware curved screen or whatever.

• 34:59Speaker 00

  You need 60 at least, maybe more FPS.

• 35:03Kirk Hamilton?

  You play at 160. Well, 60 is not even acceptable to modern PC gamers. 60 is the basement. But yeah, so if you're playing on a gaming laptop, which there are a lot of really good ones with higher refresh rate screens and built-in integrated graphics, or not integrated, I guess, built-in AMD or Nvidia graphics, and they really look cool and they're very easy to carry around with you. So that's another type of PC gaming. And then there's even kind of bleed over into Mac gaming now and even mobile gaming. Those worlds feel more connected in a way than console gaming, even though obviously Macs and tablets, especially Apple tablets are their own ecosystem.

• 35:41Kirk Hamilton?

  But the new, like, M1, M2, M3, M4, the M-series Macs can play tons of games. There's no longer this huge power delta between Macs and PCs the way there used to be. Those M-chips are incredibly impressive and it's just a matter of developers putting a game on Mac. And there's a surprising number of games that you can buy on Steam. On Mac. And I guess now that I think this through, as I talk through that, what I'm really saying is that at least when it comes to Mac and PC, the thing unifying them is Steam. So you're you're playing Steam games, but you can play the same game that you own that you were playing on PC on a Mac. And it, you know, sometimes I don't know if the games always carry the saves over, but it feels like the same experience.

• 36:24Kirk Hamilton?

  So Steam has kind of expanded beyond just PC gaming.

• 36:27Jason Schreier?

  So I've been trying to think about why PC gaming seems to be like on the rise and certainly at a at a better velocity than console. Console gaming is in that market is. And I think there are a lot of reasons, a lot of the reasons, I mean, the three of us have always been or have been PC gaming for a while over consoles and preferred PCs for a lot of reasons, the flexibility, the performance you can get. The wider array of games you can get as opposed to consoles, the kind of open garden, there are a lot of good reasons for that end, but something else I've been thinking about and something that I think might be a more recent phenomenon, and I'm curious to hear if you two have have kind of gotten

• 37:07Jason Schreier?

  seen this in the wild, is I've been having conversations recently with like normie folks, like people who aren't big gamers who like happen to have discovered some game that is like unexpected that they're obsessed with. Like I had a conversation not not too long ago with someone who was like, oh, yeah, I don't play a lot of games, but I've played a thousand hours of Cities Skylines or something like that. And a lot of those games, whether they're kind of like, I don't know, like Rim World or like any of those kind of systems heavy Dwarf Fortress, like games that you can really suck your entire life into and you don't have to play other games because that's all you play. Civ 7 could be one of those that is about to come out.

• 37:49Jason Schreier?

  So, and I think most of those, or at least they kind of primarily live on PC. And that could be a reason. And I think if you're like, if you're the type of person, maybe you're not really into games, but you are into your one big thing. And maybe you play it on your laptop every night, then it makes a lot more sense to just have a be a PC gamer than it does to buy a console for your one big game. And that could, you could extrapolate. That to refer to the big live service games that have taken over the world, the Fortnites and Minecrafts of the world, which also, I mean, you can play those anywhere, but you could also play those on PC. So you don't need to get a console. And so that's, that's kind of a trend that I've been keeping an eye on. Is that something the two of you have noticed that like people are like finding their forever games on the PC?

• 38:35Speaker 00

  Not so much that, but one of the trends that I have heard about from people who are parents. So I'm curious what you think of this, Jason, is just the idea that computers are more accessible at school and that kids are seeing PCs at school. I don't know if that's true, like across the world or even the country, but I've just heard anecdotally from people with kids that they're like, yeah, my kid plays games at school and then now they want to play them on a PC, but they don't have as much awareness of, oh, I should be getting an Xbox or I should be getting a PlayStation. I don't know why that would be, but maybe just the accessibility of those tools in classrooms,

• 39:14Speaker 00

  which wasn't really the case when I was growing up, like having a computer was kind of a big deal in my time. And then now they're just kind of everywhere in a different way. But I also think Kirk's point about mobile gaming and the crossover there, like something like Honkai Star Rail, being on your phone and on PC as like the main platforms you could play it on is sort of interesting to me. And I don't, I mean, you could kind of think of those, those games as like forever games as well, Jason. So that kind of ties into your point where it's like, okay, these are games that you're supposed to log in every day and like do your battle pass style rewards or dailies as they're called in that kind of game. And like, that is also a PC gaming experience, like Honkai runs a heck of a lot better on a PC than it does on a phone.

• 39:59Speaker 00

  But people think of it as a phone game. So I, I think there's like a few things where just computer literacy still exists and is accessible. But I also wonder if there's just the declining brand awareness of PlayStation and Xbox that Sony and Microsoft higher ups seem okay with because they're like, well, our games are going to be on these additional platforms that are also accessible. All of this is anecdotal, but hey.

• 40:23Kirk Hamilton?

  No, no, no. I think, I think there's something to what both of you are saying. I think that there is a rise of transference between mobile and PC gaming as mobile devices are just capable of playing games like Genshin and Honkai Star Rail and Fortnite, of course, is a ton of people. Who would play Fortnite on mobile. And also, there are a lot of mobile games that share a lot in common with those kind of crunchy management games that I do know a few people like you're talking about, Jason, who are really into those kinds of games. Sometimes they play them on mobile. They're just really into these city management kind of complex games. But then I can also imagine transferring from that to a different, more capable system, or wanting to use a mouse and a keyboard.

• 41:07Kirk Hamilton?

  And if you're a kind of a normie, as you describe, or a non gamer, someone who is maybe our age or a little older, who never really learned the controller. Yes. It would make sense that you would want to go and play with a mouse and keyboard, and that you're just into these city management games that you've been playing on your phone. And so then you go over to the PC and you discover, oh, there's a whole world of these over there. And then because, similar to what you were saying, Matty, about schools, a lot of people have PC laptops, have Windows-based laptops for work. They just have, that's kind of the main computer that's around the house, and otherwise, they just use their phone or iPad for everything. Then they're going to get on the laptop and discover that there are actually a lot of games that can run on a kind of default, you know, whatever, kind of base level, you

• 41:50Kirk Hamilton?

  know, PC, or a laptop PC these days. It doesn't need to have a ton of really intense integrated graphics. You're not necessarily going to be able to play Cyberpunk, or whatever the cutting edge is. But you can play, like, The Roots Are Dead. But you can definitely play Civilization, or, you know, you can play Age of Mythology. So I think that that kind of pipeline does feel like a thing to me. And again, it's still anecdotal, it's just based on people I've talked to. But it makes sense to me, just as someone who plays games and kind of understands how people tend to transfer from one system to another, and one type of game to another.

• 42:20Jason Schreier?

  One thing that is not anecdotal is that more and more, it's becoming less essential to own a console. An Xbox is completely inessential. If you're the type of person who wants to play everything, you want to play as many games as possible, you do not need an Xbox, because every single game that is on Xbox is also on other platforms. PlayStation, nowadays, they're releasing games. Sony is releasing games that are exclusive for the PlayStation, some of them temporarily, and then coming to PC, as Matty mentioned earlier. Others, maybe permanently. We still haven't seen PC releases. For like the Demon Souls or Bloodborne's of the world. But and then there's Nintendo, which is in its own kind of sphere. But these days, if you want to play everything, if you are kind of a hardcore gamer, you want to get as much as possible.

• 43:04Jason Schreier?

  You can be pretty safe with a PC and a Switch, getting pretty much everything. Especially now that Square Enix is moving into multi-platform and Sony seems to be releasing as much as possible on PC. So there isn't the only kind of barrier for entry for the PC. I guess there are two. One is the kind of it's seen as a little more inaccessible. You have to build the thing. You have to think about things you wouldn't have to think about if you buy a console. And the other is price. You have to spend a little bit more if you want to get the same level of performance as like a PS5 from your computer. But as more and more people seem to be getting past those barriers for entry.

• 43:45Jason Schreier?

  Maybe that's just kind of maybe it's that simple that people don't really need consoles quite as much as anymore.

• 43:51Kirk Hamilton?

  Is there a calculator somewhere, just a really simple web app where you could put in the cost of building a PC? And then also the cost of your five years of gaming that you're going to do after building the PC? And actually get a sense of the price difference? Since I think that really would be helpful for a lot of people to see. You know, I buy X number of full-priced games each year or, you know, I'm willing to wait X amount of time. I don't know, something that could kind of factor in the dramatically lower cost of software for PC.

• 44:20Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, the software price. Yeah, that's a great question.

• 44:23Kirk Hamilton?

  And tell you the full picture because I think that's it's a really hard thing for people to get their heads around. And I understand why. It feels almost like a vague promise or something when you're told, oh, but don't worry. It's like a marshmallow test or something. You'll make it back, you know?

• 44:35Jason Schreier?

  Right.

• 44:35Kirk Hamilton?

  Or if you you build an expensive or you buy expensive new appliances for your kitchen, knowing that the power cost over five years, the power, your power bill will be lower. And if you can actually really look at a little chart that shows you that you're not actually paying more, even though you're paying more upfront. I think it might help people understand that because that is a significant financial consideration for PC gaming.

• 44:56Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I mean, it's for some people, it's harder, it's much harder to. To put aside $800 to $1,000 to build a PC than it is to spend $70 a month to buy a new one, a new game once a month after like your initial $400 investment. So yeah, I mean, your mileage can vary. I think we're all pretty PC gaming for a number of reasons. But one thing that I'll say that I've kind of noticed in recent years is that like it used to be back in the day, maybe 10, 15 years ago. It felt like you needed to upgrade your graphics card a lot more often than you do these days. These days, I think you can get away with, especially because 4K, which is the highest, one of the highest end resolutions feels so inessential

• 45:39Jason Schreier?

  as opposed to 1440p, so-called 2K resolution or whatever. It feels like you can really get away with like a mid-tier graphics card for a long time. And so you don't have to be spending as much as upgrades as maybe you used to. Correct me if I'm wrong, guys, but that's

• 45:56Speaker 00

  I mean, I agree with you. I took a wild

• 45:59Kirk Hamilton?

  I think that's a really interesting trend right now where we've moved away from raw power and toward clever software and machine learning computing tricks, which is exemplified in DLSS. This could be, this would be a separate podcast and it's not my actual area of expertise. I just watch a lot of Digital Foundry videos and think this, I don't know, I'm a, I can't shake the nerd habit, I guess, of hardware nerdery from, from 15 years ago.

• 46:24Speaker 00

  Those are good videos. It's fine.

• 46:26Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. Oh, I mean, Digital Foundry are, they do fantastic work. But the fact that we've shifted from just can your PC brute force this thing to can Nvidia, the software engineers at Nvidia, or the people making these other sort of variable refresh rate and variable resolution, software, whatever, I don't know, protocols, I guess. I don't know what word you would use. The people who develop this stuff are coming up with some pretty amazing Amazing tools. I mean, if you have paid much attention to this new 500 series that Nvidia is releasing, there's going to be a new version of DLSS that instead of generating one frame for each process frame, I believe can generate three frames. So it's way, way

• 47:08Kirk Hamilton?

  more powerful, which means that the AI, or whatever you want to call it, the, the machine learning component of the chip, a lot of the work that it's doing is looking at the one frame that it's generated and then just figuring out what's going to be next and constantly generating frames, which is what all of our graphics cards, 400 or 4,000 series Nvidia graphics cards already do this. Like I turned on frame generation for a lot of games that I play and I, I don't even really, I can't get my head around it because to me it looks like a smooth experience and I'm not very sensitive to input lag. But I think it's very fascinating that we're moving away from raw power, generate every single frame and anytime the GPU slips up, your frame rate stutters and you lose smoothness

• 47:49Kirk Hamilton?

  of performance to, I mean, an imagined endpoint that I guess is just the GPU imagines the entire game before you play it and it just manifests in front of you in real time. I don't know. It's totally weird. It's a, I can't totally understand it just in terms of like conceptually.

• 48:06Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, I guess I'll have to tell you because they did mail me one of these. So I'll let you know if, if the

• 48:12Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. I think that's in Cyberpunk, right? I think there are a few games that have that new DLSS. Yeah. I'll be very curious what you think of it.

• 48:18Speaker 00

  I reinstalled Cyberpunk and, and Indiana Jones and a couple. I've been trying to figure out which ones have it. And I will say those reflections, they look really good. That's my non-digital foundry opinion is the reflections in Cyberpunk look freaking awesome. And with that, I guess we can conclude our, our PC gaming chat. I'm sure, I'm sure we'll be back with more on this. We'll, they'll just check in periodically and, uh, you know, we'll still talk about the Switch 2 all the freaking time, something we didn't really get into here, but is its own walled garden. And all this stuff is fun to talk about. But yeah, uh, with that, let's, let's take a little break and then we'll be back with one more thing.

• 49:04Speaker 03

  Hey, is this Jesse?

• 49:05Speaker 04

  This is Jesse.

• 49:06Speaker 03

  Hey, this is Stuart Wellington, host of the Flophouse Podcast on MaxFun. I'm calling because you've been named Maximum Fun's Member of the Month for February.

• 49:16Speaker 04

  Nice.

• 49:17Speaker 03

  If you don't mind me asking, what prompted you to start supporting the network, become a MaxFun member?

• 49:21Speaker 04

  I was trying to think of when I started listening to the Flophouse, but I think it was something like 2014, 2015.

• 49:29Speaker 03

  Oh, wow.

• 49:30Speaker 04

  And then actually having a real job in 2021 was what allowed me to actually start supporting.

• 49:37Speaker 03

  Congratulations for having a real job and supporting my not-real job.

• 49:42Speaker 03

  So as Member of the Month, you're going to be getting a $25 gift card to the MaxFun store, a special, a special Member of the Month bumper sticker, and a special priority parking spot at MaxFun HQ in Los Angeles.

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• 50:54Speaker 00

  And we are back. Kirk, why don't you go first?

• 50:59Kirk Hamilton?

  Sure. My one more thing is a book that I read a little while ago that I haven't talked about on the show yet called Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver.

• 51:08Speaker 00

  I know it from Jason.

• 51:10Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, this was also Jason's one more thing. And I wanted to just really, wholeheartedly recommend this book for anyone who, like me, had heard about it since it came out in 2022, who maybe loves Barbara Kingsolver the way that I love Barbara Kingsolver and her writing, and just hadn't read it yet, and sort of kept thinking, oh, well, maybe I should read David Copperfield first.

• 51:31Speaker 00

  Oh, so me?

• 51:34Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. Kept turning it into a larger project than it needed to be. My sister just gave me her copy over the holidays, and she had already read it, and said, dude, just read the book. And I started reading it, and just, this book hits the ground running. It grabs you immediately and does not let up for the entire run. It is an incredible piece of writing, and I just really, wholeheartedly recommend it. To reiterate, even though I know this was Jason's one more thing a few months ago, this is a retelling or an adaptation of David Copperfield. And each character in David Copperfield is sort of, you know, turned into a character in Demon Copperhead. But Demon Copperhead is instead a young man

• 52:17Kirk Hamilton?

  in Appalachia in the kind of 1990s into the 2000s. So right through both the rise of the opioid epidemic, and also eventually the financial crash. So kind of the Bush era, you know, late 90s through the 2000s, 9/11, the Bush era in Appalachia. And so it totally changes the overall feel of the story and the kind of, I don't know, the valence of the main character, to place him in this very different place, in a very different set of circumstances, even though the framework of Dickens's original is really strong. And it winds up being this amazing story of trial and hardship, and also the human spirit,

• 52:59Kirk Hamilton?

  and the beauty of nature, because it's Barbara Kingsolver, and she writes about nature better. Than anyone ever. I just, I hadn't read her in a while. I don't know if the two of you are big Kingsolver fans. Jason, I know you've read this book, but I'm not sure if you've read any of her other stuff. I love her. I really got into her back in the 2010s. The Poisonwood Bible, Prodigal Summer, Animal Dreams. There's a whole series of books set on Navajo reservations that are really, really amazing. The Poisonwood Bible is a, is a real, um, a real masterpiece. It's another book where

• 53:30Speaker 00

  It's pretty great.

• 53:31Kirk Hamilton?

  She flexes this ability she has to channel a character, a narrator, because Poisonwood Bible is a story of a family of missionaries in, I think in Congo, is that right?

• 53:42Speaker 00

  I read it in high school, so couldn't tell you.

• 53:45Kirk Hamilton?

  They're, they're, they're basically a group of American missionaries, white American missionaries who have gone to Africa to proselytize and then find themselves caught up in political and cultural

• 53:55Speaker 00

  Over their heads.

• 53:56Kirk Hamilton?

  Movements that they have absolutely no control over and they're completely in over their heads. And it's told through the perspective of three or four daughters in the family, and they're all different ages and they each narrate their own sections. And by the time you get to the youngest daughter, her voice and her method of narration are so radically different from her sisters. And it's just incredible. It's something that Kingsolver can do that only very few incredibly talented writers can do, to just create these different voices. And she does this in Demon Copperhead. I mean, Demon, he owns this book. It's his story, start to finish, and it's an amazing experience to read a story told so forcefully, so convincingly, and, and just beautifully by this narrator. I mean,

• 54:40Kirk Hamilton?

  she's created this completely fleshed out, fully fleshed person. You know him so well by the end of the first chapter, and then by the end of the book, he just feels like an old friend. And I think that it's just amazing to read someone who can do that. As much hardship as there is in the story, if you're familiar with David Copperfield, you know horrible things happened to this poor kid. He really goes through it. It is a tale of suffering and he does make it through because he's narrating. And so you know he's going to make it, but a lot of other people don't. And it is just a really bleak time at a place in America that was really horribly taken advantage of and And just, there was a lot of suffering there. So you're reading a lot of horrible things happening, but it never feels too bleak. It never feels too much of a trial to read.

• 55:24Kirk Hamilton?

  And I think it's because his narrative voice is so strong because demon himself has so much vitality, even as he's describing a really terrible time in his life as he's suffering through, you know, addiction or injury or just these terrible events, loss and death. Because it's his story and he controls the story, even when he's telling you about someone who mistreated him, who had power over him and he was in this horrible powerless situation where he just suffered and had no recourse. He does have the ultimate power because he's the storyteller. And because he tells the story so powerfully and vividly and in his own words and from his own perspective. So he's so seated so strongly in his own perspective.

• 56:07Kirk Hamilton?

  He always has power in the end and you feel safe because you're with him. And he's telling you the story and he's kind of holding your hand through it. And it's so remarkable. Every time I felt that way in the book, I just, I, I, I think it's just an amazing, amazing book. I can see why it won all the awards.

• 56:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, I gotta read this book.

• 56:24Kirk Hamilton?

  It's really, it's really a beautiful book. You, you gotta read it, Matty, just read it. Everyone listening to this, if you've been thinking about reading it or putting it off, go read it. I want to read it again, honestly. I, I, I really just think it's a tremendous book. So yeah, Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, available at your local independent bookstore and nowhere else. So just go there and buy it.

• 56:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's not available.

• 56:42Jason Schreier?

  You left out how angry it'll make you feel about opioids and the foster care system and all these other kind of just hot topics.

• 56:50Kirk Hamilton?

  I mean, I left out a thousand things I could say about it, but it is a tremendous book. And yeah, it's quite, quite angering at times.

• 56:55Speaker 00

  That'll just be a knock on effect. You can channel that anger into something. I'll go next. So my one more thing is Citizen Sleeper 2, which is a game that came out last week and I really love it. I think we talked about Citizen Sleeper 1 on this show back when that came out. Uh, but Citizen Sleeper two, really good. I think it's even better than one. You could start here if you want to, but you can also play the first one if you want. I don't think it's mandatory that you play the first one. I just also really like it. And the first one's only about six hours long. I played it in one long Sunday, as I recall, and really dug it that way. If you're just a person who likes to essentially read a whole book

• 57:36Speaker 00

  in a day, a lot of text in this game. So it's kind of a strategy game, but it's mostly reading, uh, science fiction story. So Citizen Sleeper two kind of keeps the same gameplay mechanics as the first one and the same premise as the first one, although you're playing as a different main character. So that premise is you're in this far, far science fiction future, way far from now, but there's still a gig economy. You're just on this satellite space station with a bunch of just, just wacky stuff going on, most of it terrible. Everybody else is hard up for cash as well. And you are playing as kind of this like android character called a sleeper, which is like this, this phenomenon

• 58:16Speaker 00

  in this world whereby human beings go into debt, same as in our world, but in this far future, those humans get their consciousness uploaded to a robot that works off their debt for them while the human is just in a coma.

• 58:30Kirk Hamilton?

  Anybody watching Severance?

• 58:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, kinda, yeah.

• 58:33Kirk Hamilton?

  A lot of Severance in this, in this premise.

• 58:35Speaker 00

  There's Severance vibes, but you're playing as this robot. So you have a human consciousness and a personality, but you also have like these additional robot powers where you can decide at the beginning of the game what, what you want. They kind of help you strategically. You can like hack a little better or do more engineering and like strong arming of people. That's obviously what I chose. I like to strong arm people in a video game. Uh, but you pretty much have the same personality that's like written into the game regardless. And in Citizen Sleeper two, unlike one, you also have a crew and, um, our reviewer, Diego Arguello at Polygon compared it to Cowboy Bebop, which I think is like, that's, that's the thing that like unlocked it for me where I was like, I love this. Like I also love Cowboy Bebop. Who doesn't? But like, just that vibe of like, you get all your crew

• 59:19Speaker 00

  members and then you've got these buddies and it's you against the world. How can you not like that? And I just think the writing is stronger in this. I don't, I don't want to like insult Citizen Sleeper one by saying that it's written by the same person, but I really feel like they got better in the second one. And I can see that. And, and like in one, I remember there were a few times when I'd be reading the text and I'd be like, I'm not totally sure what this is describing. And then I'd kind of put it together as it went along. This one, I almost never feel that way. Really evocative prose. Dialogue feels way more natural and less like fewer silted moments where I was kind of like, okay, I think I get the gist. This just is flowing. I'm loving it. Love all the electro music in the background. It's perfect for the setting.

• 1:00:02Speaker 00

  Right hint of stress when things are going horribly wrong at various points on the space station, or your ship is breaking, or oh, you're just barely making it out. Last thing I'll say, this is kind of like a Baldur's Gate three vibe where like, there's so much stuff you won't see because the story just keeps going no matter what you choose. And those games are so impressive to me. I mean, it's obviously going to be way shorter than a Baldur's Gate three, but I'm just so impressed by games that just have all these different branching paths. And you're just like, you know, who knows which way it could go. I think that's cool. I think that's a really cool trend that's emerging that, that game developers are making games where they're like, not everybody's going to see every story path here. And this is going to be something special just for the players who do see it.

• 1:00:45Speaker 00

  It makes it feel real in a different kind of way and really powerful. And I'm just really digging it. I'm not done yet, but yeah, Citizen Sleeper two, definitely recommend it. Enjoying it a lot.

• 1:00:56Kirk Hamilton?

  Can I chime in really quick just because I'm not sure when we'll be able to talk about this game? And I just want to say that I love it as well. And to shout out specifically Amos Roddy, the composer.

• 1:01:09Kirk Hamilton?

  Because the music for both Citizen Sleeper one and Citizen Sleeper two is such a huge part of the experience. And I haven't played as much as you, I don't think, Maddie, but I'm getting my crew together. And I loved the descriptions of the sort of abstract digital world in the first game. I think they were very evocative, but at times pretty abstract where you have to kind of just relax your brain and go with the vibe. And I loved so many of the relationships in the first game. I played all the DLCs and really You become so close with these NPCs, assuming you choose to help them and kind of partner up with them, that seeing the crew start to come together in the sequel is very cool because it seems that Gareth Damien Martin, the writer, the developer, has kind of leaned into that a little bit more, the human relationships. And I think that's a great call because the characters are all so strong. So I'm very, very excited

• 1:01:54Kirk Hamilton?

  to play more and just to cosign your one more thing. It's a fantastic game.

• 1:01:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, for sure. All right, Jason, it's your turn. Lay it on us.

• 1:02:02Jason Schreier?

  Okay, guys, imagine if you ran a video game company and if your video game company had one of the top franchises in the world, let's say Call of Duty, right? You run a video game company, you have Call of Duty, your job is to get as many sales as possible and you have one of the biggest in the world, right? Let's say one day you're like, you know, actually, I'm gonna go and call up, I don't know, Konami and say, hey, we're gonna trade you Call of Duty for Metal Gear Solid. Metal Gear Solid, perfectly fine franchise 10 years ago, like 10 years ago would have been fantastic. And you're just like, and they're like, well, you want to give us Call of Duty from Metal Gear Solid? Like, are you sure? Like, is that, is that it? And you're like, yep, that's what we want

• 1:02:46Jason Schreier?

  to do. That is what happened in the NBA last weekend. Have you guys heard about this? Has this crossed into your worlds, like the non-sports fan world?

• 1:02:55Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, as a, as a reader and subscriber of Defector, I have seen stories about this, yes.

• 1:03:00Jason Schreier?

  Okay. Last weekend was the craziest trade in NBA history, and I am saying that without a shred of hyperbole. Like, that's how earth-shattering this was. It's so crazy that I'm talking about an NBA story like three days before the Super Bowl rather than talking about football.

• 1:03:18Speaker 00

  Rather than talking about, yeah, yeah, shocking.

• 1:03:20Jason Schreier?

  And I have to talk about this. I mean, longtime triple-click slash split-screen listeners will know that sometimes I would do my NFL stories, but for the first time, I'm gonna do an NBA story because this is truly... Bonkers. It is mind boggling. I still don't understand it and it's been a few days now. The Dallas Mavericks, just kind of unexpectedly on Saturday night, traded Luka Doncic, Luka Doncic, who's one of the top three players probably in the world in the NBA right now, for Anthony Davis on the Los Angeles Lakers. And the Lakers said yes to that because why wouldn't you say yes to getting Call of Duty? And the, it was so kind of mind boggling that

• 1:04:05Jason Schreier?

  the reporter who tweeted it, Shams Karani at ESPN, had to tweet afterwards, yes, this is real. Like, he has not been hacked. Like, this is a real tweet. This is a real trade that actually just happened. This is like, like, NBA franchises, really any sports franchise, you're kind of like, you are praying for the day that you get a superstar who you can build your entire team around and he can take you to the finals and potentially the championship of your, your, your sport for years to come. This is your goal. And Luka Doncic was 25 years old. He took them to, he took the Dallas Mavericks to the NBA Finals last year, seven months ago. He was in the NBA Finals.

• 1:04:48Kirk Hamilton?

  So why did this happen?

• 1:04:50Jason Schreier?

  Kirk, if I knew, I promise I would tell you. To this day, nobody knows.

• 1:04:55Kirk Hamilton?

  I mean, so I've seen the stuff, people being like, he has conditioning issues or something. Like, I'm seeing everyone kind of scrambling for explanation.

• 1:05:03Speaker 00

  Possessed by a demon? Like, this feels like there's something we don't know.

• 1:05:07Jason Schreier?

  So this guy, this guy Luka, he has some attitude issues. He's got conditioning issues. He's overweight. But like, none of that matters because he still is one of the greatest NBA players. Like, by far, like, top three. Like, you could, you could make an argument, maybe top four, but like, he is up there in, in the upper echelon of the NBA. So it's not even a question of like, how good he is. And what's really crazy about this is not just that they decided to trade Luka. Because, okay, let's say, like, you're an NBA franchise. You're like, you know what, for, for various reasons, we're done with this guy. Let's move on. It's that they decided to trade him for basically nothing like they got this guy Anthony Davis, who's also a great player, but spooky though.

• 1:05:50Jason Schreier?

  Thirty one, thirty two, and they got a single first round pick. It turned out, reporting from like ESPN later revealed that the Dallas Mavericks hadn't even contacted other teams. They just talked to one trade partner. So they didn't even see what else is out there. There's gotta be more to it. Wrong with this guy. I don't know what it is. There's some conspiracy theories floating around. What is that? He killed someone. There's a really good one, which is that like.

• 1:06:14Jason Schreier?

  That was the other one I was thinking was he did a murder. The Mavericks were sold, the Mavericks were sold a couple of years ago to the, uh, the, um, Adelson family, the casino magnates. And there's a theory that they have been trying to build a casino business in Dallas and Dallas has been resistant. And so they're like using the Mavericks as leverage. And they want to like, kind of threaten to move the team or something like that. So there are a lot of good conspiracy theories, which you know, a trade is going well when you're getting into territory of like. There's something else going on. This makes so little sense. Yeah. It is inexplicable because I think there is a world, like there's a world in which you might want to trade anybody for whatever reason. But like, you can get so much more than Anthony Davis and a single pick for Luca.

• 1:06:59Jason Schreier?

  There are other players, lesser players who in recent history, there's this guy, Mikal Bridges, who the Brooklyn Nets traded to the Knicks. And they got like four or five picks out of him and he's way worse than Luca. So there are players that the, the, the kind of the benchmark was set a lot higher. And the fact that they did this in the middle of the night, uh, like just secretly only spoke to the Lakers. Something's going on. Mind boggling. It's also, if you really want to get into conspiracy territory, uh, the Los Angeles Lakers have always been just kind of this starstruck team that for years and years and years, they've had, um, Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Yeah, I mean, even I know these guys. Yeah, like they've had all of the NBA players that you guys would know, like our household name players.

• 1:07:41Jason Schreier?

  Chances are they've been on the Lakers. Most recently LeBron James has been on the Lakers for the past few years. So they're kind of like, uh, uh, one of those teams that is just like, has a horseshoe up their. But so that's part of this story too, is that they're now getting a superstar for the future because of course the Lakers get 10 years of Luka Doncic. So it's pretty wild. It is just like, it is still, people are still, it is now, we're recording this on Tuesday, three days after it happened, and people are still recording podcasts and like, doing stories, trying to figure out why and how this happened.

• 1:08:13Speaker 00

  Some reporter is gonna figure it out. It's gonna come out.

• 1:08:16Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, maybe update us once they find out what the deal is.

• 1:08:19Jason Schreier?

  It's, it's pretty wild, man. And it's like, this sort of thing just has never happened before. Like, superstars have gotten traded a few times. There have been some big trades over the years in the NBA. But not this lopsided, and not like a top five player. Like, this is the type of player you never trade. You build your entire, anything he does, anything he wants, you build your franchise around him. Because he is that good. Like, Luka is that good. Anyway, it is, it is still, so crazy. And I feel bad for all the Mavericks fans out there because they were prepared to have Luka in their lives for a decade to come, and now he's just gone, and they got very little in return. It's all just very wild and tragic and sad. But that's,

• 1:09:04Jason Schreier?

  that's sports for you, is you have something awesome, and then suddenly it disappears.

• 1:09:09Speaker 00

  Yep, that is sports. That's exactly what it is. And with that, this has been another episode of Triple Click, the sports podcast, Triple Down.

• 1:09:20Jason Schreier?

  Triple Down.

• 1:09:20Kirk Hamilton?

  Triple Pete.

• 1:09:21Speaker 00

  Tree Pete, whatever the heck we were calling it. Yeah, Triple Pete.

• 1:09:24Kirk Hamilton?

  We really, we had a little bit of a sports sandwich today, huh?

• 1:09:26Speaker 00

  We did.

• 1:09:26Kirk Hamilton?

  We started with a little sports, ended with a little sports.

• 1:09:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:09:29Kirk Hamilton?

  Games in between.

• 1:09:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, just a little bit of games, sports games and video games. And I guess we'll see you next week with more sports.

• 1:09:38Jason Schreier?

  See y'all next week.

• 1:09:39Kirk Hamilton?

  See you all next week.

• 1:09:41Speaker 00

  Bye.

• 1:09:44Kirk 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. Find us on Twitter at TripleClickPod, send email to [email protected], and find a link to our Discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

• 1:10:41Speaker 05

  Maximum Fun, a worker-owned network of artist-owned shows supported directly by you.