Why Are Games So Much Like Jobs?

How should video game consoles differentiate themselves without exclusives? Do games make us more or less lonely? And are RPGs popular because they feel like jobs? This week, Maddy, Jason, and Kirk open up the listener mailbag and take some of your (excellent) questions. Plus: three killer new games that are out this week!

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

• 0:03Kirk Hamilton?

  If you think about it, a lot of video games are kind of just jobs that are so satisfying that we pay in order to be allowed to do them. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we're opening the mailbag to talk about console exclusives, games as labor, how to enjoy a prequel, and more. And after the break, we talk about three great new games that we've each been loving. Lots to talk about, let's get into it.

• 0:31Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm Kirk Hamilton.

• 0:32Speaker 01

  I'm Maddy Myers.

• 0:33Jason Schreier?

  And I'm Jason Schreier. Hello.

• 0:35Kirk Hamilton?

  Hello.

• 0:35Speaker 01

  Hello, hello.

• 0:37Kirk Hamilton?

  Hi, my friends.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  It's us.

• 0:38Jason Schreier?

  Welcome to the Gates of Oblivion, aka the Triple Click Podcast.

• 0:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the day we're recording this. We just saw that, just watched it. Good stuff.

• 0:49Kirk Hamilton?

  The key with our podcast is you run in, you pass all the enemies, you just run to the very end, and then you get the unique piece of loot, and then you run out. That's how you listen to Triple Click.

• 0:56Speaker 01

  I thought the key was that you hit a rat, and then the rat starts just wildly flying around the room and not obeying the laws of physics at all, and you just kind of watch it happen.

• 1:06Kirk Hamilton?

  That happens, too.

• 1:07Jason Schreier?

  I think we've lost the metaphor at some point there.

• 1:09Kirk Hamilton?

  That's just my Oblivion Gate memory from playing Oblivion, which I think we'll talk about in the future. At any rate, Triple Click, at any gates.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  At any gate of Oblivion.

• 1:19Jason Schreier?

  At any small gates.

• 1:20Kirk Hamilton?

  A listener-supported Oblivion Gate. This Oblivion Gate only opens to the Plane of Oblivion, thanks to the support of all of our listeners who worship at the idol of each of the gates to keep the magical power flowing so that the gate is open.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, everyone knows this. We say it every week. It's like, it's very repetitive at this point.

• 1:39Kirk Hamilton?

  We need your dark energy in order to perpetuate the portal, because it takes a lot of energy to open a rift between planes of reality. And we really appreciate that you make it possible for us to sunder this realm every week. No, seriously, we're a listener-supported podcast. We love all of you who support us. If you want to support us, go to maximumfun.org/join to sign up to become a member. We put out bonus episodes every month. There are so many of them, there will be so many more. The most recent one was on Severance, Season 1. One and two, which was super fun. I really had a great time with that conversation. And we got into some interesting stuff about that show. But yeah, honestly, there's so much bonus stuff at this point. But really, you'll just be supporting the creation of our show.

• 2:23Kirk Hamilton?

  And that means a lot to us, that we don't have to have sponsors, we don't have to sell ads, we don't have to deal with any of it. It's just us and all of you. And that is wonderful. So maximumfun.org/join, sign up to become a member and support Triple Click. Last thing before we get into this week's episode, we are playing a live show in my hometown of Portland, Oregon on July 11th at the Alberta Rose Theater. Damn, I'm excited. People are buying tickets, pre-sales are up. You can get your ticket now, and you really should, because that tells us how many people to expect and guarantees you a spot at the show. It's gonna be super cool. We're gonna talk about all kinds of things. It'll be kind of a supersize live taping. There will be music, there will be songs, there will be

• 3:05Kirk Hamilton?

  instruments, there will be other surprises. We're still figuring some of it out, but I'm incredibly excited at least. And, and just psyched to do a show in Portland and at a very cool venue, too. So that's Friday, July 11th, Alberta Rose Theater. Buy some tickets, come see us live. All right. Burning questions time. Jason Schreier, take us away.

• 3:25Jason Schreier?

  We got a whole lot of questions from all you fine listeners out there.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  We do.

• 3:30Jason Schreier?

  So thank you for them. We're gonna open them up, read some questions. As always, you can reach us at [email protected] with your own burning questions. Keep them short, keep them interesting.

• 3:42Speaker 01

  Piffy.

• 3:43Jason Schreier?

  Keep it secret, keep it safe. And let's get to it. Kirk, why don't you read this first one?

• 3:49Kirk Hamilton?

  This first question comes from Billy, who writes, "How should platforms and/or consoles differentiate themselves without console-exclusive games?" That's a great question, Billy.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  This is a real brain teaser.

• 4:01Kirk Hamilton?

  What do you two think of this?

• 4:02Jason Schreier?

  And maybe they shouldn't.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  This is what keeps Phil Spencer up at night, right? And the answer is, they can't? How do we? What is a brand? What is the nature of a brand?

• 4:11Kirk Hamilton?

  The Xbox is the friends you made along the way.

• 4:14Jason Schreier?

  Well, I guess there's two ways. One is by having unique hardware, like-

• 4:20Jason Schreier?

  Gimmicks or functionality, like if it's portable or if it has motion controls.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  A mouse suddenly if one of your controllers becomes a mouse, that might be noticeable.

• 4:30Jason Schreier?

  A mouse controller, yes. So that's one way. It's just kind of weird gimmicks. That never seems to work if you don't have exclusive software to support those gimmicks. So I'm not sure if that, if that really is an actual successful. I mean, it certainly differentiates.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:47Jason Schreier?

  I guess the question is, the question is, can it sell? The question is.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  It doesn't differentiate itself. Nintendo absolutely is differentiating itself.

• 4:56Jason Schreier?

  Well, no, Nintendo is exclusive games. I'm saying.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  That's true. That's true as well.

• 5:00Jason Schreier?

  Where in this idea of like a console that can't have exclusive software, hardware gimmicks are one way. Although that wouldn't be successful because it's very hard to sell hardware gimmicks without software that associates with it. The other thing that I always think about and have been preaching that Xbox should do for like a decade now, since like early days of Katoka split screen is that they should make some sort of living room PC that differentiates itself by being open and letting you hack it and install mods on it and run Windows on it and run Steam on it and do all that other good stuff. So I guess that's one way you could differentiate yourself.

• 5:42Kirk Hamilton?

  That's an interesting thought that if you're not closing it down in order to keep your exclusive software on your console, the answer is to open it up because you don't have any exclusive software. So the way you can differentiate yourself is to open your platform up. That makes a kind of sense.

• 5:59Jason Schreier?

  It does. And I think that could be really appealing to people. I don't know if it's got the same sort of like widespread appeal as a Switch, but I think it could be appealing to people. I think people generally like the idea. I mean, like Android phones are incredibly popular for that reason. So could make it work.

• 6:18Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it's funny. Like I think one thing that differentiates the PS5 for me is the DualSense controller, which I really like. And I really like all the haptic stuff. I really like how the raindrops feel in my hands when I'm walking. Through the rain in a game. But the thing is, I really appreciate that Sony has put DualSense support in a lot of PC games or allowed PC games to support the DualSense because I just leave my DualSense plugged in to my PC and I so I play them there. So even that doesn't keep me over on the PlayStation 5, even though it is a hardware differentiator. You know, one intellectual exercise we might try for this question is, what if all the streaming

• 6:58Kirk Hamilton?

  services that all of us are constantly spending all of our money on didn't have exclusive shows? What if The Last of Us wasn't on HBO? What if Squid Game wasn't on Netflix? And they just all kind of had the same stuff?

• 7:13Speaker 01

  Oh, weird.

• 7:13Kirk Hamilton?

  Why would we subscribe to one or another? And what would it take for them to differentiate themselves from one another? The only thing I can think of is Discovery, that that could be something?

• 7:23Speaker 01

  No, what about quality? Like, one of, some of them have 4K streaming or whatever, and they, they offer that.

• 7:31Kirk Hamilton?

  That seems like that, that seems like they would reach parity pretty quickly. Cause that is true even for me now.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  But that's kind of what consoles are offering, is sometimes a quality difference. And so in my mind, I'm like, well, it could offer some, something about the app that works way better, easy to use, ease of use, and then also quality of the content on the app.

• 7:52Kirk Hamilton?

  With quality with streaming anyways, that is true, that for me at least, and it might just be the, what I'm paying for. Netflix has Atmos and we have an Atmos soundbar, so the sound is better. So if I can watch something on Netflix or on Apple that also has an Atmos, I'll watch it there. Where I think our HBO like Max app doesn't do that. So that's a little differentiator. And Discovery, which I mentioned, I, I could kind of see maybe, because there's such an overwhelming amount of stuff, you know, if the algorithm on one of these, if the way that it, it surfaces stuff for you works really well, I could maybe see that. Even that feels like weak tea.

• 8:26Speaker 01

  I don't think it is. I think it's like why people like TikTok over Instagram Reels, even if there are creators who share identical content on both places, because TikTok is famous for having good discoverability. So it's like, why do you like one?

• 8:38Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, but also there is a content difference. Like, there are a lot of people making TikTok, TikToks that aren't making Reels.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  There's not, they're not perfectly comparable, but some of it is like, I prefer the, the experience of using this thing. And it's not just name, brand recognition, or even reputation, although all of those things play a role.

• 8:58Jason Schreier?

  Discoverability is a very different beast when you're talking about a minute video. True. As opposed to a 40 hour game, 40 hour game.

• 9:05Kirk Hamilton?

  Or even as opposed to, yeah, a TV show or something like there's each, each one of those is very different.

• 9:09Jason Schreier?

  But we're talking about consoles, to bring it back to consoles, like when you're, if you're thinking about this hypothetical console that is really good at discoverability and has an algorithm that will recommend you the perfect game. Man, that'd be awesome. You still wouldn't necessarily follow the algorithm's advice when it, because the commitment, both financially and time wise is so big compared to a TikTok where you can just let the algorithm guide you and there's no real loss to that. There's no detriment to that. Other than time. So discoverability, I mean, this hypothetical console that distinguishes itself, let's say a console existed and has all the same games as all the other consoles, but it distinguishes itself through discoverability. I don't really know if that would necessarily work.

• 9:51Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, feels weak. I agree. It's, it was just one I could come up with, but it doesn't feel super compelling.

• 9:56Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it's tough. I mean, at the end of the day, I think that like we're moving more and more away from a world of console exclusives because they don't make financial sense for a lot of these companies. And I think that is going to broadly be a good thing, as much as we might love Nintendo and the games that they make. And the games they make are only really possible because they do it on their own machines. Um, I think a world where you can just kind of have access to, I don't know, let's say hypothetically, we live in a world where like instead of a PlayStation and Xbox, there was just a living room PC and you could buy it and upgrade it and mod it and get kind of different versions. And maybe some of them were kind of streamlined packages that you could buy for 500 bucks, the way that a console is now. Um, but then you had access to any game you could get on PC.

• 10:41Jason Schreier?

  That to me seems like a way more appealing world than the current one where you're just like, oh man, well, I want the PlayStation exclusive, but I also want to play a VOD. So which one am I going to get? I don't know. That sucks. And maybe if you're thinking about the TV comparison, maybe a better comparison point might be like, am I going to get a Roku or am I going to get an Apple TV? And when you ultimately get those, and all of those are successful, despite the fact that you can download any app on those, like I'm not going to Roku and being like, oh damn, Netflix is exclusive to the, the, the Apple TV. And so I can't watch it on my Roku. Um, I think that like in a world where consoles were more like those kind of set top table, TV top devices, um, that would be better for people overall.

• 11:26Kirk Hamilton?

  I guess it would be, though, mentioning the Apple TV makes me think of Apple in general. And something that Apple does to incentivize people to buy their, you know, their hardware is that they have this whole ecosystem that you're kind of bought into slash locked into, which consoles haven't really managed. And I don't know, you know, I certainly feel very conflicted about that, despite the fact that I use Apple everything. I really like the Apple TV. I've recommended it on the show. I think it's probably the best streaming box you can get, especially if you're in the Apple ecosystem, which is always that qualifier people add, because you can use it as like a home hub, or you can stream to it, like cast to it super easily from your phone, or it has the Apple Fitness app, which we really like, so we can do yoga in the living room, and it talks to my watch and knows

• 12:09Kirk Hamilton?

  that I'm working out. Like, it synergizes with all these products.

• 12:12Jason Schreier?

  I'm just, Craig, when you describe that, it just sounds like an Apple commercial, where it's cutting from you, like, you're in the studio, like, recording music on your MacBook, and then you move to the living room, and you're doing, and this music is playing over you while it's a montage of you doing these different things on Apple devices.

• 12:27Kirk Hamilton?

  Right, putting on my Vision Pro and bumbling around in the studio, trying to play guitar. Yeah, but at the same time, I'm often very annoyed by the fact that I am required to use all these products together, and they don't even always work together all that well. You know, my watch that I wear when I run doesn't always work with my AirPods. Like, there's really annoying things about having to be locked into one platform.

• 12:46Jason Schreier?

  God, this commercial is suddenly, suddenly a record scratch. And you're just like, oh, goddammit, my Apple Watch isn't working anymore.

• 12:52Kirk Hamilton?

  It's actually an Android commercial.

• 12:57Kirk Hamilton?

  So, you know, like, I think, like, that experience is one that I'm sure a lot of people have and feel conflicted about, where it's, there's a lot of convenience, but it is also frustrating, and you can't get out. You have that sunk cost feeling. And the consoles don't really feel that way. I mean, especially PC gaming doesn't really feel that way, except for Steam. You know, I feel very tied to Steam because I have such a massive Steam library, but I don't feel like there's this big ecosystem that I've bought into quite to the same extent as Apple. It does seem like Nintendo maybe kind of wants to go more in that direction, with what they're doing with the Switch 2, and like, how it feels a little bit like a just upgraded version of the Switch. I don't know. Like, I'm sure all three of those companies would love to be as successful at locking people in as Apple is.

• 13:39Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, the analogy is never going to be perfect, just because there's no gaming device that will ever be as essential to your life as your iPhone. So it's hard to make a one-to-one comparison. But yeah, I mean, I don't know. I think traditionally, to just kind of put a pin on, put a ribbon on Billy's question here, the traditional model has always been that you sell consoles through these killer apps exclusives, like going back to the days of Super Mario Brothers being packaged within NES. So I don't really know that we have seen a model that works outside of that. And I don't know if there is one, other than everyone just going open and ditching console exclusives entirely.

• 14:19Jason Schreier?

  All right, let's keep going. Matt, do you want to ask this next question?

• 14:25Speaker 01

  Sure. So this one's from Ethan, who writes, "Are creative sandbox games like Roblox and Minecraft popular for kids because they are, quote, childish, end quote, or because kids' minds haven't been molded by an employer yet? And are RPG games popular with adults because they give you a familiar formula of do this job this way?"

• 14:47Jason Schreier?

  Wow.

• 14:48Kirk Hamilton?

  I love this question. Can I read an excerpt from something as a kind of a prompt, as the beginning of our response to this question? So a little while back, I mentioned an essay by Sam Adler Bell, host of Know Your Enemy, co-host of Know Your Enemy, I should say, and a very smart guy, called All Work and No Play, that he published in Dissent. And it's all about this. We're going to link it in the show notes. And Ethan, I hope you will read this, and anyone who's interested in this subject will read it. But I want to read you two an excerpt that we can then talk about. So this is Sam, writing, "Amusement under late capitalism is the prolongation of work," Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer declared in 1944. The mechanization of labor, the Frankfurt theorists thought, had so enmeshed

• 15:31Kirk Hamilton?

  itself with human leisure and happiness, and so profoundly determined the manufacture of amusement goods, that entertaining diversions were inevitably afterimages of the work process itself." Following this lead, game theorist Steven Poole observed in 2008 that modern video games, quote, "seem to aspire to a mimesis of the mechanized work process," unquote. "We learn or are disciplined by the game's rules and receive positive feedback for following them efficiently." Quote, "You didn't play the game," unquote, Poole writes, "much less beat it. Rather, quote, "You performed the operations it demanded of you, like an obedient employee. The game was a task of labor," unquote. A little more from SAM. Single-player games with

• 16:15Kirk Hamilton?

  plenty of weapons to upgrade, skills to gain, and currencies to spend are perhaps the archetypal iteration of this phenomenon, but almost all contemporary games contain some memetic elements of work and market exchange. They don't offer fantasies of escape or imaginative play for its own sake. They offer a fantasy of rules, a rationality otherwise missing from the contemporary wage-labor process. Vicky Osterwell has called this type of game "a utopian work simulator." It doles out rewards at predictable intervals in exchange for our disciplined effort. These rewards can make the game easier, allow us to purchase in-game adornments, signal our achievements to others, and progress in a logical and satisfying trajectory towards an achievable goal. Games remain a form of diversion, but what they divert us

• 16:59Kirk Hamilton?

  from is not our labor, but our disappointment with its volatility, its arbitrariness, its cruelty, and its unfairness.

• 17:07Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 17:08Jason Schreier?

  So what he's saying is that it's not a coincidence that the video games as an art form emerged around the time that the American dream of you work hard at the same company for 30 years, and then you buy a house, and you have four kids.

• 17:23Speaker 01

  There's a meritocracy, and it's all going great.

• 17:25Jason Schreier?

  That died out at the same time as video games emerged as an art form.

• 17:29Kirk Hamilton?

  That the ultimate, I love this idea. It's kind of bleak, but it's so fascinating, and it really feels true to me, that the fantasy that so many games offer is a fantasy where your work results in coherent rewards for you.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  Your work pays off.

• 17:43Kirk Hamilton?

  And you follow a process. Yeah.

• 17:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:45Jason Schreier?

  You actually, you get a raise every year. You don't get laid off randomly, despite the fact that you work hard.

• 17:50Speaker 01

  No, you get experience points, and you get to see the sparkly level Up signifiers, whatever those may be. It's great. It feels good.

• 17:58Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, so I think to Ethan's question, I think he's really on to something. I mean, he's asking this question in a way that makes me think that he has thought about this. But the fact that kids love these games like Roblox and Minecraft, Minecraft especially, is really interesting. Minecraft, of course, does have its own systems, its own leveling, but it is so playground-like. It's so open-ended. It allows you to just fool around in a childlike way. And it doesn't always feel like it's this, you know, whatever, recreation, a memetic recreation of work.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true.

• 18:29Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I don't, I don't think it has anything to do with kids' minds being molded by an employer, just kind of having kids and seeing what they play with and what they do. Because kids around Roblox/Minecraft age, which is like eight to 12, I think is kind of that sweet spot of those games in particular. Kids around that age, and even a little younger, are really into imaginative play. And they're really into just kind of finding things and making up their own rules and getting their friends involved and pretending to be something that they're not. And Roblox and Minecraft both allow for that in a lot of different ways. And I think that is just kind of appealing to that age.

• 19:11Jason Schreier?

  And then, and then you kind of, you, you grow out of that a little bit when you become more of a teenager and you want more kind of authored stuff. And you want more kind of like, you have different types of play or different types of leisure that I don't think is really related to just kind of joining the workforce and learning how jobs work and becoming, getting all the creativity just kind of like hammered out of you.

• 19:33Kirk Hamilton?

  I don't know. I mean, if you take for a given that labor shapes every aspect of our culture, there is some reason that we move away from imaginative play. And it is kind of related to how we're educated and how we learn to begin doing things. I think about this a lot with music, where play, right? You play an instrument. Play is this essential concept in music. But to really sit around with other musicians just playing, where you're just playing whatever and messing around, becomes a very hard thing to do. You very rarely do that the longer you live, especially as a professional musician. It's mostly work and you mostly really structure what you're doing around these achievable goals. You want to make a record, you want to make a song.

• 20:15Kirk Hamilton?

  And I think even in people's leisure time, it's also very unusual for people to just sit around and play. It's what's so wonderful about Dungeons and Dragons. That as an adult, you're allowed into this space where you just make up your own rules and do whatever you want. And even then, a lot of people play Dungeons and Dragons very strictly and according to, you know, the rules that are put in place and the leveling up and all of that kind of work like stuff.

• 20:37Jason Schreier?

  I don't know. The other part of this equation though, is that like when you are a kid and playing, you're engaging in imaginative play, you are making up pretty strict rules. And like one of my five and a half year olds favorite activity is when she's playing with people is telling them they're not playing by the rules. Right. And they need to be following the rules.

• 20:57Kirk Hamilton?

  So I don't know, I think of Calvin ball where there are rules, but the rules are always changing. And it's kind of even the rules themselves are a bit of a creative act.

• 21:03Speaker 01

  But isn't that also like a commentary on, yeah, the developmental stage Calvin's at? He's, he's like an age where that's still fun. And then like as he gets older, maybe, and the version of him we never get to see. The one that Jason's describing is like a human developmental concept, which is like, as you get older, you become attuned to the idea of rules also sometimes being fun and interesting.

• 21:26Kirk Hamilton?

  Maybe as you get older, the, the society beats it out of you and makes you start following the rules.

• 21:32Speaker 01

  Rules and structure are always bad.

• 21:34Jason Schreier?

  The idea, the idea of Calvin ball is not that he's just like a kid imagining. It's that he's controlling and wants to be an all powerful.

• 21:42Speaker 01

  Calvin is not.

• 21:44Jason Schreier?

  Figure who can make up the rules as he goes. And Calvin ball is frustrating for Hobbs who's like, why are you just making up the rules to benefit yourself? No, that's a whole different thing. But I do think there's like, yeah, I don't know. I think this idea, Roblox and Minecraft, by the way, are two very different things, we should say. Like Minecraft is more of the imaginative play.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  It's true. There's very rules based Roblox games.

• 22:05Jason Schreier?

  I mean, Roblox is, is that you're playing games that other people made or you're making up your own games. And those games can be wildly different.

• 22:12Speaker 01

  It can be anything. You can make anything.

• 22:14Jason Schreier?

  For world than Minecraft.

• 22:15Kirk Hamilton?

  Right, I'm really just using Minecraft for my own thinking here.

• 22:17Jason Schreier?

  But yeah, I mean, this is, it's an interesting talking point. I'm just not sure if I buy into that, just because I feel like there's this kind of natural inclination of people. I don't know if you guys, I always have like a distinct memory of like that time in my life when I, like, when I got home, instead of turning on Cartoon Network, I would turn on MTV. And that, to me, always felt like the moment that I moved away from like being a kid and became an adolescent instead. And I feel like people have that with Roblox and Minecraft or other games too, where they just kind of like-

• 22:49Speaker 01

  We start playing Fortnite.

• 22:50Jason Schreier?

  Okay, that part, yeah, maybe, well. But they're just like, that part of my life is done now. I've just gotten, grown past this. And I don't really think labor plays a role in that.

• 23:00Speaker 01

  Like, why do we do that?

• 23:01Kirk Hamilton?

  But culture plays a role in that.

• 23:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:03Jason Schreier?

  Sure.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  You're socially rewarded for growing up.

• 23:06Kirk Hamilton?

  I don't think that's like purely, you know, nature and not nurture.

• 23:10Jason Schreier?

  And you're, you think because labor, you think because of the effects of labor? I don't know, it's something to chew on, for sure.

• 23:16Kirk Hamilton?

  Not labor, exactly, but just that our whole culture is so formed by our relationship to work, that everything in it, I mean, our whole educational system is built around teaching people how to become workers. And so much of what we do and the lessons that we teach our children relate to that, like how to function in our culture. It seems like it's not too much of a stretch to say that, you know, the ways that we change as we mature are at least somewhat driven by that. And I really think, I mean, I love this essay by Sam, I think he's really on to something, that when you play a game, it really reflects your work. And then, you know, he goes on, he talks about Cecilia, our former colleague Cecilia's work, where she has written about, you know, long-distance

• 23:57Kirk Hamilton?

  truck drivers who play Euro Truck Simulator. Or, you know, I don't know about power washers who play power wash simulator, but that's something I've talked with Emily, my wife, about, where she's like, I can't really play games like that because I could just go power wash the front walk. And I don't really want to play power wash simulator where I get to power wash more things. But that there is this even like, direct relationship sometimes between the job someone does and the game that they play, and that they find it rewarding to play a video game version of their job that offers all of these clear goals and really obvious feedback and stuff. So, there's a lot there. I mean, it is a really, a really interesting thing that goes very deep into our culture.

• 24:37Jason Schreier?

  All right, let's move on to the next question. Here is Corey. Corey writes, I had a question about sales expectations. People often joke about certain companies like Square Enix saying that their games are missing sales expectations constantly. Do these games actually cost more to make them they sold? Or is it just a case of capitalism demanding more profit? If these companies had a magic crystal ball that could perfectly forecast sales, what would they change?

• 25:03Kirk Hamilton?

  This is such a good question. I'm very curious, especially Jason, what you think since you've talked to so many people at this level, but I'm very curious what you think.

• 25:11Jason Schreier?

  Sales expectations are a funny thing because they're like very imaginary. The way these things work, I mean, I've heard all sorts of stories from the world of big budget game companies where it'll be like, all right, we have these business people putting together these kind of like surveys where they look at comparable games and just try to figure out like, okay, let's say I'm making a 3D platformer. I'm going to look at how Mario Odyssey sold and what were the business contexts surrounding that? And then I'm going to look at how Psychonauts 2 sold and how Bubsy sold, whatever. And then I'm going to figure out a number based on our pre-orders and based on the sales comps and based on our like wish lists and all these other, whatever other factors you can, you can play into that.

• 25:56Jason Schreier?

  And then you might send it to your CFO and then the CFO will turn around to you and be like, all right, that needs to be twice as much now. And you'll be like, what? Like it's literally just made up numbers and then people's jobs depend on them. Wall Street works in similar ways where it's like all, everything lives or dies based on analyst estimates. It doesn't matter how many, how much profit you've made, how much revenue you've made in a given quarter. It matters whether you've hit or missed analyst expectations for what you've made.

• 26:30Kirk Hamilton?

  So this hypothetical in this question, if a company could know exactly how they were, how much they were going to make from a game, how do you two think that would affect the way that they make the game?

• 26:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, like if an analyst was really good at their job.

• 26:43Kirk Hamilton?

  They just knew. They just, they knew 100% magically.

• 26:46Jason Schreier?

  It's tough to kind of, all right, so we need to establish a baseline for this question because like.

• 26:51Kirk Hamilton?

  So magic is real.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, magic is real.

• 26:54Jason Schreier?

  Because the question is like, could you, how much could you cut of the quality of the game and still had that same number? Like, are we, because the amount that you spend on a game, like, would you, you would try to cut costs on that? Like, let's say, okay, let's say we have a game.

• 27:07Kirk Hamilton?

  We can profit even more.

• 27:09Speaker 01

  Exactly. Like, how could it not influence you?

• 27:11Jason Schreier?

  Right, sure. Or let's say we're gonna miss, let's say we have a game and it's gonna cost $100 million to make, and our sales expectation shows we're only gonna make $80 million. Can we cut costs of that $100 million? But then would the 80 million number also be impacted if we cut costs? Because it might be a worse game. And so it's a little bit of a tricky, kind of like, chicken or egg question there. But I mean, I think that the answer would be try to get the budget as low as possible and the profit margin as high as possible.

• 27:42Kirk Hamilton?

  I have to think, go ahead, Manny.

• 27:44Speaker 01

  It just, I'm picturing like a magical actuary, basically, with a table where they're like, "Okay, well, then if we adjust this number, then that's gonna affect the sales in this way." And this person just has divination powers such that every adjustment they can make, they can do it all perfectly. So if you have an analyst like that, then it's like, I think you'd probably have the most functional video game studio in the world.

• 28:08Kirk Hamilton?

  This like goes back to our last question.

• 28:10Speaker 01

  Because you'd always have the answer. You'd be like, "Well, I know exactly how much money we're going to make if we just spend another year on this game, and it's gonna be worth it, and here's why."

• 28:19Kirk Hamilton?

  Functional game developer simulator.

• 28:20Speaker 01

  Doesn't exist.

• 28:22Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it's funny, if they didn't have quite that level of granular detail, you know, where every cut is then reflected accurately? If it was more just, "Okay, we're gonna make this much, how can we get it there?" I do wonder if. That cost cutting question that you were asking, Jason, would result in people cutting a lot more stuff out of games and finding that people still really like them and they do just as well.

• 28:43Speaker 01

  Oh, that-

• 28:43Kirk Hamilton?

  I do kind of wonder if that would maybe be a result, yeah.

• 28:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree with you. I think that is, that would be a good result, potentially, is to take out some of the extraneous stuff and be like-

• 28:55Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I could just sort of imagine it. Oh, maybe we didn't need all these features.

• 28:58Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I mean, I'm sure that's a factor, but I think that the bigger factor for these bloating budgets is just the amount of time you spend trying to figure out what the game is and just wasting time on leads that never go anywhere and just kind of more management issues. So it's a little bit harder than it might seem.

• 29:17Kirk Hamilton?

  That's true. It's not as simple as saying, "We don't need multiplayer."

• 29:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:20Kirk Hamilton?

  It's saying, "We don't need those first three years of pre-production where we didn't know what we were making."

• 29:24Jason Schreier?

  Exactly, exactly.

• 29:25Speaker 01

  Or like, "We don't need all this, like, testing of an entire part of the game that we've now realized isn't going to be fun." It's like, "Okay, great, what are we gonna do? Just not have that time exist anymore?" I mean, even the Magic Ball analyst can't help you with that, I guess.

• 29:38Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it's kind of a fun hypothetical, though.

• 29:40Jason Schreier?

  One other thing I just want to note is that Corey asked, "Did these games actually cost more to make than they sold?" One of the funny things about accounting is that you can kind of, you can, a game budget can mean a lot of different things. It is, yeah, it's really interesting.

• 29:56Kirk Hamilton?

  And the Defense Department.

• 29:57Jason Schreier?

  Like profitability. This is just a story with that movie Sinners where people were like, "Hey, it just had this big opening weekend, but it's gonna take a lot for it to be profitable." And nobody really knows how much it would take for it to be profitable because the arcane magic behind profitability is so strange. I mean, I think that like, I'll never forget something that I put in my first book, Blood, Sweat & Pixels, where like, uh, this is me paraphrasing, but I was talking about Dragon Age 2, which was a tortured game that was made in like, less than a year and a half. And Marc Dara, who was the executive producer on the Dragon Age franchise, told me that like, they were proud of what they did because they pulled it off despite like, critical reception.

• 30:37Jason Schreier?

  And also, in some corners of EA, like, the Dark Wizardry has it as being profitable. And I thought that was- So interesting because

• 30:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:45Kirk Hamilton?

  They worked really hard and they got it.

• 30:46Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, accountants, if you just like move some numbers around in a spreadsheet, you can profitability is a is an interesting thing. And yeah, that's why it's like so often about these estimates and targets and how far off you are from a target, which is mutually exclusive from profitability.

• 31:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:06Jason Schreier?

  All right, on to the next question, Kirk.

• 31:11Kirk Hamilton?

  This next question comes from Mike, who writes, something I enjoy about dramatic storytelling in video games, film and TV is the sense of unease you get when a character or characters are in danger, fearing that something bad may befall the character that you have come to care about adds emotion and nuance to the narrative that really enhances my experience. However, I find myself having a very different experience when watching or playing a prequel. When the prequel involves characters that exist in the original story, it's hard to get that same sense of unease and danger when my brain knows that no matter what this character will survive. And he mentions as a reference point, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Andor as two examples. So Mike asks, how do you each watch and enjoy dramatic prequels when you already know the end game?

• 31:55Jason Schreier?

  Can I just say, so the new trailer, the trailer for the new season of Poker Face just came out. Poker Face was such a good show for so many reasons, but one of the things that did masterfully was that it showed you who did the big, the murder, who did the crime at the beginning of the episode. And there was no tension there and you just spent the entire episode watching the characters figure out who did it. And that can be just as interesting and dramatically compelling as when you don't know what the outcome is going to be. So that, keep that in mind with a prequel.

• 32:31Kirk Hamilton?

  That's a good example.

• 32:32Jason Schreier?

  Like dramatic storytelling can work really well.

• 32:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, and Andor too. I think it's similar where like Andor is about how it happens. How does Andor become that person? And also, how do we get to Rogue One? And the planning and the kind of heist like nature of that movie. It's a similar emotional experience of setting up something that you already know how it's going to end. If you saw Rogue One, you really know how it's gonna end. But seeing how it all builds up is the payoff emotionally. And I think if it's done well, like it's, these are examples of it being done well. I can agree completely with Mike on a prequel that doesn't do it well. Where you're like, well, I don't really know why we had this. Like, say, uh, the very first Star Wars prequel, for example.

• 33:17Kirk Hamilton?

  I mean, so, yeah, I, I agree with that about Andor, though also Andor has a lot of side characters, who, some of whom die shocking deaths in the first season. And we know, we would assume a lot of these people aren't going to make it, who we've come to care about in season one. So, you know, everyone who isn't Andor, basically, wasn't in Rogue One, so pretty much. And, uh, so, you know, there's also that sense, there, those stakes do still exist in that show. But I, I think it's true that you can, you can do this kind of storytelling very well without needing the risk to the characters to be the primary thing that's giving the, the viewer or the audience excitement. I mean, so many times, if you just watch a TV show, I don't know, you watch MacGyver. MacGyver is in danger, but like, MacGyver isn't gonna die.

• 34:01Kirk Hamilton?

  There's a joke that Emily's dad will always say they'll be watching an episode where there's a cliffhanger leading into the final act of the episode, and MacGyver's hanging off a cliff, and the bad guys got him, and his dad will say, "Maybe it's the last episode. Maybe he's finally gonna die."

• 34:14Speaker 01

  This is me learning that I have the exact same sense of humor as Emily's father, because I also make that joke every single time we watch an episode of anything. And my wife still laughs at it, so I don't know, but yeah.

• 34:26Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, we make that joke every time. And so, because, right, you're not actually, most of the time you're watching a show like this, you're not actually worried that MacGyver is gonna get killed, because he, the show's called MacGyver, it's gonna be fine. So, the tension comes from other things, and that's okay. So, a lot of times, I derive excitement from prequels from all kinds of other things. And yeah, like with Andor, what's so fun is knowing that it's going to lead to this momentous thing, but also seeing how small it begins and appreciating all of the small ways that a resistance movement kind of forms through these sort of responses and these little bits of inertia, this avalanche, whatever NEMEX manifesto says, about a million small acts of rebellion eventually culminating in an avalanche.

• 35:08Kirk Hamilton?

  Like, that's so satisfying to watch, that the thrill of the show for me is, is mostly in that.

• 35:14Jason Schreier?

  All right, next question, uh, Matty.

• 35:17Speaker 01

  All right. This one's from Ryan, who asks, "Question: How does gaming in 2025 help address or exacerbate the loneliness epidemic?" Context: I was in a conversation with some friends recently about the loneliness epidemic and started wondering how gaming fits into that story. Gaming has continued to transition into online formats, live-service games, less local multiplayer options, et cetera, and does that do more harm than good for folks' ability to build and maintain community? As an example, do you think the fighting game community has a higher chance to address the feelings of loneliness?

• 35:52Kirk Hamilton?

  Man, I have really conflicted feelings about this. I don't know about the two of you.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  I mean, I think Ryan does, too. It's clear even in the wording of the question that it's not, it's not an easy one.

• 36:01Jason Schreier?

  I mean, a big part of the loneliness epidemic is that a lot of kids are going home and playing Fortnite with their friends instead of hanging out with their friends in person. And I think that like, as awesome as it is to spend time online with your buddies, it doesn't really like, it's-

• 36:17Speaker 01

  It doesn't meet every need.

• 36:18Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 36:19Kirk Hamilton?

  And also, you know, speaking of like, going and playing Fortnite with your friends is one thing, and that is somewhat social, but there are a lot of people, you know, related to the loneliness epidemic, I don't know the statistics off the top of my head, but there are a shocking number of adults who just will say, "I have no friends. I don't talk to people." Like, they don't go home and play Fortnite with their friends. They either go home and maybe play Fortnite by themselves, just online, or just play, you know, whatever, some big, single-player game or something, or, you know, read books, maybe, or watch TV, but they just don't have other human contact in their lives. And that has become pretty widespread, and it's a real problem. And I do think that games

• 37:00Kirk Hamilton?

  really appeal to, they appeal to me when I'm in that situation, when I'm feeling very isolated. Games really are a great diversion. They are a really good way to occupy your time. They give you that structure, like we were talking about earlier, a feeling like you're doing something. They let you have all this sensory input. They're so pleasurable and pleasing. Yeah, I mean, I don't, I'm not gonna say they're responsible for the loneliness epidemic, nothing like that, but they kind of intersect with loneliness. In a way that isn't always constructive. And I'm more acutely aware of that the older I get. And the more things I have in my life that are just social. And the harder I work at maintaining actual friendships with human beings that I hang out with. The more I realize how important those are.

• 37:44Kirk Hamilton?

  And how much more nourishing those are for me than playing video games. As much as I love video games, they just, they don't fulfill the same thing for me.

• 37:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I also wonder, like, a lot of these, the kids who are kind of, you know, zoomers, basically, that age range. Were coming of age during COVID. And I just think we don't yet know how. I mean, I think it's fair to say it'll be a bad effect on them. But we just don't know what that's really going to be like for them as they continue to get older. But I know if it were me, that would have really changed my life. If I hadn't gone to the mall all the time with my friends and just hung out with them in the freaking mall. I was that age range where that was the normal thing you did. And just having not that in my life would probably make me even more socially awkward than I already am. Can, can you even imagine it? It's horrifying.

• 38:37Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it's true. The pandemic gave us all kind of a taste of that kind of loneliness to some extent, especially if we lived alone.

• 38:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, or if you were young and you just didn't get to go to school and have control over your schedule anymore because you were a kid.

• 38:51Kirk Hamilton?

  And it's too bad that we kind of memory hold it and didn't use it as an opportunity for a more substantial conversation. Just about what it is to be lonely and how important it is to have one another in our lives. Like, it's still there. We can still talk about it. So I suppose we're doing that right now and that's good. But, but yeah, the, the pandemic did give us a kind of a preview. Or even those of us who do work to maintain active social lives. It gave us a sense of what that's like to just be alone in your house every day and to, to feel so isolated.

• 39:22Speaker 01

  It sucks.

• 39:23Jason Schreier?

  Also, games got too good.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  That's so true. They did.

• 39:27Kirk Hamilton?

  They did. Not, not true.

• 39:30Speaker 01

  Jokes aside, they did.

• 39:32Jason Schreier?

  When you have something like Baldur's Gate 3 and the characters like feel so real-

• 39:36Speaker 01

  Those are your friends.

• 39:36Jason Schreier?

  They could be your friends, then it's very easy to use them as a facsimile.

• 39:42Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, and this is the, this is the dark thing about AI, that AI can really feel like a friend to people. A generative AI bot can really feel like someone's friend. And for all the different uses you can get out of that kind of technology, it's such a, it's such a poor fill-in for an actual human being. And, and it makes, I don't know, it really, it's, it feels so backwards that people talk about using AI to address the loneliness epidemic. Where, okay, maybe, but it just feels like you're building the solution to a problem that we haven't addressed or created, like that we created, where we should, no, we should be building a, a culture where we spend time together and we like value having actual connections with the people. But that's hard and that is, and you know, and there's not billions of dollars of venture capital in that. So let's, let's build an AI instead.

• 40:26Jason Schreier?

  You're building more problems. Did you guys see that article by the former like guy who ran Business Insider about his new AI newsroom?

• 40:37Kirk Hamilton?

  I read Bernika's defector article.

• 40:41Jason Schreier?

  Man.

• 40:41Speaker 01

  I'll just re-patch.

• 40:42Kirk Hamilton?

  That was all I needed.

• 40:43Jason Schreier?

  That's something.

• 40:46Jason Schreier?

  All right, let's take a break and then we'll be back with one more thing. Thanks again to everybody who sent in questions. And once again, you can send them in a triple click at maximumfun.org. We got a jam packed one more thing, three video games to talk about. So let's take a break and then we'll come back with some, some big ones.

• 41:11Speaker 03

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• 41:20Speaker 04

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• 41:41Speaker 04

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• 41:46Speaker 03

  Ooh, I don't think they cover that. Reading Glasses, every Thursday on Maximum Fun.

• 41:53Speaker 05

  WrestleMania is the biggest

• 41:55Speaker 01

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• 41:57Speaker 05

  Time of the year for wrestling.

• 41:59Speaker 01

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• 42:02Speaker 06

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• 42:10Speaker 01

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• 42:17Speaker 05

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• 42:33Jason Schreier?

  And we are back, Kirk, Matty, it is time for one more thing. We got three new games, all that come out this week to talk about, and none of them are named Oblivion, so let's go one at a time. Matty, why don't you start?

• 42:47Speaker 01

  Sure, I'll start. I have been playing a game called Clara Biscuit Expedition 33, a title.

• 42:54Jason Schreier?

  Nice, just a fantastic name, no notes.

• 42:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, we, I've come around on the name. Uh, no, that's not really true. I do really like the game, though. I think it's really, really cool. I am very into it. And, uh, here's why. So first of all, combat, really, really hard. So I'm just gonna put that right out there.

• 43:17Jason Schreier?

  Do you want to just explain what the game is for people who don't know?

• 43:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a turn-based RPG. And I haven't beaten it yet. Apparently it's about 30 hours. It's not an open world. It has kind of discreet areas, so think like a Metaphorie Fantazio, but shorter, it's a fantasy game. But it's got turn-based RPG mechanics, except there is a live mechanic where you dodge, parry, or jump over certain attacks.

• 43:44Jason Schreier?

  Mario and Mario RPG style.

• 43:47Speaker 01

  Actually, yes, it is almost identical to that, but way harder, very unforgiving parry windows, even on the easiest mode in my experience. I enjoy parrying, as I think most people who've heard me talk about Dark Souls know. About me. So I really enjoy this mechanic, but I just feel the need to warn everyone as like the first thing to say about this game is that it's difficult, even the the easy mode of the game. I find difficult. I've tried the different modes because I was curious about this. So I don't know if they're going to change that on release, but it's it's tough, tough game. But once you understand all the combat mechanics, in addition to those parry mechanics, I think it's really cool. Like different attacks can compound on each other. You can make your party freaking

• 44:31Speaker 01

  unstoppable in a way that's very satisfying. Classic turn-based RPG stuff. That part is wonderful and I'm loving it. The story also fascinating to me. So the deal with clear obscure is that. So you know how in metaphor we fantasio everybody was always explaining to you what was going on all the time? Like every time you met a new character, they'd be like, here's my tribe that I'm from. And here's like a really long monologue about exactly what our situation is and what religion we ascribe to and where we grew up. And you know, you're just kind of used to that sort of thing in RPG. Well, Claire obscure dares to ask the question, what if we never did any of that at all? And even several hours into the game, Matty's still gonna be

• 45:16Speaker 01

  wondering, what?

• 45:19Kirk Hamilton?

  To be fair, it's called Claire obscure.

• 45:21Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 45:22Kirk Hamilton?

  Clear.

• 45:23Speaker 01

  Not Claire Claire.

• 45:25Kirk Hamilton?

  Not just Claire.

• 45:26Speaker 01

  Claire, the Claire is not so clear at all. In fact, it is quite obscure, if you will. So these characters, I'm going to describe the premise of the game because the game's not going to describe the premise of the game. And I at least knew it before I played it. I think that's gonna help.

• 45:40Kirk Hamilton?

  Tell us about the paintress.

• 45:42Speaker 01

  I'm gonna tell you guys about the paintress. So

• 45:44Kirk Hamilton?

  Hell yeah.

• 45:45Speaker 01

  This game takes place in this sort of Victorian steampunk fantasy world where there's this goddess called the paintress who's ruling over the entire world in which you live, where humans live, and also strange little creatures live. I don't know why, but they do. And the paintress is doing this weird thing. And she's been doing it for the past 70 years before the game begins, which is she's counting down and eliminating. All of the humans of a certain age. So like she started at 103, all the 103 year olds died. And then the next year she killed all the 102 year olds and so on and so forth. And now we're all the way down to the 34 year olds and that's where the game begins. The 34 year olds dying.

• 46:28Jason Schreier?

  Children of men in reverse.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  Precisely. And so when you're running around that open area at the very beginning of the game, it's really creepy because there's no old people at all in the world. And you're going to this ceremony for your, the main character is Gustav, and he's going to the ceremony for his ex-girlfriend who's about to die because she's 34. And they're still on like, okay enough terms that she's like invited him to this, but it's really awkward between them, which is like a really fascinating scene. And the, the whole game is kind of like this where you kind of meet characters and you have to put together what happened between them just from context clues and conversations. All of what I said is not something that was spelled out to me. So you watch her die and then you watch Gustav and the rest of all the remaining 33 year olds,

• 47:13Speaker 01

  the oldest people in this world, go on an expedition. The, one of many, many, many expeditions that have happened to try to kill the paintress. Can they do it? Can they kill God? I don't know. I, I sure hope so, folks, because this is an RPG. So I hope we can make it there. But so much weird shit happens along the way that I also don't understand. And it's clear that the game is just like, this is just the world we made. This is just what we did and we're not going to tell you how it works. And I find it really refreshing. I love that the characters aren't constantly explaining stuff to me. The dialogue's very naturalistic. The voice acting is great. But you have to be willing to play a game that is both, one, really difficult

• 47:55Speaker 01

  and two, just like gonna throw you in the deep end of the story and just be like, we're not going to tell you what's going on. We're just gonna put you on a roller coaster.

• 48:04Jason Schreier?

  Are the characters interesting enough to make this worth it?

• 48:07Speaker 01

  I'm really enjoying them. Yeah, I really like them. So yeah, for me, yes, I want to know what happens too, because I like them.

• 48:15Kirk Hamilton?

  This sounds cool. I'm totally gonna play this game. This sounds really neat.

• 48:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, the thing is Oblivion's gonna come out, so.

• 48:21Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, I've played Oblivion. I'll play a little Oblivion, but no, I'll play this over Oblivion.

• 48:26Speaker 01

  Fair enough. I do, I do know, though, that this is, this game is competing with some other RPGs. And also a couple other games that you two are about to talk about. So there's that too.

• 48:36Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, Kirk, you wanna go next?

• 48:38Kirk Hamilton?

  Sure, I'll go next. I have been playing and loving a new game called Sunderfolk, which is developed by Secret Door, one of the studios under the Dreamhaven umbrella, which is Mike Morham's company after he left Blizzard. And Jason, I'll actually ask you to tell us a little about that after I've talked about the game a little, because it's very interesting. Sunderfolk is very cool. It appears to be, and I believe is, inspired by pandemic-era tabletop simulator sessions with Gloomhaven, because that is what it feels like, only it's a video game designed to emulate that feeling. So Gloomhaven is a game that I have talked about on the show before, that I love very dearly. It's an incredibly popular tabletop game, a sort of hex-based tactical role-playing game

• 49:23Kirk Hamilton?

  that also has a lot of city-building, especially in the sequel of Frosthaven, a lot of sort of character development. And most of the game is you and your friends, kind of RPG party in a pretty cool fantasy world, just dungeon crawling. Each mission is a sort of intense fight through a dungeon with a variety of different character party, you know, character classes. And you play with cards, so you have a deck and you kind of play different cards at different turns in order to move around the battlefield and, you know, use your special abilities and kind of synergize with one another in order to win fights. And it's really fun. It was a great game that is particularly good on tabletop simulator, which is a PC or just a computer simulation that basically just makes a table

• 50:08Kirk Hamilton?

  that you can then put plugins, like mods that people will build for any tabletop game. And there's a really good Gloomhaven one that allows you to just instantly set up a Gloomhaven game. And get playing, which is what my friends and I did. Bing! Kirk here as I'm editing the show, just to chime in and clarify something, even though I know I've said this before on the show. My friends and I own a copy of Gloomhaven that we could have been playing. We also have a physical copy of Frosthaven. One of my friends is, uh, has supported both of those Kickstarter's. So we had physical copies of the game and we were just choosing to play it on Tabletop Simulator. Okay, back to the show. Bing! Gloomhaven has a famously huge box. There's a jillion pieces and cards. It takes a million years to set up. It's very complicated. So playing in Tabletop Simulator was really nice, though a little janky since it's user-created mod.

• 50:53Kirk Hamilton?

  It's all, and it's still pretty complicated. So Sunderfolk is the same idea. You can play with up to four people in an RPG party, only it's a video game and it's designed to be much, much more accessible. And it's very successful, I think, at doing this. So the way the game works is you load the game up on a console. It's on Switch. I'm playing on PC, so I had a couple of my buddies from my tabletop group over so that we could test it out and play it together. And we played a few nights together. So you load the game up on the TV and it puts up a QR code. And you load, you open the QR code on your phone and you download an app. So this isn't quite like Jackbox games, the You Didn't Know Jack games, or I suppose, whatever, Jackbox now. It's not You Didn't Know Jack. Yeah.

• 51:35Kirk Hamilton?

  It's not like those where you're going to a web browser and using HTML to like go through the internet. You're actually downloading an app that I believe is able to talk on your local network with the game. And so it's like a much slicker, yeah, it's a much slicker thing. And it allows for a much more sort of tangible interaction with the game. So you download the app, you load it up, you scan your game and you, and you join in. And then you control the game with your phone and everybody uses their device to control the game. And then it works a lot like Gloomhaven, where we had a party. I was a big barbarian bear named Bing, of course, and I was our kind of tank. And then we had, you know, different animals play different classes. The story is kinda, there's like a city.

• 52:17Kirk Hamilton?

  The Sunderfolk are these animals that live in this underground city and it's under attack from ogres. And you're kind of trying to defend against them. And then you play through these turn-based battles that work a lot like Gloomhaven, where you're choosing from your attack deck and you're playing it. Then there are modifying cards that you play each time you attack. You're kind of taking turns. You know, with like turn order, it's cool. Like initiative works kind of like you're, all the good guys go at the same time. So you sit around a lot just talking and you can use your phone to have a cursor on the screen and it works with almost no latency. It's incredibly cool. I don't, I mean, it just works really well. It's like you have a trackpad and you can kind of move around and point to what you want to point to and say, okay, well, if I go over here, I can go first and then I'll,

• 53:01Kirk Hamilton?

  you know, tank up and I'll attack this guy's attacks. So then you come around behind me and you can open this chest and then you can do a ranged attack and you're, we're all kind of pointing around at the screen and talking just like we do when we're playing Gloomhaven together. And then the game just does a lot of little clever touches in addition to being a just well-designed strategy game. For example, when you load up a new mission, it will ask one player to name an enemy unit type. So my friend Sam named the enemy archers, like the ranged attack, he called them flingems, F-L-I-N-G-E-M-S. And then for the rest of our campaign, those enemies are called flingems. But then at one point, I was just talking and I called them flingems because it's spelled that way.

• 53:43Kirk Hamilton?

  And I was like, just reading and I was like, oh, and there's a flingem over there. And then we all started laughing and so now we call them flingems. And it's, there are a lot of things like this in the game where because of a little user-created, you know, idea and then, you know, you create your own little silly inside jokes, like it starts to feel very personalized, which I really like. And you'll get these little, you know, you'll go to town, you get little interactions with townsfolk that are just happening on your phone. So we're each kind of being like, oh, cool, I'm like talking to this guy, look, and he says this and, oh, I'm learning some of my character's backstory. And then you go back out together. The whole thing is incredibly slick and it feels like a Blizzard game. It runs like a Blizzard game. It's, it's so well-designed, like the experience, at least for us, using our phones was just seamless.

• 54:27Kirk Hamilton?

  I was incredibly impressed by that part of it. So this would be a very, very fun game for anyone with a tabletop group who like wants to try something like this out. I really think a lot of people will really dig it.

• 54:38Speaker 01

  Cool. It sounds cool.

• 54:40Kirk Hamilton?

  So Jason, you know more about Dream Haven and I'm just kind of curious if you could tell people a little bit about them because I do think that that backstory of this game is also interesting.

• 54:48Jason Schreier?

  Sure. And we'll talk about this more, I think, maybe in a few weeks because they have another game that's really interesting that I played and hopefully we all get a chance to play. It's funny, I actually just spoke to the director of Sander Folk like two hours ago for Bloomberg piece that I think will go up this week. Yeah, Dream Haven was started by the Morhimes. Mike Morheim, the co-founder and longtime CEO of Blizzard and his wife Amy. And they started it shortly after leaving Blizzard. And one of the reasons they started it is because Blizzard, after Morheim left, canceled these two games. One was a project called Ares that was supposed to be a Starcraft shooter. And another was a project called Orion that was supposed to be a kind of like

• 55:32Jason Schreier?

  D and D campaign-ish sort of thing. And then the people who made those two games wound up teaming up and working with the Morhimes to form Dream Haven. And then they went on to make a shooter and then a D and D-ish tabletop campaign sort of game. But yeah, this company has a lot of, it's a mix of like some really veteran Blizzard people, ex Blizzard people, and then some newer people. So for example, the director of this game, she's relatively young, has been in the video game industry for like less than 10 years, I believe, came from Riot. Before this, but then the studio head, who's also pretty intimately involved in this game,

• 56:12Jason Schreier?

  is this guy Chris Siggeti, who was executive producer on Starcraft 2 and like ran many, many projects at Blizzard. So it's kind of a mix of that veteran experience and that youth. The director's name is Aaron Marek, by the way. And yeah, it's a really interesting company. I've talked to them a bit about it. I've interviewed them for Bloomberg a couple of times. And one of the things I find really interesting is that it feels like they are learning a lot of lessons, both good and bad from their time at Blizzard. So like the good. You can kind of see in your description of Thunderfolk, right? Like that it feels like a Blizzard game. It's very sleek. It's very polished.

• 56:54Jason Schreier?

  It's very like clearly been tested by hundreds of thousands of people.

• 56:59Kirk Hamilton?

  You know, it also, just to continue that thought, that it, the Blizzard thing, this is based on your book, that something Blizzard was very good at was playing a game and then saying, this is really fun. Let's make a better version of it. And this does feel like someone played Gloomhaven and tabletop simulator and said, this is fun, but it's pretty crusty. It's got a lot of, it's very difficult to use. What if we made a version that was slicker and kind of worked better?

• 57:21Jason Schreier?

  I don't know if it was quite Gloomhaven and tabletop simulator. I think the initial idea was like mixing tabletop games or Gloomhaven with Jackbox was the initial thought.

• 57:29Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, okay. Yeah. But yeah, with the Gloomhaven like as, as being the root of the idea.

• 57:34Jason Schreier?

  Exactly. Yeah. But just like this idea of this like polished, yeah, finding a way to really polish something rather than inventing a new genre. And yeah, it's really interesting. I mean, I think it's, it's worth noting also, I was talking to Erin, the director, a little bit about this. She joined the company, like her first week was when the Blizzard scandal happened. And internally at Blizzard, or internally at Dreamhaven, because Dreamhaven is run by the guy who ran Blizzard like for many years and co-founded Blizzard. And also a lot of the people who are high up at Dreamhaven are ex Blizzard people. They had a ton of conversations and like lessons. And Erin was telling me, they put together, Amy Morhan put together this like 40 page document about like action plans and like how to avoid this.

• 58:17Jason Schreier?

  And one thing, I think it's worth noting is that when I spoke to Mike Morheim in October at a Bloomberg event, I was interviewing him and he told me that they were, I think the number was like 37% either female or non-binary at Dreamhaven, which is much, much higher than the industry average, which is like 20% or something like that.

• 58:37Speaker 01

  Sadly, it is much, much higher.

• 58:39Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, just worth noting there, it feels like they're learning a lot of lessons, both good and bad. But one, one more thing I'll say is that like there have been a lot of companies over the years that are like, hey, we're ex Blizzard, we're ex Riot, give us money. This, I think, is the closest to a company that is actually ex Blizzard, or at least like ex, some of the people who made Blizzard what it was, especially in Mike Morheim, who was one half of the duo that created Blizzard and also ran the place for many, many years. So I think that's also worth noting that this company is one I've had an eye on for a long time.

• 59:16Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice. Yeah, it's very cool. Thunderfolk is great, and I will be keeping an eye on them for sure.

• 59:20Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, their other game, Wildgate, is really interesting. Yeah, we'll talk more about this, I think. We'll put a spotlight on Dreamhaven down the road at some point.

• 59:27Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, cool.

• 59:28Jason Schreier?

  All right, my one more thing is also a video game that came out this week. It's called The Hundred Line Last Defense Academy, and this game is friggin' great, you guys.

• 59:38Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice.

• 59:39Jason Schreier?

  I think you both would really enjoy it, so.

• 59:42Kirk Hamilton?

  Three good games.

• 59:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was about to say, we all liked our game. Guts always good.

• 59:46Jason Schreier?

  Yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay, so, a few years ago, a guy named Kazutaka Kodaka, who is the creator of Danganronpa, a game series we all know well.

• 59:57Kirk Hamilton?

  Heard of it.

• 59:57Jason Schreier?

  And Kotaro Uchikashi, who was the creator of Zero Escape, a series we also know well. That's the series of 999, 99 Doors, whatever, and then.

• 1:00:09Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, this is a real all-star undertaking.

• 1:00:11Jason Schreier?

  Visual novel greats. So the two of them started this new company. Well, so the two of them started this new company. They left Spike Jonson's off their old company, started this new company called T-O-K-Y-O-O Games, like T-O-O-K-Y-O-O Games. And they almost immediately released one of the worst games I've played in recent memory called World's End Club, and a few other games kind of on their own that were just whiffs, or at least mediocre at best. Games that were not great. Now, they have finally released a game that is truly worthy of these two powerhouses coming together, and it is called The Hundred Line Last Defense Academy.

• 1:00:51Jason Schreier?

  So let me explain this game. So the way this game starts is that a bunch of high school students are brought to a school, and an adorable mascot kind of comes out of nowhere and explains them the rules of the school, which is that they are trapped there, and they need to do certain things in order to survive. And the characters are, of course, they all have very unique personalities, one of them, and they have very unique visual styles. One of them is very kind of self-deprecating and just calls himself. Pig shit all the time. Another one is kind of a maniacal lady with like blue crazy hair and clown makeup.

• 1:01:34Jason Schreier?

  And she talks about killing things all the time. And can you guys guess what's coming next? What's coming next is not a killing game. These characters do not have to kill each other because despite the fact that it starts off looking and feeling a whole lot like Danganronpa, it changes pretty dramatically over the course of the rest of the game. What this actually is, is a strategy RPG. And what happens is these people are told that they have to defend this school that they're in because there's some sort of hidden room inside or there's a room in it with like a hidden secret. And they have to defend that secret because there are invaders coming and they have to fight off the invaders if they want to save the world and save all the people that they love.

• 1:02:15Kirk Hamilton?

  Sounds like an Ender's Game situation. Like actually we're killing other humans.

• 1:02:18Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. There's, there's definitely some Ender's Game involved here. And so to defend these invaders, you go to this grid based battlefield where your characters kind of put on these, like take these, this complicated mechanic where they like ingest blood or something. But anyway, they become superheroes and and have to fight off these invaders and you can move them around on these grid based battlefields, sort of like a fire emblem sort of thing. We're using them to attack the invaders and fight them off. There are always way more invaders than you and your characters are powerful and they can take them out. And ideally you want to take them all out in one turn before they even get to attack you. There's this really cool system. It starts off really easy and kind of simple and you're just like, why am I even doing this?

• 1:03:03Jason Schreier?

  But it gets more elaborate as you go. A very slow start, very slow burn of a game, but it gets much, much better after the first couple of hours. And the, the, the strategy battles are really addictive and interesting because the way they work is that you'll start off each turn with only like three action points. So you can only do three things and you'll have like 15 characters and you'll be like, oh my God, like I can't even use all my characters in one turn. Like what is this? But you gain an action point every time you use one of those characters to take out a, a particular. Like a mid-level enemy, an enemy who is a little more powerful than like the base.

• 1:03:40Kirk Hamilton?

  You're like fighting to increase your currency in the action economy.

• 1:03:44Jason Schreier?

  Exactly. And so the strategic way to play is to like, take advantage of all your characters abilities, either synergizing with one another or like on their own to take out multiple high-level enemies in or mid-level enemies in one shot. So then you get an extra turn involved and then you can use that.

• 1:03:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, that sounds fun.

• 1:04:01Jason Schreier?

  And so it feels, it's very, um, there's like a Rube Goldberg-esque element to it. It's, it's very chess. It's very strategic. It's very, it's not, um, it's, it's got a lot of complexity and depth to it that you, that only reveals itself a little bit later on. But when you get the hang of it, it's really, really fun. So, uh, it's got that. It's got a few other kind of mechanics and it's also got a lot of text. It's a visual novel. Also, I would call it half visual novel, half strategy RPG. And then there's also a persona aspect of it. Sort of like Danganronpa where you have free time as you go. One of the reasons it's called the hundred line is because there are a hundred days that you have to kind of live through. Because the goal, at the end of the hundred days, you are told that the invaders will be stopped and you will win

• 1:04:44Jason Schreier?

  and you will save humanity. Um, and so during these days when you have free time, you can go and you can, um, talk to some of the characters or you can give them gifts or you can study in the library. And, uh, each of doing any of these things will raise your stats, which allows you to develop new skills for your characters in combat. So it's all kind of tied together in that way.

• 1:05:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Very familiar.

• 1:05:07Jason Schreier?

  And it's really good. I mean, the story and the writing, it's very Danganronpa. Like you can see immediately, there are sex jokes. There's like one girl who like is this samurai looking woman who has a sword and all the other characters make fun of her, uh, saying, what are you doing with your sword late at night? And like all sorts of like crazy, like wacky writing. Um, it's very entertaining. It's, uh, very fun to play. And the story is sufficiently, it's kind of, it's got the wackiness and the, the crudeness of Danganronpa's writing combined with like the twisty sci-fi of, um, of Zero Escape games.

• 1:05:44Kirk Hamilton?

  Makes sense.

• 1:05:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's cool.

• 1:05:45Jason Schreier?

  And so as. You can imagine there are a lot of twists and turns along the way. Definitely some enders game in there, but obviously other stuff.

• 1:05:51Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm sure everything is as it seems from what you described in that premise.

• 1:05:54Jason Schreier?

  Definitely, everything is as it seems.

• 1:05:56Kirk Hamilton?

  That is a premise where it's just very straightforward.

• 1:05:58Speaker 01

  Open and shut after the 100 days, it's all over for sure.

• 1:06:01Kirk Hamilton?

  It's all gonna be fine and we'll have one against the bad guy.

• 1:06:04Jason Schreier?

  And then on top of all that, there's one more mechanic, which is that like you can explore outside of the academy. And then you have this kind of like Mario Party mechanic where you're on a board game exploration field. And you go around this board game with your character. And every turn you get to pick like, do I want to move two spaces or do I want to move four spaces? And then each tile you land on has a different symbol on it, meaning a different thing. And then you'll have to make little micro decisions along the way. Like it'll be like, you stumble upon an abandoned warehouse and there's a fridge in here. And there's also a table in here. Do you want to open the fridge or check under the table? And then sometimes you'll take damage if you pick the wrong choice. Sometimes you'll get cool stuff out of it. And you could do that with your free time, too.

• 1:06:48Jason Schreier?

  It's like explore that Mario Party mini game, too. So yeah, it's all, it's really fun and it's really good. I'm really enjoying it. I'm very close to the end. From what I've heard, there are like many, many endings. In fact, somewhere I heard that there are 100 endings, which I'm not sure how that's going to play out yet. So TBD on that one.

• 1:07:09Kirk Hamilton?

  You have a near out of matter situation.

• 1:07:10Jason Schreier?

  Well, it's interesting. There's also, so you guys know the Zero Escape games, there's always like a big flow chart. And you're always kind of like making a choice and then seeing that play out. And then going back in time and seeing what the alternate option was, what other outcome could occur from that. In this, there is also supposedly a flow chart, but I'm up to day like 94 or something out of the 100. And I still haven't seen it or had to make any choices. So I think that's coming up soon. And then I'm not sure how it's going to play out from there. Cause I'm already like substantial ways into this game. I don't know, I haven't checked my Steam hour count, but I'm a hefty amount in. And I haven't seen that play out yet. So I'm very curious to see what happens here.

• 1:07:51Jason Schreier?

  I might be back and I might talk more about this in a future week, once I've played through. The entire thing, but yeah, I really like it. It's really good. If you like Danganronpa, if you like Zero Escape, especially if you've been following Tokyo Games and you haven't liked their recent offerings, this is very much like them returning to form and delivering something that's really cool. It feels like a really good successor to Danganronpa without repeating the same tropes and same formula that was thoroughly smashed in the last Danganronpa game. And one more thing I'll say is that also because you're not killing new characters every chapter and like watching your character count dwindle, you can actually grow attached to a lot of these characters because most of them are sticking with you the entire

• 1:08:36Jason Schreier?

  time, which is also nice. That was always a flaw in the Danganronpa games, which is that like you have all these really interesting characters and then you never get a chance to even spend much time with them because half of them are gone by like chapter three. So yeah, it's really cool. I think you both would like it. And I've been playing it all on Steam Deck where it runs beautifully. It's a perfect game to play for like an hour or two before bed, get some reading and some tactics in. Yeah, highly recommend it.

• 1:09:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, it sounds amazing.

• 1:09:02Kirk Hamilton?

  I'll check it out in two or three months when I finally finish Blueprints.

• 1:09:05Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Only 100 hours into Blueprints.

• 1:09:08Jason Schreier?

  You're closing in. Having heard where you got to last night, Kirk, you're, you're closing in, you're getting there. You're definitely in the end game. And now you can see why I laugh when people talk about how they're in the end game because now you're actually in the end game.

• 1:09:22Kirk Hamilton?

  It is quite a journey to get to where I am.

• 1:09:24Jason Schreier?

  That's true. All right. That is that for this week's episode. Thanks to everybody who sent in questions and thanks to everybody who listened to us talk for an hour.

• 1:09:34Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. Yeah, this was fun. And yeah, I'll see you both next week.

• 1:09:38Jason Schreier?

  See you next week.

• 1:09:39Speaker 01

  Bye.

• 1:09:42Kirk 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. 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.

• 1:10:40Speaker 07

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• 1:10:43Speaker 05

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• 1:10:44Kirk Hamilton?

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  By you.