What Makes a Game Wear Out Its Welcome? (Mailbag)

That's right: it's another mailbag! Kirk, Jason, and Maddy talk about the criteria of a dad game, print vs web journalism, and when you know that a video game has outstayed its welcome. Plus: Kingdom Come Deliverance 2!

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

• 0:04Jason Schreier?

  Last week, we opened up the mailbag to answer some of your burning questions. So this week, we're opening up the mailbag to answer some of your burning questions. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the answers to you. That's right, we're doing another Burning Questions. We're talking dad games, Donkey Kong Bonanza, wearing out his welcome, and print magazines versus web.

• 0:30Jason Schreier?

  I'm Jason Schreier.

• 0:31Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm Kirk Hamilton.

• 0:33Speaker 02

  And I'm Maddy Myers.

• 0:34Jason Schreier?

  Hello.

• 0:35Speaker 02

  It's us again.

• 0:36Jason Schreier?

  Hello, my friends. I just got back from Los Angeles, sunny Los Angeles, where it turns out that Hollywood is dead, you guys.

• 0:46Speaker 02

  Whoa.

• 0:47Kirk Hamilton?

  I keep hearing that.

• 0:48Speaker 02

  Just a wasteland out there?

• 0:50Jason Schreier?

  The entertainment industry is dire to the point where multiple people in separate conversations to me described it as the new Detroit, in that the entire industry is just gonna be carved out of it, and who knows what will be left. In fact, I am very curious to hear from, I think we have some listeners out there who are in the entertainment industry. If you are a listener who's in the entertainment industry, I'm actually very curious to hear some thoughts on what things are like, where things are going. Maybe we'll do an episode where we talk about like, the entertainment industry. Because we're not, we're games podcast, but it intersects for sure with film and TV. Some parallels there.

• 1:25Kirk Hamilton?

  I keep hearing about it, just about how shooting has moved out of California, and movies are just being shot overseas a lot because of, it's just so much cheaper to do. And I, yeah, I keep seeing those kinds of prognostications.

• 1:37Speaker 02

  That the actual location is dead, interesting.

• 1:39Jason Schreier?

  We had a big team meeting at Bloomberg HQ in Los Angeles, and as part of like, our team day, one of our editors brought in this woman who is a high up, or like, a deputy commissioner of something or another in the LA government, and her job is overseeing these tax credits that they're giving studios to shoot films back in Hollywood. But I don't know if that's like, trying to stop the bleeding. I don't know if they can ever recover what it once was. I don't know, I'm very curious, because maybe we can do an episode where we like, draw some parallels. Between games and film and TV. So if you work in the entertainment industry and you have thoughts and you want to share them, send us an email, triple click at maximumfun.org because I'm curious to hear from folks out there.

• 2:21Jason Schreier?

  What it's been like, what the state of the entertainment industry in Hollywood is like. And hey, if you want to listen to all of our episodes, including not just the main feed ones, but also the bonus ones where sometimes we also talk about movies and TV and stuff. You should become a Maximum Fun member. We do not have ads, but we do have bonus episodes that come from our, that come because of our listener support. And we love our listeners for making this show possible. So become a member. You get access to a whole bunch of bonus episodes, including one we just ran. About Hollow Knight Silk Song and the story and the levels and everything we love about that game. So sign up today, maximumfun.org/join.

• 3:03Jason Schreier?

  Also, one more thing before we get into this week's episode. We got a ton of emails, Kirk. You asked for people to email if they had ever gotten tickets for using their phone, like to text at a stoplight or something or while driving. Tons of people had. Traffic tickets. Traffic tickets. Moving violations. Yeah. Not like they bought tickets from Ticketmaster on their phone. Sure, sure. They did not. Or maybe they got tickets for buying tickets on their phone while driving.

• 3:29Speaker 02

  Right, exactly. You don't want to buy tickets on your phone while you're driving. You don't want to do that.

• 3:34Jason Schreier?

  And we got a bunch. I'm not going to read them all, but I do want, I've been talking for a while. So Matty, why don't you read this, this email from Elizabeth? Because I thought it was very interesting.

• 3:44Speaker 02

  All right. Elizabeth writes, I was listening to the recent Mailbag Show when Kirk put out a call for info about traffic enforcement of no cellphone laws. I worked for a court in Washington State for three and a half years and have lots of insight into this question. Our busiest department at the court was traffic infractions and we got a ton of them. Our county has the busiest section of I-5 in the state for tickets issued by Washington State Patrol. The vast majority of tickets, other than speeding, were for use of a personal electronic device while driving.

• 4:12Kirk Hamilton?

  There you go.

• 4:13Speaker 02

  Believe me, officers out there are watching for phone use on the road. In my time there, I saw every excuse under the sun for why people were holding their phones while driving, but they almost never got off the hook. So my lessons learned are, one, have a hands-free setup that holds your phone securely. Two, queue up your latest episode of Triple Click before you hit the road. And, three, officers and judges will not believe that you were, quote, "just listening" to the YouTube video you had playing in full view of the driver's seat. Hmm. Thanks, as always, for putting out awesome gaming content every week. Thanks, Elizabeth, for this insight from inside the courts. That's great.

• 4:54Kirk Hamilton?

  That is very funny.

• 4:55Jason Schreier?

  A big, big shout out to listeners there who support the show and make it so people won't get traffic tickets for skipping the ads while driving because you don't have any ads.

• 5:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:04Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, we do have promos, as we have, as we do try to mention.

• 5:07Speaker 02

  We do have promos, and people can skip the promos, and people sometimes skip ahead if we talk about spoilers, but just be careful out there. This is what the skip button is for, hands-free. I highly recommend getting some type of hands-free setup for your phone in your car. You shouldn't be, like, clattering it around in your car. It should be on something, easy to see. Do you know what I'm talking about, when you're looking at directions?

• 5:28Kirk Hamilton?

  Honestly, no, I mean, I think you should just pull over if you're going to interact with your phone.

• 5:32Speaker 02

  Oh, for sure.

• 5:33Kirk Hamilton?

  Two thoughts on this from me. One is that if I ever interact with my phone while I'm driving, usually it's right after I've pulled out of my driveway. Like, I'll have to pull up directions, which is also very common, you know, or I need to change the route. And anytime I interact with the screen on my phone, and this is, it's technically hands-free, I guess.

• 5:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:51Kirk Hamilton?

  I mean, the phone is, like, stuck up on the dashboard.

• 5:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:53Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, a little holder. But, I mean, when I start doing that, I don't know about anyone out there, but for me, if I reach over to the right, like, the car starts moving to the right. Like, I will notice at times that I am not driving.

• 6:04Speaker 02

  It's not.

• 6:05Kirk Hamilton?

  Because I'm, you know, it's

• 6:06Speaker 02

  It's not safe.

• 6:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Because it's not safe. Like, this is why this is illegal. It is profoundly unsafe. So either just let the ads on whatever podcast you're listening to play, or the show promos, if you're listening to Triple Click, just let them play. Or, um, or yeah, just, uh, maybe get the thing queued up before you leave. The other thought is, it's funny, I actually just Paid for the subscription to YouTube, which is like YouTube Premium, because I'm just so sick of ads on YouTube and I use it a lot for work. And it was like, you can get an annual subscription, as much as I don't like giving-

• 6:35Speaker 02

  This is not an ad.

• 6:36Kirk Hamilton?

  It is a good deal, even though like, I wish I was like, putting that money toward like, a Patreon or something cool, instead of giving it to Google, like, who do not need my money. But anyways, one thing that it lets you do is listen to YouTube videos, audio only, like, you can close your phone, since so many YouTube videos are just like, an hour-long video essay, you know, you don't really need the visual, like, especially video game stuff. A lot of times, just gameplay footage and someone talking, and you can just listen. So you could actually, I mean, I think if you have the video playing, I can understand why the judge would be skeptical, but if you close the, you know-

• 7:08Speaker 02

  But if it's a black screen-

• 7:09Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, if it's a black screen and you're just listening, then it's, then it's probably-

• 7:12Jason Schreier?

  It's a very interesting phenomenon, that companies have, just will create something that is so annoying, that you'll pay them to get rid of it.

• 7:21Kirk Hamilton?

  That is so the era we live in.

• 7:23Speaker 02

  I know.

• 7:24Jason Schreier?

  Even like, things you wouldn't think about, like, I, when I, I fly a lot for work, I travel probably seven, eight times a year, and I pay for pre-check, which is essentially the airlines and the government saying, "Hey."

• 7:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, the airlines' version of this.

• 7:35Jason Schreier?

  Security is so annoying, you have to take off your shoes, pay us, and you don't have to do that. And granted, I mean, to be fair, for pre-check, it's not very much, it's like, 80 bucks for five years, but still, it's ridiculous.

• 7:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're supporting the airfare Patreon, because they're struggling, and they actually are, though, is the non-funny part of this.

• 7:52Jason Schreier?

  Well, yeah, I mean, they're not paying their staff, because there's a government shutdown, so they could use, yeah, some money.

• 7:58Kirk Hamilton?

  God, watch like, TSA and the air traffic controllers launch a Patreon, due to the government shutdown.

• 8:03Speaker 02

  Oh my god. They can.

• 8:06Kirk Hamilton?

  I could see it happening, honestly, at this point, I would believe anything.

• 8:09Jason Schreier?

  They could start a Substack.

• 8:12Jason Schreier?

  So, alright, this week, we are doing Burning Questions. And hey, you might be like, "Didn't you do Burning Questions last week?", to which we say, "Yes, so what? We like answering your questions."

• 8:22Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, we have so many great questions out of them.

• 8:24Speaker 02

  We have more questions, they were great, and we wanted to do it again.

• 8:27Jason Schreier?

  Last week, we got such a good batch, that we wanted to do some more this week. So that's what we're doing.

• 8:35Jason Schreier?

  So, we're, as always, remember, you can message us, send your questions, do triple-click at MaximumFun.org, and let's get on with it. Kirk, why don't you read this first one from Dan?

• 8:45Kirk Hamilton?

  This comes from Dan who writes, "Hey, y'all. There have been a couple of high-profile success stories in games recently like Balatro, BG3, that's Baldur's Gate 3, and Clair Obscure: Expedition 33. And what do you think are some of the, quote, 'wrong' lessons that executives will take away from these successes? Do all games now need to be French gambling simulators with tentacle monsters?"

• 9:10Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 9:13Jason Schreier?

  I mean, yeah.

• 9:13Speaker 02

  That's the right lesson.

• 9:16Kirk Hamilton?

  Tentacle monster gambling simulator, and it's written in French? Like, I think that might do well.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  That would be good. I think that would be very good.

• 9:22Jason Schreier?

  I think all games should be made by a single person, and every company should just hire, like, 2,000 people, but each of them makes their own game.

• 9:29Speaker 02

  2,000 games. It's foolproof. You're just... One of them's gotta be a hit. Actually, there's kind of a weird logic to that.

• 9:37Jason Schreier?

  Balatro is made by a single person.

• 9:39Speaker 02

  Exactly, yeah, yeah. So you're kind of taking the best of Amnesia Fortnite and combining it with the wrong lesson that an executive could take from it.

• 9:49Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm trying to think, what are some lessons from these games that an executive might take away? And I don't know about wrong lessons. I mean, I think that one thing that Expedition 33 has going for it is that all the characters are really, really good-looking, and I think that is actually something that an executive could take away from it.

• 10:05Speaker 02

  Baldur's Gate 3 also, just saying.

• 10:08Kirk Hamilton?

  That's a good point, Baldur's Gate 3 as well. Expedition 33 is kind of, I don't know, the cast is, like, notably good-looking in a way that is, like, interesting and distinct. It doesn't have that kind of porny feel that some video games with, like, quote-unquote "hot" main characters have. It's just like a bunch of really beautiful people, and then the performances are really great, too. But I think that that's part, that is part of what people got, you know, why people got into that game. And, I don't know, I could actually see that being a takeaway. I don't know if it's Frenchness would be the takeaway. So maybe the Frenchness would be the wrong takeaway. But I think that I could see them taking the, you know, character design thing from that game and it actually working out.

• 10:46Jason Schreier?

  Do you think executives are gonna be, like, going, showing up in studios and, like, hovering over the artists' screens and being like, "I need you to tune up the beautiful hot lever here."

• 10:56Speaker 02

  Make him more pretty. No, more, more!

• 10:59Kirk Hamilton?

  More like Robert Pattinson. No, more, turn up the Robert Pattinson.

• 11:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, turn it up, turn it up. Put him in a really tight fitting vest, then, then we're ready to ship. Yeah, I, I feel like the wrong lesson you could take from Expedition 33 is that parry windows should be too short and really hard and it should be impossible to predict what different enemy patterns are going to line up into when you should actually hit the parry button. That would be a bad lesson to take from Expedition 33, but I, I don't think anyone's taking it, luckily.

• 11:30Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, the whole turn-based thing is interesting. Like, do you think that could actually be something that people seek to emulate?

• 11:36Speaker 02

  Right, like the fact that it's turn-based, but it has the parry window. I actually like that aspect of it.

• 11:40Kirk Hamilton?

  Just that it's turn-based at all.

• 11:41Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, that wouldn't be a bad lesson.

• 11:43Speaker 02

  That would be okay if somebody made more games that had that concept, because I thought that was really cool.

• 11:48Jason Schreier?

  Nintendo should be like, oh, okay, we're gonna revive Mario and Luigi and Paper Mario and all those. I guess they did just release Mario and Luigi.

• 11:54Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, they kind of have been doing that.

• 11:56Jason Schreier?

  I guess they have, yeah. Um, yeah, the wrong lessons. I mean, I've definitely, after Expedition 33 came out, there were so many LinkedIn posts being like, here's what you can learn from this big hit, Expedition 33, and they were all terrible. Um, I wish I, I don't remember exactly what they said, but it was a lot of like, this was made by 30 passionate people. If you had 30 passionate people, you too could make a hit game. That is a 90-plus meta critic.

• 12:22Kirk Hamilton?

  They found their composer on SoundCloud, so all composers should be unknown composers working mostly on SoundCloud.

• 12:28Jason Schreier?

  Exactly. Oh, yeah. The, the, one of the big stories was that the writer, it was her first time writing a game. That was another big one.

• 12:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, and then she was like in a Reddit thread or something and they found her that way, or so the lore goes. I don't actually know if that's even true or if that's lore.

• 12:42Jason Schreier?

  A lot of times when there's stories like this, I don't know if this is an executive thing or maybe just a fan thing, but a lot of times people are like, oh, this is what you get when you find these inexperienced people instead of the grizzled veterans who like, don't know what they're doing. And maybe there's a nugget of truth there in a complex way, but like, it's also, people tend to devalue experience in a way that is kind of gross.

• 13:05Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. If you're rolling the dice, the odds are still with people who have a lot of experience making and shipping games, as cool as it is when, when newcomers find success.

• 13:14Jason Schreier?

  Exactly.

• 13:14Speaker 02

  Which at least something like Baldur's Gate 3 could lend credence to the other theory, which is keep a team together. Maybe they'll actually make something great again and try not to just engage in tons and tons of layoffs and replacing people after you ship everything, but I don't know.

• 13:32Jason Schreier?

  I like how we can't help ourselves but to learn the right lessons.

• 13:35Speaker 02

  I know. What would the wrong lesson be from Baldur's Gate 3? How could you look at it wrong? And yet, some executive will. Some executive will look at it and be like, we need all of the women in our games to be green and to have very small noses. That's what we're gonna do.

• 13:51Kirk Hamilton?

  And angry, green and angry.

• 13:52Jason Schreier?

  Need more D and D mechanics in all of our games.

• 13:55Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, that would be the wrong lesson, actually.

• 13:58Jason Schreier?

  Need dice rolling in every game.

• 13:59Speaker 02

  We need dice rolling and we need like a really confusing combat system that's gonna take a lot of battles before you figure it out. People love that.

• 14:08Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. Interesting question, though. It's fun to imagine. All right, let's do the next one. Maddie, why don't you read this next one?

• 14:15Speaker 02

  Sure. This is from Benjamin, who writes, hello, I find myself wondering if Dishonored meets the criteria of a dad game. My primary concern is that unlike other classic dad games, such as The Last of Us and God of War 2018, the player of Dishonored is not actively escorting their charge throughout the game. Is this a fundamental element of dad gaming? Or does Corvo get a pass? Benjamin signed this nobody's dad, which is relatable to me. I'm not anybody's dad either.

• 14:43Jason Schreier?

  You're not? Well, that you know of, Maddie.

• 14:45Speaker 02

  That I know of, yeah.

• 14:47Kirk Hamilton?

  And for what it's worth, Corvo is not Elizabeth's dad either, right?

• 14:50Speaker 02

  He's a father figure.

• 14:51Kirk Hamilton?

  Father figure.

• 14:52Jason Schreier?

  Right.

• 14:53Kirk Hamilton?

  Which, which doesn't make this any less of a dad game. I mean, I think, yes.

• 14:56Speaker 02

  I think it is, too.

• 14:57Kirk Hamilton?

  This question mainly made me think about how lately I'm playing more games about the children of dads.

• 15:04Speaker 02

  I know.

• 15:04Kirk Hamilton?

  I guess is the way I would put it.

• 15:06Speaker 02

  It's changed.

• 15:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Because I, my one more thing is actually similar to last, the game we talked about last week goes to Aviotay, or I guess two weeks ago, where both games are about the child of a blacksmith who then makes swords and, and seeks to avenge their father.

• 15:22Kirk Hamilton?

  Like, kind of funny that that trope, I mean, that was also the storyline of Blue Eye Samurai. Like, that someone reflecting on their parents has actually been a little more common in games I've been playing lately, despite the trend toward the daddening of games. But to answer this question, I do think that Dishonored is, I mean, technically a dad game, even though it doesn't, I don't think it's really about fatherhood. So, so maybe not. Maybe it isn't a dad game in the same way that like The Last of Us and God of War are, because those games are so concerned with like, the primary narrative arc of the protagonist is like, learning that being a dad is cool and that it's okay to like, care for a child.

• 15:56Jason Schreier?

  Kirk, I think that in most games where you play as a person, you're playing as the child of a dad. Just throwing that out there.

• 16:04Speaker 02

  Most of the time, yeah.

• 16:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I just was saying that because it struck me as a funny way to describe a game. But you know, these characters are like particularly the children of dads, if that makes sense.

• 16:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's daddy issues happening. Yeah.

• 16:17Kirk Hamilton?

  That is like an important aspect of their character.

• 16:20Jason Schreier?

  Children of Dads would be a great title for a video game.

• 16:23Kirk Hamilton?

  Children of Men 2, Children of Dads.

• 16:25Jason Schreier?

  Exactly, exactly.

• 16:27Speaker 02

  I think, I think it's a vibes-based thing, though. Like, I do kind of feel like Dishonored is a dad game, but maybe that's because it's from the early 2010s and I remember that being when the daddening really unfolded. I mean, that's, I also kind of think of Bioshock Infinite as a dad game, even though it has a very troubled dad situation. And like, any paternal feelings you might feel towards Elizabeth are kind of complicated by the fact that she's also beautiful. And I think the player's invited to kind of feel that way towards her as well, to feel some attraction towards her. So like, I don't know. But I still put them in the same bucket in my head.

• 17:07Speaker 02

  I think they're doing some similar things with the idea of, especially like this young girl character. I know God of War doesn't do it that way, but a lot of other, other games do where it's like, oh, I need to protect this, this girl or young woman.

• 17:22Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, so Bioshock Infinite, to your point, is another escort game, which Benjamin describes as the kind of the fundamental element of dad gaming, which I disagree with because there's some dad games where you have to go and rescue your child or find your child, even if you're not escorting them, such as Fallout 4, which I guess you could also be a mom, so not strictly a dad game. Assassin's Creed Origins, I feel like, has your dad and you gotta figure out what's up with. So I don't think that escorting is a fundamental element of dad gaming. But yeah, Dishonored is a whole nother question.

• 17:58Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I guess like the dad-est version of a dad game to me is the game, like I said earlier, the game where the primary narrative thrust, the primary character development of the protagonist involves learning how to care for a child. And that's what God of War was about, and that's what The Last of Us was really about, and I think very effectively about. And that's why the kind of accompaniment, the escort, is central to the plot. Like, for that kind of game, you want to watch their relationship change as the protagonist kind of learns, oh, okay, this is what it's like to have a kid. And, you know, I was maybe really hurt by losing my child, or I never thought I could be a father, but now I kind of see, I see this new possibility for myself. And while it's not the only kind of dad game, it is kind of the ultimate expression of the dad game.

• 18:42Speaker 02

  The platonic ideal of a dad game, if you will.

• 18:45Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, in that, I think that Dishonored is a little bit different from The Last of Us.

• 18:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's in a different category. You're right. We need a taxonomy of dad games.

• 18:53Kirk Hamilton?

  We'll get right on that.

• 18:54Jason Schreier?

  Dad-dzonomy. And Kirk, by the way, I just looked it up. In Dishonored, Corvo actually is, in fact, Emily's father.

• 19:01Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, that's right, because it's like, it's like, is this revealed that he is actually the father, even though he's not supposed to be?

• 19:08Jason Schreier?

  It might be revealed in the second game. I don't remember exactly, but he definitely is.

• 19:13Speaker 02

  I feel like that's his own category of dad game, which is that it turns out you are the dad.

• 19:18Jason Schreier?

  The secret reveal. Well, that's, so I was gonna say, I think Arcane, which makes Dishonored, and also Deathloop, is the master of secret dad games.

• 19:29Speaker 02

  Deathloop also did the secret Dad.

• 19:32Jason Schreier?

  Exactly.

• 19:33Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, you're reminding me of the end of Deathloop, which I never want to think about again.

• 19:38Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, and these are games, especially Dishonored 2, where Elizabeth is fully grown and Dishonored 2 is a playable protagonist. And that is much more of a-

• 19:44Jason Schreier?

  Emily, you keep calling her Elizabeth. It's Emily.

• 19:46Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, you're right. Sorry.

• 19:47Speaker 02

  It's because we talked about Bioshock.

• 19:49Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it's because Elizabeth is the Bioshock character and these games came out at the same time.

• 19:52Jason Schreier?

  But Kirk, I would think you would remember the name Emily, given that your wife's name is Emily.

• 19:56Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, but her middle name is Elizabeth.

• 19:58Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 19:59Jason Schreier?

  Oh, wow. Okay, next question.

• 20:05Jason Schreier?

  Jeff writes, "Hi, terrific like Donkey Kong Bonanza has repeatedly been described as a, quote, 'great game, but overstays its welcome.' I totally agree, and after some thought for me, it was due to the game offering very little challenge. What makes a great game overstay its welcome for you? Thanks for considering my question. Love the podcast. Love Jason's book. Take care, Jeff." Ah, thank you, Jeff. I 100% agree. I had this exact same thought while playing. I don't remember if we ever talked about it, but I had the same thought while playing Bonanza. I think after we recorded our episode about it, where I was kind of like, "This feels like it's taking forever and I'm doing a lot of the same stuff, in large part because there's just zero challenge." And I think, if I remember correctly, I think a few years ago,

• 20:47Jason Schreier?

  I said this exact same thing about Super Mario Odyssey, especially in comparison to Astro Bot, which does have a nice level of challenge. So I do think it's kind of a problem for this team specifically, because the team that made Bonanza also made Mario Odyssey. What do you guys think? Do you think that's accurate?

• 21:05Kirk Hamilton?

  I don't know about challenge. I get this critique of Bonanza. I actually kept playing Bonanza and played a ton of it because my wife Elizabeth and I played it together.

• 21:18Kirk Hamilton?

  Sorry, my wife Emily Elizabeth and I played it together and we had such a good time playing it that it didn't actually really matter, that we were just sort of doing the same thing, just because the novelty of the co-op mode and particularly me saying to her basically, "Unleash hell," and then she would just destroy everything on screen. Like, that just kept being fun for a long time, though we did eventually stop. We haven't finished it. For me, I think that- Running out of gas, like when a game overstays its welcome, it tends to be when the progression system bottoms out long before the end of the game. And then the story isn't enough to keep me going. Like, sometimes when my character has become, you know, god on earth and can destroy everyone and has a million moves, and there's really nothing left for me to do, the story keeps me going because I want to know what happens.

• 22:03Kirk Hamilton?

  But in the case of Bonanza, like, I'm curious, I guess, to see how it all ends up, but also the story isn't really why I'm playing.

• 22:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, I feel similar to Jason. I also really liked Bonanza when we recorded that episode, and I kept playing afterwards, but at a certain point, I just kind of stopped picking it up, you know? Like, it just, I just kind of burned out on it. And the way that you do when something is repetitious, and I don't know that that's a bad thing if you're playing, you know, with a co-op partner or you're younger. Like, I think as a kid, I would have unlocked everything, but as an adult, I kind of wanted more to be going on. And I also would have liked a little more story in that game. I think they had some room for some more story in that game, I will say, without it still being, without it not being, like, you know, kid-friendly anymore or anything.

• 22:52Speaker 02

  I feel like it could have easily been, like, the whole Pauline is a rock. Like, I don't know, I kind of was expecting more weird Donkey Kong lore, and there's some of that, but not quite as much as I would have liked, so.

• 23:04Jason Schreier?

  Apparently, there's stuff at the end that is a little more.

• 23:06Speaker 02

  Oh, okay. Will I ever make it there?

• 23:09Kirk Hamilton?

  That's kind of what I want to get to.

• 23:09Jason Schreier?

  I'm curious about that, too. Yeah, it's fun. I've been playing with my kids a little bit, but it's mostly them watching it, so the difficulty doesn't really have an impact. But yeah, I could see if it's, if you have a kid who wants to play through it and, like, you don't want it to be Silk Song level, you want them to actually be able to beat it.

• 23:24Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, difficulty for me, I think, is not really the thing. It's more like, is the game still surprising me? With these Nintendo games anyways, like, something that Mario Galaxy does, for example, it's just constantly delighting you and throwing new ideas at you. That's something Astro Bot did really well as well. Like, if the game is just showing me new things and, you know, delighting me with weird new ideas, then I'll just keep going. I don't really care about upgrades or difficulty or any of that. And Donkey Kong does kind of do that. I mean, there are. Levels later on, there's like this cool level with a race where you're having to like race on, what's his name, Rami, the rhinoceros?

• 23:59Jason Schreier?

  Rambi.

• 24:01Kirk Hamilton?

  Rambi, the rhinoceros. There's some fun variety that gets introduced and the new levels look really lovely and are funny, but mostly the game is kind of that same, you know, destroy everything, collect gold, find power ups, loop. And so they're not, it doesn't feel like a Mario Galaxy or a game like that. So as a result, it starts to be like, okay, well, I'm eating this giant delicious donut, but at some point I'm just going to stop eating it.

• 24:22Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, Kirk, I think you've identified at least two of the main reasons why I'll stick with the game. One is the story gripping me. Two is that it keeps surprising and delighting. And I find that if a game doesn't do those two things, I probably won't stick with it for very long. I guess the other is just that, like, the core gameplay of it all is just so compelling that I just don't want to stop, which is the case of-

• 24:43Kirk Hamilton?

  Like Bellatro.

• 24:44Jason Schreier?

  Bellatro, that's a good example of that. Or to, like, for a more kind of traditional action type of game, Hollow Knight is a good example of that, although that also kept surprising and delighting.

• 24:54Kirk Hamilton?

  And the story is great.

• 24:55Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, the story is great. So that kind of checks all the boxes. Yeah. And then the kind of the other end of the spectrum here is something like Mafia: The Old Country, which we all talked about and I think just stopped playing and that didn't really have anything. I felt like I'd seen it all. Felt like the story wasn't interesting enough for me to want to keep going. And then also it didn't have a core gameplay. Like, I felt like it wasn't really, like, it wasn't good enough for me to want to keep going with it in a way that other, kind of, some other AAA open world games do that for me. All right, next question. Kirk, you want to read this next one?

• 25:27Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, this comes from Corey, who writes, "Hi, Matty, Kirk, and Jason. I started subscribing to print magazines recently like Edge and Wired and consistently find myself reading articles I never would have clicked on if they were on the internet. This is a good thing. I suspect the amount of data internet publications have at their disposal influences what gets written by their staff, and print is unique in its, in the space that it makes for discovery. I'm curious if you have ever wished for the pre-big data era where publications didn't have a way to quantify all journalistic output." All of their staff's journalistic output. This is an interesting question. What do you two think?

• 26:03Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I don't think that it's quite as simple as, well, this will get us a lot of traffic, so we're gonna run this, or we're not gonna run this because it won't get traffic. Maybe at some websites it is, but even at Gawker Media, where everything was all about traffic, we were all traffic obsessed, we didn't always think exactly that way. I think a lot of places recognize that there's room for important things that matter or have an impact, but don't necessarily bring in a ton of traffic. And there's also just kind of like, you can have other incentives for packaging stuff. For example, The New York Times is a subscriber publication, and they obviously run stuff

• 26:44Jason Schreier?

  that resonates with a lot of people, but they also have a lot of niche desks that are beats or writers that aren't bringing in a lot of traffic. They still have an entire dance section, like Writer, as an example. They have a Broadway section and stuff that are very, very niche. And granted, I mean, yes, that is print, to Corey's point, but a lot of that stuff is just going online and not even going in the paper. Maybe it's because they're built as a print publication, I suppose. But I think that like, when you're a subscription publication, that maybe plays a bigger role than whether you're kind of print or digital. Because if you're not a subscription publication, then you're relying on advertising, and that is dependent on clicks.

• 27:26Jason Schreier?

  But if you are asking for a subscription, then it doesn't matter quite as much if you're reaching millions and millions of people, so long as the people who are paying feel like they're getting value for it, which is one of the many reasons that subscriptions for news is the present and future, and that the advertising model is going to slowly disappear if it hasn't already.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people... Like Corey, and there's nothing wrong with this thinking. I hear it all the time. Just assume that that's how every publication works is they need clicks. And there's like a kind of logic to that because in your head, you're like, well, clicks. I mean, I'm looking at the ads and the ads are what pays for the news, right? But most of the time ads are not actually paying for enough to support an entire publication. There are some publications that run entirely on advertising, but a lot of them have multiple income streams. And those other income streams might be subscriptions or just e-commerce, any number of other stuff, sponsored content. That's one thing, but also you really brought me back with your last sentence here about pre-big data.

• 28:31Speaker 02

  Because I used to work at a print publication, the Boston Phoenix, and our website was pretty under trafficked. This was like the era when print was dying, frankly. And the Phoenix went out of business in 2013 and our website was not enough. The ads we had on the website were not enough to sustain its existence. But I just want to say there was also no pre-big data era for any journalistic outlet. Because we really cared about how many issues people picked up. And that data point was relevant and would be something that every editor would hold to. And would be like, this was on the cover. Everyone picked this one up. Circulation as a concept has probably mattered ever since the printing press was invented.

• 29:16Speaker 02

  So I unfortunately, we as writers cannot escape big data. It has been the bane of our existence for as long as we have been able to circulate anything. It has been a matter of us worrying and wondering about how many people read it. And it's hard not to care about it, even if you aren't solely subsisting on ads. You still want to know like, hey, did people care about this? Like, that's the other thing about readership that is good to know about is literally what do people care about?

• 29:43Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, that's a really good point. And even in the 1800s, yes, to the advent of the printing press, but really the advent of newspapers, which is 1800s, like that was a time when everybody, yellow journalism, the concept came from then.

• 29:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:56Jason Schreier?

  People were just competing with other papers over who had the splashiest headlines. And there's a great book that I talked about a couple of years ago called Battle of Ink and Ice by Daryl Hartman, that was about like these newspapers just battling over these polar explorer stories, and they were funding the explorations and trying to compete to be the first to run it. And yeah, that was all about circulation, to your point, Matty. So yes, this has always been a thing.

• 30:22Kirk Hamilton?

  So I think there is a distinction between big data and just data.

• 30:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:27Kirk Hamilton?

  Data has always played a role in media, like you're talking about circulation numbers and that sort of thing. Big data, like the era of big data, I think of as kind of post 2010, you know, when these massive tech companies started aggregating massive amounts of data and using it to drive algorithms and kind of better try to really granularly understand who was doing what on the internet and then use that to profit. And I think that that is the era that we came up in, certainly writing for Gawker, where we had a big board and we were constantly tracking our numbers. And then that has only gotten more intense since, you know, all of us left Gawker and in the current era. Like, watching YouTube, watching the way that the YouTube algorithms and the various incentives of

• 31:09Kirk Hamilton?

  having a YouTube channel have warped all of the YouTubers that I follow, like in the guitar world, it's totally wild how different things are now than they were 10 years ago. And so much of it is driven by the fact that YouTube is able to collect so much data that they can then push people towards doing really specific things, you know, certain lengths, certain topics, certain types of headlines, just everything can kind of is up for grabs in a way that I don't, that I think is new. Like, that does feel different.

• 31:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, that part is probably bad also.

• 31:40Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, well, it's definitely not something that I like as a writer, you know, you're kind of, you're driven by outside forces. I mean, it seems to have had a lot of very negative effects on journalism and on the information ecosystem more broadly. Broadly. And I actually think that one thing I really like about podcasting is that it has proved resistant to data collection. And it's always something that I've liked about it. I think there's more data now than there ever used to be on, you know, who listens where and, you know, when they stop listening and when they skip ads and all of that stuff. And that's partly because as Spotify and Apple have become kind of the primary places that people go to listen to podcasts, you actually have a central repository of data.

• 32:22Kirk Hamilton?

  So then the like mechanisms of big data can start to grind into action, you know, like Apple has so much data because most people just use their app to listen to podcasts. So they can suddenly see, oh, you know, if you want to know, if you go to Apple for podcasters, you log in, they'll tell you, oh, well, this episode is most popular. People actually skip five minutes in of this and this and this episodes, and you can start to really get granular. And then as they start getting transcripts and like, you know, they can tell you exactly which words people care about. You can start to fall into those same patterns where like, you know, there's an algorithm basically telling you, talk about this, but not this. Go for this long, but not that long, you know, whatever. Lead with this. Get to your most interesting thing within the first 10 seconds.

• 33:03Kirk Hamilton?

  Don't swear, you know, whatever, any other things that they want to do that can start to really warp what you're making. And I hope that doesn't happen to podcasting because I do think that it is mostly a bad thing.

• 33:15Jason Schreier?

  Well, it comes down to what I said earlier about incentives where you're much more incentivized to, uh, to follow that data in podcasting. If you have ads and therefore your money is your financial like success is tied to how many people are listening as opposed to getting subscribers, getting paid subscribers, and then your financial output is tied to what subscribers want and what they care about and what will drive them to pay or how many of them pay. And those are very different incentives.

• 33:45Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, there and there's a Venn diagram overlap between the two things, right?

• 33:48Jason Schreier?

  There is.

• 33:49Kirk Hamilton?

  People who are listening, the more subscribers you'll get, like you do want to grow and there is always a kind of a push and a pull. I feel this with strong.

• 33:55Jason Schreier?

  Which is the case with any business.

• 33:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 33:58Kirk Hamilton?

  No, I know. I'm just sort of thinking this through and sort of, you know, and I just think it's interesting. Like, I'll, I'll think with strong songs about what I want to cover. If I did nothing but jazz songs, there are some people that I would make happy, but it wouldn't really grow my listenership. And as a result, it wouldn't really grow my subscribers. Now, that also gets into the question of growth versus sustainability, which is like a separate media question and something that I think a lot of people are kind of wrestling with right now, because it's that same, that same push and pull. Like, how much money do you need to be making from a given thing? You know, how much does it need to generate? What's your overhead? How much profit do you need? And I think if you don't think in terms of infinite growth, you do, you're then able to stop thinking about, well, I always need to be appealing to new people and always need to be bringing

• 34:43Kirk Hamilton?

  in new subscribers. Because like, maybe not. Maybe you have enough subscribers and it's fine.

• 34:48Jason Schreier?

  I just want to say one kind of little bit of contrarian perspective here as well, which is that sometimes it can be very useful to have all this data, even from a quality perspective. Like, for example, there was a stat that I always appreciated back in the days of Gawker Media, when we were all looking at Chartbeat all the time, which is our tool for measuring concurrent readers and stuff. And one of the stats that I thought was very helpful was actually seeing how much time the average reader spent reading an article. And you could get, obviously, you can read into that a lot of ways. Maybe people are only reading something for five minutes or two minutes or whatever, for, it could be countless reasons that they're doing that. But I also thought it was useful to see, like, okay, people are actually sticking to this. People are actually reading this. They're

• 35:30Jason Schreier?

  not just kind of tuning out after the first couple of paragraphs. And I think that in, back in the day, when people didn't have access to metrics and information, it was very easy as a reporter, as a writer, as a creator, to just be like, well, I know best, and this is what I'm going to do. And I think there, there is some merit to kind of getting that reader feedback and getting the data and knowing what people are thinking and how they're reacting to it, even if you're not going to do, like, even if you don't, which you shouldn't, just follow that trend and like, do everything, make everything reactive. But it is helpful to listen to, in the same way that in, if you're making games. It's very helpful to have playtesting. Otherwise, your game is probably going to be bad.

• 36:12Jason Schreier?

  Doesn't mean you have to follow every single piece of advice that a playtester gives you or do everything to make sure the playtester has an amazing time in every moment or whatever. And obviously, different playtesters are going to have different thoughts on a game, different tastes, but the data can be helpful to have still.

• 36:29Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I think, you know, I think that the data you get from an editor or a trusted reader or audience member is always going to be more valuable. This is something I've been thinking about lately, that the mass data you can get from, you know, X number of people stopped listening after five minutes. That is helpful, but it's also kind of vague in a way that I always find a little bit maddening. And also, it's so big because it's so many people, it's easy to put too much weight on it, where almost always, it's so much more valuable to just have another writer or another person you know, read the thing or listen to it. And if they're willing to give you real feedback, like, that's one person, you know who they are, you know where they're coming from. And like, I think it's very easy to just fall back on all these automated systems that

• 37:14Kirk Hamilton?

  just tell you numbers, because they kind of do it in the background without you having to go out and seek the feedback. And I do think in the end, if you're making art, if you're making media you care about, if you're writing things that you really want to be good, the real way to make them good is not going to be listening to, you know, mass aggregated data. It's going to be finding the specific feedback that you really need. And that'll always, that'll always be the like, best kind of feedback, at least for me.

• 37:37Jason Schreier?

  That's true. I mean, yeah, that's 100% true. But at the same time, if you put something out and you think it's good, and maybe your trusted circle thinks it's good, but then it doesn't resonate with people, it can be useful to, that can be a useful metric, too.

• 37:49Kirk Hamilton?

  Sometimes people are wrong.

• 37:52Speaker 02

  Yes, sometimes the world wasn't ready for it, is what that means.

• 37:55Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 37:57Kirk Hamilton?

  No, no, you're, of course, right.

• 37:58Jason Schreier?

  No, no, no, it's, it's an interesting topic. Yeah, I mean, I think data, big data is weaponized for sure by media publications these days, including our former company that we all worked on. All right, let's get to the next one. Matty, I think it's your turn.

• 38:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, probably. This one's from Levi, who says, "Hey, question for your burning mailbag. Which games have genuinely stuck with you long after finishing them? Not just because they were great, but because they made you think deeply about something in a way only a game could. Like, the combo of storytelling and gameplay merged so perfectly to unlock some profound understanding in your brain. For me, I think the endings of Outer Wilds or Shadow of the Colossus. And I know y'all didn't give Tunic a chance, but that game has got some very heady stuff later on."

• 38:45Jason Schreier?

  Matty, I think this is your chance to clear things up.

• 38:48Speaker 02

  This is my chance to correct the record. I beat Tunic. I swear I said this on the show, but maybe I never actually did. I did complete it.

• 38:55Kirk Hamilton?

  Can you say it again?

• 38:56Speaker 02

  Um, yeah, and you know, it's fine. I don't know when Levi wrote this. Could have been a thousand years ago. But I did actually complete it. It has, it has cool stuff in it. And I don't disagree. I, I still think the combat feels weird, though. And I stand by what I said about it way back on our Tunic episode. When it comes to thinking the combat feels weird.

• 39:17Kirk Hamilton?

  I think I'm the one who keeps saying, dang, I should really go back and play Tunic.

• 39:20Speaker 02

  You should. If you really feel that way, you should. There are, there are some very cool level designs in that game.

• 39:28Kirk Hamilton?

  For sure. Yeah, I just, yeah, I think that I say it and then sometimes people like misattribute that to all of us.

• 39:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're like, all of triple flick needs to go back to Tunic. But for the record, I did. I completed it. But what do we think? What games have stuck with us long after we finished them?

• 39:44Kirk Hamilton?

  Lot of games. Man.

• 39:45Speaker 02

  Right?

• 39:46Kirk Hamilton?

  I mean, plenty of games, right? I think Journey is one that always comes up for me. That was a game that had a really profound emotional impact on me when I played it. Just when I realized that it's kind of a metaphor for life. It sounds kind of cheesy, I guess, to say that. Like, but that moment when you're old and broken and climbing up a snowy mountain and nothing works anymore. And I thought back on the early moments when I was flying and my body worked and I was strong and I could soar and the sun was in the sky. And, and you know, like, and how, how, I don't know, bittersweet and sad it felt. The sort of death and rebirth at the end of that game. Like, I really thought that was beautiful. And for me, it was one of the first games that really made me feel that way. So that's, that's one pick for me.

• 40:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I wanted to echo Outer Wilds as an example of a game that was very meaningful to me. But I also really felt that way about Gone Home the first time I played it. It was very important to me and it was a game that at the time was speaking to an experience that about like coming out as a queer woman in this specific time period that really resonated with me and I had, I went in having no idea what the game was about and then that like really hit me and that was intense to play that and be like, wow, this game is like seeing some part of me and I'm, I don't know, it's what, it's what people say when they say I feel seen, it's like a joke now and like it's hard to say that in a serious

• 41:13Speaker 02

  way, but that was how I felt when I played that game. It was very meaningful for me.

• 41:18Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, man, I mean, there are a million games I could pick. Uh, one that comes to mind just right today, cause I was thinking about it today, cause after the news that D'Angelo, the singer, died, I was thinking about Red Dead 2 and the, uh, the power of that narrative, which I thought was pretty cool. Um, D'Angelo, of course, being the singer who had that great song that played, uh, when you were doing that long horse, horse ride in Red Dead 2.

• 41:56Kirk Hamilton?

  Side note, but I only just heard about that before we recorded and I'm gutted by it. That guy is like one of the great living geniuses of music.

• 42:03Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, very sad.

• 42:04Kirk Hamilton?

  Sucks. Like rest in peace to a really brilliant guy.

• 42:20Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, for real. Um, and yeah, the impact of that game and the way that Arthur's story plays out and especially coming into it, thinking like, oh man, this, this guy, like he's just gonna be this generic, like, white dude, like, uh, criminal type who just like beats people up and is just like, I don't know, like, yeah, like Michael from GTA V or something like that, who's just kind of this boring, like, flat dude. And instead, he turns out to be like one of the most fleshed out, fascinating characters in all of video games and seeing his story play out is really cool. And then the end, tying to John Marson, yeah, just good stuff. But yeah, I mean, there's so many games that have that impact on me.

• 42:59Kirk Hamilton?

  That's a good point, though. The Marston part of Red Dead 2 rocked me.

• 43:02Jason Schreier?

  Oh, yeah.

• 43:03Kirk Hamilton?

  I found it so beautiful. That was right when I was about to propose to Emily, too. And playing through that whole sequence as him, it was really amazing. So that's a great pick.

• 43:12Jason Schreier?

  It's so funny. That sequence of the game was kind of like the beginning of a Zelda game, where you're herding sheep and doing menial stuff. But because it's at the end of Red Dead 2, it just is so much more impactful. And yeah, I really loved it. All right, let's do one more quick question. This is from Sean. Sean says, "Hey, Sean, aka Dignified Beard from Portland, great to see you all in my hometown." He wrote this after our live show over the summer. "Jason and Maddie, if you could have Kirk do a Strong Songs on one song or specific artist, what would it be and why? And Kirk, if you could go full sicko and focus on a specific video game composer or game soundtrack, what would it be?" I'll answer first, because I've given this some thought.

• 43:51Speaker 02

  You have a prepared answer?

• 43:52Jason Schreier?

  Kirk, I want you to do a Strong Songs about NoFX's "The Decline." Do you guys know that song?

• 43:58Kirk Hamilton?

  Okay.

• 43:58Speaker 02

  I don't.

• 43:59Jason Schreier?

  Okay, so NoFX is a pretty big legendary punk band. They've done a bunch of music, a bunch of tracks. But "The Decline" is their 19-minute opus that is one of the most extraordinary punk songs ever written. And the lyrics are very prescient and hold up very well today.

• 44:26Kirk Hamilton?

  Okay, I'll put that on the list. I thought you were gonna say The Black Parade. But this sounds like this is NoFX's Black Parade.

• 44:31Jason Schreier?

  That's a good one. But this one is the musical themes that they play with this one. I would love to hear you dive into it. And it's so long that it's gonna be like a mega episode for you.

• 44:41Speaker 02

  So we're punishing our friend.

• 44:43Jason Schreier?

  I think you would really enjoy listening to it and then diving into it.

• 44:46Kirk Hamilton?

  Okay, I'll check it out, for sure.

• 44:48Speaker 02

  I feel like this is gonna be embarrassing if I say something that Kirk actually has done an episode on, because there's so many episodes of Strong Songs. So forgive me. But I don't think you've ever done a garbage episode, have you? And I love them so much. And I recently saw them live again. I saw them live a couple of years ago. And I just think Shirley Manson Live is incredible for starters. They're kind of like a supergroup of just techno-industrial artists, which is very much my speed. And Shirley Manson's voice is still friggin' incredible at this point.

• 45:29Speaker 02

  She's like an icon to me, honestly. But I just think that their songs are incredible. I don't have a specific pick, although most people probably know "Only Happy When It Rains."

• 45:42Speaker 02

  I think that was their first major hit, radio hit. But they have a ton of other songs that I just love. And also recommend seeing them live if anybody listening has that band in their fondest memories but has never actually seen them perform. They're incredibly, incredibly good.

• 46:01Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice. Yeah, I would, I love Garbage. And I've actually never done an episode on Nine Inch Nails.

• 46:05Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 46:06Kirk Hamilton?

  I haven't done much like of that like 90s industrial.

• 46:08Speaker 02

  That's like all my stuff. I'm like, you know, there's Nine Inch Nails and Tori Amos. And like that, that was all, that was my high school experience.

• 46:15Kirk Hamilton?

  I did do a Tori episode. I did Silent All These Years, which was really fun.

• 46:19Speaker 02

  Iconic song.

• 46:20Kirk Hamilton?

  But yeah, Nine Inch Nails would be great and so would Garbage. So, oh, those are great picks. Thanks. They're, they'll go to the top of the list. I'll answer last, I suppose. So if I could go full sicko and focus on a specific video game composer or a specific game soundtrack. So the thing is, I have already done episodes about Mario, Zelda, specifically an episode all about Tears of the Kingdom, one of my favorite video game soundtracks ever, and an episode about Final Fantasy VII that I initially made for TripleClick but has run, is basically a strong song. So those are, you know, I would pick those if I hadn't already done them. But I'm gonna say actually that if I do another video game soundtrack, and if and when, I will probably do something about Shoji Meguru and the Persona music.

• 47:00Jason Schreier?

  Hell, yeah. Good pick.

• 47:02Kirk Hamilton?

  Just because that stuff is so cool. It's really, it'd be really fun to talk about and to just cover like various tracks from, I'd say, four and five, and I guess some from three, from those Persona games. And then to talk about how those games use music. There's just so much fun stuff in there to get into. You know, it's a lot of cool kind of jazz fusion, a lot of really neat harmonies, some great guitar parts. I just think that would be a really fun episode, so.

• 47:25Speaker 02

  So fun.

• 47:25Kirk Hamilton?

  That's my answer.

• 47:26Speaker 02

  You would get to listen to it over and over. That would be a reward in another song.

• 47:30Kirk Hamilton?

  It's just like playing the game.

• 47:33Speaker 02

  It's so good.

• 47:34Jason Schreier?

  I feel like they have to announce Persona 6 soon, right? I know Metaphor just came out, but that's like a different team than Atlas.

• 47:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:41Jason Schreier?

  It's been almost 10 years since Persona 5.

• 47:43Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm excited about the Persona 4 remake, too.

• 47:45Jason Schreier?

  Oh, yeah.

• 47:46Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm gonna play the heck out of that.

• 47:46Jason Schreier?

  That would be a good peg for your strong songs episode.

• 47:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, there you go.

• 47:51Jason Schreier?

  All right, that was it. Thank you to everybody who sent in their questions. Once again, you can reach us at tripleclickatmaximumfun.org. Let's take a break and then we'll come back for ones more things.

• 48:10Speaker 03

  Hi, I'm Amber Nash, the voice of Pam Poovey on the groundbreaking FX animated comedy Archer. Remember Archer? I sure don't. That's why I started rephrasing an Archer Rewatch podcast on MaximumFun.org. Join me and a bevy of special guests as we discuss every episode of Archer, starting from the very beginning. Archer executive producer Casey Willis and editor Christian Danley will provide insight and fun and help me remember everything I've forgotten about Archer, which is a lot. So, join me on rephrasing an Archer Rewatch podcast on MaximumFun.org, because I can't wait to watch Archer again for the very first time.

• 48:50Speaker 04

  The wizards answer eight by eight. The conclave's call to demonstrate their arcane gift, their single spell. They number 64 until a conflagration. 63 and 62 they soon shall be, as one by one the wizards die till one remains to reign on high.

• 49:26Speaker 05

  Join us for Taz Royale, an Oops! All Wizards Battle Royale season of The Adventure Zone, every other Thursday on MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 49:36Kirk Hamilton?

  Bing, Kirk here. And before we get into one more thing, I actually meant to issue a correction about my one more thing last week, and then I forgot to do it. So I'm just gonna do it here before one more thing. So last week, I talked about the new Sterling Harjo show, which is on FX, called The Lowdown, starring Ethan Hawke, who is wonderfully playing an independent investigative journalist named Lee Raybon. And at the time, I said I didn't think that Lee- Raybon was based on a real person, but as it turns out, he is. He's based on a real life Tulsa investigative journalist named Leroy Chapman, who is a really interesting, real life character and someone worth knowing about. So I wanted to note that just because, you know, I wanted to get it right. And also because I think more people should know about Leroy Chapman.

• 50:21Kirk Hamilton?

  He wrote a number of really important pieces. In particular, he wrote a 2012 investigative piece exposing Tulsa founder, W. Tate Brady and his links to the Ku Klux Klan, which I will link in the show notes. So just one more cool thing about the lowdown. A great show on its own, but it's even cooler to know that it is a tribute to a real guy and that Ethan Hawke's incredible performance is channeling a person who actually existed. Okay, just wanted to note that. Let's get on with the one more thing. Bing.

• 50:51Jason Schreier?

  And we are back, Kirk, Maddie. It's time. One more thing. Maddie, why don't you start?

• 50:57Speaker 02

  So my one more thing is a TV show that actually already has a full season out last year. And I kept meaning to talk about it on the show and I never did. But season two is on now and I'm remembering that I freaking love this show. So this show is called High Potential and it stars Kaitlin Olson, who most people probably know as Dee from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. And the pitch for this show is basically like, what if Dee was a genius on the level of Sherlock Holmes and was a crime solving extraordinaire? Like the High Potential refers to her as a person.

• 51:37Speaker 02

  But at the outset of the show, she's a janitor and can't like translate her literal genius into one, social skills and two, a real job of any kind.

• 51:48Kirk Hamilton?

  She's Good Will Hunting.

• 51:49Speaker 02

  Kind of, yes. But like if Good Will Hunting was also like a single mom of three, who's completely dysfunctional in like almost every social aspect of her life and like exclusively wears gaudy pink outfits and just really high femme performative stuff. I love her outfits in this, like the. Costuming is absurd for her. It's iconic. But like, if you take that kind of concept of a character and then give her Sherlock Holmes intellect, like, we're all kind of familiar with, like, the way that Sherlock Holmes in typical stories operates, where like, he looks at someone and he's like, okay, that stuff on your boot, that means you actually were horseback riding earlier today. But that would have had to be da, da, da, and you took this train to get here,

• 52:34Speaker 02

  and that's why you're the killer. Like, she does that stuff, and it's really fun. But it's, like, combined with Kaitlin Olson's comedic timing and just general goofiness and skill as an actor. And it's so, so charming. I, if you like crime procedurals, I really recommend it. It just goes down so easy, and it's really fun. If you like something like Elsabeth, which I recommended before as another crime procedural that is a big hit in our house, with kind of an eccentric female character, who's like, a little smarter than everyone else in the room, and they can't believe it when they see her, because she's, she looks like she wouldn't be. It's, it's kind of like that, but it's Kaitlin Olson, so it's a completely different energy that only she can bring. I can't really see anyone else in this role. But apparently,

• 53:17Speaker 02

  it's based on, like, some other TV show from Belgium or something that I haven't watched. So I don't know who the European Kaitlin Olson is, but she, Kaitlin Olson, she's so funny. It's so, it's so good. So it's called High Potential, just to say the name again.

• 53:33Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm looking at this, and it was created by Drew Goddard.

• 53:35Speaker 02

  Yes, I was gonna shout that out.

• 53:37Kirk Hamilton?

  Of course, is like a TV legend, and, you know, made Daredevil, and wrote for Lost, and a million others.

• 53:42Speaker 02

  He's, I mean, he's great. He made Angel, yeah. Buffy, worked on a ton of great shows, and this show is also. I feel like I don't see people talking about it, but it's really funny and great.

• 53:51Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I'd never even heard of it. It sounds so fun. I bet Emily would love this show, too. She loves procedurals like this.

• 53:57Jason Schreier?

  Maddie, did I tell you I watched The Residents, which, another procedural?

• 54:00Speaker 02

  I think you did off the air, but yeah, just to highlight.

• 54:03Jason Schreier?

  Excellent procedural.

• 54:04Speaker 02

  Very fun and funny show. With a mystery solved by the end of a season.

• 54:10Jason Schreier?

  Um, cool. All right. I will go next. I also did a TV show and it is called Long Story Short. It's on Netflix. This is the next animated show from the creator of BoJack Horseman. Both the, uh, some of the writing staff and also, uh, the artist Lisa Hahnewald, uh, who also draws the characters in this show. And Long Story Short is brilliant. I love it. It's a lot like BoJack Horseman, um, with maybe some of the comedy tuned down and some of the drama and, uh, and like heavy hitting topics.

• 54:44Kirk Hamilton?

  Given how BoJack kind of transformed over the course of the show.

• 54:46Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, exactly. It feels like a, uh, kind of like a, if BoJack had kept going, I mean, BoJack, yeah, very much started like in seasons one and two is kind of a, a way more comic show and became much more dramatic and heavy as it went. And this feels like a continuation of that. So let me explain. So, um, Long Story Short is about this, uh, this Jewish family in Northern California. And then there are, there's a dad, a mom and three kids. Um, the Schwippers, so named because, uh, their one parent's last name is Schwartz and the other is Cooper. And so they smooshed them together. Perfect. Um, and the story is kind of, it's a little bit hard to explain, but it is essentially like every

• 55:28Jason Schreier?

  episode zips around in time to tell different kind of vignettes from these characters' lives. And so it has this effect overall of just kind of like telling this big epic story about the entirety of these characters and what they've gone through over the years. Um, from like them growing up in the eighties and nineties, all the way through the modern day when they're adults and have, um, gone through things, marriage and divorce and children and all sorts of other issues. And it's really, really fascinating. It's, um, the, the stories involved are just very relatable and fun to watch and heavy hitting and, uh, I think incredibly well done. Um, the mother character is

• 56:13Jason Schreier?

  just hilarious and, uh, a bottle of Jewish mother cliches, uh, that is extremely fun to watch and also very stressful to watch. Um, the daughter, Maddie, you will appreciate this. The daughter is, uh, is married, gets, winds up getting married to a black Jewish woman. Oh, my God. Is she literally me? Very relatable.

• 56:35Speaker 02

  At least Hannah Waltz been checking it out my life.

• 56:38Jason Schreier?

  The oldest son is, is kind of this neurotic music critic. The youngest son is this total fuck up. It's kind of reminiscent Kirk of a book we both read, Long Island Compromise, in a lot of ways.

• 56:49Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I'm reading the summary here and it's making me think of it. Also, Abby Jacobson plays Shira.

• 56:53Speaker 02

  Oh, cool.

• 56:54Kirk Hamilton?

  From Rod City, which is great.

• 56:55Jason Schreier?

  Yes, there, there's a lot of really good, a lot of really good, um, voice casting, just like BoJack had. And really, I mean, what's appealing about it is just the way that these characters, like it's a character study. Essentially, you're just watching these characters and their lives unfold. And it's just like so fascinating and, um, so well-written and well-structured and well-constructed. And, um, it's not confusing at all, despite jumping around in time a lot, because they handle it extremely well. It's not like, I think a lesser show might use that conceit to deliver all these plot twists and stuff, but that's not how it really handles it. Like you find out, um, for example, you find out that the mother dies because it's just kind of offhandedly mess, mentioned at some point in a future, like in an episode that has a story in the future.

• 57:39Jason Schreier?

  And it's just like, oh yeah, mom would have loved this, like something like that. So it's not the type of show that is just like, oh my God, the daughter is now in a gay relationship. Oh my God, the mother is now dead. It's more just like, uh, this unparalleled insight into these characters' lives and what makes them tick and the neuroses they've inherited and the inherited trauma and what that means for them and how they kind of try to break the cycle or don't break the cycle and how that affects their relationships and then their kids. And it is just phenomenal and fascinating and I really love it. I think it got renewed for a second season, so very excited to see where they keep going with it. And yeah, highly recommend it. Once again, it's called Long Story Short. And yeah, it feels just like an evolution of BoJack in many ways.

• 58:24Jason Schreier?

  Also makes me want to go and re-watch BoJack, because what a good show.

• 58:27Speaker 02

  So wait, are they all anthropomorphic animals like in BoJack?

• 58:30Jason Schreier?

  No, this is people. This is about real people.

• 58:33Speaker 02

  I mean, it would've been fine if they were anthropomorphic animals and still all the other stuff you said. I just, you know, I was trying to picture it in my head.

• 58:39Jason Schreier?

  No, real people this time, which takes away a little bit of that kind of like the humor that was especially in the first couple of seasons. It's just hilarious, just kind of background jokes and animal jokes. But there is still some great humor and some very good slapstick humor in true BoJack fashion. Like, for example, at one point, one of the main characters, his job is to like drive around this ham truck. It's a truck with like, that like sells ham and gives away ham or something. And at one point, he gets into an accident on a road by smashing into like a tomato and a lettuce truck. And then they get bookended by Sam, by bread trucks. And it is just, it's very hilarious.

• 59:16Kirk Hamilton?

  That's a very BoJack joke.

• 59:17Jason Schreier?

  Very BoJack joke, yeah. And so there's, there's still some good BoJack humor, but it's mostly a drama and it's mostly about these characters and what they do to each other and family and very Jewish show. There's a lot of Jewish, Jewishness in their lives. The first episode is about one of the characters, main characters, Bar Mitzvahs. And yeah, I really enjoyed it. All right, Kirk, what is your one more thing? Very excited to hear you talk about this one.

• 59:43Kirk Hamilton?

  My one more thing is a video game that I have been playing quite a bit of lately called Kingdom Come Deliverance 2. This game is, man, yeah, I have a lot to say about this game. So this game is a sequel to 2018's Kingdom Come Deliverance. And it just, it came out earlier this year and I didn't manage to play it then, but I've kind of had my eye on it because I've been aware of these games for a while. I guess to start with, I mean, I was aware of Kingdom Come Deliverance, working at Kotaku, because the game's director was like a vocal Gamergate supporter in like 2015. And it was this whole thing, there's, our former boss, Steven, actually interviewed him at E3 in 2015. And it is, I think, actually a very interesting interview.

• 1:00:27Speaker 02

  It is. I went back and read it when this game came out.

• 1:00:30Kirk Hamilton?

  It is, it is pretty interesting and he, he just, he seemed to be under the genuine impression that Gamergate was like an anti, anti censorship movement. And like, obviously, I completely disagree with that, but I don't know, it's interesting to read now, especially because the common take even on the first game was that it was very much its own thing. It stood apart from all of that. And a lot of people that I know really liked that first game. It sounded super interesting. I just never had a chance to play it. Cut to 2025 and Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 comes out. And I've heard from a bunch of listeners throughout the year, people keep saying like, at our live show, people would come up with like, dude, you gotta play this game. It's a Kirk game. It's like 100, yeah, it's such your shit, like you would really enjoy it. And I even

• 1:01:14Kirk Hamilton?

  knew that from the first game. So I kind of had been planning to play it. And then some friends of mine are actually playing it at the same time. And they were talking about it. I'm like, all right, fine. I'm gonna check it out so I can talk about it with them. Started playing it and yeah, I mean, this game rules. I'm so into it. It's so good. It's so weird and so interesting. And I think I'm actually gonna record something a little more substantive about it in the future. So I'll just vaguely tease that now and I'll just kind of give a quick summary of some thoughts on it. So I've played a lot of this game, like, I don't know, 40 hours or something. I like really fell deep into it over the last couple of weeks and I've gotten really far, but it is massive. So I've played up to like the, the second half. This game actually does a Far Cry 2, which I mentioned maybe

• 1:01:57Kirk Hamilton?

  last week, in a recent episode where you play through a whole first map and then there's an act break and then it's like, welcome to the second map. That's equally huge. And you're like, oh, boy. Gosu Sushima did that as well. In this game's case, I'm actually very excited because I'm really enjoying it and I do want more. So anyways, what is Kingdom Come Deliverance 2? So it is a direct sequel to the first game. I didn't play the first game and I don't find that to be an issue. This is a historical medieval epic. It's set in around 1402, I think 1403, in the Kingdom of Bohemia, which is now known as the Czech Republic, but at the time was the Kingdom of Bohemia. It is really historical. So this game is very concerned with historical accuracy and with simulating the life of, in your case, a squire.

• 1:02:40Kirk Hamilton?

  To a knight, a kind of a lower lord in Bohemia in the 15th century. And so it is, it looks like Skyrim. It kind of moves like Skyrim, but there are no dragons. There's no magic. There's never a point at which, you know, monsters invade the world or you learn spells. It's just a game where you do ordinary stuff and it's really devoted to simulating a believable version of a historical world. And that makes it so freaking interesting. So you play as a character named Henry of Skalitz. He is not noble. He is a squire to a real guy or a character based on a real guy who's Hans Kapon of Perkstein. And he was kind of Hans's squire slash bodyguard in the first game as well.

• 1:03:24Kirk Hamilton?

  So at the start of Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, they're really good buddies. They're like leading a group of people on behalf of their like higher lords, like the people they kind of represent to see a king or not a king, sorry, to see a lord in, what's, what is it? It's a Troski Castle, which is a real place in Bohemia on behalf of King Wenceslas, Wenceslas the fourth, who was the current rightful ruler of Bohemia. I'm doing this off the dome and see if I get this right. Who was engaged in a war with Sigismund, who was a Hungarian usurper and was kind of like engaged in a war for Bohemia. Now here's one thing I'll compare this game to Final Fantasy Tactics. We just talked about Final Fantasy Tactics.

• 1:04:07Kirk Hamilton?

  Something that is so cool about that game is the sort of complex, you know, it's these like wars of succession. It's based on the War of the Roses. This game very much feels like that because it is actually historical. And in fact, I would say to me, it has been even more interesting because it's a real war. And as a result, there's never a moment where it is suddenly revealed who the real villains are. There really aren't real villains because like Wenceslas, who Henry and Hans are like working on behalf of, he was kind of a useless guy. He was an alcoholic. He was like not a great ruler and everyone kind of knew it. He like wasn't as good of a ruler as his father, but because he was, you know, the next in line, he was just going to be king. So you're kind of killing people on behalf of this guy who sort of sucks. There is an argument.

• 1:04:50Kirk Hamilton?

  To be made that Sigismund would have maybe been a better ruler, who knows? But it's kind of not even about that. It's just like all these complex, you know, Lord games that the Lords are sort of playing with one another over who gets to rule what, and common people are just getting killed. So that's the kind of broad setup. The actual game is a first-person action game, action role-playing game. It's very much in the mode of an Elder Scrolls game. It moves kind of like one. It has a similar kind of sometimes janky feeling, even though it is actually beautiful looking. It has the most beautiful fields and forests I've like ever seen in a game. A really gorgeous simulation of the real world. But, you know, you walk around, you sneak, you fight, and as you do things, your skills increase.

• 1:05:33Kirk Hamilton?

  So it has that kind of old-school Bethesda game game loop where like you can just go out at night and just sneak around behind guards, not doing anything, and your stealth skill will just slowly climb. Or I spent the first couple of days in the game just going to archery tournaments and just doing them over and over and over and over and over to slowly win money and then watch my like strength and agility and archery level up so I could get more powerful. Sounds thrilling. Well, I mean, it is.

• 1:05:59Speaker 02

  This is what Kirk likes to do, okay?

• 1:06:01Kirk Hamilton?

  Let's get into this, though. Okay, so that's kind of what it is. Like you're and you're doing a lot of side quests for characters around this area and slowly working your way up to like big story beats where you then eventually get swept up in a large conflict and you play a role in like sieges of castles and like big battles and stuff. But most of the game is really just walking around to towns, talking to people, doing side quests for them. And and then like helping define who Henry is and kind of making choices and talking to people and having like really long conversations with them about all kinds of things. So, yeah, to the like, that sounds thrilling comment, right? Like to the idea that this game is actually like so mundane that it's maybe boring. I actually am finding that that is what makes it interesting and thrilling. So in this game, there is a really a rare level of simulation.

• 1:06:46Kirk Hamilton?

  So if you're dirty, for example, if you've been out digging and doing labor, you get covered in dirt. Or if you get in a fight, you get covered in blood and your armor will be marked as bloody and you'll see it on your character. And then people will comment on it and it'll like hurt your. Appearance with them and you you won't like do as well in persuasion checks or something. So then you have to kind of go wash yourself and you can also go to the bath house where they'll like wash your clothing. And so you can like get different levels of clean and you have to kind of maintain your cleanliness. Or you get hungry, so you go and hunt, but hunting is actually poaching because all of the game is owned by the king. So you have to be careful about hunting and then maybe you just go to the, you know, you go buy food at the at the tavern and then you just eat that to keep Henry fed. You have to sleep a certain amount of time. There's this kind of layered simulation.

• 1:07:32Kirk Hamilton?

  Also, thievery does not work the way that it works in Bethesda games. You can't just rob a blacksmith blind and then sell him his stuff back. In fact, I tried to do that and I got arrested and I had to reload a save. Ah, but you can reload saves, so it's not that realistic. Well, you can, but you can't just save any time that you want. In order to save, you have to drink what is called Savior Schnapps, which is a drink that you can brew. And it actually makes you drunk if you drink too much of it. But it um, it allows you to save, but it's a limited item that you have to use. And otherwise you can only save when you sleep, but only in a bed that you own. So there are all these little restrictions placed on you. Now, of course, there are ways around all of this stuff. Like at this point in the game, I have so much food, I just eat it. I don't worry about food. It's it's a non-factor.

• 1:08:16Kirk Hamilton?

  I have so much Savior Schnapps, I can save constantly. Or you can just quit and save anytime you want. So there's like really easy workarounds. I think there are also mods that just let you save. Like you can kind of get around all these frictions. But there is this kind of deep level of simulation. For that reason, I actually think that the opening, maybe 12 hours of this game is maybe its most interesting. Because, you know, you and Hans arrive in this kingdom and you're immediately like set upon and you lose all your stuff. And you're like in the stocks and and no one likes you and it's a disaster and you have to kind of build your way back up. And it's really fun when you're at that low point, because that's when you have to really lean into all the systems. You know, I'm like sneaking around in my underpants, trying to kill a rabbit so that I can eat. Like that feeling is really exciting. Now, like Henry is this unstoppable killing machine.

• 1:09:00Kirk Hamilton?

  Everyone knows who he is. He's got a, like, I think a maxed out charisma, so he can get anyone to do anything. Like it's more, I'm more now just playing for the story. But in those early hours, it was actually very fun. Lean into the simulation. The thing is, because it only can get so dramatic, you know? I mean, being on the other side of the wall in a siege of a fort is like really dramatic. Like, that's a very exciting thing. But in most video games, that's like the very first thing you do. And eventually, you're fighting dragons, you're fighting God, you know? You're doing just unbelievable things every five minutes. Because this game never gets to those heights, it actually like keeps everything within a more attenuated level of intensity. It makes everything more equally interesting is the only way I can really describe it.

• 1:09:44Kirk Hamilton?

  Like, you'll get, I don't know, one guy hired me to go and steal the maypole from another town next door, because the other town has this nice maypole that they're really proud of, and they think they're better than us. And they're using this pasture that we agreed we were gonna share, but they took it from us, so like, go get the maypole. And this quest winds up being really interesting, because it forces you to like, learn who's guarding the maypole, and then you talk to someone about how he doesn't like that guy. And then, you know, there's all these like, complex sort of interpersonal dynamics between the towns, and eventually, you kind of beat that guy up and get him to leave town. So then, just that night, there's no one guarding the maypole, and you steal the maypole, and you take it to the, you know, the guy who asked you to do it, but then he wants to do something else. And the quests become like, really complicated. And what makes them interesting isn't really what you're doing, it's more just like the

• 1:10:28Kirk Hamilton?

  narrative, the world building like narrative framework of it. It's just kind of cool, because in real life, it'd be super fun to get involved in a kind of little caper like that. And all of the side quests have that kind of rolling, stretching, surprising feeling, which really reminds me of The Witcher 3. So, a couple of touchpoints I think I'll mention now for this game are, one is certainly Skyrim, it looks and feels kind of like an Elder Scrolls game. One is definitely The Witcher 3, in the way that the quests are always more interesting and complicated than you expect. It starts with someone saying, "My daughter has run away, can you find her?" In this game, that means, you actually have to go talk to everyone in a town and be like, "Hey, have you seen this girl?" And they'll kind of give you clues, and it really feels like you're doing detective work, and you're like, looking around for tracks on the ground.

• 1:11:12Kirk Hamilton?

  And it's not just like, you know, a cloud in the air that you're following, like in The Witcher, or whatever, like, you really do the detective work. But then, of course, you learn, it's more complicated than the guy who initially hired you let you know, and you find her, and maybe something's going on, and you have to go back to the original guy. And then it turns out there's a third party involved, and it always gets so much more complicated, and so much more written and interesting. So, the game is very good at that kind of thing. So, it really reminds me of- The Witcher 3 in that way. I mentioned before Final Fantasy Tactics and Game of Thrones. I think it has that really gritty and real feeling politics going on and just the world building, the way things work. It is really full of gray areas. It's just sort of complicated. And in the end, I think it's more about the people that you're interacting with in the

• 1:11:56Kirk Hamilton?

  moment. I'd say if there's one takeaway from this game, it is that if there is a war happening and you're living somewhere where there is just war in the background, what really matters to you is just the people around you and like helping people that you talk to. Because everyone's just there kind of trying to live their life. There's a blacksmith. He's just got jobs to do. There's a miller. He's like on his own weird quest. You know, you want to help him do something. People just need help. And as you make friends with people, you kind of come to understand this whole community. And it's really remarkable, the way that it builds community. And then the last comparison I'll make is Red Dead Redemption 2, actually. It's the last time that I've played a game that felt this like just endlessly committed to historical accuracy and detail and to just like really building things out.

• 1:12:37Kirk Hamilton?

  In Act 2, you arrive in Kutenberg, which is a real city. And it's massive. It's like the first time you really get to a city. And it is unbelievable. I've never seen a city recreated like this in a video game. I just walked around looking at the architecture because this is such a work of like, you can tell, I mean, this is a Czech studio. This is made by Warhorse Studio. These are Czech developers who are clearly really committed to like creating the history of their, you know, of their nation and of their people and like showing what these cities looked like, whatever, hundreds of years ago. And it's so cool. I mean, I've never seen anything like it. Trosi Castle is the same way. You're inside and I'm like, I feel like I am actually visiting this castle because this is exactly

• 1:13:19Kirk Hamilton?

  what it looked like. And you just can't, I don't know, it's so much more interesting than your average video game town or your average video game castle, just because it was real and it shows in all these little weird architectural ways. So, I don't know, I could go on and on. And I probably will. Like I said, there's more to say about this game. It really is one of the most interesting games I've played in a long time. And I'm still going in it. I mean, it's still got its hooks in me and I am still really enjoying it. But yeah, it is, wow, it's, it's really something else. It's not like any other video game I've ever played, even though I just made all those comparisons to other games. Like it's very much its own thing. And, and I just think it's fascinating and, and really cool.

• 1:13:57Jason Schreier?

  Do you think we would like it?

• 1:13:58Speaker 02

  Like, I don't think I would like it. I'm gonna go ahead and say I would probably not enjoy it. But I will say, I think it's interesting that a lot of your comparisons, besides Red Dead, are fantasy worlds. And I feel like this is kind of what Kingdom Comes' claim to fame is. And I think that's cool, that they're like, "We're really gonna be grounded in reality." And for good or ill, like, you're gonna have to figure it out.

• 1:14:21Kirk Hamilton?

  For good, I would say, almost entirely. I mean, yeah, I think that's right. It really underlines how often the medieval settings that we engage with in video games

• 1:14:31Speaker 02

  Have dragons.

• 1:14:31Kirk Hamilton?

  Also are fantasy. They also have dragons. And like, this shows that you don't need that. Like, you can just tell a really interesting story that's based in history, that's in the real world, and it'll be like, totally entertaining. Even if you're just like, holding sacks for someone, it winds up feeling interesting. Things that would feel like, like, "Oh, this is the interesting mundane side quest that we're doing in the otherwise really high fantasy game. In this game, it's the main event, but that actually really works." To your question, Jason, I really just don't know. I think the game is so interesting and cool. Like, I just don't know. I mean, it's really fun. I think it's a, it's a good game. Like, it is really different. It definitely requires a big commitment. It's not like mechanically super thrilling. It's the opposite of Silksong.

• 1:15:12Kirk Hamilton?

  I mean, the sword fighting is like, very weird and doesn't feel good. I've gotten better at it.

• 1:15:17Speaker 02

  That's the Skyrim inspiration.

• 1:15:19Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. And I, it's just, it's even weirder. Like, it's really frustrating at first. And it definitely has a lot of that kind of janky oddness to it, especially in the mechanics. It just like, does not have a great game feel. But that's not really the point. I mean, the thrill of the game is this like, expanding social simulation. This feeling of like, growing community and like, narrative complexity. And, and the history of it, too. To know that these are real people, these are real places, is like, super interesting. I mean, so much of the medieval history that I'm aware of is English history, specifically. Like, Arthurian England. And, you know, we've played plenty of games that are set in England or sort of explore English history. Assassin's Creed Valhalla being, being a notable one.

• 1:16:03Kirk Hamilton?

  But this is like, it's just interesting because it's more Central Europe, you know? Bohemia, it's this different part of the world. And as a result, you're kind of interacting with people from different parts of the world as well. And that just feels different. It's so interesting, like that alone really kind of supercharges my interest in it. And I've been reading history and learning about who these people were.

• 1:16:22Speaker 02

  That's awesome.

• 1:16:23Kirk Hamilton?

  And what happened during this time period, which was like a really interesting time period. Like, the Holy Roman Empire was just fascinating.

• 1:16:29Speaker 02

  I think I would like that part, but I feel like all the friction at the beginning of the game, maybe I'm scared for no reason, but I just read so many articles from people being like, I lost all my stuff in this game and it was great. And I'm like, really? It sounds horrible.

• 1:16:42Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I think that's overblown. I think that that stuff is overblown. And I mean, it's worth mentioning just because I'm sure some people listening will think, oh, man, is it so hardcore? Like, all the things I mentioned, those frictional bits.

• 1:16:52Speaker 02

  And like tedious, like, is it tedious?

• 1:16:55Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, I guess, but no. I mean, not really. Like, that stuff is, it's just, what do you think of as tedious? Like, I think.

• 1:17:02Speaker 02

  Tough question.

• 1:17:03Kirk Hamilton?

  What I want to underline is that it takes things that you may think would be tedious, but by grounding them in reality, they stop feeling that way. So doing chores for someone or cleaning up or, I don't know, going to a wedding and figuring out how to sneak booze out of the cellar without anybody noticing, or fighting in a big battle, but then afterwards also spending probably even more time cleaning up after the battle and helping tend to the wounded through a series of like complex interactions. Those things could feel tedious, but they don't because in the context of the game, they actually are just fun. Like, they're kind of interesting. And then the more you play it, the more, or the more I played it, the more I got on its wavelength and just really enjoyed that. But I do think that the stuff like, oh, you lose all your gear. If you get dirty, people won't talk to you.

• 1:17:48Kirk Hamilton?

  Like, that's a little overblown. And that stuff is there. It's fun. It kind of flushes out the world, but it's not like a major consideration. Like, there are these little wash bins you can just wash yourself in all over the place. And you just walk up to them and hit a button and, you know, you wash yourself off. And then you're clean and no one cares. Like, it's, and like I said, it's so easy to really quickly like max out your stats and become super powerful, that it becomes more about just the stories in the world and the characters and all that.

• 1:18:13Jason Schreier?

  Okay, that's Kingdom Come Deliverance 2. You'll hear more about that soon, of Kirk has his druthers. In the meantime, that is it for this week's episode. Thank you again to everyone who sent in questions. Thank you to everyone who supports us and thank you for listening. See you all next time.

• 1:18:28Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, see you next time.

• 1:18:30Speaker 02

  Bye.

• 1:18:33Kirk Hamilton?

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

• 1:19:31Jason Schreier?

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