What's The Deal With: Civilization Games?

Civilization VII is out this week, and it's time to break down Sid Meier's iconic series. Kirk, Jason, and Maddy talk about their favorite games in the franchise, what "4X" actually means, and why Civ games are so appealing to so many people.

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

• 0:04Jason Schreier?

  Folks, it's time we get into the rise and fall of civilization. Sid Meier civilization. Welcome to TripleClick where we bring the games to you. This week, we are talking about Civ 7 and 4X games, which you will not believe what 4X stands for. So let's put on our strategy mouse pads and let's go. I'm Jason Schreier.

• 0:32Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm Kirk Hamilton.

• 0:33Speaker 02

  And I'm Maddy Myers.

• 0:35Jason Schreier?

  Hello. Hello, my friends.

• 0:37Kirk Hamilton?

  Hey, hello friends.

• 0:38Speaker 02

  We're back.

• 0:38Jason Schreier?

  Welcome back.

• 0:40Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 0:41Jason Schreier?

  I hope you guys are having a good winter. As we record this, my kid's school was canceled because there was freezing rain outside, which is like a pretty poor excuse for a snow day, I gotta say.

• 0:52Speaker 02

  Not fun. Can't build a snowman. It is snowing here, but it's not the kind of snow that looks fun to play in. We're pretty close together, Jason, so I think I'm getting the same, same snow as you.

• 1:03Jason Schreier?

  Same wintry mix. Yeah. Everything, everything is like colder.

• 1:07Kirk Hamilton?

  It's actually been snowing in Portland, too.

• 1:08Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 1:09Kirk Hamilton?

  Just saying. Northwest getting a little bit of snow. It's been very cold.

• 1:13Jason Schreier?

  Congratulations. And hey, if you like our weather talk and you want more of it, you should become a Maximum Fun member and help us make this show possible. Did you guys know, Kirk, Maddie, did you guys know that we don't have ads on TripleClick? I just found this out.

• 1:26Speaker 02

  Thank goodness. Yeah. That's really good news, because I don't care for ads on a podcast.

• 1:31Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, well, I assume the three of us have never actually listened to this show, so we don't realize that there are no ads. But there are no ads.

• 1:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. Even Kirk doesn't listen. He just slams the tracks together.

• 1:40Kirk Hamilton?

  Get some ads in there.

• 1:41Jason Schreier?

  Well, he uses the waveforms and just edits like based on what it looks like.

• 1:45Kirk Hamilton?

  Visually. It's like Minority Report.

• 1:47Jason Schreier?

  Visual edits. If you do want to make this show possible, we are entirely listener supported, so you can support us by going to maximumfun.org/join, becoming a member, and you make the show happen, and you will also get extra stuff for your money. You will get our bonus content. Every single month, we release a new bonus episode. We just released a great chat about Metaphor Refentazio, where we go deep on the story of that game. And there's a whole backlog full of stuff, dozens of bonus episodes that you can check out. From us talking about games to movies to just kind of random aspects of our lives. Including our own kind of personal journeys that got us to where we are today and much, much more.

• 2:31Jason Schreier?

  So, hey, go to maximumplan.org/join, become a member. All right, today, we are talking about Civilization.

• 2:42Jason Schreier?

  Civilization VII just came out.

• 2:44Speaker 02

  The video game, not just Civilization as a whole.

• 2:47Jason Schreier?

  We're talking about the end of Civilization as a whole, yes.

• 2:52Speaker 02

  Civilization, are we still doing it?

• 2:54Jason Schreier?

  Is it still a thing? Nobody knows.

• 2:56Kirk Hamilton?

  It is kind of hard to talk about Civilization without talking at least some about Civilization.

• 3:00Speaker 02

  No, I know. Sure, we can get into that.

• 3:03Jason Schreier?

  We can get into that.

• 3:03Speaker 02

  Empires, they rise, they fall.

• 3:06Kirk Hamilton?

  I guess they're both capital C Civilization, so maybe one is italic Civilization and then one is non-italic Civilization. And that's how we know whether it's the game.

• 3:14Speaker 02

  Small c Civilization.

• 3:16Jason Schreier?

  Capital C, right, capital G gamer and capital italics gamer and non-italic gamer. So, yeah, so today we're talking about Civilization. Civilization VII from Foraxis Games has just come out. It's the latest entry in the iconic franchise. The strategy franchise created by the legendary game designer Sid Meier. In fact, his name is still on the titles. Technically, it's called Sid Meier Civilization VII.

• 3:41Speaker 02

  It's great.

• 3:42Jason Schreier?

  Which I think is fantastic because it's so funny.

• 3:45Kirk Hamilton?

  Is that the longest standing name? I mean, aside from, I guess, like Madden or something that's ever been in a game title?

• 3:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, especially like when it's the person who was working on the game, like.

• 3:56Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, who made it, an author's name. I mean, every Hideo Kojima game is a game by Hideo Kojima, but that's a little less official.

• 4:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, I guess so.

• 4:07Kirk Hamilton?

  It's not the title of the game. Metal Gear 3 isn't called Metal Gear Solid 3: A Game by Hideyokojima. That's not what the Wikipedia page says.

• 4:13Jason Schreier?

  No, it's not. That's, I was just kidding around.

• 4:15Speaker 02

  It's funny that like, we're okay with it when Sid Meyer does it. I mean, we'll let him have it, you know?

• 4:20Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, oh, I mean, more than okay.

• 4:22Speaker 02

  I feel like people kind of make fun of Kojima for that. And he puts his name in the credits and all, but like Sid Meyer, you know? Respected guy.

• 4:28Jason Schreier?

  Well, so I was gonna say, one of the reasons it's so funny and one of the reasons it's accepted is because Sid Meyer is kind of widely, everyone who knows him says he's the most humble, like gentle, like kind-hearted guy on the planet.

• 4:41Speaker 02

  Doesn't that make it funnier? Like, he's so humble.

• 4:43Jason Schreier?

  He's like the opposite of an egocentric, yeah. I did a profile for, on him for Kotaku a while ago, like 10 years ago or something like that.

• 4:50Kirk Hamilton?

  I remember that.

• 4:51Jason Schreier?

  And I spoke to his former business partner, Wild Bill Seeley. And he told me, if I remember correctly, he told me that like, it was his suggestion. Like, he wanted, he was pushing Sid Meyer to do it. Cause he was all about branding and like, making sure your name is on there. Like, making sure that it can't be taken from you, et cetera, et cetera. So it was really someone else who convinced Sid Meyer it was a good idea. And it worked out. I mean, like, in terms of just kind of ownership, creative ownership, it's kind of a smart idea to be like, this is the person in charge. But Sid Meyer, no longer, he's still a consultant at Faraxis, but he's not like directing the games anymore. This game, the most recent Civilization games, it is. The most recent Civilization games have been directed by a guy named Ed Beach.

• 5:33Jason Schreier?

  They're made by Faraxis, also the home of XCOM and the underappreciated, except by this podcast, Marvel's Midnight Suns. And this new game is really interesting. It really switches up the formula in a lot of ways. I played the most of it. We can get into it a little bit, cause I know you two haven't played a ton of it. But we're also gonna broaden out and talk about these kind of, what are called a 4X strategy games, which are these kind of grid-based, turn-based strategy games that require real big picture, macro level thinking. And we're gonna talk about some of our own experiences with 4X games, with these kind of Civ-like games. And just talk about the genre in general. But let's start out.

• 6:16Jason Schreier?

  By just kind of talking about the new game Civ 7. Have either of you spent any time with it or is it really just me who's played it so far?

• 6:25Speaker 02

  I've played a little bit, but I don't think I'm as far as you. I have a civilization in Egypt. It's cooking. It's coming along.

• 6:34Jason Schreier?

  Are you still on the first age?

• 6:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I am. I'm still the first age, which that makes it sound like I'm just at the beginning and I've barely put any time in. But you can actually put hours and hours into the game, still not have gotten to the second age yet. Just a single game of civilization is untold hours of your life, but hey, I'm enjoying it. It's coming back to me in the sense that, and we're going to get into it, I got very into Civ 5 for a period of time. And that was one of my, I think, first and only 4X games that I ever played. And so Civ 7 is really bringing back the things I loved about it. It's more complicated. There are like a billion leaders that you can choose. And one of the big changes this time is that you can choose a leader of your civilization that isn't like region locked

• 7:19Speaker 02

  or civ locked, as they say, you can just have any leader running any, any other place. Like I could be starting out in Egypt and have Napoleon be in charge. That just seems weird to me personally. It's not how I'm doing it, but you can do that. And then you can just stick with your leader throughout all the ages. But yeah, I'm having a good time so far, but I want to hear from you, Jason, because you've played more than I have.

• 7:42Jason Schreier?

  Well, so it's not just that you change civilizations every time there's a new age. This game is pretty weird. There's a lot of new stuff to it. So typically the way a game of civilization works and traditionally has worked is you have a civ. Sometimes you have a leader attached to that civ in the more modern games. And you play from like the ancient Stone Age and Bronze Age all the way through the modern era. And the game ends either when you lose all your cities and you get wiped out or you fulfill a win condition, which could be a number of different things. Could be a cultural win and victory, or it could be a scientific victory, a diplomatic victory, et cetera. Or another player, another faction gets the win condition. This game functions differently and I'm still trying to wrap my head around exactly what it all means.

• 8:26Jason Schreier?

  And it is, it is like, so the game is broken into these three ages and each age is kind of like a mini game in and of its, like a game of civilization in itself. And, and then like after each one ends, you can switch Civs. So like I started one game as, what was it? It was like Rome, the Roman Empire. And then in my next game, it was like, okay, Benjamin Franklin, my leader of the Roman Empire is now. Amazing.

• 8:56Kirk Hamilton?

  Wait a minute, Benjamin Franklin was, he was also the leader of my Roman Empire.

• 8:59Jason Schreier?

  Oh, nice. That's.

• 9:00Kirk Hamilton?

  It's very funny that we picked the same combination.

• 9:02Jason Schreier?

  And then in the next age, I took over Spain. I was Benjamin Franklin, the leader of Spain in the next, next section.

• 9:09Kirk Hamilton?

  Ben Franklin spoke a lot of languages. He was a, a real man of the, of the world.

• 9:13Jason Schreier?

  Well, when you, when you pick the new Civ between each age, you actually see like Benjamin Franklin would fit in here because this, this and this. So it does say stuff like what you just said. So yeah, it's really interesting and I'm still not sure what to make of it all. I've only played through one game, which means I've only played like 15 hours of it. And it seems cool to me. It's just that like the, it's so hard to get into, which I think is really the crux of what I wanted to talk about today, which I, I think that with these games, a lot of games have pretty high barriers for entries. In fact, I would say most games do, but even by that standard civilization games are really, really unapproachable. They're really tough to get into.

• 9:57Jason Schreier?

  You have to understand and learn a lot of systems and it can be really easy to not have a good time with the game because you don't understand half of what's happening and you're just kind of going through the motions, trying to make decisions, but not really understanding the outcomes or the kind of consequences of the decisions you're making. Sid Meier once kind of infamously, iconically said, a video game is a series of interesting decisions, but those decisions are not interesting if you don't understand them. That second part is, is, is me, not Sid Meier. Yeah. His quote ended in, interesting decisions. So, um, yeah, I mean, I think it's, it's worth saying, I don't know if this is the true, is true for a lot of people, but it's true for the three of us that each.

• 10:36Jason Schreier?

  Of us kind of had our own 4X or Civ like game that we got really into and kind of learned and understood. And I think that for a lot of people, um, once you're into your one game, it's hard to like go to another one because you've already mastered that one. But I don't know, there are also a lot of people who just keep playing from new Civ to new Civ. I, I assume that a lot of those people are just kind of like, they're strategy gamers and that is their genre. But I don't want to generalize. I want to talk about our own experiences. So Kirk, you're a Civ 5 head. Is that true?

• 11:12Kirk Hamilton?

  That was the Civilization that I played the most of. Yeah, it was pretty early on when I was writing at Kotaku. I just decided to give it a go and had, I think, the quintessential Civilization experience of firing it up at 10 a.m. on a Saturday and then realizing that it was 8 p.m. on that Saturday and I hadn't done any of the things I had planned to do because I was growing my Brazilian empire and taking over the world. And yeah, I, I don't have a, a big history with 4X games. In fact, I didn't know what 4X stood for. The two of you know what 4X stands for? I always thought that it was something related to map positioning, but no. 4X stands for explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate, which are the four things that you try to do in these games.

• 11:52Speaker 02

  I found this out like two months ago. I'm acting like, oh yeah, I've always known. No, Kirk, I also found this out very recently.

• 11:57Kirk Hamilton?

  So I'm sure 4X fans will be, you know, that's old hat to them, but I also have a feeling there are some listeners out there who just said, no, that's not what it stands for. It's, it's related to the four directions. You can go north, southeast, and west or something. That's just what I always thought. So.

• 12:12Jason Schreier?

  You know, the one, this is the one video game where you can go north, south, east, or west.

• 12:15Speaker 02

  Normally you can only go two or three.

• 12:17Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. You know, it's, I think, I think people think of these games as being map based in some way and it did.

• 12:22Speaker 02

  No, I mean, that makes sense to me. I feel like I also thought it was related to that.

• 12:27Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, it's important to say like, I've never thought that that totally made sense, especially because there are hex, you're moving on a hex grid in Civilization, so it's not even 4X, it's 6X. And I remember thinking, why is it called 4X? Anyways, whatever, that's not that important. I just thought it was funny. And as ominous as those four words sound, I think they are true to what you try to do. You explore, you expand, you try to like grow your kingdom and find new parts of the map. You exploit the resources that are available to you and try to, you know, develop your civilization and you exterminate. There's a lot of warfare in these games. And that's kind of that last one is what I want to talk about.

• 13:04Jason Schreier?

  This is also, uh, my throw pillows are embroidered with explore and exploit exterminate.

• 13:10Speaker 02

  That would actually be great.

• 13:11Jason Schreier?

  It's the eat, pray, love for the modern gamer.

• 13:14Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 13:14Kirk Hamilton?

  Exactly.

• 13:15Speaker 02

  We're gonna put that into the Max Fun Store any day now.

• 13:21Kirk Hamilton?

  That last one is what I want to talk about because I think that you're right, Jason, in that this game becomes most interesting, or these games become most interesting, once you understand all of the systems that are available to you and you start tailoring your civilization to a certain type of victory, a cultural victory, a technology victory, or a military victory. But at the same time, that first time that I played Civ 5 when I really fell into it, I did what I would guess a lot of people do, and I just pursued a military victory. I just went after that last X, exterminate, and I exterminated all in front of me, except for the city-states that would bow before me and scrape and become a part of my global Brazilian empire.

• 14:02Kirk Hamilton?

  And I think that that game is really fun on its own. It's fun and almost more of a, I suppose it's turn-based, but it feels similar to me in the way that I used to play Starcraft and Warcraft, where I would just build up a massive army of all of these complex units and then just swarm across the map and, you know, conquer everyone in sight. And that was actually really satisfying, even though I had all these advisors coming up and saying, "Hey, you know, you shouldn't invest in this technology," or, "You know, we should build a new great wonder of the world." And I'd say, "Yeah, sure, whatever. I need to build more trebuchets because I'm gonna go kill these fools next to me." And I think that's a really fun game.

• 14:37Jason Schreier?

  And that's the American way.

• 14:39Speaker 02

  Well, it's the Brazilian way, or the Egyptian way, or whatever.

• 14:43Kirk Hamilton?

  It was American at the wheel in the end, I think.

• 14:47Kirk Hamilton?

  But I think that's the way that a lot of people find their way into these games is first they do a military campaign and they win. And then if they keep playing, they start trying to go for other win conditions.

• 14:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, that is also what I did. That's a very familiar story.

• 15:03Jason Schreier?

  I'm curious what it is about Civ 5 that appealed to the two of you. Is it just that it was for, it was your first one that you like really seriously started playing?

• 15:15Kirk Hamilton?

  The right game at the right time, I think, partly for me.

• 15:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, that's kind of coincidental because I feel like that's my answer too. I think some of it was also that I had a pretty powerful computer at the time, although some of my strongest memories of Civ 5 are actually playing it on the laptop I had because it worked relatively well on a laptop as, as just like, you know, with all the settings turned down. And I remember I had a friend who was house-sitting at the time and he'd just invite a bunch of people over. It was like this huge mansion. And I remember like playing Civ on my laptop and going there and hanging out with people doing LAN parties and stuff. And that, those are like really just strong 2010s memories that I have. So I don't know what it was. I think it was just that like somebody in my life was like,

• 15:59Speaker 02

  this is a really cool game. You'll, you like Starcraft, you like these other strategy games. Have you ever played Civilization? And I'd never had. And that just happened to be the one that was out when I had a computer that could run it, or two computers that could run it. Also, I had a psychic link with Kirk Hamilton at the time, even though we didn't know each other yet.

• 16:18Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. We knew we were going to play the same games. So talk about them in 10 years.

• 16:21Speaker 02

  We were going to be friends later.

• 16:22Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I think that Civ 5 is widely seen as a golden age for Civ and that most people, as I understand it, still talk about that game as the peak for the series. Also, I played some of the expansions, Gods and Kings and Brave New World for that game, both of which were fantastic and flushed it out even further. And it just feels, to me at least, and it's hard to say because I didn't play that much Six, I kind of bounced off it. And while I haven't said yet, I've played a bit of the first age, my Benjamin Franklin-led Roman Empire in Civ 7 and had a similar feeling of, I've kind of done this before. I'm sure it's going to be a little bit different, but I'm not, I don't know that I have this in me right now. So I've had a similar feeling with Six and Seven. So I don't, I can't say for certain, but I get the feeling that Five was just such

• 17:06Kirk Hamilton?

  a strong example of this kind of game design that a lot of people still think of it as the best one and the one they put the most time into.

• 17:14Jason Schreier?

  So I had a very different experience. So I grew up playing some of these games and the ones that I grew up with, I'm actually still to this day, like, could jump into and play, play hours and hours of.

• 17:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, this tracks.

• 17:27Kirk Hamilton?

  And then you proselytize to your grade school classroom about these games.

• 17:31Jason Schreier?

  Yes, you guys, yeah, you remember that story.

• 17:32Kirk Hamilton?

  Of course I remember. How could I forget that story?

• 17:34Jason Schreier?

  Sid Meier's Colonization, which is one of the two, and the other one is Alpha Centauri, which is a little bit more modern, but still pretty old at this point. And I think for me at least, one of the reasons that I'm still really into both of those games is because I understand them both so well. And it's been so many years of playing them that I just like know every single nook and cranny. Like I could tell you in Colonization, for example, which problematic game for, for various reasons, but putting that aside, I could tell you what every single founding father you get can do and give you and why some are more useful than others and when you should pick some and not others. Or I could tell you like how an Indian tribe will react, or Native American tribe, they're

• 18:19Jason Schreier?

  called Indians in the game, will react if you do X, Y, and Z. And I think having that understanding, like I said before, just allows you to make such more educated decisions that they wind up becoming a lot more interesting along the way. The same way that if you're playing, I don't know, Bellatro, which is another game about constantly making interesting decisions. The decisions are a lot more interesting when you understand, like, okay, I know I'm gonna face this boss soon that has this power, so it would be helpful for me to, to get this planet card now as opposed to this new Joker and so on and so forth. Like, once you understand it, it's a lot more interesting. And the barrier franchise for these later games has just been really like not, I guess, not worth the time for

• 19:02Jason Schreier?

  me, not worth the investment. And whenever I'm playing them, I just get the urge to play one of the two older games that I just like know like the back of my hand. Already. It's funny, by the way, I make that Balotro comparison. I think it was Russ Freshdick, Kirk, you mentioned this. Russ Freshdick said that like a Civ game is like a rogue-like where each run takes 40 hours.

• 19:21Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, this is a third-hand quote, but Russ did say that to me, yeah. Which I thought was a really apropos way to describe one of these games.

• 19:29Speaker 02

  Just how it feels.

• 19:30Jason Schreier?

  I think, yeah, very funny and also very insightful. And the thing about rogue-likes is they kind of, I think you, they, they really play by that same, they have that same nature to them where you really have to understand them deeply before you can really get the most out of them. Balotro is the same way. Slave Aspire, Hades, any of these games, like when you're first starting them and learning the systems, they're not nearly as interesting because you don't even know what your choices mean. Like, you're, you're choosing between powers on the next door in Hades. If you don't even know what the icons mean, then those choices don't mean anything to you. And playing a new Civ game kind of feels like that, where you see this list of like, scientific progress to choose from, and you're just like, I don't even know what any of these are, or why they matter. And so the

• 20:13Jason Schreier?

  decisions are so much less interesting, and it's much harder to get into. Which is a really, I think, a tough thing about this genre, is like, you have to know and learn so much before it can even get good.

• 20:25Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I think the time commitment of each run is, is really the important differentiator. Because in Hades or Balotro, you start that game, and you kind of know that you're signing up for a run-based game, and it, it meets you with an expected rhythm. So you play through Hades, and you die. Maybe you make it to the first boss, maybe you don't, but you die, you restart, and then the game is built around the loop, especially Hades, this is true, where you're back, you know, in the first Hades, you're back in the underworld, you talk to Hades, there's some new lines of dialogue, some things open up to you, you go again, and you start to understand that it really has that rogue-like, rogue-like rhythm, where you're, you're expanding and you're learning more as you go. And each

• 21:08Kirk Hamilton?

  run doesn't really take that long, and it's not until later that you're really committing to long runs, where it feels like you have enough information to make all the choices and understand the stakes of each fight. Balotro is really similar, where you kind of start out, at first, you're just sort of losing, and then you get going. And actually, it's a bit of a challenging thing about that game, that once you get really good at it, Like, I win every time now, but because of that, every game of Balotar that I play takes a really long time. I don't know, 45 minutes or an hour? So it winds up being a way bigger time suck for me. And so Civ kind of demands that you start. Your first run is going to take many hours. And that, I think, that is a challenge. And I wonder, Jason, since you've played the most of Civ 7,

• 21:53Kirk Hamilton?

  do you get the sense that this new design, this new approach to ages, is kind of trying to alleviate that, to make it feel like, okay, you finished one age, now you can take everything that you've learned and kind of start a new run, even though it's technically still the first run?

• 22:08Jason Schreier?

  I'm not sure. I haven't spent enough time with it to really get my head around what the ages mean. Like, it said a lot of stuff about what carries over, what doesn't, what's obsolete. You can buy, you can build certain structures in each of your cities, for example, that is quote unquote "ageless", which means it will stick with you into the subsequent ages. But I'm still not sure, like, what the benefits of each one would actually be and whether it's optimal to go in certain directions. I just don't know. I just don't, again, my steam clock is like 15 hours of this game, and I still barely have grasped any of it. So for me, it's kind of like, it's that time commitment you mentioned. When you are playing a roguelike where each run takes 40 hours, and if you're expected to play five or six runs at the very least

• 22:53Jason Schreier?

  before you actually learn it, that can be really challenging. And I wonder how many kind of casual players can even get into this franchise as a result of that?

• 23:03Speaker 02

  I don't know that that was my experience when I first started playing Civ, though. And maybe that's because I'd already played some other strategy games. But I remember feeling immediately like it was addicting, which is a whole other piece of it that I think does kind of propel you forward to the extent that you would continue playing.

• 23:25Jason Schreier?

  You're talking about Civ 5?

• 23:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 23:27Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, so I think Civ 7 is a lot more complex and sprawling than Civ 5.

• 23:31Speaker 02

  That's fair. I'm just speaking to, like, just the general idea of these games are hard to get into, which I don't disagree with, but I think it does a few Things to reward you along the way and make it clear when you're successful emotionally, even if you are in that position where you're like, I don't really know what it means to build a wonder of the world, or how's that going to benefit me? Or like Kirk was describing, the, the, the early player experience, you know, most, most of these games are gonna be about military conquering. So if you've never played one of these before, you might be heading into it being like, I'm gonna build a bunch of trebuchets. I'm gonna build a bunch of soldiers. I understand what that means in a video game, but the game also feels rewarding to do that. And like, you know, gives you all those, those pop ups when you're building stuff and you get

• 24:16Speaker 02

  to see this, the screen get bigger and bigger and you get to move your guys around, even if you're like, this is your first ever Civ game, that is a rewarding feeling to, and I, I find that a little dark as well. I mean, we are, we aren't really getting into that piece of it. And, and I think the game also then tries to push back on that. Once you've completed a military run and is like, well, there's all these other ways you can play the game and they feel really different, like doing a scientific run or a cultural run or whatever. And those are different ways to approach the idea of civilization. Maybe it's not all about expansionism and conquering other lands and forcing them to assimilate to you and/or die. But like,

• 24:58Speaker 02

  civilization definitely has a political slant to it that we haven't really got into. But I also think baseline, it's addicting.

• 25:04Jason Schreier?

  In Civ seven, it's like, so I did a cultural, I tried to do a cultural victory. And in the first age, you do, you get a cultural, like you're incentivized to build wonders. And that's how like you start building up towards a cultural victory. Then you get to the second age and it's like, oh, religion is here. Okay. Spread your religion to every other nation. And that is how you get a cultural victory. You're like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

• 25:29Kirk Hamilton?

  Exterminate the nonbelievers.

• 25:32Speaker 02

  I mean, that does take the words cultural victory to a different level. And I mean, a lot of civilization is like, makes you think. Like that's, that's what it's trying to do is make you question some of your impulses when you're playing a game like this. Or even just thinking back on history. I mean, I interviewed at Beach for Polygon and like, he made no secret of that. Like, first of seven, this is a recent interview. Like, every person making this game is a history dork. Like, this is what they're interested in. And they're very, very engaged with working with consultants, making things historically accurate, but also trying to be like, hey, let's question the way that empires rose and fell according to how we

• 26:15Speaker 02

  assume it's gonna go. And can we build a game that subverses expectations and makes you question those things? All of that is in the game. It's just that the game also seems to acknowledge your own dark impulses at the same time and is willing to reward them so you learn the game. But then also is like, okay, but doesn't that make you feel kind of bad? Now that you forced everyone to convert?

• 26:38Kirk Hamilton?

  Historians acknowledge that Gandhi had an itchy trigger finger and loved launching nukes. So how can we put that into the game?

• 26:44Speaker 02

  I mean, that is also, yeah, that was something that I was like, are we gonna talk about the Gandhi meme? Because that is also great, that-

• 26:50Kirk Hamilton?

  Just a funny thing. But yeah, I think that that's the part of this game where you're doing diplomacy with famous world leaders from history. And then, yeah, Gandhi is threatening to nuke your nation is just a very funny and slightly surreal, but also educational part of the game. And it's neat that they've fleshed out the leaders, you know, that they're telling you more about Ben Franklin. I just watched that, the show Franklin on Apple TV. Did you guys watch that? With Michael Douglas playing Ben Franklin? It was really good. I didn't, I didn't know that much about Ben Franklin, and I won't sidetrack us. But anyways, that was why I picked him is because I've kind of become a new-

• 27:25Speaker 02

  You're a Franklin head now?

• 27:27Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 27:28Kirk Hamilton?

  Newly become a fan of Ben Franklin. He's a very interesting guy. So it's fun that they're, that they're fleshing that out.

• 27:34Jason Schreier?

  Fun fact, by the way, the, the nuclear Gandhi thing was kind of like an urban legend that there was a bug in the original civilization that made Gandhi ultra aggressive. But I interviewed Sid Meyer a few years ago, and he released his memoir, which is pretty good, by the way. And he told me, and says in the memoir, it's actually a myth. There's no such bug existed, according to Sid Meyer. And so what explains Gandhi's aggression? Well, it's a secret. He won't, he won't say.

• 27:59Kirk Hamilton?

  I think Sid Meyer is just afraid of Gandhi, personally.

• 28:03Jason Schreier?

  It's possible.

• 28:04Speaker 02

  Well, they did actually add it in to Civ 5, which I think is part of like why Civ 5, I mean, it may not be the only reason it's popular, there's many other reasons, but I know that a designer officially added in Gandhi having a propensity towards nuking people as part of that game because it had become such a meme by that point that it became canon.

• 28:21Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, Civ 5 got a lot of updates and sort of changed and grew and became so much more than it was when it launched, which I think is something that I remember people saying about Civ 6, okay, this seems cool, but we'll see if it gets as good as Civ 5. And my sense is it never quite got there. I don't know if that's true, though. And I've seen, at least in early reviews and from people who really know Civ 7, a very similar sentiment. Okay, this is interesting. It's different. I don't know if I like it that much, but we'll see what they do with it. So they do kind of grow these games over time.

• 28:51Jason Schreier?

  And it's tough that each new one has to compete with like the previous one with years of updates and support.

• 28:57Kirk Hamilton?

  Because we're not talking about these giant technological leaps or anything. I mean, all of these games kind of work on phones or playable on Switch. None of them are that demanding and they all use a very similar kind of design, so.

• 29:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, I could still play Civ 5 on my laptop.

• 29:12Kirk Hamilton?

  When I started Civ 7, I just thought to myself, man, if I wanted to play one of these, I think I would still go play Gods and Kings. You know, I would go play this fully expanded and fleshed out version of the game. And kind of looking at that a little bit more, I think that that structural difference is very interesting, that they're trying this new age structure in Civ 7. And I don't know if it is what I was theorizing earlier, that the idea is to kind of make it so that you don't have to commit so fully for such a long period of time to a single strategy. But at the same time, removing that, I don't know. Like you were saying, Matty, there is a certain thrill to watching your empire grow over this very long period of time. And I remember feeling so much investment

• 29:57Kirk Hamilton?

  and momentum.

• 29:58Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 29:59Kirk Hamilton?

  Just almost a sunk cost feeling.

• 30:01Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 30:02Kirk Hamilton?

  You know, eight or 10 hours into building my empire. And the addictiveness of these games, that one more turn feeling that you get, which is a defining aspect of. These games, the joke I made at the very beginning is a very common civilization joke. The story of starting and then realizing it's been 24 hours and you haven't eaten or showered. I think that happens to a lot of people because you get sucked into this loop. And if you break up the loop, it does make the game more approachable. It makes it possible for you to pursue different kinds of victories each age. But the cost is that you lose that incredibly addictive, rewarding feeling of just watching something build, almost like a disgusting, you know, virus spreading around the world and feeling the sick thrill of that.

• 30:48Jason Schreier?

  So, okay, in colonization, which again is one of my kind of favorite too, the one that I've spent many hundreds of hours playing over the last 30 years, which is kind of crazy. It's a little bit different. It's structured a little bit different because you are playing as one of four nations, either England, France, Spain, or the Netherlands. And you are kind of conquering the new world and building out an empire there. And then the win state, the end goal, is to take on your former country and like have your own revolution. So you fight the king. Throughout the game, by the way, the king, you keep getting pop ups that is like, the king has decided to place a tax on blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you have to keep paying taxes along the way.

• 31:32Jason Schreier?

  So it's designed to make the king irritate you enough that you do want to fight him by the end. And so you do have to have combat and you do have to have revolution is bloody. But it's not as much about the same, it's not about as much about conquering the entire world in the same way that like that was military.

• 31:52Kirk Hamilton?

  That's so interesting. So you're building up your little creation until it can become powerful enough to kill you. This is, I'm assuming what parenthood is like, Jason?

• 32:00Jason Schreier?

  Well, no, you're, you're playing as the colonists. You're not playing as the king. You're, you're playing as the colonists who are in the new world, the explorer. Like if you're.

• 32:07Speaker 02

  Right. And you're kind of in God mode.

• 32:09Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 32:09Speaker 02

  You're kind of watching.

• 32:10Kirk Hamilton?

  I was just, I was just trying to make a joke about your, your children replacing you.

• 32:14Jason Schreier?

  I, I, it's a, it's a good, good joke, but.

• 32:17Speaker 02

  It's identical to parenthood. You were right.

• 32:19Jason Schreier?

  When, when my children have a revolution in a few years, then, uh, cause I keep taxing them.

• 32:25Kirk Hamilton?

  When your son is finally a man and is ready to, to fight you.

• 32:28Jason Schreier?

  Yes. Well, in, in the Shire House, uh, we rip each other, we rip our fathers' hearts out and then eat them. And that's our ceremony.

• 32:34Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, okay. I thought you were going to say you played Smash.

• 32:38Jason Schreier?

  Oh, that's a good idea.

• 32:38Kirk Hamilton?

  We have a Smash tournament. It's not actually a physical comment.

• 32:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe replace it with that. Just a note.

• 32:44Jason Schreier?

  Maybe we should do that. And then, yeah, I mean, I think as the games have gotten more complex, you have different kinds of win states. But back in the day, there were only, there were more limited, which I do think, I think there's some kind of elegance to the simplicity and the not having so many systems. I mean, one of the things that really struck me about playing Civ 7, I haven't spent a ton of time with like, any of these games since Civ 3, really. But one of the things that really struck me is just how many different systems there are, in a way that wasn't true way back in the day. And some of them are for the better. Like, for example, diplomacy now is done in a really interesting way, where you have

• 33:26Jason Schreier?

  this new currency that's called influence, and you can use that to do actions against other factions, and it can become a really more interesting system. But you have so many other things you have to be juggling. Like, for example, I mean, in old games, you would have like, a single tech tree, and you would only have to think about like, this one tech tree. Now, it's like, a tech tree, and a civics tree, and like, all these different other kind of upgrade trees that you have to think about as you go, because you're also getting points in like, culture and diplomacy and military and stuff like that. And there's just a lot you have to think about, which, I mean, if you have that time available.

• 34:02Kirk Hamilton?

  I think it helps that the systems that are added to the game, or at least that I remember, especially from Civ 5, they track onto something that I have a general understanding of. They aren't abstract. For example, Civ 5, at some point, one of the expansions added espionage, which was a really cool, new, nonviolent, but also sort of aggressive, you know, a method that you could employ against your opponents, where you could kind of steal their progress from them. But it was risky, and it wasn't, you know, you weren't just going and conquering them, and you also weren't fully engaged in diplomacy, but it was an aspect of diplomacy. And I think, I understood it initially, or immediately, when I saw that they were adding that, just because I understand how espionage is an element of diplomacy.

• 34:45Kirk Hamilton?

  And so, I like the way that the game maps these real concepts that we're basically familiar with, onto its own, you know, simulation and systems. That all makes sense. The complexity is basically fine. I kind of just come back to the fact that if I wanted to have that experience, I would go play Civ 5. Like, that the one that I've really learned is the one I want to play, which I would imagine is true for a lot of people. And Jason, given that you have such a history with these games, I know you never have time, but I would be very interested in what you thought of the fully fleshed out Civ 5, if you ever had a chance to kind of really give it a go.

• 35:18Jason Schreier?

  I would love to. Some of the, I mean, I would love to spend a lot of time with all of these games and I would love to like go and spend 100 hours playing some of the older ones, too. There's some of the-

• 35:26Kirk Hamilton?

  Maybe next time you're firing up colonization, just try Civ 5 instead.

• 35:30Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, play Civ 5 instead. Yeah, I'm very curious to see what it's like. It's just like, again, you have to kind of, I think part of it is, part of what's difficult about getting into a new one, at least for me, is that like, not only do you already have all this knowledge about the previous ones, you also have muscle memory on the previous ones. And so you're kind of used to doing things a certain way and having a certain understanding. And I'm sure this is true for the two of you also, like Civ 5 works in a certain way, you understand it in a certain way. And when things are changed, that can kind of be disruptive to your muscle memory in a way that is true for a lot of games. Like, it's always a little bit tough to go to the sequel and find that like they do things a little bit differently in a way that you're not used to. But again, because of the complexity involved here, it just exacerbates everything. It makes it all that more difficult to get into.

• 36:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I'm sure that was a factor for me in starting Civ 7, is that I felt very overwhelmed by some of it, but also I'm remembering a different game. But Jason, I'm also curious, like, when you started getting into these games when you were much younger, was it that depth of systems that young Jason was super into? Or did you also feel like it was kind of addicting? And even when you didn't understand it, you were just like, no, I just want to do one more turn, one more turn. Which the latter is definitely where I was at. And then the later phases, I was like, that'd be cool if I knew what I was doing. But the way you talk about it, it sounds more like you were like, no, I want to fully understand this. Before I actually go any further.

• 36:58Jason Schreier?

  Well, no, I mean, as a kid. When you're a kid, you don't really think about that. Well, okay, so a couple of things. One is that as a kid, we've talked about this before, but I like, I think both of you enjoyed reading strategy guides and like for fun. And so like I had a colonization strategy guide and so read the hell out of that. And that helped me understand the game. Same with Alpha Centauri. So that helped me like just understand it. Two is when you're a kid, you have a lot more patience for just kind of like wrapping your head around these complicated rules. Three, the rules are much less complicated in those two games because there are fewer systems involved. And four, I just found them so fun and interesting and new and different that I was just able to get into them like, and then just took it, took the time to really just keep playing

• 37:41Jason Schreier?

  and playing and playing until I understood it. And then five, there were, options were more limited when you're a kid and you don't own every game in the world and there aren't as many games coming out all the time. You're kind of like, well, I got Diablo and I got civilization. Might as well just go back and forth between the two of them.

• 37:58Speaker 02

  Those are kind of the greatest two games to have.

• 38:00Jason Schreier?

  Oh, yeah. It was, it was a great, great, great summers. Uh, great childhood summers.

• 38:05Speaker 02

  Big time sucks. Oh no, I don't have any other games besides the two longest games ever. Great, I could just play them forever. Kid Jason, he was set up.

• 38:17Kirk Hamilton?

  One thing that I think that Civ does well is the whole advisor system. I think that it's really nice that you have, you can kind of opt to just let the game tell you how to play it. And that's something, you know, I mean, you have that in SimCity as well. A lot of these complex games with lots of different systems, they do make it so that you don't have to learn all of the systems right away. You can kind of just do what your advisors are telling you in these different fields that you're not that interested in, and then just focus on the one way of playing. And I've always found that useful. I'm sure they've fleshed it out even more, you know, in the, in the current game, but I think that that's, that's one concession to the fact that no new player can keep all of these systems straight, is that there are these people who just pop up and kind of tell you what to do, which I've always appreciated.

• 38:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I think you can turn that off too. If you're like, I already understand it and, or I've played this multiple times and I want these characters to stop being there.

• 39:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. There's kind of a, you know, I would think that a new Civ game lands very differently for the person who's put a thousand hours into the previous Civ game versus the person who, like one of us, has maybe put 50 or 60 hours in. I played a whole bunch of Civ 5, but at the same time. To me, a whole bunch of a game is maybe 50 or 60 hours or something. But that was just a couple of runs through the game. So I still, I was by no means a master. I barely, I felt like I barely explored the expansions. And so when Civ 6 came out, I was, you know, my first thought was, well, I still have another couple hundred hours I could put into Civ 5. But if you're a person who like, that's your game. You only played Civ 5 and you have a thousand hours in it.

• 39:50Kirk Hamilton?

  You're so intimately familiar with everything and every leader and every system. Then when you get a new Civ, you're, you're ready to rock. You're immediately reading it and tracking it and figuring out all the differences. And you have a very informed opinion and are kind of, you know, you already have such a strong sense of how the games work. And I think there are a lot of people like that. And I would imagine those are the people who are the most excited whenever there's a new one announced because they're ready. They've played so many times through that they are ready for something entirely new. Each time for me, it's a little like, I still haven't finished my last course and you're already bringing me the next one. The courses are too big.

• 40:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, I know what you mean.

• 40:27Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. It's Kai, I was talking a little bit about this last week in our PC gaming episode about that idea of like these people who are just like not, not big hardcore gamers, except for their one game.

• 40:37Kirk Hamilton?

  Civ is definitely one of those.

• 40:39Speaker 02

  Oh, it could easily be.

• 40:40Kirk Hamilton?

  Definitely one of those.

• 40:41Jason Schreier?

  All the historians and professors out there who like, don't play games except for Civ.

• 40:47Jason Schreier?

  All right, cool. Well, that's Civilization for you. Civilization in nutshell and the rise and fall there and of.

• 40:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:54Jason Schreier?

  Why don't we take a break and then we'll be back with one more thing.

• 41:00Speaker 03

  Biggie is a former WWE champion.

• 41:03Speaker 04

  He spent 10 years at the top, sharing the ring with John Cena and Roman Reigns.

• 41:08Speaker 05

  So what's next?

• 41:09Speaker 06

  When I retire, I'm going to move to the desert. I'm going to delete all my socia's. I'm going to disappear. Y'all will never hear from me again. I'm going to sit on the couch, chill and live my life.

• 41:20Speaker 03

  From the legendary tag team, The New Day.

• 41:22Speaker 04

  It's Biggie on Titans and Fights.

• 41:24Speaker 06

  I feel like I need to listen to a few episodes that you guys have because this was really enjoyable.

• 41:28Speaker 04

  Oh, no.

• 41:29Speaker 06

  Thank you so much for your time. Oh, oh, yes. Oh, yes.

• 41:32Speaker 05

  Available on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 41:38Speaker 05

  The following are real reenactments of pretend emergency calls.

• 41:45Speaker 07

  My husband, it's my husband. Calm down, please. What about your husband? He, he loops the dishwasher wrong. Please help, please help me. Where are you now, ma'am? At the kitchen table. I was with my dad. He mispronounces words intentionally.

• 42:00Speaker 03

  There are plenty of podcasts on the hunt for justice, but only one podcast has the courage to take on the silly crimes. Judge John Hodgman, the only true crime podcast that won't leave you feeling sad and bad and scared for once. Only on MaximumFun.org.

• 42:18Jason Schreier?

  And we are back. I'm gonna go first and tell us about a video game. You guys, we're gonna talk about this game more next week when we do a proper triple play, but I have to talk about Avowed because I am head over heels in love with this new game. This is from Obsidian, the, the, the long-running RPG developer behind games like Fallout New Vegas and Pillars of Eternity and South Park, the Stick of Truth.

• 42:44Speaker 02

  That's what they're best known for.

• 42:46Jason Schreier?

  It's South Park? You think so?

• 42:47Speaker 02

  I, I was kidding. Keep going.

• 42:49Kirk Hamilton?

  I mean, that was a pretty big game.

• 42:50Jason Schreier?

  Well, that was pretty, yeah.

• 42:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, I just, I don't know. I just thought it was really sweet that you listed it alongside the other ones. I know you're a South Park fan. It's not what I would have done.

• 42:58Kirk Hamilton?

  It was a good game.

• 42:59Jason Schreier?

  It was good and sold a lot of copies.

• 43:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, it's shame on me for not thinking of it first.

• 43:04Kirk Hamilton?

  People just don't like South Park. It's okay.

• 43:06Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I mean, I get that. But the part where you go into Canada and that game is, is incredible. Anyway, Avowed. So this is from, this is published by Xbox because Obsidian is now part of Xbox, developed by Obsidian, and it is an RPG that is like, on first glimpse, looks like Skyrim, because it's a first-person, just open-world-ish fantasy RPG. But it actually feels a lot different to play. The structure, I would say, it kind of feels like, I guess a good comparison point would be like Outer, it is to Skyrim what Outer Worlds is to Fallout. But it's a little bit different because this game is actually a lot more about exploration in a way that Skyrim really isn't. Like Skyrim is a game about exploring and finding locations

• 43:49Jason Schreier?

  and doing cool stuff in them. Maybe you, you get into some shenanigans with a guard or like- Steal someone's cheese or like find some uh uh house full of vampires or whatever. Wherein is this? This game is a lot more of like, oh, that looks like a little hidden nook and cranny, or that looks like something I could jump onto. Let me jump up there. And then you find some winding hidden passage that gets you to a sweet treasure chest at the end of it. And it's dense and it's super packed full of those moments, of those little exploration moments. So it's a fantasy RPG. There's a lot to it. There's a lot of story, a lot of good story stuff. There's uh character builds and weapons. You can switch between swords and shields and bows and magic

• 44:31Jason Schreier?

  and guns and um lots of cities and quests to do. But for me, this game, and the reason I'm in love with it, is all about the exploration. And um that I've enjoyed so much. God, I love playing this game so much. I'm like thirty hours in, um so I'm like almost at the end of the second uh major area. I believe there are going to be four or five of them. I've been doing pretty much every side quest and just kind of uh plopping myself in the world and just wandering around. And it's just such an enjoyable kind of like vibe experience to just walk around in this world and look at all the pretty things and slash apart monsters and uh find cool stuff.

• 45:11Jason Schreier?

  The game has a lot of uh unexpected little puzzles and secrets and environmental storytelling. There's a lot of things that you can like um set on fire to unlock new patches like uh or unlock new areas, like uh bramble patches you can you can burn up or like um gates you can freeze open. And it's just kind of a blast to play. I don't know. Something about it is really just clicked for me and I just wanna be playing it constantly.

• 45:40Jason Schreier?

  We'll talk about this more next week, but I just wanted to rave about it for a second because it's now in uh early access for people who like preorder the ultimate edition or whatever is. And I really love it. I think everybody will who who is into exploration and is into fantasy role playing games will really get a kick out of it.

• 45:58Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice.

• 45:58Jason Schreier?

  We'll talk more about it next week though, so I don't wanna.

• 46:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, we will. We all have a copy.

• 46:02Jason Schreier?

  Get too in depth. We're all playing it. We're gonna do a trip of playing next week.

• 46:06Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm a little bit cooler on it than Jason, but I do find it very pleasant.

• 46:09Jason Schreier?

  Yes.

• 46:09Kirk Hamilton?

  It's a nice game to play.

• 46:11Speaker 02

  I'm not as far, so I can't speak to it. There's too many games.

• 46:14Jason Schreier?

  We'll get more into it next week. Yeah, um and we can we can talk about the pros and cons. But that's why my rumor thing is about. It's really cool. Matty, what's yours?

• 46:22Speaker 02

  Uh, mine is a post on Tumblr that I read and I thought to myself, wow, this is a really well-written Tumblr post. And then I got to the end of the Tumblr post and I saw that it was signed by Ken Shepherd, who is a writer for Kotaku. And I was really confused about why this wasn't a post like Kotaku.com. Can't really speak to that, but I do know following all the Kotaku writers.

• 46:46Jason Schreier?

  I can say why. In 2012, Hurricane Sandy hit and we all had to publish on Tumblr because our servers weren't working and so Kotaku wasn't live.

• 46:55Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, memories.

• 46:57Jason Schreier?

  I assume that's why, right?

• 46:58Speaker 02

  That's probably why.

• 46:59Jason Schreier?

  Definitely not other shenanigans.

• 47:01Kirk Hamilton?

  A hurricane of sorts.

• 47:02Speaker 02

  A very different type of hurricane occurred whereby Kotaku writers-

• 47:07Jason Schreier?

  Hurricane Herb.

• 47:08Speaker 02

  Are blogging really cool opinion stories on Tumblr and they're not putting them on the website because, uh, I mean, Ken didn't directly tweet this or post this, but he kind of implied that the pitch hadn't been accepted by his higher-ups. I can't speak to that. I don't know the guy. I didn't actually work with him. He didn't overlap with me in my time there, but I've been reading him and really enjoying it. And I thought this post was really good. So it's called Dragon Age: The Veil Guard Just Went From A Good RPG To One Of Bioware's Most Important Games. And it's about how, well, so I should warn everyone, does spoil the end of the game. So, you know, if you don't want to read a full analysis that tells you the plot of the game, this

• 47:49Speaker 02

  isn't for you. But if you're willing to accept that, I do think it's really worth reading. And he writes about how Bioware's been really hacked to pieces this past week by EA. It's down to about 100 employees. A lot of the people who wrote Veil Guard are gone now. And he just has some, some really pithy observations about like some of the things we talked about in our Veil Guard episodes, plural, where I know I complained briefly about how all the characters get along too well. There's not very much conflict in the game. Um, he, I'll quote him here. "I joked to a friend once that The Veil Guard is a game terrified of getting canceled and as such, a lot of the grit and grime has been washed off for something shiny and polished."

• 48:32Speaker 02

  He's got a lot of great graphs in here about about that type of thing and and good analysis of like the politics in the game and how safe they feel. But I also think his conclusions about how it feels like it's written by people who kind of knew they were on their deathbed. I thought that was a really interesting take. Like, they knew this would be the last one on some level, or they were worried it would be. And they were like, what do we want to leave people with? Some idea that maybe Thetis can change, that people can change and be better. And so then the result is kind of saccharine. But now that we know that it's maybe the last Dragon Age game ever, I mean, I don't know if that's true or not, but I think it's entirely possible.

• 49:12Kirk Hamilton?

  Maybe.

• 49:12Speaker 02

  It's kind of an interesting way for it to end. And and he points out a lot of other plot points that get very tightly resolved in the game, that if they thought there'd be a sequel, that wouldn't have happened. I just thought it was a really good essay. And it's on Tumblr for some reason. So yeah, check that out. I thought it was good.

• 49:32Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice. I'll read it.

• 49:34Jason Schreier?

  Tumblr, where you go for all your gaming news.

• 49:36Speaker 02

  I mean, sometimes.

• 49:38Kirk Hamilton?

  In times of trouble.

• 49:40Jason Schreier?

  In times of hurricanes.

• 49:41Kirk Hamilton?

  Posting on Tumblr.

• 49:43Jason Schreier?

  Kirk, what's your one more thing?

• 49:44Kirk Hamilton?

  My one more thing is also an article, though it's an excerpt from a book that I haven't yet read, but am very excited to read. I have a hold of the library, along with many, many other people. So I'm waiting my turn. This is Liz Pelley's book Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist, which is new, is very buzzy, is being very discussed in the world of music in particular, but also in the world of tech, in the worlds of streaming. Anyone who's interested in this streaming age that we live in, I think, would do well to check this book out. And at the very least, to read this excerpt, which is really my one more thing. It's called The Ghosts in the Machine. It was published in this month's edition of Harper's, but you can read it online. We'll link it in the show notes. It's a fantastic read. It's an excerpt from

• 50:27Kirk Hamilton?

  the book, all about Spotify's gradual move toward inserting their own music, or music that they have somehow subsidized into a lot of their most popular playlists, in a bid to bypass the royalties that they need to pay to music publishers, and in particular, the big three music publishers, all three of whom are also stakeholders in Spotify, which is a very, I would say, a unique and and and very important business arrangement that kind of explains a lot of why Spotify is the way that it is. So this basically tells the story of how Spotify changed from when it started in

• 51:07Kirk Hamilton?

  2008 to what it is now. And basically throughout the 2010s, Spotify went from just being, "Okay, we're a music platform." It's like having a huge iTunes music library with all the albums ever, and you can just search through it and play whatever you want, which is what it was like probably when all three of us discovered it, or when we first heard about it. And then through the 2010s, they started hiring editors, and they started creating these curated playlists that people would then subscribe to and follow. And the playlists were usually really good, because the editors were experts in whatever style of music, electronic music, jazz, whatever, and knew how to pick a mix of old favorites and new stuff that you maybe never heard. And it was a really great way

• 51:49Kirk Hamilton?

  to discover music. And then, in the mid 2010s, they started introducing something called PFC, which is an internal program. This is all reported by Liz Pelly, so this is all based on her reporting. But her reporting says, and her sources tell her, that PFC is called Perfect Fit Content, which is content that was coming in from kind of mysterious sources, usually these publishing houses that didn't really exist in the way that a music publisher or a music label usually does. It didn't have a footprint, there didn't seem to be obvious individuals associated with it. And so, they would be getting these just chill, like, kind of lo-fi hip-hop, or chill-wave electronic ambient, or piano-jazz

• 52:32Kirk Hamilton?

  that's just really, really chill. And they'd be adding them to these playlists, like, here are some names. If you've been on Spotify, you've probably seen these Deep Focus, Ambient Relaxation, Bossa Nova Dinner, 100% Lounge. These are playlists that you put on if you're having a dinner party and you just want some nice Bossa Nova music. I totally can, I mean, I put on "Get Gilberto" for some Bossa Nova when we're having dinner. And I can totally imagine just being, looking and finding that playlist and being, "Bossa Nova Dinner, perfect." You put it on, some nice chill acoustic guitar comes on, and it just plays all through your dinner in the background. So, those playlists increasingly through the 2010s became almost entirely- Some of them almost entirely populated with PFC,

• 53:14Kirk Hamilton?

  which was music that, as it turns out, is published by these kind of anonymous publishers that hire musicians to create music that then is made in some kind of a partnership, and it's not totally clear what, with Spotify, where the royalties that Spotify is paying them are not the same as the royalties they would have to pay to, for example, whichever the majors owns gets Gilberto and you listen to Girl from Ipanema. They have to pay a lot more money for that play than they would for one of these anonymous plays. So it's a, this article is a very, very interesting recounting of that story and of the way that Spotify is gradually moving in this really weird direction, basically.

• 53:56Kirk Hamilton?

  They're almost going to become an anonymous background noise, like app, like a service that just provides almost white noise, just stuff to study by or to put on at the gym or in the background at your office. And then the stuff that you go and listen to, weirdos like, I'm guessing the three of us, who get on there and look up the new album from your favorite artist and listen to it, that's just kind of the storefront at the top that is in no way reflective of the vast majority of the listening or the money that's happening. And that Spotify is kind of coring out the, all of the original music on its platform and replacing it with stuff that, you know, once they start making AI music, you can imagine they're very into AI, soon this will just be synthetic music entirely.

• 54:40Kirk Hamilton?

  And I have no idea what that even means for the future of Spotify as a music listening platform. It really does almost feel like they're on their way to becoming a white noise platform. That's my way of thinking of it anyways, which is a very strange, Wild. A very strange thing. Yeah, it's like the incentives of a streaming program that they put in place, the financial incentives are very clear, right? And this is true for Netflix as well. And you can see this in Netflix's shift toward more and more of their own content and how their content becomes kind of Dumbed down, there was an article I was trying to find about the average Netflix movie, I think was the term, and how there are these screenwriting and editing techniques that are used in those movies where they repeat the plot over and over and over because if you're on your phone- Right.

• 55:22Kirk Hamilton?

  -then you can hear what's going on. And they don't rely on you to actually be watching the way you would be in a theater where they can have visual storytelling, where a plot beat happens unspoken between actors or a prop tells a story. It's all just spoken because they know everyone's at home. Anyways, it was a really great, if I find it, I'll ping in and we can add a link. Bing! I found it. It was actually published in N+1 very recently. It is an article called Casual Viewing by Will Tavlin. It's fantastic, a very good pairing with the Harper's excerpt, and I will link it right below that in the show notes so you can read both. So yeah, a lot of good reading this week. Okay, back to my one more thing. Bing! It's true for Netflix, just like it's true for Spotify, that the

• 56:03Kirk Hamilton?

  incentives for the kind of streaming platform that they're running are such that when you start taking it to its logical conclusion, you're just making music to have on in the background that means nothing and is made by no one, that's completely anonymous and has nothing to do with what music actually is, which is a magical spell that connects human beings in a way that is profound and mysterious and like that we've been doing for tens of thousands of years in person. And I think Netflix is doing something similar where they're, you know, if you take it to its logical conclusion, it's just people talking about a conspiracy in the White House vaguely in the background that you can just have on while you've fallen asleep because it's just autoplaying and someone somewhere is, I guess, getting money from that. It's very weird. Anyways, this is a whole separate

• 56:47Kirk Hamilton?

  conversation. Maybe we can do an episode about this kind of thing sometime. I really, really recommend reading this excerpt from this book. I can't wait to read the book itself. It sounds fascinating. And I think even if you're not that interested in Spotify, it has a lot to say about the streaming world that we live in in general and the bizarre incentives of each of these major companies that run the streaming platforms that we all use so much. So again, that's The Ghosts in the Machine. It's an excerpt from Liz Pelley's new book Mood Machine. It's on Harper's and we will link it in the show notes.

• 57:16Jason Schreier?

  You know that Spotify has audiobooks? On its premium and you can just listen to audiobooks for free.

• 57:21Kirk Hamilton?

  One of their very strange initiatives from a couple of years ago, right? Similar, it was following on from their podcast initiative and also they had a video initiative. That feels like one of those things that Spotify will do and then eventually stop doing it, but I guess we'll see.

• 57:34Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I was so curious because I was like, so wait a minute, if you pay for Spotify, you can just download my books for free and listen to them. And then I, so I asked my agent to track it down and it turns out that like, anyone who listens to a certain threshold, so like 10% or something, will just count as if they bought the book. And I was like, wow, okay, interesting.

• 57:51Kirk Hamilton?

  That stuff is weird. A lot of those Spotify initiatives come and go. I mean, if you look, I'm sure the book gets into this, but the number of things that Spotify has tried to do and then just canceled. Or the companies they've bought. I mean, remember when they bought, what they bought the entirety of The Ringer and all the whole podcast network.

• 58:07Jason Schreier?

  They still own The Ringer, yeah.

• 58:09Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. And, and I guess The Ringer is still going, but there were all these podcasts they bought that they shut down.

• 58:14Jason Schreier?

  Absolutely.

• 58:14Kirk Hamilton?

  And there were so many other initiatives. The whole video thing was, was crazy. And then that just kind of came and went. So I wouldn't be surprised if the audiobook thing is, is similar.

• 58:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, I want to read this book too. I also knew Liz Pelly because we worked together at The Phoenix like 20 years ago. And I was her manager and I did a terrible job because I was like 23 and she was like 20 at the time.

• 58:36Kirk Hamilton?

  You did a great job because now she's written this great book.

• 58:38Speaker 02

  And it's all thanks to me, folks.

• 58:40Jason Schreier?

  Say the name of the book again before we, before we go.

• 58:43Kirk Hamilton?

  The book itself is called Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist.

• 58:49Speaker 02

  I will read this.

• 58:49Jason Schreier?

  And it's already out, right?

• 58:50Speaker 02

  I will read this.

• 58:51Kirk Hamilton?

  It is out, yeah. I haven't read it yet, but I will absolutely be reading it.

• 58:54Speaker 02

  I'm very excited to read this. It's gonna be great.

• 58:56Jason Schreier?

  All right, guys, that is it for this week's episode. We'll see you both next week.

• 59:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, see you next week.

• 59:03Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, see you next week. We can talk about Avowed.

• 59:06Speaker 02

  Bye.

• 59:09Kirk Hamilton?

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

• 1:00:07Speaker 03

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