Behind The Scenes Of Grand Theft Auto VI

Jason took a trip to Edinburgh, Scotland to visit Rockstar Games and check out Grand Theft Auto VI, which could be the biggest game ever made. The gang talks about how GTA VI compares to its predecessor, the ups and downs of development, and their hopes for the future of fake Miami.

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

• 0:03Speaker 00

  Well, you see, officer, this is really more of a carjacking with the intent to joyride. So it's not Grand Theft Auto. Not yet. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. Today, we're talking about Grand Theft Auto VI. Not out yet, but Jason went to Rockstar North and learned a lot about what we can expect from the other Jason, the protagonist of the game, and his girlfriend Lucia.

• 0:30Speaker 00

  I'm Maddy Myers.

• 0:31Jason Schreier?

  I'm Jason Schreier.

• 0:32Kirk Hamilton?

  And I'm Kirk Hamilton. And hello.

• 0:34Jason Schreier?

  Hello.

• 0:35Speaker 00

  Hello. Hello. We're back again for another episode of Triple Click.

• 0:41Kirk Hamilton?

  We are.

• 0:41Speaker 00

  Missed you two.

• 0:42Kirk Hamilton?

  Jason, you have a very serious look on your face.

• 0:44Speaker 00

  He does.

• 0:44Kirk Hamilton?

  Are you feeling serious?

• 0:46Jason Schreier?

  I'm kind of sick. I've been like, like getting over various, various sicknesses since travel, getting home from all of my traveling.

• 0:55Speaker 00

  We're going to talk about Jason's traveling today and, and why maybe he picked something up on his many flights all around the world. But before we get to that, I just wanted to say, we might be a relationship advice podcast now, because if you go to maximumfun.org/join Triple Click and become a member, then you will get our most recent bonus episode, as well as every other of our monthly bonus episodes. But this recent one, it's called Triple Kiss, and we asked listeners to write in with their relationship troubles, all across the spectrum of people who are meeting somebody, who want first date advice, wedding

• 1:34Speaker 00

  planning advice, long-term relationship advice, all of it. And we, we did that episode and it was really, really fascinating. And we dug it and our listeners seem to have really dug it as well. So check that out. And all of our other wonderful bonus episodes, many of which are about video games. This one isn't. This one is about relationship advice. But maximumfun.org/jointripleclick is how you would become a member and get all of those wonderful episodes.

• 2:03Kirk Hamilton?

  Bing. Kirk here, interjecting with an update that I forgot to make when we were recording, but that I feel I should share. A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned some story or movie or book or TV show where it was the future and there was an elevator that traveled through the middle of the world and that that was a way to quickly travel to the other side of the planet as you would get in this elevator that shot through the middle of the world. And I could remember the scene very vividly, but I just couldn't remember what it was from. So a lot of people wrote in to suggest what it might be. Turns out that that idea turns up in a few different things. A lot of people suggested the Total

• 2:43Kirk Hamilton?

  Recall remake from the 2000s, which I actually haven't seen. I love the original Total Recall and have no interest in the remake. So that wasn't it, even though I think that does have an elevator through the planet. But a few people did write in. One person in the Discord nailed it first, but we also got some emails. And the answer was, it is from the Thursday Next novels by Jasper Ford, which were my one more thing. I think last year, they're really great books. They're set in this kind of interestingly bent alternate future. And there's a really memorable scene where Thursday, the protagonist takes an elevator through the middle of the world. So that was the answer. And I thought that I would share that. Thanks to everybody who wrote in to try to help me remember what it was. Okay, on with the show. Bing.

• 3:27Speaker 00

  What are we going to talk about today? Not relationship advice, although maybe, maybe, because we're going to talk about a game with a relationship at its center. Jason, tell us why you're feeling under the weather. Where did you go in your many, many travels? And what did you learn?

• 3:45Jason Schreier?

  Today, we're going to talk about Grand Theft Auto VI, which is a video game about a relationship and maybe can teach you some, some kind of techniques to making sure your relationship is healthy. You go on crime sprees with your significant other, you rob some diners and banks and jewelry stores, and you'll bond like nobody else has. Bonnie and Clyde.

• 4:09Kirk Hamilton?

  One of the pieces of advice we gave was do something active with your partner.

• 4:12Jason Schreier?

  Style. That's true. Yeah, go for walks.

• 4:16Speaker 00

  Spend time together, time apart, hold their hand.

• 4:19Kirk Hamilton?

  Go for runs away from the police.

• 4:21Jason Schreier?

  So last month, I flew to Edinburgh, Scotland, which is where Rockstar Games is based. Rockstar is, Rockstar North is based. That's their kind of brain center office where the top creative developers, top creative leads of the company are, and where they make a lot of the key decisions for the company. Rockstar, of course, has 12 different offices all around the world. So not only there, they also have more than 4,700 employees. And I went there to interview some of those top developers for a big Bloomberg Business Week story that was published this week. We'll throw a link in the show notes. I'll put up a, I'll put in a gift link, so you can bypass the paywall and check it out for

• 5:05Jason Schreier?

  yourself. I was a little surprised and delighted that they let me in the building, given that I've reported some, kind of done some adversarial reporting about Rockstar Games over the years and their culture of crunch and other issues there, such as an accusation of, of sexual assault, of groping, among other things. And yeah, it was really interesting talking to them. I came away with a lot of takeaways. And I also got to see the game in action, Grand Theft Auto VI, which we've all seen if you've watched the kind of the Netflix premiere, the 26-minute gameplay footage that was put on Netflix. And then I think

• 5:48Jason Schreier?

  it went on YouTube afterwards. But I got to see it just kind of in live action. Rob Nelson, the creative lead on the game, was playing it in front of me, which was pretty cool. So I can talk a little bit about that and how it compares to GTA V and what's new about it. And we can talk a little bit about the development of this game. But first of all, off the top of your heads, how many copies do you think GTA V has sold? Both of you give me a guess.

• 6:13Kirk Hamilton?

  I read your article, so I know the answer to this question.

• 6:15Jason Schreier?

  Okay, then don't guess. Maddie, do you know?

• 6:17Kirk Hamilton?

  I probably, I can tell you what I would have guessed.

• 6:19Jason Schreier?

  What would you have guessed?

• 6:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, what would you have guessed?

• 6:21Kirk Hamilton?

  I probably would have guessed 100 million.

• 6:23Jason Schreier?

  Okay, Maddie?

• 6:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, probably a couple hundred million. I guess I'll go with 200. I don't have a good memory, even though I did read Jason's article.

• 6:31Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, you're closer, Maddie.

• 6:32Jason Schreier?

  The number is 230 million.

• 6:34Speaker 00

  Oh, hey.

• 6:35Jason Schreier?

  Usually when I ask people to guess, they're like, I don't know, 40 million copies, 50 million copies. I think people don't really understand the extent, like the scale of this game and why. Because like, one of the reasons that GTA, we've all kind of accepted that GTA VI is this, this kind of attention sucker, this cultural phenomenon that is going to come in. Oh, of course, all these video games are getting out of the way of GTA VI. Oh, of course, it's going to suck up all the air and everybody's time and money in November of this year. But I think to understand that, you have to see that number and just what, like, understand what it means. Like, that is so much bigger than just about any other game. It makes GTA the best-selling non-mobile game of all time.

• 7:17Kirk Hamilton?

  Can you give us some comparable numbers, like, for, for other games, like?

• 7:21Speaker 00

  I mean, I can give one off the top of my head. I mean, I remember, like, after a few months, Metaphory Fantasia was, was excitedly saying they'd sold a million copies. I'm like, I feel like we often see games we love celebrating after a few months.

• 7:35Kirk Hamilton?

  I mean, JRPG is always going to be a little niche.

• 7:37Speaker 00

  Of course. I just, you know.

• 7:38Kirk Hamilton?

  What's a comparable, like, AAA game?

• 7:40Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. Well, to get like, okay, so to put this on scale in context with comparable games, Elder Scrolls Skyrim, one of the biggest games ever, that's at 65 million copies. The Witcher 3 is also 60. The Sims, like, The Sims as a series has sold about 50 million copies. Overwatch, also about 50 million copies. Hogwarts Legacy, which was one of the biggest games of the decade, that's something like 40 million copies. So we're talking about magnitudes lower than GTA V. GTA V is like in its own category.

• 8:14Speaker 00

  It's a phenomenon.

• 8:15Jason Schreier?

  The only other game that comes close is the best-selling game of all time, which is Minecraft. But Minecraft was released on phones, so it doesn't count. People also count Tetris up there, but that includes every single, like, port and re-release an enhanced version of Tetris, which is kind of nonsensical, because there have been so many different versions of Tetris released over the years. This is GTA V is, it was released across a bunch of platforms, and it's just one game, one single game that has sold 230 million copies. So we're talking about something that is unprecedented, that is historically large numbers. A large part of that is because of the success of GTA Online. And worth noting that when GTA VI comes out in November, it will not have the online component. That is going to come later, expected next year. But still, we're talking

• 9:00Jason Schreier?

  about a remarkable number here. So it's no wonder the stakes for GTA VI are so friggin' high. And everybody is like, oh, this is going to be the biggest thing ever. To the point where, as I mentioned earlier, everybody's just moving their, been moving their games to get out of the blast zone, delaying to February or moving up to September to get out of the way of GTA VI. So, you guys excited?

• 9:27Kirk Hamilton?

  Get ready for it?

• 9:28Speaker 00

  I, I feel like part of how I feel about it is overwhelmed in part because not only will it be a massive phenomenon in terms of sales and people in my life who don't normally play games asking me about it, which has already happened. I'm sure that happens to you too as well, just people asking about GTA generally, as though they're asking me about the weather almost. But also the game itself is huge. And that is overwhelming to me to think about because I remember Grand Theft Auto V feeling pretty big.

• 9:58Kirk Hamilton?

  You mean in terms of like the size of the game when you're playing it, like the length of the game and the amount of stuff?

• 10:03Speaker 00

  Yes, like the amount of

• 10:04Kirk Hamilton?

  The amount of stuff to do.

• 10:05Speaker 00

  Things you can explore and do in the game itself.

• 10:09Kirk Hamilton?

  I would be curious how many of those 230 million people finished the story part of Grand Theft Auto V. And also, how many of those people have never even played the story mode at all? I installed the, whatever it's called, the updated version of GTA V?

• 10:24Speaker 00

  Enhanced.

• 10:25Kirk Hamilton?

  Enhanced Edition. And it's really interesting loading it because I hadn't played GTA V in a long time. And now when you load it, it is like Grand Theft Auto Online. Like that is the piece of software you're loading and it plays a trailer for GTA Online and the opening menu is GTA Online. It like loads up my GTA Online character. And then like two menu tabs over is story mode where you can kind of go and play the story, which has just been so backburnered because it's just so much less relevant to what GTA V is now. And yeah, I'm just that, that, I would be very curious just to know those numbers.

• 11:01Jason Schreier?

  It's really interesting. I, I don't know the answer to that question. GTA Online is so massive and so all encompassing that I imagine the answer is a lot of people bought it for the online mode, which is why it's really interesting to, to kind of try to predict what's going to happen when GTA 6 launches without an online mode. Kirk, you also revisited the game and actually played the story for a couple, for like a little bit, right? Do you want to talk a little bit about what that was like? Cause that's kind of a good springboard into talking about what GTA 6 brings to the table.

• 11:33Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I've played GTA V a lot. I played it on, I guess Xbox 360 when it first came out. And then I played it again on PS4, probably not all the way through, but a lot because they like added first person. And then again on PC when it was released on PC. And I think I've like maybe started it three or four times. I'm very familiar with the beginning, but it had still been a long time. And the enhanced edition, I had to start over. It either, like I didn't port my save over from my, the other PC version or whatever. I didn't really care because I was just kind of dipping my toe in the water. I was immediately exhausted by it. I kind of had forgotten. I mean, it's just that the beginning is kind of on rails and it's just a lot of dudes yelling at one another and at, at other people. It was

• 12:17Kirk Hamilton?

  just a lot of yelling. And I was kind of reminded of a feeling I've, I've had many times about GTA V where it's enough years later that I'm no longer blown away by the immersiveness and the technology, which I really was for many years after it came out. And that was kind of enough to just make me want to play it. But there's always a feeling with GTA V, for me at least, where eventually that excitement gets kind of worn down by just the cynicism and the men yelling of the game. And like how much of it is just Lamar, like calling you names and, you know, while you try to drive and not crash into people. And I just had that feeling of like, oh yeah, this is sort of, you know, I'm, I'm a little overly familiar with this now. And so, yeah, that was my feeling playing that

• 13:01Kirk Hamilton?

  intro again was like, I maybe wish I could just go and play the old version, load up my old saves so I could just run around and do some stuff and not have to play through this intro. You know, I got up to where Franklin and Lamar are street racing. And I was like, I've done this so many times, like, and I, this tone turns me off at this point. I don't really need to experience it again.

• 13:17Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. So GTA V came out in, during, just at the beginning of the second Obama term. And to me at least, it feels like a very, very much of that era, very nihilistic, kind of almost like a counterpoint to the earnestness of like the Obama years, the late 2000s and early 2010s. It's very much in the vein of the South Park style. We're just going to throw grenades at everything. And I think as a result of that and the story they wanted to tell, they have these characters who are all just awful people. And to your point Kirk, exhausting to spend time with. And it was interesting to trace the path of that to Red Dead Redemption 2, which is a very different kind of game. Also a game

• 13:58Jason Schreier?

  about really awful people. But your main character, Arthur, is a really fascinating awful person. And he's an awful person who is actually really likeable and charming and tries to do right and has his own code despite his awfulness. And watching him get entangled and be unable to leave this kind of toxic abusive relationship with his gang leader, Dutch, is really fascinating in a way that a great Scorsese movie is. And that's a much more grounded world. It's a much more grounded story. And watching them go from GTA V to that and now to GTA 6, which is going back to that world of satire and absurdist

• 14:38Jason Schreier?

  reflection of America and nihilism. And especially in this one, Florida and a modern depiction of all the ridiculousness that Florida has to offer. But at the same time, it seems like they've learned a lot or are taking a lot from Red Dead 2, both in terms of story and gameplay. I'll focus on the story first and we'll talk about the gameplay in a bit. But in terms of story, here is a game about these, this couple, Jason and Lucia and their relationship. And it seems a lot more grounded, a lot more real. They are much, from what we've seen, we're talking about a game that isn't out yet, worth noting, but from what we've seen so far, it seems like these are people who are meant to feel like people and not cartoon

• 15:18Jason Schreier?

  characters in the way that GTA V's people do. From what I saw, the footage that I saw and also the footage we all saw online, these are not just like exhausted people who just hate everything and hate each other and just don't want to spend time together. It's actually the opposite. It's two people who are like in this situation where they have to do bad things, but also they seem to really enjoy spending time together. So what I saw at Rockstar's office, and I'm curious to hear both of your takes on this, is a game where, so one of the things that they told me they are kind of most proud of, or like the, the feature that they really put a lot of work and a lot of time and resources into, is this idea of free roaming with your partner. So in a GTA game, in any Rockstar game, you

• 16:03Jason Schreier?

  have kind of two different kind of components of the game. One is you just exploring the world, free roaming on your own. And the other is doing story missions, which are a little more handholdy and restrictive in what you can do, to much criticism from the internet. And in the free roaming part, in both the GTA games and the Red Dead games, you're on your own and your character can go do whatever he wants. It's always been he before. Now it's he or she. He wants and can go rob whatever, rob stores and steal cars or horses, go tie someone to a train track and let a train run over them, whatever you want.

• 16:41Kirk Hamilton?

  Do whatever you want within a fairly narrow scope of illegal and violent activities.

• 16:45Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, do whatever crimes you want, I suppose is the answer. Although in Red Dead 2, you can talk to people and see what, what happens as a result of that. But yeah.

• 16:53Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm just laughing at the examples you give.

• 16:55Jason Schreier?

  The simulation here is very much like it's a crime simulator, right? But still, that's the free roaming part. Now you can, and I got to see this in action, you're, let's say you're playing as Jason, you can text Lucia, say, hey, you, you busy? Come on over. She'll say, okay, sure. Give me a few minutes. Then she'll come meet you in a park and you can walk together and you hold hands and you take a stroll. Suddenly this like bespoke dialogue will play and you'll have, watch this really interesting, funny conversation play out between the two of them. Then you can get in a car and go scope out a nearby store and see how many security guards there are and see if you can case the plates. Or you can go to a gym. And in the gameplay that I saw, they went to the gym and Jason started doing this like little mini game, kind of like what they used to have in San

• 17:38Jason Schreier?

  Andreas, where it was like you could do these little gym mini games to like bulk up your character. You do this little bench pressing or squatting mini game and Lucia would go and run on the treadmill. And then when you leave, like she goes, oh, she like gets off a treadmill and goes with you. You go and rob a scooter and she'll grab your vice scooter. And it's kind of like, it, it sounds really, like when you see it, it feels very like, oh, of course this is what should happen. But in practice, it's very different than other Rockstar games.

• 18:05Kirk Hamilton?

  Did they say whether Jason will like get yoked if he goes to the gym a lot? Like the way that CJ in San Andreas would become huge or he could become skinny? Is that system in this game?

• 18:14Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, yeah, they're doing that. And it's like you, you eat, you get fat, you, you can like, your body type will change based on your eating and workout happens.

• 18:22Speaker 00

  That's absurd.

• 18:23Kirk Hamilton?

  That was one of the coolest things about San Andreas. Some people hate that.

• 18:25Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, they've never brought it back after San Andreas until now. Although Red Dead 2

• 18:30Kirk Hamilton?

  Cause it is absurd, as you say, Matt.

• 18:31Jason Schreier?

  Red Dead 2 had some physical changes.

• 18:32Speaker 00

  It's just, it's so much detail. It's, this is what I mean when I say it's overwhelming. It's like, how do we even talk about this? This is a game where you can work out and get swole. And like, that's literally a mechanic in the game, along with 10 million other tiny things that they had to decide to include or not include.

• 18:47Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it's really interesting. I mean, to your point, Matty, that's like part of what, the early struggles. One of the reasons this game took so long is because like they spent a couple of years trying to figure out how realistic to get. Because a lot of people saw Red Dead 2 and a lot of people liked how kind of slow and plodding and realistic those games, that game's mechanics were. A lot of people did. And then they were trying to find the, the right balance between the realism that they wanted and also the kind of more, I don't know, fun, satisfying mechanics of like a GTA game where it's a little more instant.

• 19:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, that was one of the more interesting parts of your article, although I really like all of it. To me was you describing the developers debating like, okay, if Jason makes a sandwich in the game, should he actually make the entire sandwich? Do you have to get out the two pieces of bread? Do you have to decide what kind of sandwich it is?

• 19:35Jason Schreier?

  Go to the grocery store.

• 19:36Speaker 00

  Do you need to go to the grocery store and buy some lunch meat? Are you out of cheese? Like, I was like, this is absurd. I mean, I understand why this is a debate in this game as compared to some of the other games we play where it would be totally ordinary for a sandwich to just magically manifest in a character's hand. And you're just like, okay, great. There's a sandwich here. And that's just how the entire game works. But if you start rendering one thing, then it's like, okay, he can already walk over to the refrigerator and open it. We saw that in the Netflix commercial, that super long commercial. So how far is that going to go? Can he take all the things out of the refrigerator and construct a meal out of them? And then, or we, do we need to press a button to bite the sandwich? I don't know. That's, it's crazy that that's something that they really had to think about. But of course they did.

• 20:20Kirk Hamilton?

  It's something that Grand Theft Auto offers maybe more than any other game is a view of the future, like a view of a very specific future, I should say, where we have gone like several steps further toward verisimilitude than most games even would ever want to, you know, to go. Like, and we, we've seen many times that you don't need that stuff to have a good video game. It's something that Nintendo demonstrates over and over again, that you can just use, like they can make games on the Switch one that were incredibly immersive and fun and, you know, exciting and complex and had plenty going on. And they didn't need to Answer that question of like, well, now it looks like real life. You know, we've all seen that that trailer where it basically looks real.

• 21:01Kirk Hamilton?

  So in real life, suddenly it's a new problem where we have to account for like, yeah, pouring a certain amount of liquid out of a bottle and like, you can't just have it magically fill the glass. We have to animate the whole thing. And like, it's like a vicious cycle almost where the more realistic it gets, the more you have to do. It's amazing in a certain sense, right? Like, this is something I've written about many times. I used to write about it at Kotaku, that detail, how unbelievably detailed these games are. And you wind up just, you know, just as a detail hound, someone who loves that stuff, you can just get caught up in it. But then it's also as a game developer, really challenging that the more realistic you're making the game, the more you're having to solve that problem. It almost argues for everybody else going the other direction and like, not worrying

• 21:44Kirk Hamilton?

  about taking those steps toward verisimilitude at all.

• 21:47Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it's almost like, it's like building the pyramids just because you can. I feel like that's what Rockstar's goal is here. It's not necessarily to make like, the most fun video game. A lot of it is just like, we want to create this thing that nobody else possibly can. This tribute to realism and detail and something that is just impossible for anybody else to do because they don't have the budget that we do and they don't have 4,700 people on their team to work on this game. To be fair, 4,700 people is the entire company, not just GTA 6, but still.

• 22:20Speaker 00

  It's a huge number.

• 22:21Jason Schreier?

  By the way, that number, for context here, this is in my Bloomberg piece, my Businessweek story, which by the way, cover of Businessweek magazine, so check it out.

• 22:28Kirk Hamilton?

  Hell yeah. We love to see it.

• 22:30Jason Schreier?

  Rockstar went from 2,400 people in 2018 to 4,700 people today. So like, almost doubled in size since Red Dead 2.

• 22:40Speaker 00

  Just like a wild management challenge for a project of this magnitude.

• 22:44Kirk Hamilton?

  One incredible detail from your article is that they built a whole new studio in LA, full of, I'm quoting your article here, writers, producers and directors who will be solely responsible for creating NPCs. First of all, that sounds incredibly cool. And I kind of wish you could go to that studio and just look at how they're doing that. Just as someone who's always been obsessed with NPCs and I love just that process, the idea of writing the background characters. And I don't know, like, Rockstar Games have some of the most interesting and well-written NPCs, outside of, I suppose, IO Interactive, because the Hitman games maybe have my favorite NPCs of any series. But Rockstar Games, it's a different thing. They're really believable, just the things you hear people saying, the way that they all look, the amount of variety.

• 23:27Kirk Hamilton?

  And the fact that they had to do that for this game, I mean, watching that footage, it feels like that. Like, it feels like, oh, there must have been so many people whose whole job was just picking shoes for, you know, the 4,000 people that you'll see in a given, you know, two-hour play session of this game.

• 23:44Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, and varied body types and stuff. One thing on the detail, I didn't put this in the article, but you guys will find it interesting, a little triple-click exclusive, is Aaron Garbutt, who's like, the top artist, essentially has been the art director for all the games, now his title is Head of Development. He's one of the three heads of development there. And also is co-studio head of Rockstar North. So he's someone who's been there for years and years and just responsible for a lot of the amazing art and supervises a lot of the amazing art in this game. He mentioned to me, he was like, when you have this many people, a lot of the artists are just kind of on their own volition, putting little details in, because that's what they're doing for the last seven or eight years, working on this game, is putting details

• 24:25Jason Schreier?

  in. And he brought up something infamous, which is Red Dead 2's horse testicles, which if you guys don't remember, was a big story back when that came out, because

• 24:33Speaker 00

  Oh, how could I forget?

• 24:34Jason Schreier?

  The game is so detailed that like, a horse's testicles would like, contract based on the weather, like, based on the situation that they were in.

• 24:43Speaker 00

  The temperature, yeah.

• 24:44Jason Schreier?

  And Aaron Garbutt was like, I guarantee you, nobody told anyone to do horse testicles. It's just like, that level of just kind of putting attention to detail and obsession with the detail is something that people here have, and I would go one step further, this is not him, but this is me extrapolating, can afford to have, because they have basically unlimited resources. It's funny, I asked Strauss Zelnick, who's the CEO of Take-Two, the company behind, that owns Rockstar, the publicly traded company, I said to him, so like, it sounds like Rockstar essentially has an unlimited budget, like, do they have a cap on their money? And he said to me, he said, my son is getting married and I gave him an unlimited budget

• 25:26Jason Schreier?

  for the wedding, and he exceeded that, which I thought was a funny, a funny thing for a CEO to say and kind of helps, helps sum up the Rockstar experience.

• 25:36Kirk Hamilton?

  There's no such thing as an unlimited budget.

• 25:38Jason Schreier?

  Exactly. It's like on the rehearsal when Nathan Fielder is like, "CEO, give me a blank check as long as I stay within budget."

• 25:46Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 25:48Jason Schreier?

  But, yeah, it's, they have the resources to be able to do this. And part of the experience of playing this game, I think, will just be kind of ogling the details and marveling at the details and wondering, is this necessary? But for me, I've never really played these games for the details. I've played them for the story. And so for me, what's really exciting is the fact that, and I've said this on the show before, that I really hope they're taking lessons from Red Dead 2, and I think they are. We don't know what it's going to look like, but what I've seen and what we've seen online, I think is very promising as far as telling a story with these two characters who they want to be really likable. And in fact, this is their first attempt to write a female protagonist.

• 26:29Jason Schreier?

  They brought in a lot of new writers, including a lot of women writers, to try to authentically tell the story of Lucia. It feels like they are, despite the fact that this is GTA and it's going to be full of dumb jokes and absurd satire and Florida stereotypes and all that other stuff, including probably some Gronworthy stuff, it does feel like they are really taking these characters seriously, or at least they're trying to do things with the character, I shouldn't say taking him seriously, they're trying to make these characters more serious than Michael and Trevor and Franklin ever were.

• 27:02Kirk Hamilton?

  You know, yeah, it occurs to me that, you know, Rockstar has tried to tell more interesting stories before. Like, I think that GTA 4, at moments, has an actually, has the setup for a very good story. And certainly, Red Dead Redemption 1 does.

• 27:18Jason Schreier?

  Well, but even that, can I just say real quick, even GTA 4, Niko Velik is a really interesting protagonist, but even that game is just filled with people who just genuinely don't like each other and only are spending time together, because they have to be, like him and Roman and like...

• 27:31Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, I think that actually, like, there is a version of that story, I wrote about this at one point, like, this kind of, the version in my head, that's the story of Niko and Roman that has a more tragic ending and like, feels like the Scorsese version of that would be like, a one where Roman dies at the end and like, Niko lives on, but you know, it's like, he has to kind of reckon with what happened. And like, you could really tell a two-character story really effectively. And I think like, that, that's also, that could have been true of GTA 5, where I think that Michael and Franklin, that dynamic is interesting, like, the jaded criminal who kind of like, you know, made a deal with the government and is now just sort of out in LA, moldering away, and the young up-and-comer from a very different culture and background,

• 28:15Kirk Hamilton?

  and like, the two of them cross paths in this happenstance way, and then like, Michael begins, you know, mentoring Franklin. This is all in the game. It's just that like, first off, like, they don't really go where they could with it. And then there's the Trevor factor. And like, because they included Trevor, who's this like, total different kind of character, like, he winds up kind of dominating the story and then it really becomes about Trevor for a while and Trevor and Michael, because they have this backstory. And like, eventually you're like, what the fuck is the actual story here? And that would be like, my story note on that is like, you had this third guy, instead they could have explored the two characters. So it's cool to hear that they're doing two characters here, and especially like, with a romantic element to it. That just seems like, like, two people, you know, John and Arthur in Red Dead 2, it's the same thing. And like, the way, you know, both playable

• 28:58Kirk Hamilton?

  characters, both characters that like, get explored in a really cool way.

• 29:02Jason Schreier?

  Or Arthur and Sadie, taking it a step further, because it, yeah, I mean,

• 29:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes. Well, Arthur and Sadie is the version of Red Dead 2 that I wish they had made. Like, when Sadie turned up in the later parts of the game, I was like, man, I hope we get to play as her. And then we did it and I was like, ah, missed opportunity.

• 29:16Jason Schreier?

  I know. I said that to them. They didn't take the bait, but I was like, man, I wish, the only thing I didn't like about Red Dead 2 is that we didn't get a Sadie DLC. They did not take the bait. But yes, this is, I mean, that's the thing about this game, right? It's not just the romantic relationship, it's just even the pure, the fact that you get a game, a Rockstar game about two characters who seem to enjoy spending time with one another, that I think is really cool and will play into this whole story in hopefully really interesting ways.

• 29:42Kirk Hamilton?

  So let me ask you the question that that kind of brings up for me. Dan Hauser, who was the lead writer on all these games we're talking about, left the studio after Red Dead Redemption 2 and has not worked on GTA 6. I think I just saw a headline that he didn't even watch the like, footage of it, because he's working on his own game and doesn't want to get distracted.

• 29:58Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 29:59Kirk Hamilton?

  So now, you know, part of your article is about this like, tri-purit directorship that's going on with Rob Nelson, Phil Hooker and Aaron Garbutt. And Garbutt, I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right, but I think that is just like, I'm guessing, a very different thing to have the game just at the top of the management structure work so differently. What's your sense there of that? And specifically, how it relates to the writing, since I think we all agree that the writing is such an important part of these games?

• 30:25Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, so that is true. This will be the first Rockstar game in a long time that has not been led, writing creatively by Dan Hauser, not been written, or not had Dan Hauser as the lead writer. That said, Rupert Humphreys is still there. He's also a top writer who worked on previous games. He's been at Rockstar for a couple of decades. They really, so it's interesting. I came in to meet with a bunch of them and I wound up sitting all day at Rockstar's studio, talking to Rob Nelson and different people would like, kind of come in and out of Rob Nelson's incredible office, which has this like, view of the Scottish crags. It's really incredible. But different people come in and out, and so I wound up spending a bunch of time with him and then Phil Hooker and Aaron Garbutt.

• 31:10Jason Schreier?

  And all three of them really kind of, so I came in having heard from people, other people at Rockstar, people more on the ground level, that there was kind of this concern of too many cooks in the kitchen and like, a three-headed, like, a conflict among the three of them and you didn't have a single person making decisions, which led to some kind of conflicts and kind of conflicting direction or hesitation and so on and so forth. And especially in the early days, I think that led to some grumbling among the ranks and it even led to some departures at some point. That said, they had a very different reaction than I expected, which they were essentially like, yeah, like our titles changed after Red Dead 2 to now we're all quote head of

• 31:51Jason Schreier?

  development. But like, our roles didn't really change that much because Rockstar has always been this kind of driven by this like, they didn't use this word, but I interpreted it this way, inner circle, so to speak, of like, directors who each kind of has their own domain and is all working together overseeing the project. Rockstar has never been a kind of auteur-driven company. And that's almost, that's one of the reasons that they are a little more opaque than other companies. You don't have a Neil Druckmann or a Hideo Kojima kind of like being the public face of the company and the director and the person who is making a lot of the key creative decisions. Instead, it was always a little bit more kind of nebulous or committee-driven. So even though Dan Hauser was a co-founder

• 32:35Jason Schreier?

  of Rockstar and top writer, he wasn't making all of the final calls on these games. And so the way they conveyed it to me was that like, things haven't actually changed all that much from Red Dead 2 to this game in terms of production. And in fact, the way they described it, and in fact, I've heard this from other people as well, is that aside from COVID, which really threw a wrench in everything, and especially those first couple of years, this was a smoother production than their previous games, certainly smoother than Red Dead 2, certainly fewer like, major story overhauls in the last couple of years, fewer just kind of big changes. A lot of that just happened early on, and then it was

• 33:16Jason Schreier?

  just a matter of executing on this big ambitious vision. So yeah, I don't know. And I think we'll have to wait and see how it's actually executed in terms of story, but they definitely still have this core creative team of people who have been there for, for, for decades working together.

• 33:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's also in their best interest to make you think that, Jason. I mean, I know you know that, but like, to present it.

• 33:40Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, absolutely. But I mean, these, these guys, they were candid about the problems they ran into. That's the thing. It's not like they're sitting there and doing a whole PR. Obviously, they're, they're media trained and they have, there's like, there, there definitely, there's a certain level of like, well, if we're going to talk to a reporter on the record officially, we have to have some level of PR training here. But like, these, they weren't sitting there and being like, all is well, things are great here at Rockstar North. And in fact, Jen Colby, who's the head of publishing, was talking to me a little bit about how like, even before the big crunch controversy on Red Dead 2, they were looking at each other and being like, we need to change how we do things here in terms of white-kite balance. Like, we can't go through this again. And the three

• 34:25Jason Schreier?

  of them, they were very open about the things that they did find to be challenges. That said, I think if you were under them and then maybe you saw some other kind of conflicting direction or just like, waiting, waiting forever to make decisions, then maybe you, you feel a little differently than they do. But that said, I think they were pretty candid about the fact that like, those first couple of years, yeah, things were rough. There were, it was the dark times, it was the doldrums. Nobody knew if it was actually going to come together. One other quick thing I'll say is that, talking to them, it just like, really, it made me feel like, man, every problem that Rockstar runs into is the same exact problem that every other game developer runs into, like.

• 35:02Speaker 00

  Even with 4,700 people.

• 35:04Jason Schreier?

  Exactly. It's just the scale is so much bigger, right? It's like, communication problems, vision problems, technical problems, like, not knowing if something is going to work until all this other stuff is implemented in the game and you can see it in action because it's very hard to evaluate if something is working until you've actually seen it all come online. And so, it was really interesting, just kind of being in the center of this company that is one of the most opaque companies in gaming, and hearing them talk about their problems and challenges, and thinking to myself, oh my God, this is just what every other game company goes through too.

• 35:36Kirk Hamilton?

  I enjoyed reading a Jason Schreier reported piece, "From This Point in the Development", where basically, it's a large studio that is about to release a game. And while there were some struggles, they're currently feeling good, clearly, like, they're feeling very confident in the game. They seem to have good reason to be. And there isn't, like you said, you know, there's not like, a juicy drama in the story. So I'm used to reading your stories and there's like, here's where it all went wrong. You know, this guy and this guy like, got in a fight and this guy threw a dude out the window and then they, they burned the building down for the insurance money. And then, you know, and you're like, reading all this wild stuff.

• 36:10Speaker 00

  That Jason definitely wrote.

• 36:12Kirk Hamilton?

  That's the version in my head anyways. But, but you know, in this, it's not that. It's just like, yeah, it was hard, COVID was tough, you know, we figured it out. And it's a lot of that feeling of like, yeah, we got through it. We were a team. You know, you were, you returned to this idea of like, like the protagonists of the game, they were a team, which is all very positive. And, you know, they have a reason to feel that way. And I just kind of, it was just interesting reading a Jason Schreier article, "From This Point in Development", and, you know, it does seem as though the game is going to prove that out.

• 36:40Jason Schreier?

  They're very confident in this video game. I'll, I'll tell you that.

• 36:44Kirk Hamilton?

  One thing that does strike me as like, an interesting point of tension that they, you addressed and talked about was the union stuff, where there were, some of their employees were trying to unionize. They fired people who were working on the union. There were a lot, there were accusations of union busting. It's currently in court. It looks like it's going to be settled at the end of the month, I think you said in your article, of October, that is, which is like, right before lunch, which is interesting. Can you say a little more about that?

• 37:07Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, the tribunal is going to conclude by the end of October. It's not clear when there's going to be a verdict from the tribunal.

• 37:14Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, I see.

• 37:14Jason Schreier?

  I'll zoom out, I'll zoom out for a sec. But actually, I want to talk about one other point of tension, which might be the biggest one, which is like, so Red Dead 2 came out, a lot of talk about crunch. Even in the big story that I ran at that point, there was a lot of acknowledgement from people that like, hey, crunch was bad on this, but still better than previous projects. This time, I've heard similar things, like, this one, a lot of people crunched to make GTA 6. Better than previous projects. The culture is kind of changing. And especially, something that Rockstar especially did was get rid of a lot of the kind of problematic managers that had been in place at the company and, and tried to make themselves grow up a little bit. I point out on the story, like, they're trying to make their games grow up at the same time as the companies are trying to grow up a little bit, which I think is really interesting. But, there was another kind

• 37:59Jason Schreier?

  of workplace issue that came up, and then I'll get into the union stuff, which is the problem of remote work, which is, of course, during COVID, everybody worked remotely. A lot of people would wind up settling on this hybrid plan where like, people would go in three days a week and then work from home two days a week, which seems to be like, a very kind of, accepted as a compromise by a lot of employers who, who want people in the office, but also recognize that they should have some flexibility. Rockstar, largely due to the big leak that happened in 2022, where early footage of the game got online, Rockstar said, hey, all employees have to come back five days a week. And also, there's no flexibility for working from home. Can't log into your work, to your, to the game,

• 38:43Jason Schreier?

  or your work tools from home. That, I would say, proved to be way more controversial internally at Rockstar, even than crunch issues on this project. And it's still hanging over Rockstar as like, something that a lot of people are not happy about. Because it's like, if your kid is homesick, instead of being able to like, work from home while watching them, you have to take a PTO day, you have to take a vacation day, which, that lack of flexibility, I think is really frustrating for people. And so that's something that Rockstar is going to have to deal with. And that's something, is something that the union would then publicly criticize. And so what happened was, Rockstar employees, not just because of that, but for many reasons, really for a long time now, since like, 2018, they've been talking

• 39:27Jason Schreier?

  about unionizing. And in 2025, in October of 2025, Rockstar fired 34 people, 31 in the UK and three in Canada, most of whom were involved in the unionizing effort in some way. Now, Rockstar said they were fired for what they say is quote unquote egregious misconduct. They say that these people were leaking confidential information on a Discord, and that that Discord, which was a union organizing Discord, had, had union organizers who didn't work at Rockstar, and also a whole bunch of people, current and former Rockstar employees. The Discord did not, like, was not just actively removing people who had then left. So Rockstar's argument is that these people are like, sharing all this info

• 40:11Jason Schreier?

  about the company that non-Rockstar employees are seeing.

• 40:16Jason Schreier?

  The fired employees say this is a straight on case of union busting and that they were fired as an attempt to scare workers into not unionizing. A lot of those people were part of the bargain or the, the union organization committee. So that happened. And yes, the two company, the, the employees sued and they've been in this protracted legal battle that has lasted, gone on since then. And it's now in court in Scotland and Glasgow court and tribunal, a tribunal, work on an employment tribunal in Glasgow, Scotland. And people are testifying and it's like a whole drawn out process that is expected to be concluded by the end of the month. One other thing I learned of the story, because I was pressing Rockstar's head of publishing, Chen Colby, about this, is that unionization

• 41:01Jason Schreier?

  efforts continue despite the firings and people continue to try to organize. And over the summer, they asked for voluntary recognition. They've been in meetings with Rockstar management ever since. And Colby actually told me, and I thought this was surprising and interesting. She told me that it was, it's been a positive process. And she said, quote, "We go where the team goes. So if they want a union, they will have a union."

• 41:30Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. I, going back to, to the remote work thing, even though that figures into this, you know, union discussion, I just think that it's interesting that there's this argument about security and remote work, which I would imagine it's not unique to Rockstar. A lot of tech companies have proprietary software that they're trying to protect. And yet, you know, I think you mentioned this in your article, that a lot of people saw it as particularly frustrating, that after they did this, they upended so many people, kind of forced them to come in. There was still another massive security breach and people got, you know, someone was like playing the game or whatever and like had a playable build and all of this stuff that happened with the leaks over the summer, right around that, that Netflix premiere. I was struck in your article, by the way,

• 42:13Kirk Hamilton?

  they talked about that hack and the effect that it had on everyone and just how sort of invasive and just harmful it was for, for everyone working there. You know, it's your creative work just getting held out to the world when it's unfinished and then criticized in a way that I'm sure was just awful. And how frustrating that they did this unpopular thing. They forced people back to the office in the name of keeping that from happening. And then it happened anyway.

• 42:36Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. And I mean, Colby was telling me that like she didn't, doesn't think they'll go back to like a three days at the office, two day remote work style. Because here's another quote from her from the story, which is, quote, "I think if we did not have a game that people wanted to steal as much, maybe it would be an easier conversation."

• 42:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, I thought that was a very apt quote from her that is fair. I mean, this is like the most coveted game. And of course, some guy wants to sell his stupid meme coin by airing previously as yet never seen footage of Grand Theft Auto VI. Like, that makes perfect sense to me. And it's deeply irritating.

• 43:17Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. So the 2022 leak, it turned out it was a teenager in the UK who like did a phishing attack on someone at Rockstar, got access to their Slack. The teenager was caught and tried. And I believe things have changed, but for a while he was like sentenced to a mental hospital because he, he said, hold on, let me look up the exact. So the teenager who, who was the hacker, the original hacker, he was 17 at the time. And then he was caught. And a year later, he was tried in the UK. He was 18 and doctors said he was unfit to stand trial due to his severe autism. And he was put in a mental hospital

• 44:02Jason Schreier?

  indefinitely at that point. I believe since then, like in recent months, he's been put back on trial. I don't know what the current state of that is, but yeah, it's a wild, wild story.

• 44:17Kirk Hamilton?

  Bing! Kirk here with just a little bit more information. We'll have an article linked in the show notes with the latest on that first GTA 6 hacker. But it looks like their trial is set to start in November of this year, right? As GTA 6 comes out. So it's October and November, kind of a big time for various trials and hearings related to GTA 6. I also just wanted to note while I'm in the Bing space, that we recorded this episode a little bit early and there's been some new developments with the hacker who has, who like stole the build of GTA 6 over the summer. And we didn't talk about it because we recorded this before that happened. Basically, the hacker is back and is trying to pump

• 45:00Kirk Hamilton?

  up their meme coin. There's a bunch going on. By the time you hear this, more has probably happened. Just wanted to put the conversation in context that we recorded this before all that new stuff happened. Okay.

• 45:12Jason Schreier?

  Bing! As for the most recent one, this person's cyber leak has not, as far as we can tell, not yet been caught. At least Rockstar hasn't said if they've found them.

• 45:24Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. It reminds me of the Half-Life 2 hack. Like there, there are these games that just become so high profile that they become a target for hackers in that way. And it's, I mean, I guess it's just another thing to think about when you're working on something this huge and this high profile.

• 45:39Jason Schreier?

  So yeah, so GTA 6, it's gonna be, there's gonna be a lot to talk about. I am looking forward to us actually having the game and being able to talk about what it's doing and trying to do. Cause that'll be really interesting. It's quite, it's like idiosyncratic. It's so interesting and cool. I think that the biggest game in the world is also so unlike anything else. And I think there will be a lot of discourse surrounding this game. But one thing that nobody can ever say is that, oh, it's just another AAA trope game with its skill trees and scent trails and waypoints and whatnot. No, this will be a very different game. And so it'll be really interesting to talk about, I think.

• 46:20Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 46:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, we'll have to talk about it in a totally different way as like the most AAA game ever. Is it a quadruple A game? What was the game that was saying that it was a quadruple A game? It wasn't Grand Theft Auto.

• 46:33Kirk Hamilton?

  There are a few different ones.

• 46:34Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it's, but it's, it's the most AAA game ever, but it's also not. It's like it's.

• 46:38Kirk Hamilton?

  It's like a horseshoe theory. If you add enough As, it just goes all the way around and it becomes a bizarre experimental indie game.

• 46:44Jason Schreier?

  Right. It becomes indie again.

• 46:46Speaker 00

  It becomes an experimental game about making a sandwich in your kitchen.

• 46:49Jason Schreier?

  You joke, but it's like.

• 46:51Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm not joking, man. I remember Red Dead 2. I remember GTA V where you have to be a janitor and there's like a whole floor mopping game that you play for a while. Like, these games are always like this.

• 47:01Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. And GTA 6, sorry, Red Dead 2 ends by forcing you to like herd sheep and like build a house. And remember that whole section? It's like.

• 47:10Kirk Hamilton?

  Red Dead 1 did the same thing.

• 47:11Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. Yeah. It was, man, it's, it'll be, I'm very excited and very curious about what this game will actually be like. All right. We'll talk about more in the future. In the meantime, go check out my Bloomberg story. If you want to read about the development of this game and what I discovered in Edinburgh. And we will take a break and be back with one more thing.

• 47:37Speaker 03

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• 47:49Speaker 05

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• 48:57Speaker 06

  And at maximumfun.org.

• 49:03Jason Schreier?

  And we are back. It's time for One More Thing. Kirk, start us off.

• 49:07Kirk Hamilton?

  Sure. My One More Thing is a show that I just finished watching the first season. First season just wrapped up. We're recording this a little early, but I just watched the season finale of Lanterns last night. And now I feel like I can finally kind of come down on where I, how I feel about this show. Like, it really was one where I was waiting for the finale to sort of see, how is this all gonna tie together? And? And I'm happy to say, it's good. I think it's a, I think it was a good show. It was a really interesting show, and an unusual one. And, um, and yeah, I really, I really liked it a lot. So this is, of course, an HBO show. It is about the Green Lantern, who

• 49:49Kirk Hamilton?

  is a DC superhero. This is another HBO DC show, like The Penguin, Peacemaker. I've actually watched both of those. Kind of watched all of these. I don't know. I don't think of myself as a big DC fan, but I just keep getting pulled back to these shows. Watchmen, I suppose that counts too. It's a DC property. I get pulled back to them because they get good reviews, and I find myself without something to watch, and I put them on, and then they wind up being pretty good. Like, each of those shows, better than pretty good, really. Each of those shows is excellent. Uh, Watchmen in particular. But, I mean, I love, we all know I love Peacemaker. So this is another one, based on a DC character that I'm very unfamiliar with. Or either, Maddie, I mean, Jason, I'm gonna assume that you're not really familiar with the Green Lantern.

• 50:29Jason Schreier?

  Same assumption.

• 50:30Kirk Hamilton?

  Maddie, are you?

• 50:31Speaker 00

  I'm more of a Marvel person than a DC person, as you both know very well. I did watch, um, there's like a bunch of Justice League cartoons, and I, they're pretty good. And I've seen those, and there's some Green Lantern stuff in there. So I have kind of like a general sense of the character. The, like, Justice League Unlimited, those cartoons are pretty famous for being pretty one-to-one adaptations. And Batman: The Animated Series is in a similar case, where even though it's not one-to-one, it like, it introduces Harley Quinn. I, that's like, the extent of my DC knowledge, just like, watching those shows.

• 51:01Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. Yeah, I watched some of that Harley Quinn animated show.

• 51:03Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, that one's pretty fun, too. That's like, the new one. Um, new twist on Harley.

• 51:07Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. Yeah, the kind of comedic thing. Yeah, so this, I'm like, just totally unfamiliar with the Green Lantern. I didn't see the Ryan Reynolds movie. I remember he makes fun of it in Deadpool or whatever.

• 51:17Speaker 00

  That existed.

• 51:19Kirk Hamilton?

  I know, I really just don't know, like, what the Green Lantern is about. And that was an interesting place to be in, starting this show, since this is a kind of a gritty, pretty down-to-earth version of the Green Lantern. But then also, they go to, like, other planets, and they say this kind of goofy oath that kind of rhymes, where like, you put on the ring and charge it up, and you swear to do good and patrol this space for criminals or whatever.

• 51:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's like a poem or whatever. I do know that.

• 51:44Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, like, it's, it's, it's a little bit goofy comic book stuff, which is fine. It's just that, like, I wasn't really sure of what the source material was actually like. So then, watching this very different take on it, I just kind of, had to come to it fresh. Um, let me explain what the show is, really, kind of briefly here. So Chris Mundie, Tom King, and Damon Lindelof are the three creators. And I think that they actually form an interesting, ah, it's maybe a little like GTA 6. They form an interesting, like, three-part, uh, creator. Like, they, they have three different perspectives.

• 52:14Jason Schreier?

  Triumvirate.

• 52:15Kirk Hamilton?

  A triumvirate, a three-headed hydra. So Tom King is a comics writer. He's worked on DC series. Chris Mundie is a TV guy who, uh, he made, or he's worked on Ozark and True Detective, among other shows. And I think those two are like, kind of helpful touchstones for this show in some ways, especially True Detective. And then Damon Lindelof, we know, I mean, going all the way back, was one of the co-creators of Lost. But for us, I think, maybe more relevantly, like, he's gone on to, I think, be a very powerful creative force for some really great shows, including The Leftovers and that Watchmen, um, sequel series, that I think we all three just thought, I thought was so brilliantly great.

• 52:51Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I was gonna ask how this compares to that.

• 52:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:54Kirk Hamilton?

  It's, I would say, just in terms of sheer quality, like, the Watchmen thing was transcendentally good to me. I loved it, and it had, you know, one of, that one episode in particular was just brilliant. This is like, not that, but it's still very good, and very strong, and like, thought-provoking, and kind of structurally interesting in similar ways.

• 53:12Jason Schreier?

  Okay.

• 53:12Kirk Hamilton?

  So those are the three creators. And I think, so you get the comics guy, the TV guy, and then the other TV guy, who are bringing their different backgrounds to it. And I think that kind of makes sense, when you watch the show. It stars Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre. Kyle Chandler, best known as Coach Taylor from Friday Night Lights, an actor who I've always loved, great in whatever he's in. He's much more Carowarn, he's older now, playing a really, kind of, um, a grumpy take on, uh, Hal Jordan, the Green Lantern, who, I guess I could have pulled that name, if you'd asked me who the Green Lantern was. But, you know, kind of, the, the Peter Parker, you know, whatever. The, the most known Green Lantern. Though, of course, there are lots of Green Lanterns, and I did know that.

• 53:51Jason Schreier?

  It's actually Greens Lantern.

• 53:55Kirk Hamilton?

  Right, right. The plural, the plural is, is actually Greens Lantern. So I had encountered Nathan Fillion as the Green Lantern in the Superman movie from like, a year earlier, and that's set in the same

• 54:05Speaker 00

  He's hilarious in that.

• 54:05Kirk Hamilton?

  Universe. This, right. He's like Comic Relief. He's a total goober. His name is Guy. He has like, a gold tooth. He sucks. And like-

• 54:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, from what I understand, he, Nathan Fillion, like, insisted on wearing that terrible wig, because like, that's what the character wore in the comics. And he was like, we have to stick with this, and like, have this character look ridiculous, because this is where, my direction for the, the character.

• 54:23Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. And that, I even found that confusing going into this, because I was like, what, is that like, a parallel universe? No, it's not. It's just like, taking place at a point that this show isn't overlapping in the timeline. So anyways, so Kyle Chandler is Hal Jordan, and Aaron Pierre is a guy named Jon Stewart, who is a character from the comics as well, who is also a Green Lantern. And the setup is that the two of them go to this small town in Nebraska to investigate a kind of alien disturbance. And, um, Hal is training Jon to replace him. But really, like, Hal does not want to be replaced. They really don't like each other. There's this really intense kind of conflict between them. And a lot of, like, the life of the show is just watching Aaron Pierre and Kyle Chandler

• 55:06Kirk Hamilton?

  bounce off of one another. Aaron Pierre, I think, is a really amazing screen presence and a great actor. He is, I know him best from Rebel Ridge, the movie that I loved from a couple of years ago, is my one more thing.

• 55:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, we both talked about it. He's so good in that.

• 55:18Kirk Hamilton?

  He's very good. He just has this, like, he's a very, like, solid, you know, he's super ripped guy, like, very, like, good-looking, and like, you can't stop looking at him, because he's just so handsome. But he has a kind of a, like, uh, weight to him. It reminds me a little of Keanu Reeves, and his just sort of, like, presence. Where Kyle Chandler is like, so, especially now, he's a little older, and he's playing this really crotchety curmudgeon. And he's so expressive, and he's so wry. And like, the two of them, it's this immobile object and this, you know, I mean, this super-powered sarcastic guy who doesn't really like him very much. And they have a very interesting mentor-mentee relationship. And that's like, the lifeblood of the show. And it winds up being, you know, the kind of key to the whole thing, is their relationship. And then a bunch of stuff happens,

• 56:02Kirk Hamilton?

  and I mean, I, I won't get into all the particulars. Um, it gets, you know, pretty deep in the lore in some ways. It's really like, you'll understand what's going on better, I think, if you understand the Green Lantern. But at the same time, but after a few episodes, I found I didn't really mind. It's a fairly small-scale story in a lot of ways. It's just in this small town. And it begins to feel like True Detective, where you've got these two guys with very different perspectives, investigating a crime. I should say that, uh, Kelly McDonald, the actress, is in this. And if you, once you see her, you'll recognize her. She's in a ton of different movies and TV shows. She was in No Country For Old Men. And I mean, I guess I know her from Boardwalk Empire. That was maybe her mediest TV role. She is fantastic in this. Like, she has as much to do, and is as great of

• 56:47Kirk Hamilton?

  a performance as the two male leads. And like, the three of them are really amazing. Plus, there's a great supporting cast. So really, I'll just say, like, it's a really cool show. I think it solves a lot of those superhero show problems, especially with structure. It doesn't adhere to the, what you're expecting in terms of the arc. Like, there is a kind of big action set piece. Again, I won't say any specifics, but it happens in the middle of the season. And there's a time jump also, that is introduced in the first episode, where a lot of the events take place in 2016, but then a lot more of the events take place in 2026. And there's a 10-year time skip, where a lot of stuff happens. And you kind of get the first half of the season in 2016, and the

• 57:29Kirk Hamilton?

  second half in 2026, though they then jump back and forth, which is a really cool storytelling device. And it allows them to have the narrative climax take place in the middle of the season. Or, I'm sorry, not the narrative climax, I should say, the action climax. Like, the biggest, you know, set pieces and special effects and stuff that happens. And then, it's all character stuff. And really, this is a show about, like, really about stuff. It's about your upbringing. A lot of it is about Jon Stewart's upbringing. He was raised to be the Green Lantern, to live without fear. It's about your relationship to your parents, and your programming, and whether you can, like, be the person that you want to be outside of that. There are these big ideas at play that I think are explored effectively. And I loved the finale. Like, I thought the final two episodes were just perfectly handled.

• 58:13Kirk Hamilton?

  And it ended, like, as it ended, I felt like, you know, wow, I just watched something really, really good. And I really wasn't sure. There were points through the show. I just kept thinking, like, is this gonna be, what are they doing? This is such an unusual show. Where's this going? And, um, I was really happy with where it wound up. So, yeah, I want to recommend it.

• 58:30Jason Schreier?

  I can't believe Damon Lindelof made a show about relationship with your parents.

• 58:35Kirk Hamilton?

  You can see, you can definitely see the sort of lindelof, his fingerprints on it. And he wrote at least one episode. He's a great writer and he wrote some really good episodes. So yeah, I really, you know, I recommend it. I really, I thought quite a bit of it. I thought it was a good show. And I'm guessing the two of you may watch it now that it's finished. And I think, I think you'll enjoy it.

• 58:53Speaker 00

  I do intend to watch it. Did you ever circle back and watch Wonder Man, Kirk? Cause that's also like an atypical superhero show that's a two-hander.

• 59:00Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, you should watch that.

• 59:01Speaker 00

  Mentor mentee. You, I think you would like it. It's, it's canceled now.

• 59:04Jason Schreier?

  Got canceled. Season two got canceled.

• 59:06Speaker 00

  But season one is standalone. So you shouldn't let that stop you.

• 59:09Jason Schreier?

  It's real good.

• 59:09Kirk Hamilton?

  No, I'd like to. I just haven't renewed Disney since then.

• 59:13Speaker 00

  Oh, sure.

• 59:13Kirk Hamilton?

  And so I haven't been able to. But at some point, for sure, like, I remember your recommendation and it's, yeah, it's, I kind of thought of it when I was watching this, just because anytime one of these shows kind of skips all of the, what you're expecting, especially structurally, it's just kind of nice. Cause we're so used to the other, the other format.

• 59:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's such a relief. I feel like watching a superhero show that does something different, like, I guess that's what they're all doing now because they have to.

• 59:37Kirk Hamilton?

  Right.

• 59:38Speaker 00

  Because we're tired of the same origin stories. But it's nice. It's good.

• 59:41Kirk Hamilton?

  At some point, we're gonna be like, look, I, I want a big fight in the final episode. Don't end with just interesting character stuff that, you know, feels like earned resolutions for all the characters. I want you to blow up a building.

• 59:50Jason Schreier?

  It's funny to hear you say that you haven't renewed Disney in a while. As a parent, Disney is probably the easiest choice that I have when it comes to renewing my streaming services.

• 1:00:00Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, that's definitely been my sense is that my, all of my friends who are parents, of course, like, keep Disney, at least, well, at least to a certain age. Though, I'll be interested if you keep it when your kids are a little older. Cause I have some parent friends now whose kids are a little older and they don't have Disney anymore because it has kind of fallen out of favor in their hands.

• 1:00:17Jason Schreier?

  I'll probably keep it forever to watch The Simpsons.

• 1:00:19Speaker 00

  I can't, I can't cancel it either. I have an X-Men podcast, so you want X-Men additions on there and they're all on there. So it is what it is.

• 1:00:28Jason Schreier?

  Maddie, what's your one more thing?

• 1:00:29Speaker 00

  My one more thing is a movie that I am going to describe very lightly because I don't want to spoil it. Cause I think that its plot is really worth preserving, even though it's also based on a true story. So if you know what happened, then hey, maybe you won't get as much of a kick out of it as I did. But I still think it's great. It's called Roof Man. It's all one word. And it stars Channing Tatum as this, this actual man, Jeffrey Manchester, who, I will just describe the premise and no further. So this guy, he's a, he's an army vet, he's divorced, he is trying to figure out what to do with his life. He's a financial failure and kind of like a career failure in the way that kind

• 1:01:11Speaker 00

  of a forgotten army vet who's been sort of abandoned by the system might be. And he decides to start robbing McDonald'ses. So he robs like several dozen of them and he becomes kind of famous societally for being like a really kind robber and like being really polite to all the employees at all of these McDonald's that he's robbing. And then-

• 1:01:37Jason Schreier?

  GTA VII.

• 1:01:38Speaker 00

  Kind of, yeah. I mean, I guess if you-

• 1:01:40Kirk Hamilton?

  Is he robbing them with like a gun? Is this like an armed robbery?

• 1:01:43Speaker 00

  Yes, but not aiming it at someone. They kind of show you like in the very first scene, like an example of how he goes about robbing a McDonald's and like scaring people, but not trying, kind of trying to take care of all of them while also robbing the store. And like by intentionally choosing a McDonald's, it's easy to not really feel that sorry for McDonald's, et cetera. So he kind of like chose a good target, quote unquote. But regardless, he ends up being on the run from the law as a result of his many crimes. And he manages to escape capture by camping out in a Toys R Us for like almost a year.

• 1:02:23Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, I've heard of this. Okay.

• 1:02:25Speaker 00

  And the movie is about how he lives in this Toys R Us and evades capture from the law and subsists off of things that you can only find in a Toys R Us. And it ends up being this, it's built as a comedy.

• 1:02:38Kirk Hamilton?

  Like he eats-

• 1:02:39Speaker 00

  He eats M&M's. And like, cause you know how Toys R Us is only sell candy?

• 1:02:42Kirk Hamilton?

  I know this movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:44Speaker 00

  So anyway, I, I was really fascinated by this movie. Dean and I both really liked this movie and kept talking about it and just this man's life. And I, I looked up afterward, like, what were the real things that the movie changed? And they really don't change much. And I was okay with the stuff they changed for the sake of like, kind of keeping the narrative coherent for a movie length. And it's really fascinating. It kind of ends up being a story about the human condition and how this guy could have gotten away with it. But he can't help but start interacting with people and not staying and hiding fully because being completely alone in this Toys R Us and never interacting with anybody ever is, is a tragic way to be. But also you're kind of rooting for him and you want him

• 1:03:27Speaker 00

  to get away with it and you don't want him to get caught. He sort of is like watching all these Toys R Us employees on the cameras and stuff and like getting to know, know them, quote unquote, and rooting for them in his own weird way. Anyway, he's, Channing Tatum does a really great job in this role. I've always liked him. And I think he's, he's a pretty interesting actor. He lost a lot of weight for this role, which I always feel kind of stressed out when actors do that. But in his defense, he needed to play a man who was subsisting entirely off of candy in a Toys R Us. So I guess, I guess that's part of the actor's job. But yeah, it's called Roof Man. It's really good. It's, it's a weird, good movie and I recommend it.

• 1:04:09Jason Schreier?

  Cool.

• 1:04:09Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice.

• 1:04:10Jason Schreier?

  All right. My one more thing is a video game called Valor Mortis, which is out this week. And I have played a few hours of, I'm not super far, but I think it's really cool. So I wanted to talk about it. I actually, I previewed this at Summer Game Fest and came away buzzing about it on the show. And I'm enjoying the final version as well. So Valor Mortis is a first-person Souls game. And it is very much in the same vein as every other Souls game. You got every trope in the books from, from your backstabbing, killing enemies immediately to dropping your, your souls, whatever they're called in this game,

• 1:04:54Jason Schreier?

  I forget. When you die and I'm going to get them back to your bonfires that are literally just lanterns that are your save points. And that's where you level up your, with your souls. And using it resets all of the enemies and makes them all respawn. You got your shortcuts that get you back to the bonfires in easier ways. You got everything. Everything you could possibly think of that a Souls game would do, this game does. Except it's all in first person, which I think adds a very interesting wrinkle, makes it feel different than other Souls games. This is created by One More Level, which is the developer behind Ghost Runner. And I believe it's sequel Ghost Runner 2, which were also good first person games, had a lot of good, just kind of first person action and parkour and stuff.

• 1:05:39Jason Schreier?

  And they've applied that to this Souls game, which makes it feel different. It's kind of, it changes it up enough to make it feel pretty good. And combat feels really good. The platforming and parkour feel really good. It's just a good feeling game. And the story of this game and the kind of setting are truly out there. This is a game set in the 19th century in Europe, in a alternate version of history where Napoleon and his army have all come back to life as like undead supernatural monsters. And you play as a soldier who has also been brought back to life as an undead monster. But for some reason, you are in

• 1:06:22Jason Schreier?

  control of your body and you're not just like a mutated beast. So you have to go around putting down all these other mutated Napoleon French soldiers and trying to find ones that are still alive and sane and, and interacting with them. And also finding just kind of various mutations of these soldiers that have been turned into bloodborne-like creatures in, in various ways. You have a Cutlass that you slash things with with your right hand. And then in your left hand, you can either use a pistol that can be used to like take out enemy, hit enemy weak spots. Or you can swap that with magic spells, like a fire thrower, like an incinerator type thing that you can use and other stuff later on. And

• 1:07:07Jason Schreier?

  it all feels really good. It's not like, didn't blow my mind or anything from what I've played so far. And in fact, I would say that it's kind of, it's adherence to the Souls formula does it a disservice because it's just so much like a Souls game that it never really surprises you in terms of its level design and, or at least from what I've played so far. Again, caveat, I've only played, I don't know, three hours, four hours, something like that. So it hasn't really surprised me so far. It's also taken a while to get to like a proper boss fight. I did fight one boss, but it was one of those kind of, you're not meant to defeat this boss, you're meant to just die right away. And I haven't yet fought a real proper first boss, which I thought I would have fought by now.

• 1:07:51Jason Schreier?

  But, but I'm enjoying it. It's like a good game. It's coming out at an awful time because it's surrounded by so many other games. And it would be easier for me to be like, hey, you guys, we should all play this and, and talk about it. If it was like January or something like that. But still, it's a good game. And worth noting that unlike most of the other games out this fall, this one is only 40 bucks. So if you're really into Souls likes and you want a first person one, and you want one at a discount, this is a cool option. Kirk, you want to chime in real quick? Cause you've been playing it as well.

• 1:08:21Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I've only played a little bit too. I dig it. It reminds me of Liza P, only in that it, the setting and the setup, you know, the Napoleonic war part of it is so cool and feels pretty different. In that way that Liza P, being the Pinocchio setting and these puppets, kind of that set it apart. And then also like Liza P, it's like really polished and it plays really great from everything I've played. So I totally cosigned that, which isn't a surprise since the Ghost Runner games, like you said, are, those play great too.

• 1:08:49Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:49Kirk Hamilton?

  So it has that feeling of like, oh, this is very much a Souls game, but the setting is, you know, interesting enough. And it's kind of pulling me in. And then, yeah, the first person hook is pretty cool from what I've played. It's so funny playing it at the, you know, I just was playing it while I was finishing the Count of Monte Cristo. I'm kind of sitting there, you know, in, in most Souls games, you die and then you have to go back and get your souls. But in the Napoleonic Souls game, you die and then you spend 10 years infiltrating Paris society. You gradually take over the social scene and then humiliate and destroy all of the people who killed you.

• 1:09:21Jason Schreier?

  And then you get your souls back. Yeah.

• 1:09:23Kirk Hamilton?

  And then you get your souls back and you keep playing the game.

• 1:09:25Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:09:26Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, no, it's cool. You know, it, it has that kind of Bioshock-y- I compare it to Bioshock, even though Skyrim does the same thing, where you have like the melee with the right trigger and the spells and the ranged stuff with the left trigger, but it does have that kind of feeling. Like, it's still, it's that kind of first person, you know, I don't know, Shadow Warrior. There are a lot of these cool first person sword games that it's very much in that lineage and they've got, they've got that dialed in. So that alone makes it pretty cool. You know, Dishonored, actually, is a good comparison point.

• 1:09:53Jason Schreier?

  It reminds me of Dying Light in the way that you kind of move around.

• 1:09:57Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:09:57Jason Schreier?

  And the way that the parkour works and the way that you're kind of, you're frequently like leaping and then grabbing kind of a horizontal pole to just kind of fling yourself to another ledge. There's a lot of platforming like that.

• 1:10:11Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, that's true. It does have that feeling. Though then the combat is like snappier than Dying Light.

• 1:10:15Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, combat is way better.

• 1:10:16Kirk Hamilton?

  More kinetic. I would have to imagine there will be speedruns and like skillruns of this game that are going to be outrageously cool, like just because it's such a kinetic kind of fast-moving game.

• 1:10:25Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. Liza P. is a good comparison point. I found that Liza P., the kind of the world and story and writing of that game grabbed me more than this one so far. This one is falling a little flat in terms of just the dialogue and just kind of William, their main character, just kind of talking to himself in this way that feels a little bit flat. But Valer Mortis, I think, has way better, just kind of moment-to-moment gameplay. I enjoy the combat in this way better. Just something about the first person has really grabbed me and I'm definitely going to keep playing this because, yeah, I'm really into it. And I'm actually, I think, I'm talking, again, third time, just a few hours in, so it might go on to surprise me in terms of its level design a little bit later on. It's just what I've played so far that is very much like Cookie Cutter, following

• 1:11:09Jason Schreier?

  the exact mold of a Souls game. And maybe it'll expand and go in some really great directions, especially when it gets to boss fights. So I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes. And again, yeah, I just really recommend it, especially given the discounted price, which is, price is not something the three of us often talk about because we get most, if not all, of our games from the people who make them and are sending us codes. So I do just want to put a spotlight on that. If you're like looking at this fall and you're overwhelmed by the deluge of games and you want something that doesn't cost the $70 or $80 a lot of these games are costing, just worth noting that this one is $40.

• 1:11:45Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's cool.

• 1:11:47Jason Schreier?

  All right. That is that for this week's episode. A lot of people have been wondering if we're ever going to talk about the sequel to Control, so I guess we should tease that we're going to do that next week.

• 1:11:57Speaker 00

  We are. I'm excited.

• 1:11:59Kirk Hamilton?

  Really looking forward to talking about that.

• 1:12:00Jason Schreier?

  Real resonance.

• 1:12:01Kirk Hamilton?

  Very cool game.

• 1:12:03Jason Schreier?

  Man, next week, I'm going to talk about, my one more thing next week will probably be Final Fantasy Resonance. So we'll talk about Control Resonance.

• 1:12:11Speaker 00

  We're only talking about resonances.

• 1:12:13Jason Schreier?

  Final Fantasy Resonance.

• 1:12:15Kirk Hamilton?

  It'll be a very resonant episode.

• 1:12:16Speaker 00

  We'll see if I can come up with a resonant one more thing as well.

• 1:12:19Kirk Hamilton?

  I'll record the whole thing. I'll talk through it, drum. So I can have a very resonant voice.

• 1:12:24Jason Schreier?

  In the meantime, for 2027, we will have to officially form an LLC for our name consultancy and we will start charging people for naming advice. And if you pay us, let's say $1,000, we will tell you not to name your game Resonant or anything close to Resonant.

• 1:12:42Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. Okay, that'll be our first piece of advice. We'll just have a FAQ on our website and we'll just have a few like-

• 1:12:47Speaker 00

  Wow, we're just giving this away for free. And we were-

• 1:12:49Jason Schreier?

  No, no, no. People have to send us, if you heard that, you have to send us $1,000.

• 1:12:53Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. If you visit the FAQ where it says, "Don't use Resonant, no ashes, no ryes." There are certain words that aren't allowed.

• 1:12:59Speaker 00

  No ashes. Don't put ashes in there.

• 1:13:00Jason Schreier?

  No lord. No using the word lord.

• 1:13:03Speaker 00

  Lord of, et cetera.

• 1:13:05Kirk Hamilton?

  No, sorry.

• 1:13:05Speaker 00

  It's been done. It's been done.

• 1:13:07Kirk Hamilton?

  Age of, uh-uh. No, not allowed.

• 1:13:08Jason Schreier?

  Unless it's lord combined with something unexpected, like-

• 1:13:12Speaker 00

  Age of Lords, Resonant.

• 1:13:14Jason Schreier?

  Puppy Lord.

• 1:13:16Kirk Hamilton?

  Maddie, I feel like Age of Lords, Resonant, almost has to be an actual game, right? I bet that's on Steam. Like, if we went and looked for it.

• 1:13:22Speaker 00

  I don't want to. I don't want to know.

• 1:13:25Kirk Hamilton?

  Age of Lords, Resonant.

• 1:13:29Jason Schreier?

  I found a game, there's a game called Age of Lords. And if you go to the website-

• 1:13:33Kirk Hamilton?

  Yep, there we go.

• 1:13:34Jason Schreier?

  Oh, this looks like, oh, weird. Okay.

• 1:13:40Jason Schreier?

  So the first thing you see is the Age of Lords is over. I guess this was a defunct game.

• 1:13:45Speaker 00

  Oh, shit. It's over.

• 1:13:45Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:13:46Jason Schreier?

  But the, the kind of, the top, the banner splash for this is like a woman, a fantasy woman in like skimpy clothing with her cleavage out.

• 1:13:55Speaker 00

  Oh, sure.

• 1:13:56Jason Schreier?

  And it says, "Age of Lords, build your city." It looks like one of those kind of Facebook spam things. Yeah, it's a mobile game. Yeah.

• 1:14:03Speaker 00

  Come hither, my lord, to the Age of Lords, if you will.

• 1:14:06Kirk Hamilton?

  You won't last five minutes playing this game.

• 1:14:08Jason Schreier?

  This is a dead mobile game.

• 1:14:13Kirk Hamilton?

  You know, we're about to get an email from someone who's like, "Actually, I worked on Age of Lords."

• 1:14:16Jason Schreier?

  We worked on Age of Lords.

• 1:14:17Kirk Hamilton?

  It was a great team. Really rewarding project.

• 1:14:20Speaker 00

  Didn't resonate.

• 1:14:21Jason Schreier?

  It's like a Clash of Clans. It's a Clash of Clans rip. I'm looking at gameplay now. Yeah, it's like Clash of Clans, like one of those mobile, yeah, come hither, my lord style. Oh, my God, this art. If this came out today, you would call it AI, but it came out before generative AI.

• 1:14:35Kirk Hamilton?

  It's the thing that AI trained on.

• 1:14:37Speaker 00

  Yeah. AI trained entirely on all of those games.

• 1:14:39Jason Schreier?

  Well, Age of Lords, turns out it's a real thing, just like you thought.

• 1:14:42Speaker 00

  No surprise. No surprise.

• 1:14:43Kirk Hamilton?

  Not a shock.

• 1:14:44Jason Schreier?

  All right. Kirk, Maddie, I'll see you both next time.

• 1:14:46Kirk Hamilton?

  Yep. See you both next time.

• 1:14:48Speaker 00

  Bye.

• 1:14:51Kirk 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.

• 1:15:48Jason Schreier?

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