Date Everything! (with Ray Chase)

Kirk, Jason, and Maddy bring on special guest Ray Chase (Final Fantasy XV, Play Nice) to talk about his experiences as a voice actor and his new game, Date Everything! Ray talks about how he came up with the game, the seven-year saga of building it, and how it's so much more than a romance simulator.

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

• 0:03Jason Schreier?

  If you've ever walked around your house and thought, hey, this piano is pretty cool, but I wish that I could have a date with it. Here's the game for you.

• 0:13Jason Schreier?

  Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the dates to you. This week, we are talking to Ray Chase, prolific voice actor and the director of a new video game called Date Everything. Let's do it.

• 0:30Jason Schreier?

  I'm Jason Schreier.

• 0:31Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm Kirk Hamilton.

• 0:33Speaker 02

  And I'm Maddy Myers.

• 0:34Jason Schreier?

  Hello.

• 0:35Speaker 02

  Hello. Hello.

• 0:37Jason Schreier?

  Welcome back.

• 0:38Kirk Hamilton?

  Hello, my best gamer friends. So nice to see you both.

• 0:41Speaker 02

  The best of all.

• 0:42Jason Schreier?

  We are the best of all. We have a special guest today, which is gonna be

• 0:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 0:46Jason Schreier?

  very exciting. I'm very excited to talk to him. But before we get to that, we have some other things to talk about, including the fact that we are a listener-supported podcast. That's right. You may have heard Triple Click is supported by listeners just like you who go to maximumfun.org/join and become a Max Fun member. And in addition to making this podcast possible, you also get bonus episodes every single month, including one we just did, where we dig a deep dive into Blueprints, and including one we are about to do at the end of June, where we talk about season two of Andor, the new Star Trek show.

• 1:30Kirk Hamilton?

  Live long and prosper.

• 1:31Jason Schreier?

  If you want to hear those episodes and many, many more, go to maximumfun.org/join, become a member, support this show. One more thing is that we will be doing a live show that is coming up very soon in Portland, Friday, July 11th, at the Alberta Rose Theater. If you'd like to buy a ticket, you can buy it in the show notes. The link is in the show notes. Reserve your seat. I believe it's a little more expensive at the door. So if you do want to come, make sure you get your ticket in advance. And Kirk, one more thing for you before we, before we bring in our special guest.

• 2:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, one more thing for me is that I have finally put together all of the podcast music that I've written over the last 10 or so years, most of them in the last five years, and made them into a little album that is now for sale on my Bandcamp page. It is called Music for Podcasting.

• 2:20Speaker 02

  Great title.

• 2:21Kirk Hamilton?

  And it's got all kinds of themes from shows that I have hosted and also other people's shows that they've hired me to write, a bunch of different musicians. It actually features Jason and Matty, of course, on the TripleClick theme.

• 2:31Speaker 02

  True.

• 2:32Kirk Hamilton?

  And a bunch of other great musicians. And it was fun to finally put it together. I don't know. So I just wanted to let everyone know. It's on my Bandcamp page. We'll put a link in the show notes. Check it out and, you know, buy some MP3s from me if you feel like it.

• 2:44Jason Schreier?

  All right. Well, we've got a very special interview slash guest host slash whatever you want to call it. We got a guy. We got a guy coming on. So without further ado, let's bring in our pal, Ray Chase.

• 2:59Jason Schreier?

  And we are joined by Ray Chase. Ray Chase is a prolific voice actor who is best known as the narrator of Blood, Sweat & Pixels, Press Reset, and Play Nice, but also he did some Final Fantasy and X-Men and Resident Evil things. Ray, how are you?

• 3:17Speaker 03

  Hi, I'm so, so happy to be here. I'm a long time listener, first time caller. It's truly an honor. I'm so, I'm just absolutely happy to be here. I'm big, big fans.

• 3:28Jason Schreier?

  It's exciting to have you. So you and Ben Starr, both lovely people, both voice actors, both Final Fantasy stars, both TripleClick listeners, which I appreciate.

• 3:37Speaker 03

  We love games, man. I mean, one of the things that like, I really loved talking to him when I saw that he was cast and promoting and played games. I'm like, he's a real frickin' gamer. One of us, man. Let's do it.

• 3:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, that really matters.

• 3:52Jason Schreier?

  He is a true nerd.

• 3:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:55Jason Schreier?

  So Ray, so we have you on here. We're gonna talk a little bit about voice acting in general, but most importantly, you have a new game that comes out this week as we are airing this. Ray, tell us about your game, which is called Date Everything. On the TripleClick scale of names, by the way, this gets a 10 out of 10. Tell us about Date Everything.

• 4:15Speaker 02

  It's pretty good.

• 4:16Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, solid name.

• 4:16Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 4:17Speaker 02

  It is what it is.

• 4:17Speaker 03

  I have to say, like, that name was what guided the whole thing. I had not had a, I was not a video game developer, but I was also really interested, I was always really interested in indie games specifically. I went to GDC. See you for the last 15 years, just always, anytime I was in a game, I was just, I just wanted to meet the developers, see what that was like and play their games and play the lesser known titles that took risks with what a game could be and expanded the scope of what this amazing interactive media can do. And the title was just a funny title that Robbie and I came up with during a voiceover session about like, what about a game where you could just date everything? I don't know.

• 4:57Speaker 03

  And then I thought about it for the, that night, came back to him and said, I want to make that game. I think I want to do that. And it has been a seven year journey of trying to make something that lives up to that title.

• 5:10Kirk Hamilton?

  That's so interesting.

• 5:11Jason Schreier?

  Robbie being, of course, Robbie Damon, your fellow voice actor who worked on this game with you.

• 5:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, Goro Ketchin persona, um, prompto in Final Fantasy, he's on Critical Role, yeah.

• 5:21Kirk Hamilton?

  So you guys started seven years ago, which is before the pandemic.

• 5:25Speaker 03

  Oh, yes, I know. This is a very pandemic coded game in the sense that you can't leave your house. And we were highly aware of that. Yeah, we started in, in June 17th, 2018, was when I sent the first email to Adrian Wallach, who was our lead programmer for the Vertical Slice. And almost seven years to the day, we'll be releasing it June 17th, 2025.

• 5:46Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice. Can I take a crack at explaining what this game is?

• 5:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I feel like we need to go in a little more detail than you did.

• 5:52Kirk Hamilton?

  I mean, we could get Ray's description, but I feel like I can, maybe I can try and you can correct me if I'm wrong about anything.

• 5:57Speaker 03

  Essentially draft rooms in a house and you're trying to get to room 46 in our game.

• 6:02Speaker 02

  And it's harder than you think.

• 6:03Speaker 03

  Right, it's harder than you think. Yeah.

• 6:05Speaker 02

  More to it.

• 6:05Kirk Hamilton?

  The real date everything begins when the credits roll. So I've, I've played a bit of this and I find it very funny, delightful, and yes, very pandemic coded and sort of intriguingly dystopian.

• 6:17Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 6:17Kirk Hamilton?

  I don't know if you would use that word, but it is actually, there's a bit of darkness underneath it. But you're a, you're working for essentially an Amazon like mega corporation. You're working remotely from this house where you have been put up by the company. And then you, your first day of work, I think, you're laid off and replaced by an AI and put into job limbo. Sort of like some of these corporations have where they don't want to lay you off without cause, so you're just kind of working for them, but you have nothing to do. And at the same time that this happens, you get a mysterious delivery at your house and it's a pair of augmented reality glasses. They're pretty fashionable and you put them on and the glasses themselves take the appearance of a cute girl and they start talking to you and they say, hey there, what's up?

• 7:02Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm the glasses, but I'm here to tell you about dating. What are they called? Wait, now I'm forgetting the name. They have a very funny name, the glasses.

• 7:09Speaker 03

  They're called date viators.

• 7:11Kirk Hamilton?

  Thank you. Date viators. So aviator glasses, but you can use them to date things. So then you walk around this house that you are not actually trapped in, but you can't leave because if you leave, the glasses would be powered down because they're like proto tech or whatever. And you can just look at any item in the house. You hold down the trigger, at least for me, it's the trigger I'm playing on Steam Deck. And the item sort of manifests into a character that looks like a dating sim character with, you know, a really striking look and fun music and a whole vibe and a weird energy or whatever. And they're all very, very different. So you go talk to your piano and the piano is this musician who is performing a version of John Cage's 433 that's actually 33 seconds long. And I appreciated that joke very much.

• 7:53Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 7:54Kirk Hamilton?

  It was like one of the very first jokes that I encountered in the game. I was like.

• 7:57Speaker 03

  I'm a, I'm a big classical music head. There's a lot in, a lot of cool references and a concerto, a full on concerto that plays.

• 8:04Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, wow. Okay. I haven't gotten to that yet, but.

• 8:07Jason Schreier?

  Which, I mean, we should say it's like 33 seconds of silence that you have to go through while you talk to this. It's amazing. It's amazing.

• 8:13Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, well, so this, and it's by, I believe, John Cage. So 33, 433 is a famous John Cage piece that is four minutes and 33 seconds of silence is very provocative when it was composed. There's actually an episode of the podcast 20,000 Hertz about it. So anyhow, that's the premise. And then you go around and you kind of date the things in your house that are maybe being projected as artificial intelligence, like, you know, it, you can almost imagine this being a real thing in the world, the war you play. And that's what begins to feel a little bit dystopian, even though it's a very cheery and funny game. So that's the, that's the basic outline of the game. How did I do?

• 8:49Speaker 03

  Well done.

• 8:50Jason Schreier?

  It's very funny that you guys came up with this pre pandemic because it's so like, like you're stuck at home. You imagine dating things in your house.

• 8:57Kirk Hamilton?

  You're so lonely.

• 8:59Jason Schreier?

  Suddenly, suddenly your TV remote is actually telly this.

• 9:03Speaker 02

  Gotta be six feet apart from everybody, but like that table's looking really good.

• 9:08Jason Schreier?

  Yes. So, right. Tell us a little bit more. I mean, so you and Robbie, you're just voice actors. You're not game developers, or at least you weren't when you started on this journey. How do you even start the process of saying, oh, my God, we have this idea. We have this title, Date Everything. Let's turn that into an actual video game. What was that like for you?

• 9:26Speaker 03

  It was a, it was a really long path and I definitely took more of a mantle on from when I started. When I first started, I was like, hey, I've produced things before. I've made up a podcast, a narrative podcast. I, before I was a voice actor, I owned a digital media production company. I was like, I know how to bring people together with different talents to put something in. And I was like, I bet I can outsource a lot of this stuff. I can just kind of like helm the ship and like do stuff. And then I very quickly found out that no, I gotta, someone has to make the decisions, design the game, be the narrative designer. And one of the big things that I had to learn because no one else really did, and I could just kind of took to it, was be the, the story programmer for the entire thing. And it is a massive, massive story.

• 10:09Speaker 03

  I was the, Ink is the language that we use for it. And we have over 2,000 variables. And I designed the whole system for how it interacts with Unity and then implemented all of the variables that go with it. I built a lot, a lot of little fun machines inside Ink that were able to do it. We didn't use it correctly. You're supposed to use Ink for, this is what the Sorcery Games are from, or the 80 Days, which is non voiced. We're using it voiced, so we weren't able to use some of the full power. They have things called glue. We were able to take parts of, of text and mush it together. We always had to have voice lines, but it meant that I had to come up with some interesting little ways around that

• 10:51Speaker 03

  to, to make, um, uh, voice lines play, take the character's pronouns. For example, the player character's pronouns, play the, the right thing that happened. And I had a lot of. Narrative design decisions where we have a lot of randomness in the game, or you have characters who give quests in a random way. And so I built little ways of making those things work inside of the three dimensional dating sim environment, which was a lot of design problems that I don't think had ever been solved before. Usually you don't see that visual novel dating sim, first person shooter controls all come together.

• 11:27Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I wasn't expecting that.

• 11:28Speaker 02

  And the full voice acting.

• 11:30Speaker 03

  And the full voice acting, yeah.

• 11:31Speaker 02

  This is a real who's who voice actor cast, which I would say is part of the fun of pointing your aviators.

• 11:39Speaker 03

  Date aviators, yeah. Aviators copyrighted, we can't say it.

• 11:42Speaker 02

  At various objects around the house. It's that you're like, well, who's gonna play what?

• 11:47Jason Schreier?

  Matty, I don't know if you've gotten this far, but there's a moment where you're talking to your pal Sam and you're explaining to her what's going on. And you're like, yeah, I got these date aviators. And she's like, no, they're not called date aviators.

• 11:58Kirk Hamilton?

  She can't get into it.

• 11:59Speaker 03

  She calls them magic furniture, furniture F glasses.

• 12:03Speaker 02

  I don't know if we curse on this show.

• 12:06Jason Schreier?

  So Ray, I mean, how did you even, did you have a programming background? How did you even know where to start? For all the aspiring like voice actors out there who want to make video games.

• 12:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, all the voice actors.

• 12:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm just, you know, there's, there's stuff. I have no formal training in that stuff. I'm just trained, I have a, you know, a theater degree and a minor in film. But a lot of it was, was learning as you went and just saying like, all right, if no one's gonna design this narrative, I'm gonna design it. If no one's gonna do the game design, I'll just do it. But it comes from a love of, you know, you have a lifetime of playing games that you really like. And you say, I want to live up to these ideals. One of the, my guiding lights with this one was I wanted this game to be Stanley Parable meets Disco Elysium. In the sense that like, this is a, this is a visual novel that has a, that has exploration elements with a breezy feel to it.

• 12:57Speaker 03

  That I could not reach the literary heights of a Disco Elysium. But I do like Disco Elysium's role playing, variety, surprises. There's places in it where I do hope that you get emotional and cry. And like really dig deep into some into some stuff. Um, and that was that was kind of my guiding principle for it. And then just, you know, watching Design Doc YouTube uh tutorial stuff, uh kind of stuff. Listening to you guys, listening to uh Game Maker's Notebook, Game Maker's Toolkit. Uh, these these podcasts that really go into um how games are made and and overcoming challenges. And that kind of stuff really inspired me to keep going forward, uh even when things got dire. And because they definitely got dire.

• 13:39Jason Schreier?

  When did things get dire?

• 13:41Speaker 03

  Immediately. We had four years where we were putting together our vertical slice um and pitching. And we got a lot of feedback on that that vertical slice. At first, the game was really puzzle oriented. You were locked in the laundry room. The scandalabera hates that you're dating everything.

• 13:56Kirk Hamilton?

  So you did have to get to room forty seven.

• 13:58Speaker 03

  You did have, yeah. It was really, it was really puzzling. And one of the big pieces of feedback that we had from our art director, uh Aaron Nijuku Wong, said like, where's the dating part? I'm, I want to do the date part. Uh, and I'm like, you're right. We're getting too up our own butts about like being being uh avant garde about this stuff. Too gamey. Um, and uh, and so we toned that that kind of stuff back down. Um, and then, so that was four years. We got fully funded by Team Seventeen. Um, and that was such a gift for them to believe in us and to say like, hey, these idiot voice actors have uh zero, a zero percent hit rate on making uh video games. Uh, we're still gonna believe in them anyway because they probably can get this done. Uh, and then what followed was a series of uh failure after failure.

• 14:43Speaker 03

  We had twenty four milestones. We failed every single one.

• 14:45Jason Schreier?

  Oh my god.

• 14:46Speaker 03

  But one of the reasons why it was because it was, we, and I think one of the reasons why they kept believing in us, because we always failed it for the same reason. The assets were made. We got the writing done. We got the art done. We started building the house. We had these things done, but they weren't appearing in the build. And that was always just a a level of catch up that we were always playing, which which was um, we have, we have this massive um uh idea for, let's say, um, um, I don't want to be too spoiler on this thing, but uh there's a thing called uh, say, the postcards. Um, which is, uh, there's like, uh, 150 of these images and they're just not appearing at the correct time. Or they're not, uh, the file name was wrong, uh, because we're all just trying to get this done as, as quickly as possible.

• 15:32Speaker 03

  And so it was, sorry, you got 89 out of 120 of these things appearing in the build while we're playing it. Um, and so we'd fail the milestone. We failed it again and again and again. And it came to a point where I did have to put in my entire life savings into it because it was just like, hey, uh, this, uh, either we give full control of the game over to Team 17 to take it over the finish line. Or I, I keep the artistic and directorial, um, uh, goals that I wanted and just fund it myself. So that's what ended up happening, uh, in it. And then I took over the roles of all the writing that had to be done, uh, left, uh, and, and fixing the bugs. We had 4,222 bugs at the end that were squashed, uh, and I did around half of them.

• 16:13Jason Schreier?

  So, uh, needless to say, stakes are a little bit high for you for this.

• 16:17Speaker 03

  Very much, yes. Uh, but there's always anime conventions. I, I hope I can make, uh, my money back if this game doesn't make any more.

• 16:24Jason Schreier?

  I mean, now I have to write more books. God.

• 16:26Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 16:27Jason Schreier?

  So, uh, yes, is there like a threshold of sales that you have to hit in order to like, uh, get yourself back in decent shape?

• 16:35Speaker 03

  The, um, the full final budget, uh, was, uh, around $3 million for the game. Uh, a large portion of that is the console. Um, at a certain point, uh, I would say like around a third of the budget is just for the console development. And that is something we never, ever could have done without Team 17's help. They have so much of a pedigree. Uh, 20, over 25 years of being in business. They know how to make games for console and port it over. So they had a dedicated team who's taking the game, which was still being worked on, still being added to, even up to the last minute. And then taking that and, and making sure that there was parity between all the different console versions.

• 17:11Speaker 03

  And it was, it was frustrating because, you know, you have to design for the Switch 1 at the time, uh, which was the, the, the, um, least, uh, uh, available processing power, but you always had to design for that. We wanted to have, you know, cool water effects and mirrors and stuff like that. We got some of it. In there, but that was always a slight bummer. But I'm really happy because it kept ourselves in check. This game is a maximalist game where it says, if you want to be able to do something, we will absolutely let you do it. There's so much hidden stuff that like, I don't even think most people realize just even from 20 or 30 hours of playing that like, there's systems underneath systems underneath these systems that I fully padded out.

• 17:53Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. So can you, can you elaborate? So people hear the name Date Everything and they think of it as a romance sim. But it sounds like you also had a lot of ideas for puzzles and stuff like that. Can you kind of explain a little bit more behind what the game is beyond just talking to hot people?

• 18:09Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 18:10Jason Schreier?

  Especially for people out there who might not be, it's funny. I just had a conversation with Ben Starr and a couple of other voice actors about this last week. Cause I was like, I'm excited to check out Ray's game, but I am not like personally super into dating sims. And they were like, this is, this is for people who don't like dating sims also.

• 18:25Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 18:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's like a comedy as well.

• 18:27Speaker 03

  You're right. It is, it is a visual novel. That is the genre of it for sure. A visual novel, you can walk around. It's the melding of those two, a walking simulator plus a visual novel. Of course there are dates in it, but I wanted to sidestep that at the, right at the outset, by saying that the date viators allow you to directly acknowledge a thing's existence. And that is shortened to date everything. You are talking to these things. It is essentially a big RPG city that you're communicating with. It is a Baldur's Gate that you're able to go in. Everyone has their own shit going on and you're just coming in and uh, just being a new player character who's set amidst all these things. Because of a hundred and that was always from the top.

• 19:08Speaker 03

  It was like, we have to have a hundred dateable characters because it's ridiculous, because whoever would do that? It uh, it couldn't, it could not be repetitive. And that was the one thing that I was just driving home every single time. Whenever we chose a character to do, it was they have to have their own lane. It has to be a hundred different lanes that you're in narratively, visually, sonically. Otherwise you just get so bored. So if this was a traditional dating sim where you are going out on a date, you're a high schooler, you're going out on traditional dates with. With all these characters, you would top, tap out at 20. It would, it would be the most boring game of all time. So I, I think pretty quickly I had to go like, this is, let's go visual novel territory.

• 19:52Speaker 03

  With a lot of romantic elements, you do get some really saucy dialogue. There is an achievement for having sex with every single character in the game. It allows you to do all the, explore all these things, or not, and you still get a good thing. There's Dory in the door who says, "I wish everybody would be friends." And he's the friendship path. You also have Reggie rejection, who's the hate path, and Skylar, who's the love path. And all of those are completely valid options.

• 20:19Kirk Hamilton?

  Just to really clarify here, you said directly acknowledge a thing's existence, and you moved kind of quickly through that. When it is outlined in the game, you're capitalizing letters there. D A T E, directly acknowledge a thing's existence.

• 20:32Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 20:33Kirk Hamilton?

  Right off the bat, you're kind of saying, okay, this isn't exactly dating. There is more to it than that.

• 20:38Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 20:38Kirk Hamilton?

  Which does seem evident from the start. It's cool to hear that there's so much more going on.

• 20:41Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, and there's a lot in the game that you haven't even mentioned. I mean, there's a stat system. You unlock certain elements of dialogue, kind of Baldur's Gate or Disco Lizard style, based on your stats. It is definitely more elaborate than just like talking to hot people and convincing them that you're, you're cool. There's even, if you talk to the fireplace, he'll teach you pickup lines. And I'm very curious to see how that system works.

• 21:06Speaker 03

  The fireplace, played by Dante Bosco, named Dante. He, so I, I wanted variety with all of these characters. Sometimes the specs points are able to, your, your character points are able to get you cool new dialogue options, but they never block you out of any ending. And Dante specifically hates those points. And if you try to win him over through use of the points, he's like, "Man, that's not cool. You're metagaming me, man. I don't like that." So that's the kind of like variety that I really wanted to go, where every character is breaking a rule laid out in the system of the game, and saying, "Here's a different perspective on what getting to know someone is, what dating is, what the metagame of this all is."

• 21:44Kirk Hamilton?

  So I'm curious if you had a sense of how deep this was going to be when you set out? Because a lot of projects like this, you know, you have a fun idea, this sort of central concept, and then it just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger. With a smaller team like you guys had, you can only get so big, I suppose, and that kind of limits you. Because of course, so many big games, they lose, they lose control of it completely. And by the time they ship something, it's this kind of shambolic mess. So I guess, did your scope creep and how did you account for that?

• 22:11Speaker 03

  The scope didn't creep, it took off like a rocket. On two separate occasions, there were two really big ones. And one of them was when we first started out, it was like, the only way that we're going to be able to do this is we have a star system with all the dates, where some characters are a five-star character, they'll take a whole lot of time, be really deep. We'll have some one-star characters who are little jokey ones that happen. And it was just an off, another offhand comment that changed the entire development. But our senior producer, Jamie, Team17, was playing through the dialogue. And Arma, the smoke alarm, her story was about trauma and dealing with it, with her incessant beeping. And then it ended after, after just like two conversations, and she was a one-star character. And he was just like, "It just seems kind of fast.

• 22:56Speaker 03

  I don't know, it seemed abrupt. Was there more? Is this a bug? I'm not quite sure. Was there more?" And I was like, "Yeah, why? If this is someone's, this is gonna be someone's favorite character, why do any of these need to be abrupt? They should all be five-star characters." Oh no. And making, making that decision made everybody amazing. There's a lot of characters, I don't know if you talked to Wall, or if you talked to Lux, or Aaron the air, but they're, they can be resolved immediately. Or Fantina, the fan who gives you a love ending immediately. But that's usually just the beginning of their story. And if you keep going through, you're able to get all of the different endings and find different routes. Sometimes you get a love ending, but it's a toxic love ending, and then you get the real love ending later.

• 23:34Kirk Hamilton?

  So was there ever a point where you kind of regretted adding this?

• 23:38Speaker 03

  I regretted it every day of my life. Because so, again, yeah, we, we had to do it, we had to figure it out, we had to fund it, and amazingly, we were able to do it. But it certainly took a toll on me personally. I gained 50 pounds making this thing. I could only do it, I still doing conventions in order to pay for the game, and then doing voice acting as well. Jason, narrating your book happened. One of the hardest weeks of my life was, was narrating that Blizzard book. Narrating Play Nice. Because I was also voicing Lyric Literature. If you want to talk about Scope, did you guys talk to Lyric or write his book?

• 24:14Speaker 02

  I talked to him.

• 24:15Speaker 03

  You talked to him, but just once, not the second time?

• 24:17Speaker 02

  No, but I can imagine.

• 24:20Speaker 03

  You talked to him the second time?

• 24:21Speaker 02

  He's the spirit of literature. There's gonna be some things involved there.

• 24:26Speaker 03

  He wants to, he wants to write a book because he's never written. He's only been books. And so he gives you a plot and there's four genres. There's noir, adventure, comedy and erotic. And you start a book and it's these four choices and you pick one and at least to four more choices. Noir, comedy, adventure, erotic, and then four more, and then four more, until it's 1,024 different stories that you can make with Lyric. And then he gives it a score.

• 24:50Speaker 02

  It's like a game within a game. Like a choose your own adventure with it and then choose your own adventure.

• 24:55Speaker 03

  He gives one a score and then you publish that. It was hard, man. I was doing Lyric. I was, I ended up having to voice Lyric just because of the time that was involved. It was around 3,000 lines. And I was like, doing that and doing Jason's book the same day, plus working on The Bugs. It was a tough, it was a tough time.

• 25:13Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, that was a little dramatic. Our publisher, we had some kind of back and forth about whether we would be able to get you back.

• 25:19Speaker 03

  We certainly did, yeah. And it was, it's a hard thing to explain. It's like Ray's having a tough time because he's making a dating sim. It's like, what?

• 25:26Speaker 02

  He's busy voicing the spirit of literature right now and that spirit's writing a lot of books himself. So he's got a lot going on.

• 25:33Jason Schreier?

  You said there were two big Scope creeps. What was the other one?

• 25:35Speaker 03

  So then the other one was, and this I go with Michelle Kleal, who is from GDC. I watched a talk from her and she's a narrative designer. And I was just really inspired by her talk about kindness coins in games.

• 25:50Speaker 02

  Oh my God, I love that game.

• 25:51Speaker 03

  You know that, yeah. You love kindness coins?

• 25:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, the one where you get rejected. Oh, I, sorry. I thought you were referring to like, there's like a game that's about this.

• 26:00Speaker 03

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 26:02Speaker 02

  I'll send it to you after this. It's like a play on how kindness coins work in games, where no matter how many coins, coins so-called, you give to the one female character in the game, she's a lesbian and she always rejects you at the end, no matter what. And I think, I believe the game's called Kindness Coins.

• 26:19Speaker 03

  I love this. That reminds me of the ending of Disco Elysium with your, with your ex-wife and stuff. I love that. Holy smokes. I do, I would love to play that. That sounds amazing.

• 26:29Speaker 02

  I'll send it to you.

• 26:33Kirk Hamilton?

  Bing. Kirk here as I'm editing the episode. Two quick things. First of all, that game is Kindness Coins by Arden Ripley from 2013. We put a link for it down in the show notes. Second thing is Ray is about to mention a plot point from Date Everything that happens a little ways into the game. It's not a huge spoiler. He says it's something that everyone will just be talking about pretty quickly after the game comes out, but I wanted to at least mention that he is gonna give what could be a spoiler for the game. So if you don't want to hear that, skip ahead just a couple of minutes to 29 minutes and then the conversation will continue with no further spoilers. Okay, back to the show. Bing.

• 27:11Speaker 03

  Her thing is, yeah, there's kindness coins in RPGs, which are RPGs of Mass Effect can get away with it or a Witcher because it's like, all you have to do is be nice to them and then they'll love you. And that's really not how the real world works and definitely something I didn't want in this game. We had to come up with other ideas for like how to, how to make these dates seem dynamic and unpredictable, but with hints in the data decks and from other datables and stuff. So she, she was that. She was inspiring. And then I remember calling her over the course of a couple of weeks and saying like, how do we end this game? How does the through line happen? How is there a central plot to all of it? And we came up with realization, which usually happens about maybe 20 hours

• 27:54Speaker 03

  into the playthrough. You find out that you can bring these characters to life. They become humans. And then what happens through that thing? The game does not end.

• 28:03Kirk Hamilton?

  Is this a big spoiler? Are you spoiling something?

• 28:05Speaker 03

  At this point, I'm okay with saying now that the game is out, I think everyone's going to know about it pretty, pretty much immediately that like, this is how the narrative keeps going. What happens with these date viewers now that you're bringing things to life? The more things you bring to life, the more the story progresses. And, and then you get it. You still get that ending as you leave the house, which changes based on the choices of who you realized and who's out there and how far you got. And that was the second like rocket ship to the moon of like, okay, we have to also write all of these, all of the epilogues for the characters. Now they also have to have a piece of art. They have to have different poses involved and we have to keep the lore consistent and not have any overlap between what everyone does with the rest of their lives.

• 28:50Speaker 03

  So those are the two horrible scope creeps that that made everything crazy, but somehow we were able to do it, man. We were not canceled, unbelievably.

• 28:59Kirk Hamilton?

  So it was two of you that had this idea, but I'm curious, and I think listeners might be wondering, how do you think of the size of your team or studio versus, you know, the publisher and the people there who helped you with various things? Like, what's the kind of, what kind of headcount are we talking about? And how do you think of the various headcounts that interact for this?

• 29:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was, we definitely had leads, which really helped, and all of our leads were just ballers. We had Nijuku, who was our character designer. She designed all of the characters. She sketched out all of the poses.

• 29:32Kirk Hamilton?

  She's great.

• 29:33Speaker 03

  She's amazing. Each pose, each character has five different poses that can happen, and then nine different expressions, plus blinks for each of the expressions if their eyes are open. And I found out later, because she did not tell me this while she was working on it, because she didn't want to be accused of making herself do crunch, but she did all 13,000 expressions on that game. The other artists would do the poses, and then she would do all of the facial expressions and the blinking and export all the files and then put them through GitHub. And she's an absolute beast. And then on the music side, we had Garrett Williamson, who is just incredible at variety, that you're able to give him any kind of reference for these characters, and then he

• 30:18Speaker 03

  makes it in his own style while incorporating the themes and making it all feel like it's from the same game. And that was something we absolutely needed, someone who could say, we, you know, each character has their own theme, someone who can say, we need variety. And he got everything. I was, I like Enrique Granados, the Spanish composer. I was like, can you make a Granados song? And he's like, show it to me, never heard of him. And then the next day, he wrote Keith the Key's song. And it's just like unbelievable how talented he was. So with Nij at that, we had Garrett as the The um, the uh, the um, uh, music part. We had Robbie in the booth directing the actors. Also a superstar.

• 31:01Speaker 03

  And then I, I have to give shout out to Suha Al-Samkari, who was a game developer and visual novel and dating sim designer in her own right, who I was able to catch at just the right time and say, hey, our scope went crazy. A lot of our writers have now left the team. Can you help make, uh, bring this up? And she ended up writing 23 of the characters on her own. We, we worked really well together where I would just do, I would, I would design the, um, the ink for her, put in all the variables, show her how it worked. She would fill it in. She'd be the, I would be the skeleton. She'd be the muscle. And uh, it was such a great working relationship. And she was really good at something that a lot of us writers struggle with, with like, how to be sexy enough.

• 31:44Speaker 03

  Where it's not explicit. It doesn't make you feel gross, but just like that nice titillating quality and uh, she was a superstar at it. And she wrote all of the narrator lines, which also was a late addition. We did not have a narrator for most of the game and uh, JB Blunk recorded all 5,000 of the lines in the last couple of weeks of development. Yeah.

• 32:03Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, the writing is really impressive in this game. And I think people who check it out will, will come away thinking, wow, this is really strong. I wanted to ask you, Ray, you're a professional voice actor. You were now, it sounds like Robbie directed, but I'm sure you were involved as well because you're so key to the, the game's development in dealing with these voice actors. What's it like being on the other side of the microphone and having to deal with the, the quirks of other voice actors? What'd you learn from it?

• 32:28Speaker 03

  It's wild. Yeah, we, uh, we did a bad thing, which again, we have no lead characters in our game. Everyone has equal play, which is a very uh, stupid way of making a game. Normally you have lead characters who like you bring in. You don't have to explain the game every single time they are. You don't have to go off to the races and be like, all right, we gotta do 800 to 1,200 lines for each of these characters in a four hour session. It was, it was pretty brutal for a lot of these voice actors to be put uh, under, under these, the, the scrutiny. But uh, and uh, people's uh, definitely said that it was, it was. Hard, but they also said it was the most fun that they've had. Once it was over, they're like, I've never played a character like that. Cast a lot of people against type and it was, uh, I think it ended up being a good experience for a lot of them.

• 33:13Speaker 03

  And it's a union game that we are paying our actors residuals for, which is something that we've never experienced in any video game that has ever been made. Uh, and we just said, we are going to be the ones to do it. We have a special agreement with SAG. 10% of our profits go to all of our voice actors.

• 33:30Kirk Hamilton?

  That's incredibly cool. Good on you guys for doing that. That's awesome.

• 33:34Speaker 03

  Be the change you want to see.

• 33:35Jason Schreier?

  Well, I want to get to the union in a second, but what, what did you like, were you, as someone who's been a voice actor for this long, working with other voice actors, were you ever like, God, I can't believe I do that. God, this person is doing this. Like, were there any takeaways for you? That were like, oh man, I have to change my style or learn this from the experience?

• 33:53Speaker 03

  Well, here's the, here's, here's what it is. I wasn't there for a lot of the voice acting, unfortunately. We started in March of last year and it went till around June or so. And that was when I was super, super crunched finishing my characters. I wrote 14 myself and they're usually the most ink heavy where there's like really weird, uh, I just really wanted to flex my, my, my, uh, programming muscles to be like, what about a character who gives dates randomly? This is Parker, the board games. He gives them randomly, but he waits a die based on how you played his games and you can cheat or you can win or you can let him lose and all of those end up being the die roll that happens at the end. Uh, and, uh, and just making really weird, weird things like that. That took a lot of time. Or Dory in the door.

• 34:34Speaker 03

  There's 17 of him, uh, in the entire game. Each of the 17 has three of them, but, uh, three different conversations and then you also.

• 34:41Kirk Hamilton?

  I love how excited you are about this design complexity.

• 34:44Speaker 03

  I love it, man. It was so much fun.

• 34:46Speaker 02

  Well, there's 17 doors in the house, obviously.

• 34:48Speaker 03

  There's 17.

• 34:49Kirk Hamilton?

  Let me tell you about the door.

• 34:50Speaker 03

  Cause also you also, you had to make sure that all of the narrative, Dorian's narrative beats, like his friend, uh, or not his friend ending, because he gives you that immediately, but, uh, his love and his hate endings and then his, his, uh, there's an epilogue with Keith, um, and some other things that happen that had to work with all 17 of the doors at the right time. So you can have, because you can talk to any door at any time, you have to. Sometimes can get his love ending talking to Backdorian, where he's facing the wrong way and speaking muffled into the microphone because he's Backdorian. So anyway, I was doing all of that stuff while recording was happening. So I was only able to attend like 10% of the sessions, which was a real tragic. I'm sad that I missed out on that, but it might have been for the good because Robbie,

• 35:35Speaker 03

  Amanda Hufford and Julia, my wife, and Logan Burdick, who were the, doing the heavy lifting on the voice directing, are a lot nicer than me in the studio. I think I directed Ally Hillis, who was Maggie the Magnifying Glass, who's a really complex character and one who I really needed specific gameplay reads from. And I was so apologetic, but I was like, I know I'm being mean, but it has to be this line. I'm so, so sorry. But I can be, I think my personal directing style is as more abrasive than the nicer people who ended up doing it. So I think it might have been a blessing that I wasn't there for a lot of them.

• 36:18Jason Schreier?

  It's good. So you mentioned the union. This is a union production. The union, of course, has been on strike for a long time. It just ended, but it lasted over a year, I believe. Did that impact your production at all?

• 36:32Speaker 03

  No, because so this, I was part of, both of these strikes were a big part of my career. The first one was the residuals one, where I was working on Final Fantasy XV at the time, Project Black. We were spared having to stop recording because we'd already been in production for a year, which was a great, thankfully, a great rule. And the casting director and director, that Keith Farley, was heading up the strike at that first video game strike. So I was intimately involved with that. I did some AMAs with like Jennifer Hale and stuff, and it was a big part of it. For the second one, it really was just striking against those 12 companies who, don't quote me on that, something around 12 companies who wouldn't do any sort of AI provisions.

• 37:17Speaker 03

  But everybody else. All indie studios just said, yeah, of course, we're doing these AI provisions. We don't want to do this crap. And we were absolutely one of them. When that came out, when SAG was like, this is the new interactive media agreement. We were like, absolutely. We do not want this in our game at all. We have no intention of it. So it was an easy thing. So as far as that strike affecting development, not very much. We had a better contract than than most in there.

• 37:46Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, can you talk about how AI is going to impact voice actors? I mean, so the strike just ended. It sounds like there are some certainly not like the best, like certainly not all encompassing protections against AI. It seems like AI is able to pretty solidly replicate voices these days, which is very scary. How are you and how do you, how are you feeling about it? And how do you think it's going to impact your career?

• 38:10Speaker 03

  I think there's, I think absolutely people who have bad faith are going to use it and say, who cares? We can make our things worse and people have to buy our stuff anyway. We see that in a lot of of technology these days. And I think absolutely bad faith people use it. But I do think that like people make things because they like making things. And I don't think that that's going to really go away anytime soon. It is still difficult to use AI, even if it was something where you were, it was the, if you wanted to make something completely from whole cloth, you still have to tell the AI what to do to make your vision happen. And I don't think it will ever be a thing where like telling, directing an actor is always going to be so much easier than directing an AI.

• 38:55Speaker 03

  The AI is always going to do the the choice that's the safest and easiest choice. And I just don't think it would be very fun to do. Fun and business don't always go together, but I I don't think that it's all going to go away. I really, I truly don't.

• 39:10Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm curious if you have any thoughts about actors licensing their voices to an AI model? Like we saw James Earl Jones in Fortnite coming back to play Darth Vader. This seems like something that more people will do, or especially if the financial incentives line up right. I could imagine someone entertaining the idea, oh, OK. You just pay a recurring license to subscribe to my voice plugin in Pro Tools or whatever, and then you can just have me say anything. I can totally imagine some people doing that. I'm curious what you, as an artist, think of that.

• 39:42Speaker 03

  I think that you can, you can absolutely do that, but I think it's a, it's kind of a toy that will lose its charm pretty quickly. You can talk to James Earl Jones, but he's also not going to be very interesting. I don't think people are going to still be asking him questions in Fortnite a year from now and going like, I got him to say this. It's kind of just like making a crank call or something and it, it's fun for sure, but I think it loses its luster after a while and it feels empty. And I do believe that humans really don't like feeling empty for very long. I can see it a lot with the younger generation being like, I just don't feel good. It doesn't make me feel good. My phone doesn't make me feel good. And I can see it going the other way in the, in the future for sure.

• 40:26Speaker 03

  But I also think we're going to have a deluge of terrible games by EA for, for a while. That's not going anywhere.

• 40:33Jason Schreier?

  Terrible games by EA or terrible games by AI or both?

• 40:37Speaker 03

  EA, AI. Yes, absolutely. There's a great, I'll plug, I'll plug this article, Why AI Isn't Going to Make Art by Ted Shang in The New Yorker. That was one that, that really put my mind, I think, in the, in the place that makes sense about like how difficult it is to make AI entertaining and good.

• 40:57Jason Schreier?

  It's true. It's true. It's more of a nuisance than anything else.

• 41:00Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 41:00Jason Schreier?

  So Ray, I want to talk a little bit about voice acting in general. You've been doing this for a long time now, sitting in a room by yourself with your thoughts and reading lines and trying to get the emotion out of them. We've also seen some kind of interesting evolutions in voice acting and performance capture specifically. A lot of people now are just kind of like using their faces and their voices. They're doing all sorts of motion capture on set. Can you talk a little bit about how the profession of voice actor has changed over the years? And kind of what the current state of things and the future of being a voice actor looks like?

• 41:39Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 41:41Kirk Hamilton?

  What do you think about your entire career?

• 41:44Speaker 03

  About my entire career?

• 41:45Speaker 02

  It's going that good, eh?

• 41:47Speaker 03

  I'm trying to come up with, yeah, I'm trying to come up with an answer about like how it's changed.

• 41:51Speaker 02

  Maybe it hasn't.

• 41:53Kirk Hamilton?

  I mean, I guess, well, one thing is that you can record so effectively from home. It seems to me that more and more games just are able to have fully voiced, you know, a fully voiced performances, partly because it's less expensive. You don't have to necessarily rent studio time and have a director if someone's just directing the game themselves, or having their friends come in. Like, it seems like there is just more voice acting than ever.

• 42:15Speaker 03

  You're right. Okay, I think that is a good angle. Yes, over, over COVID, we all had to record at home. So it did open up the, the ability for a lot of people who didn't live in Los Angeles and, and Dallas, Texas, to be able to record some lines. We got some really cool talent from far flung places who, who joined the, the ranks of working professional voice actors, which was cool. But things have definitely opened up. We're back in the studio a whole lot and there, but, but there is that, I was there on both sides of it when I first started my career, pre-COVID. There was this sense of fun, like in the lobbies and stuff, you'd see people, everyone's coming in at the same time, there'd be a receptionist.

• 42:58Speaker 03

  There was sort of a, a nice club atmosphere that, that came in it. We're all people who are very much struggling to get booked. Let's all be nice to the other people who are in the exact same position that all of us are. And that, after COVID, kind of went away. It is a lot more, there's not a lot of receptionists, there's not a lot of lobbies. You're going into a place, even though you're in studio, you're still very much cut off from, from a lot of your other voice actor friends. We threw a, a party, a cast party, a couple of nights ago for, for everyone. A few hundred people showed up. And one of the things that I heard a lot was, it's been a long time since I've gone to a cast party. Film and TV don't have those, video games don't have them anymore. It's definitely a thing of the past. And, and that sort of sense of fun has gone away.

• 43:43Jason Schreier?

  That is really sad.

• 43:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's definitely sad. But sassy chap games will continue to have cool cast parties.

• 43:50Speaker 02

  Last party's alive.

• 43:52Jason Schreier?

  Do you ever get a chance to play with other people and read your lines with other people? Or is it entirely just you in a room alone for these gigs?

• 44:01Speaker 03

  I have an unusual path for voice acting. I did audiobooks, I do promo, I do commercial, and I do video games, and almost no animation. I recently got X-Men, Devil May Cry, a couple of these sorts of things. But I was a really slow burn for my animation career. And that is where you get to work with people. With video games, you're always completely alone. Final Fantasy, we tried one session where we were like in the same room. But because you have, you're dubbing and you have to get the lines exactly correct to the Japanese time code. It's, there's just no sense of play. It doesn't help to have the other person in the room when you have to get it right, right, exactly the correct timing.

• 44:42Speaker 03

  So, so I personally have met very, very few of the, the voice actors coming up. Just because I recorded alone so, so much. But definitely some people in my cohort were able to, to work together. You might see it in the younger generation too, where they're able to have YouTuber, VTuber careers that get started. And I feel like those people do have a little bit of a closer relationship. Cause they're able to collab and work together in a way that, that I just missed out on.

• 45:09Jason Schreier?

  It's incredible that for Final Fantasy XV, you guys were able to build such a camaraderie among the four main cast members in the game without ever actually playing together.

• 45:19Speaker 03

  The wild thing was, is that, that all the credit goes to Keith Farley and Dan Inoue, who were the, the lead localizer and the lead director. They listened back to the conversations and we did pickups if the conversation didn't feel natural. And that was like, I, that's a true testament to the luxury of working with a AAA and a really great company like Square Annex. Who are like, let's put that extra bit of effort to go back and re-record something. We don't check it off the checklist until it's actually done. And I really commend them for doing that. It was so, so important.

• 45:51Kirk Hamilton?

  You mentioned the newer generation of voice actors, often coming from YouTube-ing, somewhere where they have their own platform. We had Matt Mercer on the show last season to do this. Triple Quest.

• 46:01Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 46:02Kirk Hamilton?

  Thing, and it was kind of my first interaction with someone from Critical Role. But Critical Role is really impressive in that it's a bunch of voice actors who then became creators and then made their own very successful company. Now, you're doing something kind of similar where you're making something that is outside of voice acting. Do you think that that is maybe the smartest path, or at least a good path for a voice actor, to, instead of just acting and acting and acting in other people's projects, to make something yourself, just from a financial perspective and a sort of career perspective?

• 46:32Speaker 03

  Absolutely. You're, you guys are artists as well, making your own stuff. And there is something about owning your own IP, being your own boss, where you're like, not auditioning or asking for work all the time. I'm always asking for work, every day auditioning for stuff. And it's, it's, it's definitely, I think, that a lot of actors see the writing on the wall, where like, well, I can't do that forever. I can't have my retirement just be like, to the whims of, of casting directors and, and what's, what's the new cool thing? And what do, what do games sound like? And who knows, that maybe there's a new media that comes out, a new way of, of acting that like, we never even thought about. Yeah, I think that's why a lot of people do that. But I think it only works if you're not doing it just for the commerce of it all, if there's

• 47:17Speaker 03

  a real, genuine passion. And I think Matt and Friends, it's like, you can see how genuinely passionate they are about us. And I hope you see it with, with Sassy Chap, that like-

• 47:26Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, Date Everything does not come off as a cynical money-

• 47:28Speaker 03

  As a cash grab.

• 47:29Speaker 02

  No, you seem very passionate, which actually makes me wonder, do you feel like being a game designer and programmer is your dream now? Are you gonna keep doing this?

• 47:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was, it was awful, and I can't wait to do it again.

• 47:41Speaker 02

  That was gonna be my real question, like, are you gonna make another game now?

• 47:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:45Speaker 02

  Even after everything you told us today?

• 47:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think what I really liked doing, if, if, if there's a next game, if we're able to make my money back, if it doesn't all go away, I think what I really liked about Date Everything was that there isn't anything like it. And there were a lot of design problems that I got to solve. I don't think I'd ever be able to make a game, like, my favorite games, like Slay the Spire, Mega Crit's always gonna make a better version of it, and I would always just be trying to catch up to them. I love people like Lucas Pope, Jonathan Blow. The Witness is an incredible game. It's just like, it's just its own thing. It's trying to be coherent in design and solving new problems. And that, to me, is what's most fun about game development. I want to keep doing. I don't think I'll be able to make a Doom or something like that.

• 48:32Speaker 03

  It's just straight ahead. It has to be something weird.

• 48:34Jason Schreier?

  We're all very excited. One last question before we have to go, Ray. So you did Final Fantasy XV. Ben Star did Final Fantasy XVI. Is Ben Star better than you? Has he replaced you? Because his game is one more than yours.

• 48:48Speaker 03

  It is one more.

• 48:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's another digit there, yeah.

• 48:51Speaker 03

  He's also one more than I have. He certainly has a lot more awards than I ever could dream of.

• 48:56Kirk Hamilton?

  You're the underdog here.

• 48:57Speaker 03

  And god dang it, he is a sexy beast himself. I don't think I can compete against Ben Star, unfortunately.

• 49:03Jason Schreier?

  But you did make a video game and he did not, so then...

• 49:06Kirk Hamilton?

  That's true, you've got this one on him.

• 49:08Speaker 03

  Not yet, not yet.

• 49:09Speaker 02

  The fontlet has been thrown, Ben Star.

• 49:11Speaker 03

  I think Ben's passion for video games might just lead him down the exact same path. And I cannot wait to see what he makes.

• 49:17Kirk Hamilton?

  He just announced a game? I'm seeing Ben Star announces Date Even More Things.

• 49:23Jason Schreier?

  You date 200 things, oh my god. I love it. All right, Date Everything is out right now. Ray, sell everybody on it in two sentences.

• 49:33Speaker 03

  Two sentences with semicolons, maybe? Date Everything, there's more under the hood than you can imagine. Please consider buying the deluxe edition. It's $5 more and you get two extra characters, the whole OST, which is five hours long, the art book, and you get to wear a fantastic red shirt that opens up new dialogue possibilities that don't do anything.

• 49:56Jason Schreier?

  Ooh, exciting.

• 49:59Jason Schreier?

  You definitely sold it. All right, Ray, thank you so much for joining us.

• 50:03Speaker 03

  It's been a pleasure.

• 50:04Jason Schreier?

  The three normal hosts. We'll be taking a break and we'll be back for one more thing. And we'll say goodbye to you now. Farewell, Ray. Thank you for being here.

• 50:13Speaker 03

  Bye, guys.

• 50:18Speaker 04

  Hi, everybody. It's Ellen Weatherford.

• 50:20Speaker 05

  And Christian Weatherford.

• 50:22Speaker 04

  People say not to judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree.

• 50:25Speaker 05

  But we can judge a snake by its ability to fly, or a spider by its ability to dive.

• 50:31Speaker 04

  Or a dung beetle by its ability to navigate with the starlight of the Milky Way galaxy.

• 50:36Speaker 05

  On Just the Zoo of Us, we rate our favorite animals out of 10 in the categories of physical effectiveness, behavioral ingenuity, and of course, aesthetics.

• 50:44Speaker 04

  Guest experts like biologists, ecologists, musicians, comedians, and more join us to share their unique insights into the animal kingdom.

• 50:52Speaker 05

  Listen with the whole family on MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 51:00Speaker 06

  The wizards answer eight by eight. The cornclaves call to demonstrate their arcane gift, their single spell. They number 64 until a conflagration. 63 and 62 they soon shall be, as one by one the wizards die till one remains to reign on high. Join us for Taz Royale, an Oops! All Wizards Battle Royale season of The Adventure Zone, every other Thursday on MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 51:45Jason Schreier?

  And we are back. Big thanks to Ray Chase for coming on the show. Make sure you check out his game, Date Everything. We're all playing it and laughing very hard.

• 51:54Speaker 02

  It's funny.

• 51:55Jason Schreier?

  It is funny. All right, it's time for one more thing. Maddie, you've got some wild, exciting news, so why don't you start us off?

• 52:04Speaker 02

  My news is that I quit my job at Polygon and I just kind of felt like it was time for a change and...

• 52:10Jason Schreier?

  Well, really Vox Media felt like it was time for a change.

• 52:13Speaker 02

  That's true. Jim Bankoff personally felt like it was a time for a change for Polygon, and then I also felt like it was a time for a change for me, Maddy Myers. Stuck it out for a month and honestly... Just ended up feeling like my heart wasn't in it. I was really attached to the Polygon of the before times. Still am, quite frankly. Probably need a lot more time to grieve what it was. And I think we all can relate to that. I mean, we all had our moment of quitting Kotaku around the same time, feeling like it was really different when Jim Spanfeller took over. The Deadspin walkout happened. I was so angry by that that I was like, I'm finding a new job

• 52:53Speaker 02

  right away. And then, I will say, after us, a lot of other people worked at Kotaku. A lot of them, really great writers, really enjoyed reading them. And that's fine. That's fine with me. And I think something like that will probably happen at Polygon. I'm really curious to see who's going to work there now. And truly, no hard feelings to anybody who wants to take that job. I think sometimes people who are like fans of a site kind of have mixed feelings about somebody else coming on. I just, I just want to say, I don't think that's fair. A job is a job. If you want to, if, if you want to feel however you want to feel, that's fine. But like, no hard feelings on my end towards the Polygon of the future. It's really just that I left because I am attached to the Polygon that was.

• 53:38Jason Schreier?

  It's worth, it's worth noting that like, when Deadspin imploded, all the staff quit kind of in solidarity. People who joined at that point were fucking scabs. Like, any of the new Deadspin people.

• 53:49Speaker 02

  So Jason feels the way he feels.

• 53:51Jason Schreier?

  No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm saying, I'm saying this to draw a contrast between that and Polygon. Polygon is not a struck workplace. Polygon is not a place where all of the staff have quit in solidarity. It is a place where actually, like, a lot of, and I, and I think a lot of them, despite their bitterness, would be supportive of like, people trying to make Polygon great and keep it great. It is a very different circumstance. So this is not a case where like, people should feel inclined to be angry at people who stay and, and work there in the future.

• 54:19Speaker 02

  I really hope they don't. And that's mainly what I want to leave this on, is I don't begrudge anybody who has kind of the emotional fortitude to stay. And in some ways, I wish I did. And I tried for a few weeks there. And I just felt ultimately really sad and very deeply attached to the Polygon that used to be. And that means I can't remake it in this time. It just, it's more psychological than anything else for me. So that's where I'm at. But it means that I'm freelancing again for the time being, because I quit with nothing lined up, at least for now. But you never know. Who's to say what will happen in the future? I guess I'll leave it there.

• 55:00Jason Schreier?

  It's nice having TripleClick as our kind of stable weekly thing that we own and can never be taken away.

• 55:05Speaker 02

  That's true. Maximumfun.org/join, come on.

• 55:12Jason Schreier?

  Well, it always speaks, all the experiences the three of us have had in media just speak to the importance of owning your own thing and how cool and

• 55:18Speaker 02

  Truly, yes.

• 55:19Jason Schreier?

  amazing that is.

• 55:20Speaker 02

  And that has been something I've really treasured in just the past month is thinking about the fact that we own TripleClick. It's ours. Nobody can sell TripleClick and lay off two of us, which is, that sounds perhaps comical for me to even say, but that is literally how it's felt to me at work lately would be the equivalent of someone selling TripleClick and just randomly dartboard laying off two of us and telling the third, hey, you need to hire two more co-hosts. Like, wouldn't that make you feel frickin' nuts? So.

• 55:55Kirk Hamilton?

  My main thought, Maddie, is that your work at Polygon was usually behind the scenes, or a lot of the work that you did as an editor was behind the scenes. And I think that will be missed in ways that people might not even realize. Since you write really well, of course, obviously, and I like reading your articles, but so much of what you were doing there was editing other people's work. And I think so many writers have that relationship with you, that you kind of helped them get some article into shape. You know, take some idea that just wasn't working and make it work. And that relationship is really precious. I mean, from every editor that I've ever worked with. You know, I, I, I just think of the articles that would have been terrible and that wound up being good. That then had my name on them and I got all the credit, even though it was an editor that made it what it was.

• 56:40Kirk Hamilton?

  And you did that for a lot of people. And so I guess part of this is just to say you're cool and you're good at your job and I respect that about you. But also that this is something that I think Polygon is losing and also has lost in many of the other people who were laid off in the transition.

• 56:54Speaker 02

  I agree.

• 56:54Kirk Hamilton?

  While people might notice bigger names, people who wrote a lot or wrote reviews or really high-profile articles. You know, people, it takes a lot of people to make a website run and that they will be For not having you and you will make any place that you go after this much richer.

• 57:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, I hope so. Thanks.

• 57:13Jason Schreier?

  Not just editing also, and Maddie, this is the blow smoke up your ass section.

• 57:17Speaker 02

  Hell, yeah.

• 57:18Jason Schreier?

  Not just, not just editing, but I think like, in my experience working with you, your best quality is also mediating and working with people and managing people and like mediating conflicts and like getting people to work together really well. So if anyone listening out there is like, hmm, I need someone like that, Maddie Meyer is your gal because you're really good. Yeah, well, that's a lot of invisible work that like keeps like any sort of team running is like having someone who's really good at just like recognizing, oh, man, this is like a simmering, this is a tension point, this is a simmering conflict, I need to step in and help out with that and make sure these people can kind of like work together more smoothly and see eye to eye.

• 57:57Jason Schreier?

  And you're always really good at just kind of threading the needle and like negotiating those conflicts and helping people work together better, which I think helped made Kotaku run really well back when it was, when we were there.

• 58:10Speaker 02

  Wow. I didn't know you guys were going to be so nice. And now I don't know what to say. Thank you.

• 58:15Kirk Hamilton?

  You're good, Maddie, and we like you.

• 58:17Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, now we should move on before you burst into tears.

• 58:20Speaker 02

  I mean, I, I don't know. I'll try not to just tell a stupid joke, but it's true. Kirk and Jason are just at each other's throats when we're not recording. And it's all I can do to keep them from fighting every day.

• 58:29Jason Schreier?

  We need the moderator.

• 58:30Kirk Hamilton?

  We're still arguing about Game of Thrones and Maddie just manages to keep us working together.

• 58:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:36Jason Schreier?

  All right, let's go to Kirk. What's your one more thing, Kirk?

• 58:40Kirk Hamilton?

  My one more thing is a book that I've been reading on the recommendation of my friend Ryan called The Air Affair. And you may hear that and think air, A I R, but oh, no, it is air, E Y R E, as in Jane Eyre, the incredibly famous English novel. And this is a really interesting book that I'd never heard of. It is by an author named Jasper Ford. It was published in 2001. It stars a woman named Thursday Next and is the first in a series called The Thursday Next Novels. It's, I would say, intended for. For a maybe slightly younger audience, though it's it's kind of unclear who it's intended for, and that makes it very entertaining and interesting.

• 59:23Kirk Hamilton?

  This is an alternate timeline story. It's very English. It is extremely nerdy. It is written by a massive English literature nerd. And if you are at all a fan of Jane Eyre or the broader pantheon of English literary works, you will probably enjoy this book. Though if that's you, you've probably also read this book, or at least are aware of it. So the premise of this book is that it's 1985 in England. Thursday next is a literary detective working for a government branch. I think they're called Spec Ops, which is a little confusing, since these days we think of Spec Ops as like, you know, SEAL Team Six or whatever. But there are all these branches of Spec Ops in the English government, and they are very

• 1:00:06Kirk Hamilton?

  much not SWAT teams. They're very weird detectives with incredibly abstract and strange specialties. And this is an alternate history where not only is history very different, but also technology is completely different. There's all kinds of strange technological developments. A bunch of previously extinct species have been brought back because of gene splicing. There are just like time travel is possible, and it's never fully explained why literature has become kind of a central flashpoint for all of culture. Like, some of the broadest cultural conflicts are over, for example, who was really Shakespeare? And it's not just like a thing that nerds argue about at universities.

• 1:00:50Kirk Hamilton?

  It's like a massive thing that everyone has a huge opinion about, and there are protests in the streets about it. And then in the world, Wales has broken off from England and is now a socialist republic. So there's a hard border at the Welsh border. And England has been at war with Russia for more than 100 years over Crimea, which is a very weird thing. I mean, it makes sense because Crimea has been like, sort of war-torn and contested for longer than it is right now in the current, you know, invasion of Ukraine. But- If you're reading it, it's a really central part of the world building. Thursday Next is actually a war veteran who fought in the Crimea, as they call it, and lost her brother there. And it is constantly referenced, this ongoing war against Russia in the Crimea.

• 1:01:34Kirk Hamilton?

  It's a really central part of the backstory of the world. So describing all of that, you might be thinking, okay, wait a minute. What, you said something about being a literary nerd? The thing is, this book is actually a comedy. It feels like Douglas Adams. I mean, that's kind of my touch point for it. It's really wild and weird. There's all kinds of interesting technology, very funny names, weird little tricks with the writing, a lot of cleverness being thrown at you at any given moment. And it's very disorienting and you just kind of go with it. And the story is basically that Thursday Next is hot on the trail of this incredibly villainous, like basically a supervillain, who is, he's almost just pure chaotic evil. He just loves doing evil stuff.

• 1:02:15Kirk Hamilton?

  And he begins infiltrating famous novels and kidnapping and/or killing the protagonists or characters of those novels, which then causes the novel itself to change. And then because literature is this much bigger cultural force in this world, it's like a huge deal. Like when Jane Eyre is imperiled, which happens in this, of course, it's called the Eyre Affair, and Jane Eyre plays an important role. When that happens, it isn't just like, like what would happen right now if in America somehow Jane Eyre was kidnapped out of her book and then the book changed? Like, people would think that was really weird, but it wouldn't be like a cataclysmic cultural collapse. And it is in this story because Jane Eyre is like such an important thing to everybody. So it's almost impossible for me to describe it further.

• 1:02:59Kirk Hamilton?

  I mean, there's a million little rabbit holes, but it's just like a really charming. It's a really charming and unusual book. It's not like anything I've really ever read. It just moves from genre to genre and style to style so quickly. It just seems so specific. Apparently Ford was rejected like dozens of times before he finally found someone to publish it. And now has found, I mean, I think the books are well thought of and he wrote a whole series and has continued to write. So it's really neat. I mean, I recommend it if only as a literary curiosity, but also it's a very entertaining. Entertaining and funny book. I've really enjoyed it. So that is my recommendation for The Air Affair by Jasper Ford, the first of the Thursday Next books. And I will certainly be reading the rest of this series.

• 1:03:40Jason Schreier?

  Uh, cool. That sounds awesome. I will check it out. You sold me. Um, my one more thing is also a book. It's a book called Marble Hall Murders by Anthony Horowitz. Anthony Horowitz is like one of the most prolific and talented mystery writers on the planet. He's a British author who has also written a ton of other incredible series and books. Um, I think he's best known for, um, Alex Rider. He's also done like some Sherlock Holmes books and a ton of other books. Um, I've talked about, I think one of these other books is why one more thing too. Um, this is the third in a series about a detective slash book publisher named Susan Ryland. The first books were Magpie Murders and Moonflower

• 1:04:25Jason Schreier?

  Murders. This is the most recent one. It just came out. And the gimmick of these books is that they're set in this world where, um, there's a book series called Atticus Poon that is about, um, this kind of this world's version of Sherlock Holmes. And each of these books, the actual books, um, so in this case Marble Hall Murders, um, has a book within the book. And so that book within the book is kind of key to solving the mystery that actually happens in the book. So Marble Hall Murders has this big mystery, um, involving a rich family and they're kind of like the, the truth behind some various kind of murders or deaths. And within the book is an entire Atticus Poon novel that you read as you're

• 1:05:10Jason Schreier?

  going through the book. Like suddenly the, the font will change and you'll be inside this other book. And that has its own mystery involved and that mystery is linked to the grander mystery in some way or another. Um, and it is phenomenal. It is a tremendous accomplishment, just like the first two where all of these series, this entire series, all three books are incredible. Um, this latest one is, is just as good as the other two. Um, and, uh, yeah, I don't even want to say more other than the, the main character, Susan Ryland, um, is Just a great character because she's like so stubborn to the point where you're just like, why are you doing this, Susan? Oh, my God, you were making such bad decisions. But she's actually so very likeable because of the stubbornness and because of her kind of willingness

• 1:05:52Jason Schreier?

  to to make the right decision or what she thinks is the right decision, even when it's probably also the stupid decision. And I'll just kind of leave a vague that. One thing I'll also say, if you are interested in these books, you should not start with this one because this one has a very direct link to the first book in the series and very clearly spells out who the kind of the murderer is in the first book in the series. So if you're going to check these out, go check out Magpie Murders first, then Moonflower Murders, then the most recent one, Marble Hall Murders. And they're all incredible. And then Atticus Putin, when you're reading those books, it's just so delightful because Atticus Putin is this like classic Sherlock Holmes character who like deduces things immediately.

• 1:06:36Jason Schreier?

  And you are just like, well, as the reader, you're one step behind him the entire time and just trying to keep up with him. And it's all just delightfully entertaining. And Anthony Harwitz is just somehow like finds a balance between the two books and gets you to remember characters from each of them without like totally losing track, which is such a skill. I'm sure like, like you definitely kind of like have to, your mind has to get used to like, oh, am I in this book or am I in that book? Every once in a while, but like for the most part, it's all very clear and understandable, even though it is literally two books in one. And he is brilliant at executing it and finding a right balance

• 1:07:17Jason Schreier?

  between like reminding you who people, who people are without losing any of the steam of the narrative. So, yeah, I strongly recommend this one. I really, I strongly recommend starting with the beginning as much as that might seem like homework, but Magpie Murders is really good. And if you start with this one, you'll just kind of be spoiling the ending for yourself of the first book. So you should check out the first book.

• 1:07:38Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice. They sound great.

• 1:07:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is like the most meta series of recommendations in a TripleClick episode ever with like Date Everything, The Air Affair, and Marble Hall Murders. Like, we're really on theme here.

• 1:07:49Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:50Kirk Hamilton?

  How many books within books within books within games within books?

• 1:07:53Jason Schreier?

  God, for real.

• 1:07:55Speaker 02

  What are we doing?

• 1:07:55Jason Schreier?

  But yeah, Anthony Harwitz, he's so friggin' prolific and so good. Like, every, everything I've read by him is just delightful, so, um.

• 1:08:03Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice.

• 1:08:03Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, he's a, he's a superstar. He's a treasure. Um, I think he's written like dozens and dozens of books. He's kind of like the-

• 1:08:10Kirk Hamilton?

  Some of those people just have that sort of, they can just be a machine.

• 1:08:13Jason Schreier?

  Yep. The Stephen King of, uh, of the mystery business. See, if I did that, then Ray Chase wouldn't have to worry about money if I could do that.

• 1:08:21Speaker 02

  Get it together, Chase!

• 1:08:22Kirk Hamilton?

  You'd disemploy him forever.

• 1:08:23Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. God, if only.

• 1:08:25Kirk Hamilton?

  Think of the voice hat.

• 1:08:26Jason Schreier?

  If only. All right, that is that for this week's episode. Thanks again to Ray for coming on. That was a lot of fun hanging out with him and, uh, we're all excited to play more of Date Everything. And Matty, good luck in the job hunt.

• 1:08:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'll figure it out. Don't worry about me.

• 1:08:42Jason Schreier?

  Do well. We're not worried. We're not worried. You'll be fine.

• 1:08:45Kirk Hamilton?

  And in the meantime, yeah, I'll see you both next week.

• 1:08:48Jason Schreier?

  See you next time.

• 1:08:49Speaker 02

  Bye.

• 1:08:53Kirk Hamilton?

  TripleClick 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. TripleClick 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.

• 1:09:50Kirk Hamilton?

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