The Good And Bad Of The Game Awards 2025

Maddy, Jason, and Kirk talk through this year's Game Awards show, from the big reveals (Star Wars! Divinity!) to the Clair Obscur sweep. They talk about what the show did well, what sucked, and why they chose to end on a hero shooter. Plus: some quick thoughts on Netflix buying Warner Bros.!

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

• 0:03Jason Schreier?

  Last week, I went to Los Angeles for the Game Awards, which was full of new reveals, Muppets, and even a couple of awards. Welcome to Trip Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we are talking about last week's Keely Extravaganza. We'll get into it all, from Claire Obscure sweeping to Fate of the Old Republic.

• 0:30Jason Schreier?

  I'm Jason Schreier.

• 0:32Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm Kirk Hamilton.

• 0:33Speaker 02

  And I'm Maddy Myers.

• 0:34Jason Schreier?

  Hello.

• 0:35Speaker 02

  Hi.

• 0:36Kirk Hamilton?

  Hey, hello. Hello, my friends.

• 0:38Speaker 02

  Welcome home, Jason.

• 0:39Jason Schreier?

  Can I tell you guys a funny story?

• 0:41Speaker 02

  Yes, always.

• 0:42Jason Schreier?

  So I was in Los Angeles last week, very fun trip. We'll talk about that a little bit more throughout this episode. But I went out to lunch with a friend of the show, Nick Weiger, of the Get Played Podcast and Joe Boy's Podcast. And we went to this place, and we're sitting down, and the waitress comes over and she takes our drink orders. And she's talking to Nick about matcha tea or whatever. And then afterwards, she's like, did you guys see the sky yesterday? And we're like, no. And she's like, it was so cloudy, but there were these little particles inside of the clouds, inside of the fog. Like, it wasn't like, it didn't seem like normal weather. And we were like, oh, okay, what does that mean? And she starts going, well, we already know, it's established that the government poisons our food.

• 1:27Jason Schreier?

  So in this case, I think that the government was trying to pollute the skies, too. And we start asking her, so like, what do you think it was? And she's like, you know, I think it could be chemtrails. And she's just going on and on for five minutes. And then she's like, so how spicy do you like your ramen?

• 1:48Jason Schreier?

  It was very, it was quite a lunch.

• 1:50Speaker 02

  Don't put in the government poisoning.

• 1:52Kirk Hamilton?

  It's especially tricky when you can't eject, you can't eject from the scenario. You can't leave your table.

• 1:58Jason Schreier?

  We could not eject. I mean, it wasn't that long. But she did pull up the picture of the fog on her phone to demonstrate that it was, in fact, chemtrails.

• 2:07Kirk Hamilton?

  I mean, she could be right.

• 2:08Speaker 02

  She had a photo, Jason. Who's to say?

• 2:11Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, she had photographic evidence.

• 2:13Speaker 02

  And what did you have?

• 2:14Jason Schreier?

  If you like chemtrails and making sure that the government continues to stick them in our sky, you should become a TripleClick supporter because we are entirely listener supporter. We don't get any of that government chemtrail money. And so you can help us make this show possible by going to maximumfun.org/join and become a member. Help us make this show and also get access to bonus episodes every single month, including the most recent one where we talk about The Sopranos, season one, and lots of others. We talk about games and movies, all sorts of cool stuff. We're about to do one for December at the end of the month where we talk about our favorite

• 2:58Jason Schreier?

  things of the year that are not games. So as longtime listeners of the show will know, we always do our games of the year episode that'll be hitting next week, Christmas week. And then we will do our other things of the year episode where we talk about our favorite movies and TV shows and books and whatnot. So stay tuned for that if you're a Max Fun member. All right. So before we get into this week's episode, the meat of this week's episode, we do have to go over our predictions results for the Game Awards.

• 3:30Speaker 02

  Yay.

• 3:31Jason Schreier?

  So a couple of weeks ago, we all made predictions about who would win each category of the video game awards show. And I have the results in front of me.

• 3:42Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:42Jason Schreier?

  With 10 correct picks is Kirk Hamilton. With 11 correct picks is Jason Shire. With 13 correct picks is Maddy Myers. By my count, Matty is the winner. So Matty, that means you get the tiebreaker if our standard yearly predictions bet, which we'll go over the results of in early January. If, if there's a tie between you and someone else, then you'll win it. And then I guess if there's a tie between me and Kirk, I will win it since I have more points than he does.

• 4:16Speaker 02

  It's great that we have totally different scores. That's very helpful to breaking the tie. Otherwise, who knows what would happen? We might have to play two video games or God forbid, three video games.

• 4:26Kirk Hamilton?

  We do hate playing video games for a triple play.

• 4:29Jason Schreier?

  It's true.

• 4:30Speaker 02

  We absolutely can't, can't sustain playing two or even three video games in 2026. Just the one, please.

• 4:36Jason Schreier?

  So Nick's podcast, Get Played, used to be called How Did This Get Played? And it used to be about playing bad games.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  I know.

• 4:43Jason Schreier?

  So for their podcast, it really was a punishment to play games.

• 4:45Speaker 02

  It was. I'm glad for them that they changed it. It seemed extremely onerous in those early years, but it was funny.

• 4:52Kirk Hamilton?

  That's true. It's one of those bits that probably wore out its welcome. They're like, what if we just played some good games? I think the time that I guessed that we were talking about Kojima games and we were just talking about like good games. So it had already kind of transitioned into being just a podcast about.

• 5:05Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I like that show a lot. And it's, I think that they're kind of, they're one of the shows that I think is on the same, a similar wavelength as us. I think we have a lot of crossover in our listenership. All right. I'm with the show. So this week, as we head towards the holiday lull, and before we do our games of the year, we're going to talk a little bit about the game awards and what happened there and some of the trends we're seeing. I can tell you guys a little bit about what it was like being there, not at the award show itself, but at least in the neighboring bars and restaurants. But first of all, we should talk about the awards. So the game awards, to anyone who doesn't watch this kind of annual nonsense spectacle,

• 5:47Jason Schreier?

  is a cross between an award show and an E3 hype, here's what's coming next show. I would say that's most of it. Most of it is the kind of the trailers for what's coming next as opposed to the awards. But let's talk about the awards part first, because the awards are kind of interesting in that Claire Obscura Expedition 33 really stole the show. It won nine awards, including game of the year, best RPG, best indie, best debut indie, all four of which are basically saying, this game is good. And it was, it was interesting to see. I mean, it wasn't a big surprise that it took control of the show, but it's still interesting. What did you guys make of it?

• 6:30Kirk Hamilton?

  I mean, congratulations to them.

• 6:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure. Okay, sure. I do think that it was interesting to see the backlash happen almost immediately after this. And I think if I had to make my own read on it, the fact that it's in the indie category and the indie category becoming increasingly confused as to what is an indie game. I think it's really hard to define that, and it always has been. And we've talked about that on this show every year for that category. What is an indie game? But seeing a game that has a really large team, I think people just don't associate that with the word indie, even if you're technically an independent studio, according to some definitions of that word. So I think that it winning in that category in particular is what set off a lot of people being like, this feels

• 7:16Speaker 02

  like too many awards. Like, sure, it's fine if it wins some of them, but it's taking away from some of these other games, like, you know, the Hollow Knights of the world, if you will.

• 7:26Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. Well, so to the point I made earlier, I think that like, in typical award shows, each award is specific to a craft, or if it's a broader, like, best of the year award, then it's one in which others don't really overlap. So like, for example, best comedy versus best drama. But you're not going to see, like, best comedy, and then also best 30-minute series, and then also, like, best three-camera sitcom, because all of those are just kind of subsets of the same thing. Instead, you're rewarding specific crafts. Because essentially, when a game like Claire Obscure wins game of the year, and it's also nominated for best RPG, best indie, best debut indie, then of course it should win all of those, because those are

• 8:09Jason Schreier?

  just kind of subsets of the larger game of the year category. So if you're saying it's the best in one film, I think the show could do well to get rid of these kind of silly genre categories, or indie, whatever that means, and instead focus more on best art, best music, best narrative, maybe get a little more granular, best open world, best combat, best narrative design. I don't know, there's a lot of more interesting ways you could go about this. And to your point, Matty, I think that might be one of the reasons that it felt so repetitive that Claire Obscure kept winning. And then also, yes, there's the question of what is an indie even. But like, some of the games in that category, a lot of the games in that category had publishers

• 8:50Jason Schreier?

  attached, as we discussed a couple weeks ago. So there's something kind of undefined and vague about that category in general.

• 8:58Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I think that that specific feeling of upset about the fact that Clare Obscure is stealing, you know, something like stealing the limelight from games that are smaller and could deserve, you know, could could use that that win in the indie category, it kind of underlines what one thing that the indie category is trying to do, which is, you know, don't just make this award show about the biggest, most expensive games and celebrate smaller games and kind of have a more diverse slate of nominees, which is a good goal. It's just this, it seems as though this isn't the way to do it because of exactly what they ran into at the Game Awards, where, you know, like you said, Jason, I mean, if

• 9:43Kirk Hamilton?

  one game gets nominated for all these categories, why shouldn't it win, you know, like, I guess it's up against different games and different categories. Like, you could say, if Blueprints won Best Indie Game, then maybe logically if Blueprints had been nominated for Game of the Year, then it should have won because it's better. But like, can you be a better indie game than you are regular game? Like, that doesn't make any sense.

• 10:04Jason Schreier?

  No, it doesn't make any sense.

• 10:05Speaker 02

  So it just seems like they're... I'm like, what does that even mean?

• 10:07Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. They're going about it in a way that clearly has some problems, like some category problem.

• 10:11Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, well, that's the thing about these awards. And I haven't really given much thought to this because awards are kind of stupid in the first place. But if you're going to do them, just having so many categories that are based on the concept of overall quality, best of this category, is just such a waste. And it's kind of, it speaks to like with Clare Obscure, if they had to have someone, I think most of those categories, they didn't have people come up, except for a few of the big ones. But if they won all of those and someone had to come up for it, it would just be the director or producer of the game coming up for every single one, because again, they're just overall categories. And so I guess my issue here is not that Clare Obscure won all these awards, it's just that four of those were just essentially saying the same thing, which is, this game is good,

• 10:55Jason Schreier?

  as opposed to pointing to something specific. And that's the problem with having categories that are subsets of games.

• 11:02Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, thinking through the categories, I think that best multiplayer is a good one. Like, that is one that I think can stand on its own. Where if a game is the best at being, you know, a multiplayer game, that is just such a different kind of game, that I can see the, like, if there was just game of the year, and that's the one overall quality award. Best multiplayer seems like it could be a subcategory that would do just fine. And I guess it's possible that there would be a game that would win both. But that's okay, it just seems like it's different enough. But otherwise, yeah, like, we've talked about this before, but more specific awards. Best boss fight, innovation in controls, you know, there are these awards that could be really interesting and more specific to video games, that would just allow for, again, that kind of feeling of diversity and excitement, you know?

• 11:45Kirk Hamilton?

  Best boss fight would be a great category, and everyone would have so many opinions about it, there could be controversial winners, you could pick like, I don't know, you know, some part of Blueprints could be the best boss fight, you know? Like, if you, if you kind of expanded your definition.

• 11:59Speaker 02

  And that could be up against like Night Rain or something, yeah, which would be very comical to imagine, yeah.

• 12:05Kirk Hamilton?

  Herbert, Sinclair.

• 12:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. Also, like, we were talking before about the mocap division and the voice actor division, and, and how that seems like such an obvious necessity and makes video games really special and interesting in terms of how actors' performances are reflected. And I was really thinking about that this year with those multiple, clear, obscure actors, and the fact that they didn't all do their mocap. And I just feel like that's another, you can have as many awards, and just have them be more specific, and make more sense for the art form that video games are, as opposed to whatever they are now.

• 12:41Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, you know, one of the things that makes video games distinct is the, is player involvement, right? This is why something about controls, innovation in controls, that's an award that you're just not really going to give anywhere else. The Oscars aren't going to give an award for like, the coolest TV interface. The easiest way to turn off motion smoothing on your TV.

• 13:01Speaker 02

  They should give that.

• 13:02Kirk Hamilton?

  That maybe does deserve an award, I guess. But, um, but yeah, and so the players, like, they are part of this, right? And that, it's, I feel like the way that the game awards has dipped its toe into giving awards to players, like content creator of the year or esports teams. Like, that's a step in the right direction. They could do more of that as well, like speedrunners, for example. Totally seem like that, that just seems like a gimme. Like, you could have speedrun of the year or something and then just nominate all the most amazing speedrunning feats from the year. And like, there's a category right there and that would be super interesting. And that's a, it's a whole community and a type of, like, a type of, a way of interacting with the art, I guess, that is unique to games and deserves to be celebrated.

• 13:44Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. Best, best new mechanic, best innovative mechanic. Yeah, there are a lot of cool ways you could experiment with this. And yeah, it does feel a little bit staid and just kind of uninspired to go with the, the genre categories. But maybe staid and uninspired is a good way to describe this entire event.

• 14:02Kirk Hamilton?

  I guess so. You know, I gotta say, I mean, I have to give Keely credit. This show has really become a pretty solid experience. Like, it isn't everything I would want a show to be.

• 14:12Jason Schreier?

  Did you, did you watch it all this year?

• 14:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's very solid if you watch the first hour and a half and go to bed.

• 14:20Kirk Hamilton?

  Okay.

• 14:20Speaker 02

  Totally agree.

• 14:21Kirk Hamilton?

  Hang on.

• 14:23Kirk Hamilton?

  All right. Let me, we're gonna rewind time and I'm gonna try that again.

• 14:26Jason Schreier?

  Okay.

• 14:27Kirk Hamilton?

  I gotta hand it to Keely. If you only watched like 35 minutes of the show and mostly were in a Discord with a bunch of funny people making jokes, it was actually a really, really solid experience.

• 14:38Speaker 02

  Couldn't agree more, couldn't agree more. Really solid way to experience the show.

• 14:42Jason Schreier?

  So I didn't go to the show this year. I watched it from a Netflix games viewing party nearby, which they like, um, had an open bar and they set up, uh, these big TVs where you could watch it on with closed captioning. Cause the sound was kind of like, I mean, a lot of people were talking.

• 14:57Kirk Hamilton?

  So that Arkham Asylum, like Batman Arkham themed Netflix gaming party?

• 15:02Jason Schreier?

  It was not, but I made that joke to a lot of people. Yes, I joked to, uh, to, uh... Old split screen guest Sean Crankle, I said, so are you gonna make a Batman game now? Or what? Friend of the show. So yeah, so I was watching there and even there, like not being in there and being able to talk to people, like I was next to our pals, Russ Freshick and Steven Totillo, we were all watching the other. I was just talking to them, talked to a bunch of other people. Even with all that, it was still insufferable how long it was. At one point, this is very funny, at one point, they started playing this anime trailer for like one of those Chinese Genshin Impact games, I forget which one, Wuthering Waves or like Ark Knight, one of those.

• 15:44Kirk Hamilton?

  No one remembers, actually. I don't think that a single person remembers.

• 15:47Jason Schreier?

  But they pay $2 million or whatever, a million dollars to be in the show. Anyway, so they started playing it and I was like, okay, good time to go to the bathroom. And so I just kind of leisurely walked over to the bathroom. It was in a different area, so it took me a little while to get there. Did my thing, came back and when I got there, it was still playing.

• 16:07Jason Schreier?

  It was just like, so, um, no, I disagree Kirk, that it is a solid show. In fact, I would say it is an excruciating show. It's gotten better. I would agree with that. There's fewer celebrities just kind of rambling about nonsense. But it's still just kind of like so long, so unnecessarily long, so excruciatingly long, that it's hard to date a solid viewing experience.

• 16:34Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I mean, that's fair. I revised myself in real time already, but yeah, of course, I can't even say, I really can't even make a judgment of the show because my experience of it was so limited.

• 16:43Jason Schreier?

  Very limited. And it's not like award shows are ever that great to watch. Like if you ever try to watch the entirety of the Oscars, it's also pretty tough. It is. So let's talk about the part that people actually watch for, the reason that it becomes this big event every single year, the big announcements. So the biggest one, and this was the statue that I mentioned to you guys the other day that I told you you would like, that would be one that we were all pretty excited about, is the next game from Larian Divinity, Makers of Baldur's Gate 3. This is their next big. RPG. It's going back to the franchise they worked on before Baldur's Gate 3, the Divinity franchise, and it's another turn-based RPG. I spoke to Sven Vinkie,

• 17:26Jason Schreier?

  the CEO of Larian, shortly before the show, and he wasn't talking much about the game, but we talked about a whole bunch of other things. We'll link my article in the show notes. Part of it is already causing a kerfuffle as we speak about generative AI, but I don't want to get into that because this game is interesting for a lot of different reasons. What did you guys make of it? Gruesome trailer, huh?

• 17:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was gonna say, can we talk about how that trailer was one of the most gory trailers I've seen in a long time? And we've watched a lot of Diablo trailers over the years, and usually I think Diablo trailers take the cake when it comes to flaying human flesh.

• 18:05Kirk Hamilton?

  We must not, we must not forget the Wolverine trailer. That was pretty, that was pretty intense.

• 18:09Jason Schreier?

  Maddie, can I tell you a funny story? So that same day at the Game Awards, I had, so I had spoke to Sven, and he showed me the trailer at like 11 a.m. or something. And then my next appointment was to go talk to Blizzard. I talked to the president of Blizzard and like the director of Diablo, and they showed me their trailer. And after they showed me their trailer, I was like, guys.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  I don't need lunch.

• 18:30Jason Schreier?

  No, I was like, guys, guys, you, you might be surprised to find that there's an even more grisly trailer coming in the show than this Diablo.

• 18:39Speaker 02

  Someone is coming for your crown, Diablo, and it is surprisingly Larian. I would not have necessarily expected that. But yeah, it is a, it is a trailer that depicts a man being burned alive, among other, other kind of gross cutaways. And boy, do they show it. Boy, did they get into it. Just real visceral, visceral, as they say.

• 19:01Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 19:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:02Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, they don't mess her out. I mean, Larian's games have always had quite a bit of, of blood and guts in them, despite having also sort of a Mormon touchy feely reputation, since their writing and their characters are so great. Like, they do have a very, you know, there's a lot of bloody abattoirs and giant piles of guts in Baldur's Gate 3 and in the earlier Divinity games, or at least in the ones that I've played, Divinity Original Sin and Original Sin 2. So this is a turn-based game, which is cool. There have been some Divinity games that were not, and it's good to know that they're sticking in that, in that realm, just because I think. I mean, it worked for them and it would it would be a little worrying to see them sort of changing course. No, we're gonna make an action RPG now. Like, oh, wait a minute,

• 19:42Kirk Hamilton?

  you just sold 20 million copies of a turn-based D and D role-playing game. Like, come on. But I'm excited that they're going back to something that they know, to a world that they built, that they own. And that, you know, something Sven said to you, Jason, in your Bloomberg interview, which I guess we'll link in the show notes, is that they are excited about working with a toolset, like with a series of rules, that were built for a video game, as opposed to a series of rules that were built for a tabletop game, which is certainly something that Baldur's Gate 3, for all its strengths, struggled with. I liked it. I actually liked it as a D and D trainer. Like, I also play D and D, and it kind of helped me with my D and D playing, because it's so easy to experiment

• 20:24Kirk Hamilton?

  and to try out items in a way that in your actual tabletop campaigns, like, you don't actually get to play every character and, you know, really quickly equip magic items and then destroy them and try new ones. Like, it is a really cool D and D tutorial, but it's very complicated, and I think that was very alienating for a lot of people. So the idea of them making, you know, taking what's great about their turn-based combat design and taking it back to divinity is really exciting.

• 20:47Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, agreed. The thing that got me excited about what Sven was saying when I spoke to him is this idea that they want to push narrative branching and player agency even further. Like, one of the highlights of Baldur's Gate 3 that the three of us talked about quite a lot when it came out was how you could make, not only would you make all these permanent lasting decisions that had a real consequence on what would happen next, those consequences could also have ripple effects that would just like be, you would see them 20 hours later when a character appeared in some way, came back to haunt you, or maybe came back and helped you out because you helped them out earlier in the game. And the way that that all just kind of impacted one another, those branches, and it sounds

• 21:30Jason Schreier?

  like they want to push that even further. For this game, Sven told me the thing that, like, he's most excited about, that that he thinks, quote, "RPG that has never been done in RPGs before" is like, is some of that stuff, and was telling me that, like, he wants it so all, every journey- Journalist is talking about this game and everybody has a completely different experience when they're talking about it, like totally different story. I think that stuff is pretty cool.

• 21:52Kirk Hamilton?

  The two things are really connected to the turn-based part and that incredibly systemic, interactive part. It really is something I've come to appreciate, thinking about Baldur's Gate 3 and just about their games, you know, reading about, reading your article and thinking about it as they announce a new one. Like, the fact that the world can pause and that you can really get into the nitty-gritty of like what everyone is gonna do at a given moment in time. It allows for all that super granular, you know, just all that detail where like each item in everyone's pockets is itemized and you can pickpocket one thing and put another thing in their pocket. And then that allows them to design around, you know, all of these, all these different things. And, and that, I think it's just like, it's key to like why their world is so reactive

• 22:34Kirk Hamilton?

  and also why the story is so reactive. Like, it's all of a piece. And so, yeah, anyways, I'm very excited for, for whatever they're gonna do next.

• 22:42Speaker 02

  Same. I think it's worth highlighting how incredibly challenging that's gonna be, though, because what I'm thinking about is how, by the time I got to the end of Baldur's Gate 3, it was running pretty slowly. And I always speculated that that was because the game was performing so many calculations under the hood as to all the previous decisions that I had made. And that's fine. I love that game. It's incredible. And I was happy to be patient with some of the staggering in those final chapters. But if there are even more decisions in Divinity that are impacting the end of the game, I am really curious how they're gonna have that run smoothly all the way to the end and hopefully not stagger at all.

• 23:23Jason Schreier?

  For what it's worth, I'm not sure that is the reason for the performance so much as the fact that the city is so dense full of like, characters. I think that might be a, might play a bigger role.

• 23:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, that final city has a lot going on.

• 23:34Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, like when you get to Baldur's Gate, it's just so overwhelming.

• 23:36Kirk Hamilton?

  Am I right that they're on a new engine?

• 23:38Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 23:39Speaker 02

  Oh, that should help.

• 23:40Kirk Hamilton?

  Could be, that'll improve things.

• 23:41Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, he was talking a little bit about their streaming system and how they overhauled it with this. And he told me that the city of Baldur's Gate, I don't think, I think I might have left this out of the interview, but he told me that the city of Baldur's Gate, they originally wanted it to all be one giant map, but because of streaming issues and technical issues, they couldn't make that work. So they had to split it into the two different, the two big areas. I was, I said to him-

• 24:05Kirk Hamilton?

  Incredibly CPU intensive of memory.

• 24:07Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 24:08Kirk Hamilton?

  The CPU is just having to process a ton of things at once with that dense of a simulation.

• 24:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, my computer was working hard as it was on that game.

• 24:16Jason Schreier?

  I joked to him that, well, Baldur's Gate, one had Baldur's Gate in it, and it was like seven maps. So at least you beat them.

• 24:23Speaker 02

  Great point.

• 24:24Jason Schreier?

  The other big announcement, the other big surprise was Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic, a new Kotor-inspired game, not quite Kotor 3, but as close as we're gonna get, directed by-

• 24:36Kirk Hamilton?

  Fotor.

• 24:37Jason Schreier?

  Fotor. Directed by Fotor sounds like, like a foul, a faux, a faux Kotor is a Fotor.

• 24:43Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, Fotor, right, AUX.

• 24:45Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, like when you get a full X or something. Yeah, you could go get that down the street, get your fake roll up.

• 24:51Kirk Hamilton?

  You know, Mass Effect, it's kind of just Fotor when you think about it.

• 24:54Jason Schreier?

  Exactly.

• 24:55Speaker 02

  No, this is the real thing, though. As real as it can get.

• 24:57Jason Schreier?

  As real as it can get. This is by-

• 24:59Kirk Hamilton?

  They got the license.

• 25:00Jason Schreier?

  This is directed by Casey Hudson, who directed Kotor, the original, and the Mass Effect trilogy, and Anthem. Anthem was his baby in the early years, although he left in the middle of production and then came back to be studio ahead. So he directed it for the first couple of years of its development. And this is an interesting one, another one of those kind of CGI teaser trailers where they said shortly afterwards that they started the studio this year. A little bit of context here is that Casey Hudson had started a studio called Humanoid Origin in 2021, and then last year, so three years after that, he announced that they had lost funding. I believe it was from NetEase, and then disappeared

• 25:42Jason Schreier?

  for a bit, and now he's back with this. And he said he started this new studio, Arkon Games, earlier this year, and they've been working on Fotor. So I guess it's not 100% clear if he's and his team, how many people he's taken from his old studio, how much tech, or how many ideas they've taken from their old studio and are able to use for this. But it struck me as a game that is many, many years away.

• 26:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:10Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it's an interesting, it's an interesting question, like what a KOTOR game would look like now. You know, I mentioned this on the show before that I listened to a more civilized age AMC's playthrough of the first KOTOR. They're doing KOTOR 2 as well, though I haven't listened to those yet. I'm sure they're great. And it was super interesting. It was a great, like, trip back, you know, to my memories of playing KOTOR. And I mean, that game is just really old at this point. And I don't know, like, it's kind of just an open question of what a Star Wars role playing game could be. And that could be anything. So they, this is basically just, they have the brand. But I mean, I don't even know what a modern KOTOR is. So I guess it's just like, well, some people who are probably good at making video

• 26:55Kirk Hamilton?

  games, Anthem notwithstanding, are making, are making a new Star Wars role playing game. I guess, great. Yeah, right. See you in 2035.

• 27:05Speaker 02

  That hopefully is a little further out than it actually will be. But you could be right. And anytime I watch.

• 27:11Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, baby, hopefully.

• 27:12Speaker 02

  One of these kinds of trailers, I just purposefully don't get my hopes up because I have seen teaser trailers like this and then had the game never come out. Now, I'm not saying that will happen here. It's just that it's very far away and a whole lot of things could happen between now and then. And

• 27:29Jason Schreier?

  Wonder Woman.

• 27:31Speaker 02

  And what, I was thinking of Wonder Woman, Jason. I didn't want to say it, but I was

• 27:34Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, well, I mean, it was Game Awards 2021. Two of the games announced there were Star Wars Eclipse, which is still in development, but nowhere to be seen, and Wonder Woman, which was canceled earlier this year. So

• 27:48Kirk Hamilton?

  It's brutal out there.

• 27:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:50Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, but it's also this trend of just like, we're going to announce this thing through a teaser trailer, even though it's many years away, because we need to recruit people. And that's the reason to do this. In this case, because they, the people behind this game are hoping that by saying that's a KOTOR successor, KOTOR 3 and all that name, they will get a lot of excited, talented people to come and apply to join their studio. So that's the main reason that, that anybody does this.

• 28:18Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. Which makes sense. And I'm, I'm sure it's very effective. It was a cool, splashy CGI trailer. And I hope it works and that they maintain their funding all the time.

• 28:28Jason Schreier?

  Other big announcement is Tomb Raider. Tomb Raider, a remake of the first Tomb Raider and a brand new game called Tomb Raider Catalyst. Remake is coming out next year and Tomb Raider Catalyst is coming out in 2027. What do you guys think?

• 28:44Speaker 02

  They gave Lara a makeover again, gave her a new look again. 2010 Lara is out. This other Lara is in. She looks, I would say, different than any other previous Lara and yet also unmistakably Lara Croft at the same time. Great eyeliner.

• 29:00Jason Schreier?

  It was cool. I thought the trailers are pretty cool.

• 29:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, they look cool.

• 29:02Jason Schreier?

  Like, good trailers.

• 29:04Kirk Hamilton?

  And to be clear, because I don't think I was totally clear on this, even though I played the game. This is a remake of the 1996 original. So it's called The Legacy of Atlantis, I'm seeing here, which is the plot of the first one. Like, you wind up going looking for Atlantis. So it's basically like the first one remade, which has kind of already been done, if memory serves. Like Tomb Raider Legacy already exists. They've kind of been to this well. So this is redesigning it again, making Lara yet again, look more like a, you know, real person, like a, you know, not a collection of polygons. And you, but again, you get to fight it, you know, dinosaur and shoot it with your pistols or whatever.

• 29:43Speaker 02

  The part where she was fighting the dinosaur looked cool, I will admit.

• 29:46Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm sure we'll play it and talk about it. I'd love to see how those puzzles translate to like a true remake, only because I like Tomb Raider games. Like they're, especially the early ones, were very puzzle focused and not, you know, not that action forward. And I think now we kind of think of Uncharted and it's easy to just sort of get this whole mix of these third person, Indiana Jones inspired action adventure games in your head, where like, it's a lot of shooting. And then occasionally you move some, you know, you reflect some light with some mirrors and like, you know, Sully makes some wisecracks and then you do a lot of shooting and you, you know, you're like blowing up helicopters with rocket launches and stuff. But, you know, before that, before Uncharted, Tomb Raider was actually a lot of just standing in a big, cool, empty space

• 30:30Kirk Hamilton?

  with like actually really neat, like atmospheric synth music, kind of droning as you just try to figure out what you're supposed to do. And it's actually something that the recent Indiana Jones game kind of recaptured, though in a specifically Indiana Jones flavor. So I'm looking forward to trying a true remake of the original game. And I guess we'll see as to the new Tomb Raider game like that. That's a little further out, but I am, I am, you know, I'm, I'm interested in and looking forward to the remake.

• 30:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I love environmental puzzles.

• 31:01Jason Schreier?

  It's a good idea when it's been a while since a franchise had a new entry. It's a good idea to be like, we're gonna do a remake of the first one and then a brand new game. I think it's a

• 31:12Kirk Hamilton?

  See Metroid Prime 4.

• 31:14Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, well, that didn't work out for other reasons.

• 31:17Kirk Hamilton?

  You can see why they, but it was, the idea was sound.

• 31:20Speaker 02

  Great idea.

• 31:20Kirk Hamilton?

  It's just that Metroid Prime 4 was not.

• 31:22Jason Schreier?

  The strategy was, was intact.

• 31:25Jason Schreier?

  Another thing, Mega Man returned. I don't know if you guys are excited about that. I like Mega Man, so I was, I was stoked on that.

• 31:31Kirk Hamilton?

  I dislike hearing

• 31:34Kirk Hamilton?

  I dislike hearing the music. Well, but I, I like Mega Man music more than I like Mega Man gameplay.

• 31:40Jason Schreier?

  I will also say that when they showed that trailer, it was very funny. It was all this buildup of like a hallway. Everyone was like, oh, my God, is this Half-Life? And then they show Mega Man pop out and then they show gameplay footage for like a two day Mega Man game. And we were all like, oh, cool. And then they show 2027 and everybody around me just cracked up at that.

• 32:02Speaker 02

  What are we doing here?

• 32:03Jason Schreier?

  Just seems so impossibly far away. The other thing that got announced is Silk Song DLC, Hollow Knight Silk Song Sea of Sorrow, which of course did not get announced to the Game Awards, but instead on a random Monday night at like, like seven or eight PM Eastern time, which is hilarious. Team Cherry was just like, nope, sorry, we don't care about the Game Awards. We're just gonna do our own thing as always. In fact, when I asked them, I spoke to them a few weeks ago. I asked them if they were going to the Game Awards and they like, didn't know when it was.

• 32:36Speaker 02

  Iconic.

• 32:37Kirk Hamilton?

  That's so classic, though. That's so on brand.

• 32:39Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, extremely funny.

• 32:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's great. I love that they didn't even go.

• 32:43Jason Schreier?

  But I can't wait for more Silk Song. It's the point.

• 32:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:46Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, no, I'm excited as well. I'm sure it will be very easy.

• 32:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:50Kirk Hamilton?

  Seems like probably pretty easy based on that name. I think we'll just kind of blow right through it.

• 32:55Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 32:55Kirk Hamilton?

  It won't really be any challenges.

• 32:57Speaker 02

  It's gonna be like, sorrow who? Like, I'm not even sad about this, except how easy it is and I'm disappointed by that.

• 33:02Jason Schreier?

  Kirk, you had a good joke on text. You should share it.

• 33:05Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, I said, basically, well, I think that the sorrow is actually that it's too easy, and so you finished it too fast.

• 33:10Speaker 02

  Got it.

• 33:10Kirk Hamilton?

  And you rolled out of new stuff, so you're feeling very sorrowful because it was so easy.

• 33:14Jason Schreier?

  Love it.

• 33:14Kirk Hamilton?

  I think that's probably what they mean.

• 33:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:16Kirk Hamilton?

  You know, speaking of DLC, actually, one thing I meant to mention earlier when we were talking about Claire Obscura was only in video games would you have the Best Picture winner basically get up and announce a shadow dropped DLC for their game in their acceptance speech? I just sort of love that.

• 33:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:32Jason Schreier?

  I feel like that's happened the last few years, right? Like, didn't Astro Bot, didn't they announce something? And then Baldur's Gate 3, they announced like an Xbox version at the Game Awards.

• 33:41Kirk Hamilton?

  Baldur's Gate, I think, yeah.

• 33:42Jason Schreier?

  It's very funny.

• 33:42Kirk Hamilton?

  I mean, it's a good opportunity to do it, I guess, and it makes sense.

• 33:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I'm sure they chime their release, just crunch time, around trying to make the Game Awards, right? Because they know they're gonna have a ton of eyes.

• 33:54Kirk Hamilton?

  Like, combining an acceptance speech with an announcement is actually like the most Game Awards thing you can possibly do.

• 34:00Jason Schreier?

  It's true.

• 34:01Kirk Hamilton?

  It's incredibly on-brand for the night in question.

• 34:04Speaker 02

  It is, and one of my long-term life predictions has always been that I think the Oscars are going to become more like the Game Awards than vice versa. I realize that will be very unpopular with any Academy members, but

• 34:18Kirk Hamilton?

  That seems very true to me.

• 34:19Speaker 02

  I could very easily see the Oscars including more look-ahead type stuff, rather than the Game Awards ceasing to include all of the things.

• 34:28Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, I don't know how much money the Oscars makes, but like

• 34:31Speaker 02

  I think a lot.

• 34:31Kirk Hamilton?

  Maybe imagine that the people making the Oscars would like to make as much money as the Game Awards makes.

• 34:37Jason Schreier?

  It's funny, I actually, I'm very into the idea of like announcing new things in an award show because I find award shows to be boring without that. The problem with the Game Awards One of the problems with the two of ours is that is that the announcements are not selected based on taste or kind of like like a creative autonomy or something like that. They're selected based on who will pay Jeff Keighley to be in the show. And so that's why we have these just like insufferable, endless, intractable like anime.

• 35:08Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I don't know though. The minute you the minute you open the show up to announcements, I think that's just how it's gonna go. Like, it's very hard for me to imagine a version where somehow the announcements are like curated based on taste. No, that's just. Wouldn't it just be whoever pays the most?

• 35:23Jason Schreier?

  But that's just a Keighley thing. Like, if you're doing an Xbox presentation, you're not you're not paying or getting paid. There's no money changing hands. It's just marketing.

• 35:31Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, but I'm picturing the Oscars aren't like a platform holder. They're not Xbox. Like, they're the Oscars.

• 35:36Jason Schreier?

  Sure.

• 35:37Kirk Hamilton?

  So if you're a neutral third party, like, how do you decide who gets to go there? Especially if you're charging them money, like presumably the minute money is involved, like, you're gonna be giving it to the highest bidder.

• 35:46Jason Schreier?

  But that's that's what I'm saying. I'm saying that it would be a much better show from a viewer perspective if they there was no money involved and if it was just kind of like someone just kind of making decisions based on taste and what they thought people would be interested in instead of just paying them for slots. Anyway, was there anything else you guys saw that was noteworthy that you liked at the show? A couple indie games that looked pretty cool. There was Out of Words, which was this kind of like claymation co-op game that I thought looked really neat. There's a new game from Jonathan Blow, the creator of The Witness and Braid, called Order of the Sinking Star, which.

• 36:23Kirk Hamilton?

  Star of indie game the movie?

• 36:24Jason Schreier?

  Yes, star of indie game the movie, which looks really interesting. And then also really interesting is that a few of the designers whose puzzles were licensed for this game, which is kind of a massive Sol咔棒style puzzle game that just combines a whole lot of mechanics, those designers came out on Blue Sky and said, hey, we denounce Jonathan Blow and his views and kind of regret being part of this, which I thought was wild. I've never seen anything like that before. But the game looks really interesting and cool. I actually spoke to Blow before the Game Awards, and I'll have that interview up probably not till after the holidays, but it was really it was interesting.

• 37:02Speaker 02

  Was that before or after people denounced him? Did you get the chance?

• 37:05Jason Schreier?

  Way before. No, it was before the announcement.

• 37:07Speaker 02

  Too bad.

• 37:08Jason Schreier?

  I just sent them, sent them an email asking about that and just got a no comment from

• 37:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure.

• 37:13Jason Schreier?

  him and his publisher about the denouncements.

• 37:15Kirk Hamilton?

  I was excited to see so many co-op games, like just same, like games that are designed to be two-player co-op. I just thought that was cool. The one you mentioned, Jason, there were another couple of ones. This one, I'm forgetting the name, but it was this beautiful looking, kind of hand-drawn animation style that looked just really neat. And yeah, I mean, having loved Split Fiction and really liking these hazelite games, and I haven't played that new Lego one, but it looks really cool. And I think my co-op buddy, Dan and I are gonna play through that together. Like, I love that we're kind of returning to a world where there's a regular cadence of two-player, you know, designed co-op games, like that are meant to be played by two people. That's great. And seeing more of those, just, that made me happy.

• 37:55Jason Schreier?

  Covenant of the Chickenfoot, did you guys see the trailer for that?

• 37:59Speaker 02

  This is awesome. It's so good.

• 38:01Jason Schreier?

  That is a super cool-looking game, looks inspired by The Last Guardian. It's you playing as this old woman witch who has a pet. And it's got this stylized world, and you're doing an adventure and solving puzzles and whatnot. It's, uh, it's by Wildflower Interactive. The studio formed by Bruce Straley, former director of The Last of Us and former Kotaku split screen guest. He came on when, shortly after he resigned from Naughty Dog. And yeah, a couple of other cool things here and there. Very interesting choice for them to end the show on a hero shooter called High Guard, which, I mean, nothing against High Guard.

• 38:46Jason Schreier?

  I haven't played it. I don't know anything about it, but it was surprising that Keely ended on that.

• 38:52Kirk Hamilton?

  This is a problem that Jeff has run into before, especially like where he hypes it before you see it. And he gave, I can't remember what it was, but it's like, I'm so excited.

• 39:00Jason Schreier?

  I got to play this, and it's so cool.

• 39:02Kirk Hamilton?

  Dude, it's so good, you're not even gonna believe it. And the trailer starts, and I'm like, alright, this is the big thing, so let's see what it is. And it's like a guy, and he's got a lance, and, and then he like gets on a horse. And I'm like, oh, he's on the horse and it cuts to first person perspective on the horse. He pulls out a machine gun and like starts shooting in like the and it just suddenly it just looks like whatever Overwatch, any video game. And I was like, I, I started laughing in my room. I, I was like watching this. I started laughing out loud. Because it was such a hilarious anticlimax. Like it was such a like trip over a rake and fall on your face. At least for me personally, I was like, wow, like that really fell off a cliff fast.

• 39:40Speaker 02

  Wasn't this supposedly worked on by kind of some of the people that one imagines would have made Titanfall three? Is that maybe why?

• 39:48Kirk Hamilton?

  That's right. Yeah.

• 39:50Speaker 02

  Maybe why Jeff put it where he did because Titanfall three is like a popular meme that people spam in the chat.

• 39:56Kirk Hamilton?

  He put it where he did because of money.

• 39:58Speaker 02

  What? Okay. You say so.

• 40:01Kirk Hamilton?

  But I don't know.

• 40:02Jason Schreier?

  Well, he, he went and played it. Apparently was impressed. It comes out in just a few weeks. So I'm guessing that was part of his calculus to be like.

• 40:10Kirk Hamilton?

  Which is nice.

• 40:11Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 40:11Jason Schreier?

  I think that, um, these are the people who made Apex Legends, which was successful as a shadow drop. It came out of nowhere and people just played it and it was cool. And so I imagine they wanted to do something similar here. I don't know. It's a tough sell. I saw a lot of memes in reaction to this. People just being like, yeah, another frigging hero shooter. That said, these people are very good. It just kind of like you grab the sticks and you feel something really good. So I don't know. Hard to crack that market.

• 40:41Kirk Hamilton?

  That's very true. It's just, it's hard to get past that on the horse pulling up. Like that visual, it's really burned into my brain.

• 40:48Jason Schreier?

  The, the character art style also just a little tough. I saw a lot of comments that were just like, this is the next Concord. I will try to reserve judgment until it's out.

• 40:57Kirk Hamilton?

  For sure.

• 40:59Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. So, uh, man, there's a lot more to talk about. Any final thoughts on the game awards? Cause we could also hit the, uh, the Netflix Warner news real quick.

• 41:11Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I'm curious what you think of that.

• 41:13Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it's wild, man. So just before I left for LA, came the news that Netflix is buying or hoping to buy Warner Brothers. They've agreed to terms. There's going to be a lot more drama that comes in the weeks and months and years ahead because Paramount is trying to sweep in, I don't know if it's a hostile takeover or outbidding them or what. It's just going to get complicated and lawyers will be called. Lawyers will make a lot of money off of this one. But just the thought that Netflix would own Warner from a TV and film perspective is pretty bonkers, but from a games perspective is awesome.

• 41:56Jason Schreier?

  Just as bonkers for our world, even if it seems like an afterthought to the people involved. Because of course Warner, Warner Brothers Games is the company behind Rocksteady, Batman, Avalanche, Harry Potter, Hogwarts Legacy, the Lego Games, the TT Games and several others. Mortal Kombat is in there too, Netherrealm Studios. So a lot of, lot of important franchises. It's wild to imagine them part of Netflix.

• 42:25Kirk Hamilton?

  That's true. I mean, the video game thing, the fact that it's less of a focus makes sense to me in part just because a lot of the biggest video game franchises that WB owns are derivative of their film franchises. You know, like the Batman movies, I mean, they own The Dark Knight, you know? They own all the Harry Potter movies. Like that is massive in terms of cultural impact. And the fact that one company is going to own all of that and then also own HBO, which is like, I mean, not just all the HBO shows that we've watched, but the legacy of HBO documentaries, HBO sports, HBO series since forever, you know, they'll own this like.

• 43:06Jason Schreier?

  A show I just found out about.

• 43:09Kirk Hamilton?

  So it's like, it is totally wild. I mean, it really is on par with Microsoft buying Activision Blizzard. And I think the reason that I think of it at least first and foremost in terms of movies and TV is because in that way, it feels very similar. When Microsoft bought Activision, it was like, holy shit, like, Microsoft is now going to own World of Warcraft and Call of Duty. Like, they're going to own like, some of the biggest and most storied brands in video game history. Like, it's the same now for Netflix. And it's almost weirder because Netflix is an even younger company. And it's just, they're just Netflix. Like, you know, they were the guys that we like, ordered DVDs from a couple

• 43:51Kirk Hamilton?

  of decades ago. And now they're going to own, I mean, Warner Brothers. That is pretty wild. Like, if it actually goes through, that is like, that is the tide changing moment. Like, that's the turning of the tides. It's the crossing of the Rubicon, pick your metaphor, for like Hollywood changing absolutely and forever.

• 44:10Speaker 02

  Wow. Yeah, you're right. I have had trouble dealing with the scope of it as well, because mostly I've just been thinking about how Netflix has tried so hard to get into games prior to now, and has failed repeatedly, and how those attempts have been kind of fascinating to watch, just from the perspective of realizing how hard it is to just start completely from scratch and make games that are interesting.

• 44:33Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, see, Amazon.

• 44:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Another great example, where it's like, even though you might have a lot of money, and you might even be a household name, however young of a brand you might be, people know Netflix. That doesn't necessarily mean you can make good games. They tried to make games based on very, very successful TV franchises that they originated. And I've heard those Love is Blind games they make do well. But other than those, I don't think anything else has taken off. So from that perspective, I'm like, yeah, I get why they would also probably internally see it as a bit of a boon to get those Warner Brothers games, even though clearly, the mainstream news articles are not focusing on the game deal. It's the first thing I thought of.

• 45:14Jason Schreier?

  I wonder if Hogwarts Legacy makes more money than a lot of these blockbuster films you're talking about, Kirk. That's the thing that really, that trips me up. Hogwarts Legacy sold, I don't remember the exact number, but it was the best-selling game of 2023.

• 45:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, like outsold Call of Duty, right?

• 45:30Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it outsold Call of Duty that year.

• 45:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:33Kirk Hamilton?

  I think that that's true, but then again, I think that this is a type of calculus that video game fans tend to do, substituting financial success for cultural importance, because it just doesn't seem to add up. You're like, yeah, but why do you think that it's more important, this movie that made a couple hundred million dollars versus this video game series that has made a billion dollars every year for the last five years? And it's like, you know, there's-

• 45:57Jason Schreier?

  Well, I'm thinking about this from a Wall Street point of view, not necessarily a cultural impact point of view. I'm thinking of this as kind of like, hey, here is this company that is buying this other company. What's it getting financially for its $72 billion?

• 46:10Kirk Hamilton?

  Studio executives sometimes think in terms of cultural impact first, I guess. But, I mean, yeah, the Hogwarts game alone is like a massive get for them. I guess I'm thinking about why they wouldn't be leading with that. I guess maybe, yeah, if they're giving investor reports or something, I guess they probably will if the sale goes through.

• 46:30Jason Schreier?

  No, they haven't. That's the thing. They said that games weren't a material part of their calculus for the, it wasn't priced into the deal. And yeah, I'm surprised how much they've kind of underplayed the games part of it, given how lucrative that part of the business is. And also, there's theories that like, oh, will they sell the games business? They've tried to bid in AAA and never worked, but that would make no sense for the same reason that Warner has never been able to sell the games business, which is that all of those game companies are so attached to Warner's IPs that any company that bought them would have to deal with, would get something useless. Buying a game studio without its biggest IPs attached to it is not a valuable prospect.

• 47:15Kirk Hamilton?

  That is interesting then, especially given that Harry Potter is like about to have a whole resurgence, whether we like it or not, it's coming back. And, um, and there's going to be a new show, there's going to be a whole new cast, this, they're going to retell the story all over again. And of course, there's going to be a sequel to Hogwarts Legacy that's going to make a ton of money.

• 47:33Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 47:34Kirk Hamilton?

  It is, I mean, it is surprising that they wouldn't at least fold that into part of their strategy, since they have this multi-billion dollar IP across movies and TV and video games.

• 47:44Jason Schreier?

  Yep.

• 47:45Kirk Hamilton?

  Um, all right. And books, I guess there were books once, there were books in there at some point.

• 47:49Jason Schreier?

  There were, but.

• 47:50Kirk Hamilton?

  Who cares about books?

• 47:51Jason Schreier?

  Nobody buys books.

• 47:52Kirk Hamilton?

  I guess WB doesn't own the Harry Potter books.

• 47:54Jason Schreier?

  Books don't make money. Yeah, that's true. Books are not part of this. That's a good, that's why they're not brought up, because they're not actually part of this.

• 48:01Kirk Hamilton?

  They're not actually part of it.

• 48:02Jason Schreier?

  All right, let's take a break and then we'll be back with one more thing.

• 48:11Speaker 03

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• 48:57Speaker 03

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  Tune in every week as we take a deep dive into the internet's bargain bin.

• 50:00Speaker 06

  Every Tuesday on MaximumFun.org or your favorite pod place.

• 50:12Jason Schreier?

  And we are back, Kirk, Matty. It is time for one more thing. Matty, what's this? Interesting choice.

• 50:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I'm reading a book for the first time from 2003.

• 50:23Jason Schreier?

  You're reading a book for the first time?

• 50:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:25Jason Schreier?

  Your first book?

• 50:25Speaker 02

  I decided to read a book.

• 50:26Jason Schreier?

  Congratulations.

• 50:26Speaker 02

  And you know what I went with? I went with a famous video game book because I'm a gamer, see? And for my first book, I thought, why not go with something real simple? Jokes aside, I am actually, for real, reading, almost done, reading, a book called Masters of Doom by David Kushner. This is a nonfiction book that details the creation of id Software and also the life stories of John Romero and John Carmack. It's worth noting that although John Carmack is pretty happy with this book, apparently thinks it's very accurate, John Romero is not. And he has his own book that I want to read next called Doom Guy that

• 51:06Speaker 02

  is his accounting of this story. And I think most people are aware that the two of them had a falling out over the years. And this book gets into why that is and what they disagree about. And this book is, it really rockets along and it tells the story in an extremely thrill ride type of a way that's extremely accessible and fun and voicey. And it also does one of Jason Trier's original sins with books, which is that it puts dialogue into the people's mouths constantly. And I can't not think about you, Jason, on basically every page

• 51:50Speaker 02

  of this book because David Kushner, this is, this is writing style is very common nonfiction book writing style. It's clear, it's very clear that the guy did a ton of interviews for this book. And he does make that clear periodically in how he writes, where he'll say, oh, this person told me this or said this. And it's made more deliberate that this is a quote from someone recounting a story. But 80% of the time, he is not writing in that voice and is instead presenting a scene where it's like, John Romero clutched his stomach, he was laughing so hard and then picked up his ham sandwich and took one bite of it before replying, yes, let's do it. And you're like, wait, did John tell

• 52:32Speaker 02

  him all of those details? Like, how, how did he know all of this? And how much of this is some creative license? And I suppose we won't-

• 52:41Jason Schreier?

  And who remembers?

• 52:41Speaker 02

  Well, exactly. Who could possibly remember all of these minute details? So I, I am thinking about that a lot while reading it. I will say that including that type of writing does make the book extremely entertaining. So I understand why he does it because it's painting a picture in your mind. Like, you can see the offices, you can picture the characters of the book, and they're really lively characters. And that makes it fun. And it's why the book is super famous, lo these many years later. So I still recommend it. I think it's interesting. I think I'll probably report back after I read Doom Guy because I'm really curious about what John Romero's personal perspective is on this

• 53:23Speaker 02

  notable time. So yeah, for now, I only have part of the story. But that's Masters of Doom, famous book, famous for a reason. Really fun, fun to read.

• 53:35Jason Schreier?

  Nice. Awesome. Kirk, what's your one more thing?

• 53:38Kirk Hamilton?

  My one more thing is school announcements, because this is just something that I've been thinking about lately. When the two of you were in school, did they like have a morning announcement that they did, like in the morning?

• 53:48Speaker 02

  They did.

• 53:49Kirk Hamilton?

  Like they would come on the PA?

• 53:50Speaker 02

  And I was the anchor of it in middle school and read a lot of announcements.

• 53:53Kirk Hamilton?

  Really?

• 53:53Speaker 02

  Yes, that's right.

• 53:54Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, nice. Was it like a video show?

• 53:56Speaker 02

  Yes, it was a video show. It was a video show.

• 53:59Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, man. Did you sit behind a desk?

• 54:00Speaker 02

  I sure did.

• 54:03Jason Schreier?

  Maddie, that was your training for becoming a professional podcast.

• 54:06Speaker 02

  That's right. That's why I'm so good at it.

• 54:07Kirk Hamilton?

  That's true. It's really, yeah, it's training the media professionals of tomorrow is doing the school announcements. I've been thinking about, I've been, I've been thinking about my nieces and where they go to school and just how much has changed with the way that school announcements work. And also thinking back on the announcement that they made at my school. I went to a kind of interesting high school and every morning they would make kind of the same announcement. You really got sick of it after a while? It went like this.

• 54:37Kirk Hamilton?

  Up and at 'em troops, time to rise and shine. Today is your fourth day of active service.

• 54:42Speaker 07

  ... here at Last Defense Academy. Prepare to spend another day enduring the unendurable

• 54:48Kirk Hamilton?

  and suffering the insufferable to pave the way for humanity's greatness.

• 54:54Speaker 07

  Be ready to give your lives to protect our beloved school from the vile and barbaric enemy.

• 55:02Kirk Hamilton?

  You know, it's kind of a weird school. So the way this school worked was, we actually woke up there. We didn't know how we got there. And then we were told that we had to stab ourselves in the heart and use the power of our blood to transform into superheroes and fight off invaders every so often. It was kind of a, kind of a crazy experience. And incidentally, also, I have spent the last month or so mainlining the video game The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy. And I have played all the way through it and, well, not all the way through it, but a whole ton more.

• 55:37Jason Schreier?

  Is this, is this another of your secret? This is another of your secret.

• 55:41Kirk Hamilton?

  And I wanted to surprise Jason with it.

• 55:43Speaker 02

  This is good, actually.

• 55:44Kirk Hamilton?

  For a long time. So yes, I have played through this game. This was one of Jason's one more things from a while back.

• 55:50Jason Schreier?

  Wait, you played through all of the endings? Or you played just through the main one, the first one?

• 55:54Kirk Hamilton?

  I have played through several endings, but not all of the endings. But I've played a ton of it and am so excited about it. And have been kind of like sitting on my hands and playing and playing and playing and playing and playing because it's quite long. And figured at some point that I should just not tell you that I was playing.

• 56:12Jason Schreier?

  Classic, classic Kirk Hamilton.

• 56:13Speaker 02

  Classic triple click move to just not tell each other what we're doing.

• 56:17Kirk Hamilton?

  So this game, so that is really my one more thing is The Hundred Line Last Defense Academy, which, as I mentioned, was one of Jason's one more things earlier in the year when it came out, but I'm making it my one more thing as well. And just to explain what it is to people really quickly before I talk about it a little bit more, so this game is like kind of a super group kind of a situation. It has two directors Kazutaka Kodakka and Kotaro Uchikoshi. Kodakka is the writer and director of the Danganronpa series. And Uchikoshi is the Zero Escape 999, you know, and also like AI, the Somnium Files. He's the director of those games. And going into this, I was kind of expecting a Danganronpa type game because those are the ones that I'm more familiar with.

• 57:02Kirk Hamilton?

  And all three of us love Danganronpa. These games, for anyone who hasn't played them, they're visual novels with a bit of like courtroom gameplay where you have to do these kind of trials where you're like proving who's lying. And they're essentially a series of murder mysteries set in a high school where a group of very colorful characters, kind of anime styled characters are all put in a killing game together. So they're trapped in the school. And if you kill someone and get away with it, like it's a whole like kind of murder mystery slash, I don't know, post apocalyptic like surprise at every turn sort of story. So I was expecting something like that because partly because The Hundred Line begins that way. It really feels like this is a Kodakka joint through and through.

• 57:44Kirk Hamilton?

  Like it's got his style of characters, his kind of like asthmatic writing and pop culture references. The music is very similar. I think it's the same composer. So it's like the same kind of freaky music vibe.

• 58:00Kirk Hamilton?

  Bing! Kirk here, editing the episode. And just to give the composer credit, since I tried to do that, it is indeed Danganronpa composer Masafumi Takada, along with Jun Fukuda, who wrote the music for Last Defense Academy. There's a lot of really cool chillwave stuff like this. There's also a pretty killing battle anthem. Actually, a lot of the fight music, the battle music, is pretty amazing as well.

• 58:29Kirk Hamilton?

  So yeah, a killer soundtrack. Any visual novel needs a good soundtrack. This one definitely has one. Bing!

• 58:40Kirk Hamilton?

  It's ugly and scary and creepy and weird and off-putting in the way that Danganronpa is. And then you keep playing it and you realize Uchikoshi's influence and see what an amazing pairing these two game directors are. Because in addition to being a cool visual novel about teens with a lot of blood, it's also this amazing branching narrative, like choose-your-own-adventure, multiversal time-travel story in the way that a lot of Uchikoshi's games, especially his later games, really lean into. And holy shit. I mean, that's where this game goes from being a cool visual novel to something like I've never seen before. And it's so exciting.

• 59:23Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, my God, Jason, so after the show, I'm gonna be DMing you for a million hours about this game because I'm so excited about it. And there are so many spoilers that I don't want to just drop spoilers on.

• 59:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, don't spoil me, because I would also like to play it. And I don't spoil the listeners, I guess.

• 59:40Kirk Hamilton?

  I think, yeah, I won't spoil the listeners. And also you, Maddie, I won't spoil you. You definitely should play this game.

• 59:45Speaker 02

  I want to.

• 59:46Kirk Hamilton?

  The thing is, and Jason said this in his "One More Thing", the challenge is, it's a big buy-in. It's like a Brandon Sanderson novel or something. You've got to really roll with it. Because you're gonna play 20, 30... It was almost 30 hours, I think, of just visual novel through this game before you even get to where the game actually begins.

• 1:00:07Jason Schreier?

  Well, not just visual. There's also like a whole strategy.

• 1:00:11Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I'll talk about that in a second there. And that is actually a really important part of why I like it so much. But it's, you know, it's a linear story, though. And like the thing that makes it brilliant, like the thing that makes it really exciting doesn't happen for 30 hours. And then you start to be able to make choices. Right. It sounds crazy, but the thing is.

• 1:00:30Jason Schreier?

  It makes sense. You have to.

• 1:00:31Speaker 02

  I'm sure it does. It's hilarious.

• 1:00:34Kirk Hamilton?

  It has to go that way. So, um, and like, I'll stay on that, I guess, and then talk about the, the actual gameplay part as well. Cause there's also like a tactics strategy game. That's quite good. But, um, but in terms of the like branching narrative, you have to play through a story that long because that's what makes it feel so exciting that you get to start changing it. The, the narrative, like the way this narrative is set up is like, you play through it one time. And I would say that it is fairly clear as you're playing through the story that there are branches you're not seeing. Like, even if you didn't know there was eventually going to be some sort of branching option, you would just see like a character really unceremoniously die or vanish, or something really mysterious happen that just feels like, kind of abrupt and then dropped. And you'd think like, really, that's it?

• 1:01:17Kirk Hamilton?

  Like surely I'm gonna have a chance to see this again, or like have this character in my party again. They have a whole move set and they like died immediately. Like what the hell? So it's kind of clear from the beginning that like, that kind of thing is gonna come into play. But then, once you make it to a certain point, you're given the opportunity to go back and start replaying stuff. And it's in lore. So it's like in the story. So at that point, you've played so much, you're so familiar with the story and the characters and the world. You have so much that you still want to know that it really feels like you're actually getting to go back to the beginning of something that you experienced and try it again and like make different choices and see what happens. And it's so exciting. Like it's so endlessly interesting.

• 1:01:59Kirk Hamilton?

  And that's especially because a new mechanic opens up, like you can just rewind, undo a decision if you start doing one and it just, some of them just like lead to a bad ending like pretty quickly. And you can just go back to the last junction point and like try again. And there's what, are there a hundred endings, Jason? Is that right?

• 1:02:14Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:16Kirk Hamilton?

  So some of them are like jokes. I think some of them like aren't really major, but there are some really major storylines too. And the more I play through this part of the game. I'm just seeing something I've never seen before. It's the feeling of a true multiversal story. We've talked about multiverses before on TripleClick and the challenges that they present to storytelling and how like a big problem with all these Marvel multiverse stories, for example, is like, nothing matters because like, who cares if this character died in this world, they're just gonna come right back and the same actor will play them and will kind of pretend they never died. And then we also talked about, I don't know, a movie like Everything Everywhere All at Once, a movie that I really liked, which was a multiversal story that like, made the multiverse the point and kind of built its story around the idea that there are infinite

• 1:03:00Kirk Hamilton?

  copies of everyone and then told a really interesting story as a result. And like, that's the kind of multiversal storytelling that video games actually very rarely explore unless you count the fact that like reloading a save technically is like, some sort of a multiverse like outside of the fiction of the game. But I don't really think of it that way. Anyways, this really feels like that. You've seen, you get to see these characters reacting in all these different configurations to all these different scenarios. You watch them like grow and then they don't remember things that you do remember, your protagonist does remember, and it's like constantly branching in all these different directions. It's so freaking cool. Like, even now, and I mean, I have god knows how many hours left, I feel like I've gotten to know these characters in a way that I never really have in another narrative video

• 1:03:45Kirk Hamilton?

  game, just because no other video game narrative that I can think of has done something like this, where like the branches, there are 100 branches built into this, you know, this like spiraling structure. It's incredibly cool. Like, I can't say enough about how cool it is.

• 1:04:01Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I mean, I just wanna give the caveat here that this game is too much. Like, there's so many roots and so many of them are so repetitive that it gets to be a little bit grueling. That said, it's still one of my 10 favorite games of the year. It's gonna be on my game of the year list.

• 1:04:21Kirk Hamilton?

  Spoilers.

• 1:04:21Jason Schreier?

  But it's like, it's like, it's like at Thanksgiving when you're just like going up for thirds. You're full, but you want more. And it's just like, I mean, this is good, but by the end of it, I'm gonna be bloated. I'm not gonna be able to eat for another three days. That's what playing this game is like.

• 1:04:37Kirk Hamilton?

  I can imagine, I was reading a Steam review and they were like, I played 400 hours and saw every ending. I was like, holy shit. But I could kind of see it. I saw every ending too, yeah. Oh, nice. Okay, you've done all of them. All 100 endings. Wow. Good lord. So that's, yes, that is probably true. At the same time, like, just seeing what it's doing and experiencing it the way that I am right now, like, it's so freaking cool. Like, even if I don't see every ending, which I may not do all 100 endings, like, I don't know. You should not. I'll probably just play until I want to stop. But like, or I might go read and like, look up what are some cool ones that are worth seeing. I will tell you. I will tell you. Nice. Okay, that would be even more fun. Yes. But like, just experiencing it the way that I'm experiencing, like, seeing the way that they've, they're telling this story is so flipping cool.

• 1:05:22Kirk Hamilton?

  And then the last thing to mention, I know I've gone on a long time, but whatever, it's kind of a special one more thing. I think that the strategy gameplay is really fun. So this is kind of a visual novel in that it's a lot of reading dialogue while like, fun, and like anime avatars pop up and their lips move. And they all make, I should say also, they all make sounds. They don't vocalize the way in Danganronpa, they'll be like, "Shut up!", you know, or they say something. In this game, they all just go, "Ah, uh, ah", and all the female characters basically just make sex sounds the entire game. And I don't know if you, I'm guessing Jason- I had to turn off the noise. Yeah. It's like, even, I love the music in this game. There are characters where you're talking to them and straight up, it's just a normal conversation between your character and one of the female characters, and she'll just be like, "Ah, ah, ah, ah",

• 1:06:07Kirk Hamilton?

  because it's just her reaction sounds, but if you just listen to them without reading or following along, it's totally ludicrous and like, especially because I skipped through the dialogue really fast. It's just like, sex sounds really fast out of my headphones and it got totally ridiculous. Anyway. Especially Nozomi, who's kind of the- Yes, Nozomi is the, yes, she is absolutely like every one of her poor voice actors. Or her very talented voice actors. I don't know, maybe she had it. Anyways, um, the gameplay is, in between these sections, you'll get attacked and you have to defend the school from these attackers. And it's this like, turn-based, you know, isometric view strategy game with like, a really fun and diverse crew of fighters. Each one is kind of scripted ahead of time, so you don't like, pick your team. It's just like, whatever the situation calls for.

• 1:06:52Kirk Hamilton?

  A lot of them, it's like, every single character, so it'll be, I don't know. Like 16 fighters or something, or 12 fighters on the field at once. And they all have really different and complementary abilities. And it's really well thought out and designed. And I just have a great time with that part of the game. And that's pushed this way above Danganronpa for me. Just because while the story is really cool and I'm liking it, the gameplay is like fun. Where in Danganronpa, it was always kind of obligatory. Like, I really enjoy every fight. So like, man, I can't say enough good enough about this game. Like, anyone out there, if you like, like this kind of game, and if any of this sounds interesting to you, I highly recommend checking it out and like, commit yourself to that initial playthrough. It's really fun on its own. It's fun. It's like, the music's great, the vibe is great, the writing's fun, it's funny, and the combat's good.

• 1:07:36Kirk Hamilton?

  But then, it becomes something truly special and it is like, absolutely worth doing that. So, I'll stop there. That's enough. The 100 line, Last Defense Academy, what a game. I'm so glad, Jason, that you endorsed it earlier in this year and that I decided to really stick with it.

• 1:07:51Jason Schreier?

  We will discuss more down the road. Um, maybe we'll even, Matty, if you play some, we could even do a spoiler cast.

• 1:07:57Speaker 02

  It could happen.

• 1:07:58Jason Schreier?

  At some point.

• 1:07:59Kirk Hamilton?

  That could be pretty fun.

• 1:08:00Jason Schreier?

  Cause there's a lot to unpack and.

• 1:08:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe Jason can tell us about the endings that we don't have to play.

• 1:08:05Jason Schreier?

  I totally could.

• 1:08:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Five hours spoiler.

• 1:08:07Jason Schreier?

  It goes in so many different directions. I mean, so one thing you did mention, Craig, that I'll just say real quick is that when you get to that second part of the game, this is a little bit spoilery, sorry, but like, it's worth knowing. Um, it almost turns into like, different branches almost become different genres of story. And like, you wind up going, I won't say what any of them are, but it just feels like they just shoved a bunch of different games into this game.

• 1:08:33Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:33Jason Schreier?

  It's pretty cool.

• 1:08:34Kirk Hamilton?

  When they do a little bit of that even in the main storyline. And you can skip stuff. You can like, skip fights you've already done. And like, some of the, like, there are some of the busy work. It's just like, do you want to skip this? And I'm like, yes, please.

• 1:08:43Jason Schreier?

  It's actually been patched to be even, uh, more skippable since I played it.

• 1:08:48Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, nice.

• 1:08:49Jason Schreier?

  So you're playing a version with more quality of life stuff, which is nice.

• 1:08:53Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice.

• 1:08:53Jason Schreier?

  Um, okay, cool. My one more thing is Pluribus, a show that we somehow still haven't mentioned on the show despite it being uh very much up all of our alleys. This is the next show.

• 1:09:03Kirk Hamilton?

  And that's planning a beans cast.

• 1:09:04Jason Schreier?

  Well, that's the thing. So this is a new show from Vince Gilligan, the creator of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, co-creator of Better Call Saul. And um this is his next much hyped Apple TV plus extravaganza. It's set in New Mexico, stars a woman named Carol Circa, played by Ray Sehorn, phenomenal. And uh she is, as the show says, she is the the least happy person on earth and how she must save the world, the most miserable person on earth, she must save the world from happiness. So yeah, I won't really get into this uh because we are gonna do a spoiler cast probably at the end of January,

• 1:09:45Jason Schreier?

  where we talk about the entire show, once the first season is aired and we can really unpack it. Other than to say, I guess, two things. One is that I am really loving it. And Ray Sehorn better win an Emmy this time around for all the time she was robbed. Better Call Saul.

• 1:10:02Kirk Hamilton?

  They're gonna deliver their screeners to like the voters' doors with like stick it into the door with like a knife.

• 1:10:08Jason Schreier?

  For real. I mean, this feels like like this show is such a uh I've never seen a show, actually, that so that focuses on a single person for so long and yet, well, first of all, period, and also is so captivating.

• 1:10:20Kirk Hamilton?

  I was reminded a little bit of some of Rebecca Ferguson's work on Silo, especially in the second season when she's totally alone. She has episodes where she's completely alone and they were similarly fun to watch, just an actor figuring out how to communicate. But yeah, I mean, what Ray Sehorn is doing in this show is like unbelievable.

• 1:10:36Jason Schreier?

  The other thing I'll say is that if you thought Better Call Saul could be slow, oh my god. Like this, this might also be one of the slowest burns on television that I've ever seen or that I've ever seen and it's still been captivated the entire time. And it's it's really cool. I mean, I love it. It's just like sumptuous and and so much fun to watch and so engaging, but uh I don't think it's gonna be for everybody. Because it moves so slowly and it is so willing to just spend 10 minutes on Carol, I don't know, drinking orange juice or like going to the supermarket. And, and it's, it's, that's less mundane and boring than it sounds and.

• 1:11:21Kirk Hamilton?

  Want my sprouts.

• 1:11:22Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, you gotta get. I love it. I think it's an amazing show. Very, very slow. Be warned if you're considering watching it. And I won't say anything else, else about it, other than I, I recommend it. And we will all be talking about it for real and like really getting in depth on spoilers. As a bonus episode next month.

• 1:11:42Kirk Hamilton?

  Two quick thoughts and I will be as circumspect as you have been as well. One is that I think the premise is so killer that for me, like Emily and I just talk about this show all the time. My sister and I also just, there's so much, I just want to talk about it all the time because the premise is so killer that I don't even care if nothing happens. Like I, I would actually, I think that a lot happens, but like I, I have so many thoughts about every episode.

• 1:12:03Jason Schreier?

  Well, I didn't say nothing happens. Just to be clear. It just takes a very long time for things to happen.

• 1:12:08Kirk Hamilton?

  Sure. I guess it doesn't feel slow to me, but I think that's because I'm so engaged by the, by the premise. And then the fun fact that I will share is that Vince Gilligan got his start as a writer and then a director on The X-Files, which I think explains some things about Pluribus and kind of feels a little more full circle and ties it. It does feel like a little bit of that is in there with Albuquerque and The Breaking Bad and The Better Call Saul.

• 1:12:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I didn't know that. That makes a lot of sense.

• 1:12:32Jason Schreier?

  I think if you, if you watch Better Call Saul, and if you remember that one episode where Mike Casta find is like looking for a, a, a bug on his car and he spends like a solid 15 minutes just dismantling his entire car looking for that bug. If you enjoyed that sequence, then you will very much enjoy Pluribus.

• 1:12:51Kirk Hamilton?

  It's true. He really is great. You know, Better Call Saul and, and Breaking Bad, both were a big, they were fond of the long, like no dialogue setup, like environmental storytelling sequence. So that is, that is a good point. He's been exploring this kind of thing for a long time.

• 1:13:07Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, 100%. And I mean, in this most recent episode that aired last Friday, just the visuals were just like, oh, my God. Yeah.

• 1:13:15Kirk Hamilton?

  What an episode of TV. I was the whole time. I was just like, oh, my God.

• 1:13:20Jason Schreier?

  But it's so much different than Breaking Bad. I don't know. I don't want to. I don't want to

• 1:13:24Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:13:24Jason Schreier?

  get too specific. We will talk about it. Breaking Bad is very, very plot heavy in that there are just like new plot reveals happening on every single episode, new twists and turns. And this is very much not like that. It's a very different type of show, which is really interesting to watch. And again, I love it. I thoroughly recommend it. But like, my wife, for example, is not super into it, just because it's moving so slowly. All right. That is that for this week's episode. We will be back next week with our games of the year. And then just as a quick programming note, we will be off the week of New Year's, and then we will come back the following week. So I believe January 8th to do our predictions, go over predictions for this year and make new predictions for 2026.

• 1:14:09Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, very exciting. All right. And we'll see both of you next week.

• 1:14:13Jason Schreier?

  See you next week. Bye.

• 1:14:17Kirk 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.

• 1:15:15Speaker 04

  Maximum Fun, a worker-owned network

• 1:15:17Jason Schreier?

  of artist-owned shows supported

• 1:15:20Speaker 04

  directly

• 1:15:20Jason Schreier?

  by you.