Help, My Dog Hates My Switch 2 [Mailbag]

Jason, Maddy, and Kirk open up the mailbag to answer your burning questions about all sorts of things, from the gambling epidemic to our favorite funny bugs. And the burningest question of all: What do you do when your dog hates your Switch 2?

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

• 0:03Jason Schreier?

  There's some things that are just too good for this world, too pure, too special. Our IP anthem. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we are opening up the old mailbag and pulling out some of your questions, including one of my favorites in a long time about a dog who hates the switch too.

• 0:30Jason Schreier?

  I'm Jason Schreier.

• 0:32Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm Kirk Hamilton.

• 0:33Speaker 02

  And I'm Maddy Myers.

• 0:35Jason Schreier?

  Hello.

• 0:36Kirk Hamilton?

  Hello. Hello, my friends.

• 0:37Jason Schreier?

  Hello. Kirk, did you see that rock star band Charlie Kirk from GTA V? Like, people within GTA V were making missions where, like, USS N. Charlie Kirk and rock star band it, which does not bode well for your prediction that you made just last week.

• 0:56Kirk Hamilton?

  Or it means that they want to really get it right when they finally put a Charlie Kirk based character into GTA 6, and they don't want all these people diluting their artistic vision.

• 1:07Jason Schreier?

  Right, muddying the waters.

• 1:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, they don't want to, they don't want people to get out ahead of it, or get sick of it in any way, because they're gonna recreate it so respectfully and accurately.

• 1:16Kirk Hamilton?

  I still have, I have hope.

• 1:18Jason Schreier?

  Speaking of things that are done respectfully, welcome to Triple Click, where we are a listener-supported podcast, and you can make this show possible by going to maximumfun.org/join and sign up today. We do not have advertisements. We are entirely listener-supported, and so you make this show happen. And in addition to making the show happen, you also get access to our monthly bonus episodes, including one we just recorded and published this week about the TV show Pluribus. Super fun conversation about a show we all really enjoyed. So go and check that out if you haven't already, and if you haven't subscribed already, that, once again, is maximumfun.org/join.

• 1:59Jason Schreier?

  We also have a massive backlog of bonus episodes and many more to come this year. In fact, I would, I would, I would venture a guess that there will be 11 more to come.

• 2:11Speaker 02

  A very good.

• 2:11Jason Schreier?

  Just a hunch.

• 2:12Speaker 02

  Good guess.

• 2:13Kirk Hamilton?

  Should've made that one of your predictions.

• 2:15Jason Schreier?

  That should be one of my predictions, but that's one where we could just control it. And you guys could be like, oh, I'm calling in sick for this bonus episode.

• 2:23Kirk Hamilton?

  That's a good point, I guess.

• 2:25Jason Schreier?

  And one more thing, we are now on YouTube.

• 2:30Kirk Hamilton?

  We are.

• 2:31Jason Schreier?

  Kirk, do you want to talk a little bit about our video adventures?

• 2:34Kirk Hamilton?

  Sure. I have spent the last while sort of investigating how to make a video version of TripleClick. And the answer to the question ultimately was, it is now possible to make a full video version of TripleClick that is on the level of the audio version of TripleClick that we have all spent so long refining. But we can still post our episodes to YouTube. And as it turns out, YouTube has somewhat recently made it possible to just like import in our SS feed, which is what we did. We imported all of our episodes to our YouTube channel, which you can find a link for that down in the show notes if you would rather listen to the show on YouTube. And also, we're going to be posting some shorts and like little video snippets as we're recording the episodes. They'll kind of just be for fun. They're, you know, before we even edit the show. So they're kind of just like little bits from

• 3:19Kirk Hamilton?

  the episode that to kind of share them out there as a YouTube short, or maybe on Instagram or other social media sites. So anyways, if you, if you like listening to podcasts on YouTube, you can find us on YouTube, either just through the YouTube app, or you can also listen on YouTube Music, like the way that you would listen to a podcast. So we're over there now. And yeah, go, go follow us. Somehow, we already had like 14 subscribers, even though we hadn't told anyone about our channel. It just like immediately had 14 subscribers. I think the bots have already found us or something, or I don't really know how that works.

• 3:51Speaker 02

  Or it's 14 really dedicated fans. And shout out to those people.

• 3:55Kirk Hamilton?

  They've just been sitting there refreshing TripleClick in the search on YouTube for five years.

• 3:59Jason Schreier?

  14 people who just keep searching YouTube.

• 4:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, they just.

• 4:02Kirk Hamilton?

  Like, well, it's morning. Time to search YouTube.

• 4:04Speaker 02

  And those people, they already know that all those episodes are up there. They didn't even need us to tell them. They've been listening and they've been just so psyched that we finally updated. But everybody else, you're going to have to go subscribe.

• 4:15Jason Schreier?

  Well, that's all very exciting. All right, let's get on with it. This week, we are opening up the listener mailbag and pulling out some hot, hot, hot burning questions. As always, you can reach us at [email protected]. And as always, the shorter your question, the better. Please do not write like a 500 word preface, because chances are I am, we are not going to read it on the show if you, if you just include a whole bunch of stuff. Just, just, just send us a question. We really like weird and hilarious ones. I think we might get to one of those this week. And we really like ones that aren't the same question that we've gotten a

• 4:55Jason Schreier?

  whole bunch of times before. All right, on with it. Maddy, start us off with this first question from Nathaniel.

• 5:02Speaker 02

  Sure. Nathaniel writes, hi TripleClick, been a big fan since Splitscream. I was recently playing online in FC26 and had a really annoying bug happen to me. It made me wonder, what is the most annoying bug that you all have encountered? Along the same lines, do you have any favorite funny bugs? I know the face glitch from AC Unity is infamous, but do you have any personal favorites?

• 5:29Jason Schreier?

  I have a couple that come to mind that I'll share. So most annoying one is there was one, man, it was like a puzzle game or an adventure game of some sort. And I was playing an early copy and there was a bug that like prevented me from actually making progress in it, which was extremely annoying. And then I had to talk to the developers about fixing it. Doesn't really count quite the same as like something that actually makes it to fans' hands, but still very annoying. It's happened to me a couple of times over the years, actually. My favorite funny bug, though, I don't know if you guys remember this, but when Cyberpunk 2077 launched, I jumped into the first mission and it's in this, it's, it was the prologue where you play as a corpo

• 6:12Jason Schreier?

  and you're in this big, high-tech building, office building. And there were little trees everywhere. And I looked around and there were just tiny little trees everywhere I looked. And it was some, I don't know, some graphical issue where there were just trees displayed anywhere. And then I went into the car and there were just trees as far as the eye could see. And it was just the, the most hilarious tree bug. It was very enjoyable. Like the Lorax bug for Cyberpunk? Exactly. I think you made that joke in, in 2020 when it came out.

• 6:42Kirk Hamilton?

  One of the funniest bugs in cyberpunk was just the way that people would stand up in their cars in T-pose, if you remember this.

• 6:48Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 6:49Kirk Hamilton?

  And there were amazing, I mean, just the videos of that, of like, someone's basically ass cheeks above the skylight, like the sky in the top of their car, just standing there like this while the car flew around. I think T-pose bugs are generally hilarious, like, I've run into those many times, where, you know, to anyone who doesn't know what a T-pose is, this is a kind of a default positioning for a body in the game. It just stands stock-still with its arms out to the side, forming a T. And there's a certain kind of bug that just causes that to happen. I mean, and it's widespread enough across a number of different games that it makes me think that this is like, related to the way that animations work, like, they always start in that position.

• 7:29Kirk Hamilton?

  And so if the bug kicks them back to that position, you get this just hilarious and often deeply uncanny

• 7:37Kirk Hamilton?

  situation where you're like, walking down a street in a beautiful countryside, and then you just look to the right, and there's like, 40 people all standing right next to one another, frozen in the same position, and it feels like Children of the Corn or some kind of...

• 7:52Speaker 02

  Or Pluribus, maybe?

• 7:54Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, a little bit, yeah.

• 7:55Speaker 02

  Any, any, any science fiction example. I, I have some, some favorite bugs, although I, I gotta confess some recency bias here. I mean, I'm sure I had plenty of progress breaking bugs in my past that are vague memories, but I've talked a little bit about the four-player Night Rain mod that my, my gaming friends and I play almost every Thursday night. And because it's a mod, it introduces some really funny bugs, because, I mean, this isn't the fault of From Software, we're willingly engaging with something that can break the game. And one of our favorite ones that pops up now and again is, anytime you beat kind of a mid-boss in that game, you get, like, this kind of little altar pops up for each individual player,

• 8:40Speaker 02

  and they can each look at it and select a reward, and everybody gets their own version of the altar and their own reward catered to their character class. And there's a bug whereby multiple of those altars pop up. Up for the first three players that join the game and the fourth player gets zero of them. And they get zero rewards for the entire playthrough and everyone else gets multiple rewards for the entire playthrough. And this has happened a couple of times and has been so funny and has caused us to all just drag the fourth player and be like, you don't deserve it. You don't deserve any rewards. You're not working hard enough. And it's, it's really funny.

• 9:19Speaker 02

  But we all get paid back because in the final boss fight, every, every Night Rain match ends with a final boss fight. If the first three players who joined the game all die, but that fourth player is remaining, they also are counted as being dead, even though they are actually alive. So we automatically fail, which means that we have then had to decide which of us is the best Night Rain player? And how do we ensure that those people, those three people are in the top slots and the fourth person, who's most likely to die is in the fourth spot? It's, it's really introduced a whole additional layer.

• 9:58Speaker 02

  I know, I know. It's, but it is mostly comical and really fun and like also adds a layer of difficulty to the game. That kind of helps out the fact that the game is actually quite easy when you have four players.

• 10:11Kirk Hamilton?

  Man, that kind of stuff, that makes me think of Destiny where you would have to have someone sign in first to the raid and then everyone would join on them so that they could be the one to unplug their LAN cable or whatever. Cause they're the host, because there's no actual way of managing who the host is on PS4 or whatever. That's pretty funny. Kirk, what do you mean this next question? All right. This next comes from Hugh, who writes, I was wondering your opinions on the trend of using predictive markets to effectively gamble on game of the year. As industry insiders, do you ever look at the lines for these games or, or place bets on this kind of stuff? As a longtime NFL fan, I remember when radio shows and podcasts had to talk around the betting lines for fear of conflict of interest allegations and it seems like games are heading that way, too.

• 10:54Kirk Hamilton?

  Side note to Hugh, everything is heading that way. It's a nightmare. Okay. Anyways, back to you. Do you think a serious gambling market could pop up around? On video games and do you think reviewers will have to abstain? Or if they will ever face allegations of posting inflated or deflated reviews to try to game the outcome of a bet? For example, if a poly market prediction placed odds on a specific game's meta critic score, but reviewers were talking to each other to help beat the game early, they could have an insider perspective on what the critic's score would be. I think individual betting like this is inevitable and will only add toxicity to the video games, games, journalism industries. But I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. This is a great question.

• 11:37Jason Schreier?

  Oh, man. Okay. I have so many thoughts on this, but first, do you guys mind if I do a little digression here? Please go for it. Little, little kind of side path to before we get to this question. So as you guys know, I've talked about this a little bit on the show before, but for many years I've bet on football, like as a fun little hobby to make games more interesting. This year, like three or four months ago, I actually stopped and I stopped for a few reasons. One is that like it kind of it made the games like, I don't know, it makes game it's games are more fun when you're not like personally invested in whether the points are gonna be because the spread is gonna be covered or not.

• 12:16Jason Schreier?

  Two is something that happened, which I sent you guys a clip of, which is in a Cardinals Titans game on, I think it was October 5th, it was like week five. The Cardinals were up 21 to six in the fourth quarter and this guy, Amari DiMarcato, who's this like third string running back, kind of a meaningless player, a useless player for most senses, had this incredible 72 yard run for a touchdown, but he, being a complete moron, decided to showboat and drop the ball before he actually crossed the goal line. So instead of a touchdown, it became a touchback. Titans got possession and of course the Titans came back, this miraculous comeback in the fourth quarter to win the game. And I had money tied to the Cardinals in that game and I had this kind of come to

• 13:01Jason Schreier?

  Jesus moment where I was like, if this idiot, Amari DiMarcato, who's this like third string running back, who nobody had ever heard of before today, can cost me money by like dropping the ball before scoring a touchdown, something, something isn't right here. Like I don't want this to be part of my life. But the third thing, and this is where we get a little bit more relevant, is that I am so sick of the ubiquity of gambling and I feel like it is ruining so many lives and getting so many people addicted to this really just completely destructive habit for a lot of people. I think many people can do it in a healthy way and I think it can, gambling can absolutely be something that you choose to do as a hobby and don't

• 13:43Jason Schreier?

  get sucked into it. In the same way that drinking can, or cigarettes can, well, maybe not cigarettes, but drinking can, but like, and, and for, or weed can, but for a lot of people that can also be very addictive and it being so ubiquitous to the point where you can't even watch a sports game without seeing the lines everywhere and seeing Fan Duel and DraftKings advertisements surrounding it, I think is really destructive for society and especially for young people in society and it makes me really nervous about the future and my kids watching this sort of thing and so on and so forth. And it made me feel like I don't want to be part of this anymore by like participating in this gambling system that I feel like is going to ruin a lot of people's lives and, lives and already has. And that leads us to today, which yes, I mean, Polymarket and Kalshi already have

• 14:26Jason Schreier?

  bets for video games. There's a bet, I know this firsthand because last week I saw spikes for GTA 6 getting delayed on Polymarket based on like some comments that I made on a Ringer podcast. Go see my Bloomberg newsletter from last week to read more about that. But I, yes, this very much exists and I think it will only continue to get worse as, as this stuff just becomes to like, become more and more ubiquitous and is totally unregulated. And yeah, I think it'll, it'll definitely lead to some sort of crisis. Maybe this could have been one of our predictions where like video game reviewers get threats because people had money tied to GTA 6 being a 95 plus Metacritic and you gave it a five and

• 15:09Jason Schreier?

  you skewed the review score. Like I could very easily imagine that happening.

• 15:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, especially since video game scores are already something that reviewers get harassed over and there isn't even money tied up in it. There's just allegiances.

• 15:23Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, there's developer money, right? There's bonuses and then that is used as an excuse, I think, a lot of the time to like, say like, oh, look, you're costing these developers their bonuses.

• 15:32Speaker 02

  Right, right. And if the players don't defend them, who will?

• 15:34Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, there's also this thought, I think, in the back of people's heads that like, oh, this game isn't reviewing well, that means I might not get the sequel that I want because people aren't liking it. So people do have kind of like their own personal logic for like going after reviewers. But even beyond that, I mean, it could be that like, like people bet a bunch of money on a game not being delayed and then they start threatening the developers because it was delayed. Like, this could go really out of control. And the insider trading part of it, I mean, that's like a whole nother can of worms. Like, if we wanted to, we could probably bet so much stuff on Polymarket or CallShe based on the, like, embargoes and stuff that we have behind the scenes. It's, it's crazy. There's no regulation of this. It's insane.

• 16:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like wild that there is, it's even possible for us to do that based on what we know. It's such a sign to me that these markets need to be regulated. I would, it would never even occur to me to do that. And even just reading Hugh's email was giving me residual stress, like imagining a games critic with that inside knowledge, using it to bet. I, it's like, oh, yeah, if somebody didn't have any morals and somehow they found out about these embargoes or got a game early, then they could do, they could do these things. So, yeah, I don't even know how you control for that if you're Polymarket or any of these other just betting platforms.

• 16:53Jason Schreier?

  Are you guys familiar with, like, in sports, like, players get threats from fans because they didn't hit their over total and stuff like that? Like, that is actively happening as we speak.

• 17:02Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm not surprised at all. I mean, I don't think that these markets are, they don't even, they don't seem remotely interested in regulation. This whole thing seems to be going so hard in the opposite direction that to me, I, I don't, I just, it feels so weak to just say, well, I hope it gets regulated because that seems so unlikely, given

• 17:21Speaker 02

  You're right.

• 17:22Kirk Hamilton?

  Congress, given, I don't know if any, if either of you saw this, like, there was a, I think, I don't know if it was on Polymarket, there were betting predictive markets about whether Maduro would be removed from office by the end of January. Someone put in, I believe it was a $400,000 bet, bing. Just to be totally accurate, it was a bet with a $400,000 payout.

• 17:42Kirk Hamilton?

  Like two days before he was ousted. And like, then it was reported, not only did people in the Trump administration know, but there were reporters who knew, like, who sat on the story. So, okay, so now you have to ask yourself, like, any reporter who finds out vital information about something like that, not only can they sit on it and protect those in power, but, but like, as if you didn't have enough to like, generate conspiracy theories, they can also sit on it and make a hundred thousand dollar bet on a predictive market and presumably cash out and make a bunch of money. So that's like happening, you know, at the like, highest levels of geopolitics. It's certainly also happening in video games, it's happening in sports, it's happening everywhere. And I find it incredibly distressing as well.

• 18:27Kirk Hamilton?

  To be perfectly clear, to like, kind of answer Hugh's question, like, I do not bet on anything and would not, and I would see that as like, a huge ethical violation. I think all three of us would, so that's like, worth saying explicitly. And also, yeah, I think it's like, I think it's a huge problem and kind of a sign of a truly unfortunate Pandora's Box that has been opened for our culture. And I'd recommend, if people want to watch a really good video about this, Drew Gooden, the YouTuber, who's kind of been on fire lately and is a very enjoyable YouTuber in general, he made a video about this, maybe six months ago, that I really enjoyed. It was just really comprehensive. Things have already changed since then, but it really does sum up, I think, a lot of what you were talking about, Jason, which, to me, the like, DraftKings logos all over

• 19:11Kirk Hamilton?

  sports broadcasts, the ways that like, these sports podcasts and like, really major sports broadcasts will just have like, gambling stuff just festooning the screen, is like, so disgraceful. I just, I really find that so gross. And he talks quite a bit about that, because among other things, he's a sports fan. So it's a great video, we can link that in the show notes.

• 19:32Jason Schreier?

  During the pre-shows of games, you'll have the announcers being like, "Our favorite parlay of the night is this, this, and this." It's really wild. Like, if you guys haven't watched a sports broadcast in a little while, I think your minds might be blown at just how infested it all is.

• 19:48Kirk Hamilton?

  You know, it's funny, I went to watch the IU Oregon game because I grew up in Bloomington.

• 19:53Jason Schreier?

  The future Jets quarterback in that game, Dante Moore.

• 19:56Kirk Hamilton?

  So I grew up in Bloomington and I've always been a Hoosiers fan, but of course, Indiana's a basketball school and we always had a terrible football team. And then I went to music school at the University of Miami where it was a great football team and that's kind of where I learned to like be interested in college football. And now, suddenly, I have to like decide whether to root for U Miami or IU. It's like a decision I never thought I would have to make because it's just, it was outlandish.

• 20:19Jason Schreier?

  Fernando Mendoza is gonna be the number one pick. He's the Indiana.

• 20:22Kirk Hamilton?

  Just to imagine that IU could compete with U M, like they were just in different worlds. And now suddenly, I think IU is gonna win. I think I'm gonna root for IU, actually. I never really, I never liked U Miami.

• 20:32Jason Schreier?

  Kirk, did you know that IU is favored by 8.5 points and you can get a free $50 on DraftKings if you sign up there?

• 20:41Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I will, I will not be betting, but I did know that they are favored, which is also just crazy considering how things have historically been. But I was actually wondering about that, if, is there gam- like, is it as bad, like with the, with college sports broadcasts, like the DraftKings and all that?

• 20:57Jason Schreier?

  It's everywhere. It's all over the place. One more thing I'll say, just because you mentioned this, it used to be like 10, 15 years ago, there's this famous broadcaster, Al Michaels, one of the greatest to ever do it, and he was known for making these like hilarious subtle comments, like towards the end of a game, if it was like a blowout and someone scored, he would be like, "Well, that mattered to someone out there." That was kind of like implying, like hinting at the outcomes for gamblers, because that was before it was legal. And so you couldn't really outwardly talk about it in the same way. Now, it's totally different. It's just all over the place. They're talking about it constantly. It's really, it's really a lot.

• 21:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's important to remember that the only safe form of gambling is to force two of your friends to play a video game if you predicted something correctly in a game.

• 21:47Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. God, hopefully there's never a predictive market for the triple-click predictions.

• 21:52Jason Schreier?

  Could you imagine? Oh my god, that'd be so funny.

• 21:54Kirk Hamilton?

  I don't even think we could do anything about it if that did happen.

• 21:58Speaker 02

  Well, if you're a listener and you want to start one, please don't.

• 22:01Jason Schreier?

  That's how you made it to the big time, is if there's a Kalshi market based on our predictions. All right, let's move on. This is from Steven, and Steven asks a question that we actually got a few emails about, so I feel like we should address it. It's a big, big existential question for TripleClick that I think we were gonna have to address this sooner or later, so we might as well address it now. Steven writes, "The three of you always seem to be engaging with lots of cool, different art forms, music writing, movies, video games, etc. How do you have time for it all?"

• 22:33Kirk Hamilton?

  I mean, I feel like I don't.

• 22:34Speaker 02

  I know.

• 22:35Kirk Hamilton?

  To answer the question as honestly as possible.

• 22:39Speaker 02

  I mean, we all struggle with it. We're human. It turns out we're mortal. I know it seems like we're not.

• 22:44Kirk Hamilton?

  I think I have seen, I think we can, that Maddie and I can talk about this, but I've seen several versions of this question directed specifically to you, Jason.

• 22:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, Jason.

• 22:52Kirk Hamilton?

  Because you are the parent of two children, and you do have a tendency to say things like, "Oh, well, I went and played through this entire 80-hour JRPG in the last two weeks." And yet also have other things that you've been doing while presumably raising two children. So maybe, maybe you can start.

• 23:08Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I mean, I don't know, I guess. Like, I play, my gaming time is split. Most of it is probably like the two to three hours between when my kids go to bed and when I go to bed, where I'm just playing on my Steam Deck in bed. Like, that's when I get most of my gaming done. But then sometimes, especially if it's like a really big game, I can get away with playing during the workday. So that might be an advantage that I have even over you two, now that Maddie's no longer a Polygon, is that I can justify it. If it's a game I'm gonna be writing about and covering at Bloomberg, I will spend a couple hours in the morning, especially if I'm not working on some big story or feature or something like that. And so I get some of my gaming time done during work hours,

• 23:52Jason Schreier?

  which is an advantage I have over probably most of our listeners out there, unless you're lucky enough to have a job that doesn't, that either lets you play games or doesn't care if you, or you can get away with it. I don't really watch movies. I don't listen to- New music or anything like that. I listen to podcasts in the car. I watch TV shows with my wife at night, sometimes while I'm playing games. On weekends, I don't play any games or do much of anything other than like spend time with my kids and take them, take them places and take them to birthday parties and whatnot. And then books, I will do either instead of gaming at night or on planes, I travel a fair amount. And that's how I get most of my reading in is I'll like read two books for each plane, each

• 24:35Jason Schreier?

  ride, each plane ride, which is where I get a lot of reading in. And yeah, I don't know. I mean, one thing that I've gotten pretty good at, I think, is not wasting time in social media holes, which I think allows me to get more done. Kirk has talked about this before, but it's very easy to just pick up your phone and find yourself having lost half an hour to scrolling through Twitter. It helps that I don't use Twitter anymore. And Blue Sky is, I mean, it's, it's fine, but it's not quite as interesting. It's not 2014 Twitter.

• 25:06Speaker 02

  No.

• 25:07Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, exactly. I used to be on Twitter a lot more back in the day. And I feel like I was less productive with other stuff. So that helps. And I'm not on Tik Tok or Instagram much or anything like that, which I think can be a real, a real time suck for people. So that, that helps me do other things, I think. And I read really fast. I think that also is a big part of it. What about you guys? I mean, you guys also do plenty of things.

• 25:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, my, my schedule's not so different. Yeah, I, I think I have the huge advantage, which is that because I don't have children, I can get a lot of gaming time done over the weekend.

• 25:42Jason Schreier?

  Right.

• 25:42Speaker 02

  And also, Dina and I have a weekly movie night, which if we didn't have it, and we've talked about it, we would not keep up with movies. We would just fall into the pattern of either playing our own games or watching TV. Because we will always decide, like recurring TV shows, we're going to watch together or apart. And we have a shared Just Watch account, actually, where we both can add things. And as they come up on streaming, we can decide what we want to watch next. I recommend that for any couple that likes to watch things together or family, I suppose. So some of that is like just conversations with my partner about like what, when and how we're going to watch and do things together. But also, I just have the entire weekend. To just devote to playing a game, sometimes for maybe

• 26:25Kirk Hamilton?

  I remember those days. Too many hours.

• 26:27Speaker 02

  Sometimes I set an entire Saturday playing a game and should I regret it? Maybe, but I kind of don't because I can always justify it by being like, well, write about it. I'll pitch a story about it or I'll talk about it on TripleClick. So that's one answer. How about you, Kirk?

• 26:44Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I, I mean, I've talked a lot about, right, limiting social media, reading in the mornings. Every time I hear from one of our listeners who has given up their phone in the morning and just has a book while they have coffee or whatever, it makes me very happy. Because those people are always, they always write in and saying, oh, this is a great change. And I'm reading a lot more books now and that makes me happy. That's definitely been a big recent change for me, like the last two, three years, was shifting to reading books in that way. And that's let me read so many more books and just make reading a part of my life again. Because it really wasn't for most of the 2010s. Like when I was working at Kotaku and playing video games all the time and reviewing them, I remember like not really, like feeling like, man, I've really let reading go and I miss it.

• 27:27Kirk Hamilton?

  Because I, you know, when I was younger, I read all the time and like loved reading books. So that's been a cool addition. It really required a lot of sort of conscious thought and getting rid of things like social media and just in internet browsing in general, like just jumping around from website to website. Because that reading is just so different from books and, and I get so much out of books. But yeah, I mean, I don't watch a lot of movies. I wish I watched more. I've mentioned my friend Sam and I have this game where he comes over once a month-ish for an afternoon and we roll a dice and like watch Oscar movies, which is pretty fun. We just did it. We watched Erin Brockovich, which I hadn't seen in a while.

• 28:02Speaker 02

  Great movie.

• 28:04Kirk Hamilton?

  And Julia Roberts at the top of her game. She's so good in that movie.

• 28:07Speaker 02

  I love hearing about all these famous movies you've never seen before. I feel like I do the same thing and I try to talk about it on this show too.

• 28:13Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, I've seen Erin Brockovich like six times, to be clear.

• 28:15Speaker 02

  Okay, fair enough.

• 28:16Kirk Hamilton?

  But we just rolled the dice for, for 2001 and we were like, well, let's just watch Erin Brockovich because Sam hadn't seen it in a while. But no, I love that. Also, that year, Steven Soderbergh, Traffic, and Aaron Brockovich, both nominated for Best Picture, and then Ocean's Eleven was the next year. Crazy time for Steve Soderbergh. Okay, anyways, to give a little bit more of an answer, though, on my own personal front. For me, like, I'm constantly, especially lately, like, music has taken a huge part of my life over, and in particular, musical practice, writing, learning new instruments, and also, like, working on this show. I'm doing a Strong Songs Live this year, which tickets will be for sale shortly, and I will be yelling about it on this podcast and everywhere else. But like, I'm writing this, like, huge suite

• 28:57Kirk Hamilton?

  of music for it. And there, these things are so all, like, they're so all-encompassing, they're so immersive, that when I'm working on that, like, I can't play a video game. And it's actually been a challenge. Like, I really, like, I'll go and sit down and be like, alright, I'm gonna play this game. And then I start, and I'm like, my brain is just not in this. I can't do this right now. And I have to just either go on a walk outside, or just go practice again. So that's actually been a challenge for me lately, is like, the music is really pushing out time for games, and I have to kind of figure out a new time to play games. It might be in the afternoons during the week, and then on the weekends, I think, as well. But yeah, I don't know. It's like, actually, a thing I'm consciously struggling with right now. So I really, I always feel like there's never

• 29:41Kirk Hamilton?

  enough time. Like, it's really just about making a lot of choices and trying to stick with them, and just being methodical.

• 29:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. I always feel that way, too. Like, I wish I had even more time to watch more, play more.

• 29:53Kirk Hamilton?

  Stupid sleep!

• 29:53Speaker 02

  Read more.

• 29:55Kirk Hamilton?

  Sleep!

• 29:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:57Jason Schreier?

  All right, Maddie, read this next question, please.

• 30:00Speaker 02

  Sure. This one's from Ramon, who writes, "What is your relationship with audiobooks? How do you feel the experience of listening to a narrator read you a book compares to reading a book? Do you have a preference, and why? And what do you feel are the best aspects of both?"

• 30:17Jason Schreier?

  Can I just say, shocking stat is that for my last book, Play Nice, the audiobook has outsold the print version. It used to be, that audio was like way smaller than print. That's cool.

• 30:30Kirk Hamilton?

  People love audiobooks. Emily only reads books with audio. Like, she loves audiobooks and has really been listening to tons of them.

• 30:37Jason Schreier?

  So I'm, I'm very appreciative of audiobooks, given that they are getting people to read more.

• 30:42Speaker 02

  I love audiobooks. I, I will say, I'm a much faster reader as well. I mean, that helps with the time thing we were talking about. So especially if I want to finish a book quickly, just reading it is always going to be the faster option. But, um, and I, I know that the brain also kind of takes in information differently. And in my experience, I'll remember something better if I read it, rather than if I listen to it. I'm less likely to be distracted because I have to focus on reading it. And I think there are studies that comport with that. And it's not just a sensation I have. But I also really like audiobooks. And I just wanted to shout out at least one example of one I really like. So I mentioned this book written by my friend Samantha Allen. She wrote a comedy horror

• 31:26Speaker 02

  book called Patricia Wants to Cuddle. And it's like, uh, set in a kind of version of The Bachelor, like the reality show, but it's on an island that is haunted by a Sasquatch that is killing all the contestants off. And they, for the audiobook, got a ton of different actresses to play each of the contestants. And each of them has their own point of view chapter. And having all those different actresses play the parts just really brought the story to life and was an incredible way to experience the book. And I think even when I made it my one more thing, I said that. And I, I just think some books are kind of made to be that way. I remember, um, I actually listened to The Game of Thrones, A Song of Ice and Fire books on audiobook as well. And there was a reader who did different

• 32:09Speaker 02

  voices for every character's chapter. And that was also cool. Um, there wasn't different actors per chapter. That would have been even cooler. Uh, so I think sometimes, like, especially with a book that has multiple characters and point of view, like a fiction book, that can be a really, really cool way to take it in.

• 32:27Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I mean, the Harry Potter books, they were the books on tape at the time, but I listened to those and I'm now forgetting the actor's name. What is his name?

• 32:34Speaker 02

  Stephen Fry. Stephen Fry, the guy that did it?

• 32:37Kirk Hamilton?

  Jim Dale, it was an actor named Jim Dale, who did voices for everyone. And I had just never listened to an audiobook before. This was like when those books were new, in the early 2000s, and loved them. And World War Z is another one, since you're listening to them, Maddy, that comes to mind.

• 32:49Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 32:49Kirk Hamilton?

  World War Z has this all-star cast.

• 32:50Speaker 02

  I read World War Z, but that makes sense.

• 32:52Kirk Hamilton?

  So you can imagine, given that World War Z is like, kind of like a series of dispatches from different people, they got all these different actors.

• 32:57Speaker 02

  Exactly, yeah, that's probably great.

• 32:59Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, for me, I almost never listen to audiobooks because I guess I still listen to podcasts, but not as often. And I really find that like, I'm remembering that sometimes I just want to put on an album and like, listen to music, like when I'm in the house. It doesn't have to be a podcast all the time.

• 33:15Jason Schreier?

  But nobody should listen to Kirk, because actually podcasts are what you should be listening to.

• 33:20Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. The, I have a great quote here. I had Jad Abumrad on Strong Songs last fall to talk about his Fela Kuti show. And in the course of our conversation, we were talking about audio and video and like, the power of audio. I wrote a newsletter post about this, we can link in the show notes. But he said something really, I thought really wonderful, specifically about listening to someone tell you a story, which I know is part of this question. He says, "I do feel like the way that you listen when you are just listening, it's very special, you know? The way a voice gets in your imagination. Somehow, because of the lack of images, you fill it in with your own paintbrush, and it lives so much more warmly and more vividly in your mind. I really love that.

• 34:03Kirk Hamilton?

  Even with chat shows, I love the way a voice can fill your consciousness." And I think he's right. I think that just listening to someone tell you a story, there's something so old about that. We've been listening to people tell stories just around a campfire or whatever, and you picture it in your mind and like, it's just, it's so powerful because it doesn't have a visual component. And that's something that audiobooks really do really well, especially with like, a great, a great person with a great voice, like a great actor reading the stories. So it can be really cool. I kind of wish I had more time for them.

• 34:32Jason Schreier?

  It's funny to think of it, because you think of audiobooks as kind of a new concoction, like a new No piece of technology, but the idea of audiobooks itself of of being orally told a story is older than

• 34:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like the oldest tradition.

• 34:45Jason Schreier?

  Reading books is only, yeah, reading books is only 500 years old.

• 34:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, but telling stories.

• 34:50Jason Schreier?

  Storytelling is thousands and thousands of years old. Who knows?

• 34:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, it might be even older. It's probably it's probably the advent of human language is how old telling stories is.

• 35:00Jason Schreier?

  Interesting. All right. Let's do this next one. Kirk, you want to read this next question?

• 35:06Kirk Hamilton?

  This is from Kevin. Kevin writes, an odd I have an odd situation that I could use your advice on. My dog seems to be afraid of my Switch 2 and leaves the room whenever I turn it on. Doesn't matter whether it's docked or in handheld, whether I'm using the Joy-Con or a Pro Controller, whether it's Zelda or Mario Kart and so on. If the Switch comes on, he is out. I am not an angry capital G gamer, so I don't think he's responding to my behavior when I play. He also doesn't mind the PS5. What can I do? Have you heard of anyone else experiencing this?

• 35:35Jason Schreier?

  That's such a good twist that he doesn't care about the PlayStation, but it's only the Switch for some reason.

• 35:40Kirk Hamilton?

  Your dog is a console warrior.

• 35:41Jason Schreier?

  Setting off this dog. Yeah, this dog hates Nintendo. He's like, oh, frigging Nintendo's for babies. I'm out of here.

• 35:49Kirk Hamilton?

  I have a couple of thoughts on this, having recently trained our dog. So my first thought is that it would not be a bad idea to talk to a dog trainer if this is actually something you want to fix. Because anything your dog is like exhibiting sort of fear reaction to or not liking is probably something that you can work with a trainer on and like come up with a program to actually find a way to like teach your dog not to dislike the Switch, you know, by like slowly. Like if you come up with a plan, that will actually be the way to solve this problem, since Kevin does seem to be asking, how can I fix this? And like, I definitely recommend a trainer. Like anytime you think, oh, I can figure it out myself, like a trainer will just really help because they kind of train you. My one thought as to what might be causing this, that the only thing I can think is that there's a fan or some sound that the Switch 2 is making

• 36:34Kirk Hamilton?

  that the dog can hear and you can't hear. I don't know what if that's really the case, because I don't think of the Switch 2 as being particularly loud in handheld, though I know it has a like whole cooling apparatus when it's docked. But that's my only thought is that, given that like my dog sometimes didn't like 60 frames per second on the screen, like high frame rate when she was a puppy, she would actually get freaked out because it was too real looking and she thought it was like a real thing in the room.

• 36:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, our cats do that sometimes too, where they think that it's a window and they they get scared.

• 37:02Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. And so, but the PS5 doesn't cause that. So it just makes me think. It's, it could be some sound thing that you're not hearing. But either way, I think a trainer, talk to a trainer is my advice.

• 37:12Jason Schreier?

  I think Kevin's dog found out about Nintendo dogs and it's just really pissed that Nintendo is.

• 37:19Kirk Hamilton?

  How can you keep the dogs in there? Let them out. They need to go on a walk.

• 37:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know if this is true of dogs, but I know from owning cats that they have very weird memories. Like they'll have an association with something that will last for a long time. Like, for example, they might have like a bad association with an object or a thing because the first time we used it, there was a car backfiring outside and they remember that forever. And we have no idea what that association is, but just through positive reinforcement, we can just be like, okay, we're going to slowly fix this. I agree with Kirk, though. Dogs are a lot more, they need way more regimenting than a cat does. A cat, you can kind of just redirect in a way that you can't always with a dog. But I, but I do think there's probably a similarity where something bad may have happened with the Switch 2 really early on that you don't remember or have any idea what it was.

• 38:08Speaker 02

  And it might've been something that had nothing to do with you, like a loud noise outside. And the only way to fix it is to rebuild a new association. But I really hope our listeners write in because if it's a sound thing, then I feel like other people are going to tell us and be like, no, my dog can also hear the phantom whistling that the Switch 2 is making that our human ears can't hear.

• 38:27Kirk Hamilton?

  This is like the, the end of Sergeant Pepper where there's an ultrasonic sound that makes dogs freak out.

• 38:32Jason Schreier?

  I think you guys are just underestimating the stock. Like, I think it's because the dog is upset that Nintendo didn't innovate with the Switch 2 and it just made this kind of iterative new machine.

• 38:42Kirk Hamilton?

  It's just mad about how expensive it was. It's like, I can't believe you spent that. You could've bought Kibble with that, man. You could've bought me treats.

• 38:48Jason Schreier?

  If $500 were the dog toys, come on, what are you buying that thing for? The dog is like, where are the exclusives? The dog is like, Metro Prime Force, kind of mid, first year.

• 38:59Kirk Hamilton?

  Everything is cross-platform with Switch 1.

• 39:01Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, man.

• 39:02Speaker 02

  These are all good points. Dogs are smart.

• 39:05Jason Schreier?

  The reason that dog is leaving the room is to go post on Reddit about. The switch.

• 39:09Kirk Hamilton?

  It's true. Kevin says that he is not an angry uppercase G gamer, but he says something about his dog and some dogs can be angry uppercase G gamers. It happens.

• 39:19Jason Schreier?

  All right, let's get one more question in. I'll read this next one. Ben writes, I was listening to your Metroid Prime four episode and at one point Jason complained about its sameness to other Metroid Prime games. When discussing the desert, Maddy said it was very un-Metroid. When thinking about a sequel, what is that Goldilocks zone where it's definitely a game from that series, but not too samey?

• 39:46Speaker 02

  This is a tough one, right?

• 39:47Jason Schreier?

  It's not too similar, not too different. Just right.

• 39:50Kirk Hamilton?

  I think one important thing is that when you're different, you should be different in ways that are cool and fun.

• 39:55Jason Schreier?

  And not bad.

• 39:57Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. Not just a big weird desert.

• 40:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, it's hard not to just answer this really specifically about Metroid Prime four, but I think it's also like a general question you could apply to any sequel that probably all the game developers out there listening are like, yeah, this is the bane of our existence. What is the Goldilocks zone?

• 40:14Jason Schreier?

  Well, there's a rule. There's a rule that all game developers use. I believe it was, is it the Warren Specter? No, it's a Sid Meier rule. I'll, I'll, I'll props to Warren Specter, but it's a Sid Meier rule, which is that a sequel should be 33% old, 33% improved, and 33% new. Thirty, like a third of the stuff in a sequel should be returning. A third should be like the same, but better. And a third should be totally new. And a lot of game developers have used that as a rule of thumb over the years.

• 40:45Kirk Hamilton?

  I've never heard that. I love that.

• 40:46Speaker 02

  I've never heard this either.

• 40:47Kirk Hamilton?

  It seems like a great starting point.

• 40:49Jason Schreier?

  I mean, Sid Meier has a million like design rules that are just brilliant and everyone just, like one of his other ones, which I've always thought was brilliant. Sid Meier is, of course, for people who don't know, the developer, the designer of Civilization and

• 41:04Kirk Hamilton?

  Like our civilization.

• 41:05Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, he created Civilization.

• 41:07Kirk Hamilton?

  Where we are currently living.

• 41:09Jason Schreier?

  He designed it. Also, also has a reputation for being like the kindest man in the video game industry. Founded for Axis, lives in Maryland. Yeah, a very respected dude. One of his other big like, design principles is to never make something like have a 10% leap or something like that. Like, you always want to either double something or half it. Otherwise, what's the point?

• 41:34Kirk Hamilton?

  He really thinks in terms of percentages.

• 41:35Speaker 02

  I love that.

• 41:36Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, that's like part of his design aptitude. But anyway, that's kind of the rule of thumb that a lot of game designers use, which I think is tends to be effective. I think the problem is that when you're talking about things that can't be kind of quantified. So like, if you're, I don't know, if you're going from one open world RPG into the sequel to that open world RPG, you could say one third of the weapons will be new and one third will be old and one third will be improved. But like, how do you handle mechanics? And are you going to just quantify the number of mechanics? How do you do that? That's when you get a little bit squishier territory. And yeah, it's a tough one because you do have to find that balance of like, what people

• 42:19Jason Schreier?

  want because they enjoyed the last game and what people want to do differently. I mean, if you look at Zelda, I think that's kind of an interesting analogy here because that series has changed so much over the years and especially going from Skyward Sword to Breath of the Wild was such a leap. And Breath of the Wild certainly feels like it carries on a lot of things that make it feel like Zelda, but it is also such a different game. So I guess the answer here is if you're making a sequel, make it one of the greatest games of all time.

• 42:51Kirk Hamilton?

  Right.

• 42:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's great advice.

• 42:54Kirk Hamilton?

  I think that that, I mean, honestly, the closest thing we're going to come to an answer to Ben's question is what you just, that Sid Meier like percentage that you just gave, like, that seems like a great starting point.

• 43:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think from a critical perspective, you can also map that on to some of our disappointments with Metroid Prime 4 too, or as well, don't add the number two to the title. And in the sense that I do feel like there's a third of it that reminds me of old Metroid Prime games, like the Vault Forge reminds me of some old Metroid Primes in a good way and bad way, that that whole running up and down the elevator situation is kind of old school. But then I wouldn't say there's a third of the game that is like old Metroid Prime but improved. I don't know that much of the game feels that way to me. And the new stuff, the desert, also feels pretty boring. So that's tough.

• 43:45Speaker 02

  I do feel like there's actually a lot in there that's new, perhaps more than 33%, but a lot of the new stuff is not exciting. So they should have refined that.

• 43:56Jason Schreier?

  Did you guys see that interview that came out over the holidays with the Metroid Prime?

• 44:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was really fascinating.

• 44:01Jason Schreier?

  It was in a Japanese interview, so this is machine translated, so I can't 100% say that it's like accurate. And I'm going to paraphrase anyway, but essentially they were like, we started this off with another developer and it was going to be this open world project, then we moved it to retro. But we decided not to like reverse course on the open world part, even though open worlds had kind of evolved since then and players have kind of like changed their views on it and so on and so forth. And they were essentially like, yeah, we got stuck with this old design and couldn't do anything about it. And kind of reading that interview was a little bit surreal. It felt like what developers would be saying anonymously later, except it was just this on the record interview and like from it too.

• 44:40Speaker 02

  It made so much sense, though, and it really made me feel for the retro developers who got the project later. And we're like, okay, we have a game that Nintendo told us they didn't want it to be. But we also still need to reuse some of this in order to make the new version of the game. And what can we get rid of and what can we replace? It sounds really, really difficult. And I think that that's evident even in the game that we got is that that difficulty.

• 45:06Jason Schreier?

  Yep. Yeah. All right. Thank you to everybody who sent in questions. Once again, you can reach us at [email protected]. Now we're going to take a break and then we'll come back with one more thing.

• 45:21Speaker 03

  Say, what's the trivia show where dreams come true?

• 45:24Speaker 04

  It's gotta be Go Fact Yourself. Legend in the house.

• 45:29Speaker 03

  We quiz celebrity contestants about topics they love.

• 45:32Speaker 04

  Then bring out surprise experts.

• 45:34Speaker 03

  To delight and amaze. And then finally tell us why you know and love the lyrics to the song Knockin' Boots by Candyman.

• 45:40Speaker 04

  Joining us tonight is a rapper and producer. It's Candyman.

• 45:47Speaker 03

  This is among the greatest moments of my life.

• 45:51Speaker 03

  This is one of mine too. I love it.

• 45:53Speaker 04

  That's Go Fact Yourself.

• 45:55Speaker 03

  Twice a month, every month.

• 45:56Speaker 04

  Here on Maximum Fun.

• 46:01Speaker 05

  Since 2017, after every Max Fund drive, we've held a sale for Max Fund members where all of the proceeds go to a nonprofit. In December, we donated $43,000 to Transgender Law Center. $43,000. Thank you to all the Max Fund members who made this possible. Transgender Law Center champions the right of all transgender and gender nonconforming people to live freely, safely, and authentically. A mission that everyone at Max Fund supports. If you'd like to learn more or make an additional donation, go to transgenderlawcenter.org. And for anyone who needs to hear this, you belong here. You deserve to be able to be yourself, and we love you.

• 46:46Jason Schreier?

  And we are back for one more thing. Maddie has a very exciting announcement that I think, Maddie, you should share.

• 46:54Speaker 02

  I will share it, and it is that I am creating a website. And I think that our listeners will like it a lot. So to give some backstory, before I worked at Polygon, I worked at Kotaku. And before I worked at Kotaku, I worked for a website called The Mary Sue that was kind of a quote-unquote geek girl-style blog. That was the angle that we took on all of our stories. It was really fun to work there, and I loved it a lot. And Suzanne Apolo, who I later worked with at Polygon, was actually the co-founder of that blog, and working with her was really great. And I used to read her work at The Mary Sue before I worked there. So many years went by.

• 47:37Speaker 02

  This, this big company called Gamers Group acquired The Mary Sue in 2021 and laid off almost everybody. Super different website now, and I kind of saw that happen.

• 47:48Jason Schreier?

  Is that just like another version of Valnet with a different name?

• 47:50Speaker 02

  It kind of is. They laid off some people. And, and I mean, I will say, even when I worked for The Mary Sue, we had a really high post quota even then, like before we were, before the site was acquired by Gamers Group, which also maintains a really high quota for the one employee remaining there. But even when there were five of us, we all had to write four to six posts a day, which meant that I didn't do as Much reporting as I wanted to, we had to do a lot of like shoot from the hip reaction posts and just really quick news and that I think plagues a lot of publishing today, just in general, it's just the especially like advertising driven publishing, which is kind of how these big companies like Gamers Group and Valnet, which acquired Polygon recently, that's how they operate is entirely advertising dollars.

• 48:31Speaker 02

  So there's a really high rate of churn of stories because it's like, kind of the quote unquote easiest way to get traffic. Anyway, I, I think it's fair to say I'm against that as a methodology, but also I have been thinking since the Mary Sue changed completely that I think a website like that should exist. But I've also been looking at a lot of other kind of independent video game websites that have popped up. And many of them are trying to do it all. They're trying to do news and reviews and everything. And they're basically trying to compete with other websites that have way, way, way more resources than they do. And that was one of the things that worried me when I didn't, hadn't yet founded this website. I was like, how, how do you make a website and like stand out and compete with like the IGNs of the world?

• 49:15Jason Schreier?

  Did you know, Maddie, as soon as Polygon went through its changes and you decided to leave? Did you know right away you were gonna start your own?

• 49:22Speaker 02

  I did not. I did not. I really, I really thought about it a lot over like three months and didn't really firm it up until after I quit Polygon. But I did observe a lot after the Valnet acquisition about like how they operated and think a lot about publishing and what I didn't like about it. And one of the main things I didn't like was that I didn't own any of my work, which I know you two can relate to, like we don't own any of our Kotaku stories. And we have no right to change anything about them or profit off of them. Other people profit off of them. Other people are profiting off of my old stories at the Mary Sue and my old Polygon and Kotaku stories as we speak. And that upset me a lot. So I just kind of was like, well, what would be the solution to all of these

• 50:07Speaker 02

  just mixed feelings I'm feeling? So. I ended up kind of getting in touch with one of my old Polygon coworkers, Zoe Hannah, and she and I decided that we wanted to make a website in the tradition of something like the Mary Sue in that it's like a lot of, there will be a lot of women and queer writers and writers of color contributing to this. And that's going to be an angle that a lot of it takes, but it's also going to have a lot of reporting. So that means that we really, really need subscribers, people to pay for the website. So the website is called Mothership, and it's launching for Real Z's on January 26th. But before it launches, I'm doing a

• 50:50Speaker 02

  special, special pre-launch sale. So if you're listening to this and you're like, I already know I want to read this site. I want to read reporting. I want to help Maddie pay those very expensive legal bills for any reporting they might do on anything dicey about a big gaming company, that kind of thing. You definitely want to help me with my bottom line, now that I'm a small business owner. So if you already are in, then go to mothership.blog and you can actually get a 15% off lifetime discount of your subscription fee. I'm never going to do this again because I'm already pitying my future self, having to make sure that we get a lifetime discount implemented on any future CMS the website has ever hosted on. But I'm doing it just this one time. So go to mothership.blog, get

• 51:32Speaker 02

  the lifetime discount now, or if you want, you can just wait until January 26th and see what we publish and if you like it. And I'll talk about it here whenever we do a story that I think is cool.

• 51:43Jason Schreier?

  Awesome. It makes me very happy that you guys are pursuing this with reporting as a goal in mind because the low hanging fruit is to be like, we're gonna just check the internet and just write up some thoughts and opinions on what we see online. And what actually brings value to the world, I think, not that those don't bring value to the world, but like what I think brings more to the table and can really make you guys stand out is by having reporting where you're actually getting on the phone with people and asking questions and getting answers for readers who won't be able to get them without you guys, as opposed to just getting opinions, which everyone has 4,000. ...opinions about every different topic.

• 52:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I really, really strongly agree. And I think that there is still a dearth of reporting in the game space. And that's been happening for the many years that we've seen layoffs. And I think that's a huge issue. And it's part of why in founding this, I was like, reporting has to be the key pillar. It doesn't mean we won't have reviews and opinion stories, but we're not doing news. I'll tell you that right now. We're not going to try to keep up as a news site. We're just really going to focus on longer stories, longer turnaround, higher effort stuff.

• 52:52Jason Schreier?

  Good stuff.

• 52:53Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, I'm very excited. I can't wait to read Mothership. And I think it's an amazing name, which I have said many times, but really like picking a name is important. I think it's so important and you guys crushed it. It's such a, it's a fantastic name and I'm just very excited. The Mary Sue was such a good website and it's a great thing to be kind of using as a spiritual successor or whatever.

• 53:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:12Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I can't wait to see what you do. It's, it's just very exciting. I hope everybody listening goes and signs up for a membership and gets that discount.

• 53:18Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I'm excited too. I'm also excited that you guys are going to have showcased all these different types of voices, but not just talking about like issues that are relevant to their specific like category of whatever.

• 53:31Speaker 02

  Instead, it's like, what if we give those people the opportunity to be reporters and get answers directly about the issues that concern them and have those people be who write about those issues? That's something that I think is really important in general to have people reporting on the issues that directly affect them. So I'm excited about that, too.

• 53:52Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, love it. Can't wait to see it. Very excited for you, Manny. Congratulations. Kirk, what's your one more thing?

• 53:58Kirk Hamilton?

  My one more thing is a video game that I have been playing through that is so freaking good. It might've even made my top 10 list last year if I had played more of it in time. But it was also like, it came out in December, really close to the wire. And that's just how it goes. This is a game called Skate Story that is so awesome, at least in my opinion. It's the kind of game that I just really love. This is a game made by a solo dev named Sam Ing that is a kind of... I'd say I would actually compare it to Sayonara Wild Hearts, that Simogo game, if I had to compare it to anything, in that it has that same feeling of like breathless, surreal, forward momentum with a beautiful soundtrack. A lot of the music is by the

• 54:43Kirk Hamilton?

  band Blood Cultures. And it just, the music is like pulsing and pushing and it feels like you're kind of just soaring along.

• 54:58Jason Schreier?

  Blood Cultures is a great name for a game.

• 55:00Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it is. It's a cool band name. They're a great band. It just really feels like you're playing through, not exactly a music video, but like a synesthetic like music experience. It's, it's also just really cool as a narrative game. This game has been like in the ether for a long time. I think certain people have been very aware of it. I think actually anyone who is like in the not insignificant crossover between skate culture and video game culture is aware of it. Because this game is, as far as I understand, very true to skate culture. It is a skateboarding game in which you kind of do Tony Hawk-like moves as you fly through these surreal landscapes. And I'm not a skateboarder and don't know a lot about skate culture, but I can just tell that there's like a very specific love for a very specific subculture behind this

• 55:44Kirk Hamilton?

  game. And that's part of what makes it really kind of cool for me, is to experience that. But also just the story and the world and the way that it looks. So, this is a skateboarding game, but it's incredibly abstract. You play as a demon who wants to eat the moon because the moon looks so delicious. And yet you can't get to the moon for kind of complicated and abstract reasons. And then the devil offers you a contract.

• 56:08Jason Schreier?

  Can you pause for a second? That was like a two-sentence difference between, this really accurately represents skate culture and you play as a demon who wants to eat the moon.

• 56:18Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, now, look, I don't want to say that I know everything about skate culture. Maybe most skaters are demons who try to eat the moon. I'm, yeah, I don't know. I think some of this is like Sam Ings' cool brain. And some of it is like, at least aesthetically in line with some of skate culture as well. Even though it has this kind of fantastical story. But yeah, you Sign a contract with the devil that allows you to leave to go and try to eat the moon. And you are given a body that's made of glass and a skateboard. And so you're this glass skater. And anytime you crash, you'll like shatter apart. And you feel it's like, there's a lot of the kind of conjuring of the pain that your character feels like.

• 57:00Kirk Hamilton?

  You will feel the pain of every crash, but then you immediately rewind and start over. And then there's this just thrust forward, you know, especially at first. It kind of alternates between enclosed skate park type areas where you have like a series of sort of objectives that you have to meet, like things you have to find or unlock. And then it'll get into like a kind of move forward, you know, feels a lot more like Cyanora Wild Hearts. Like you're just flying along and the music is going. There are boss battles. I really can't describe it that well because the visuals are so weird. It looks kind of like, I don't, I really don't know. I don't have the like background in like artistic styles to really nail it down. But once you see it, you'll be like, oh, okay, this has a very distinct visual identity.

• 57:44Kirk Hamilton?

  It's very abstract and very kind of almost like 90s clip art website meets like synth wave meets vapor wave. Kind of lofi internet aesthetic, whatever. I'm just saying words. It's incredibly cool. If you go like, my words will not really-

• 58:02Jason Schreier?

  If you say a word with wave at the end, it sounds legitimate.

• 58:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, it sounds like a great description.

• 58:07Kirk Hamilton?

  So if you go and look at like five seconds of gameplay footage-

• 58:11Jason Schreier?

  Chill wave, punk wave, skate wave.

• 58:12Kirk Hamilton?

  It will, it's really ska wave.

• 58:14Speaker 02

  Glass wave, demon wave.

• 58:15Kirk Hamilton?

  If you go and look at like five seconds of gameplay footage from this game, it will do more than everything that I just tried to describe. As much as we just talked about the beauty of the power of the voice, like the paint, the image that you're painting with your brain won't be as accurate as the one that you will immediately clock when you look at the game. But I really just recommend playing it. I mean, this is like the kind of work of interactive art that we don't get that often. It's clearly a labor of love. I think it's been in development for a long time. The person who made it is like really brilliant, I think. Like it's narratively actually really moving at times. It's really beautiful. It's just, it's not really like anything else. I love it and just wanted to shout it out. I think a lot of our listeners would love it if they haven't already played it. So it's called Skate Story. It is on, yeah, it's on all consoles.

• 59:00Kirk Hamilton?

  It's on Mac, PC. I played it on PC and you know, it's, it's a really great game.

• 59:06Speaker 02

  Cool.

• 59:07Jason Schreier?

  Um, my one more thing is a movie, despite the fact that I talked about how I don't watch movies earlier. This is like one of the three movies I watched in 2025, and it is called Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery.

• 59:22Speaker 02

  Hell, yeah.

• 59:22Jason Schreier?

  I actually, I guess I watched it in 2026. But anyway, um, this is the third Knives Out movie, the third entry in the Benoit Blanc saga, um, which I'm sure people out there are familiar with, directed by, directed and written by Ryan Johnson, Ryan Johnson?

• 59:36Speaker 02

  Ryan.

• 59:37Jason Schreier?

  Ryan Johnson, uh, starring Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc, the, uh, infamous detective. And this one takes place in upstate New York at a very small Catholic church where the, um, the, uh, the, the minister in charge, what's the exact? Priest. Let me look up the exact. Monsignor, uh, Jefferson Wicks, played by Josh Brolin, is this charismatic, desperate type, um, who has this, uh, small congregation of people who are all flawed in their own ways and are all allured and attracted to him in different ways. And then he is found

• 1:00:15Jason Schreier?

  dead and Benoit is called in to help, uh, a young priest named Judd Duplantis, uh, help figure out what happened. Um, this young priest is a former boxer who himself killed a person, um, many years ago, which is the reason that he decided to become a Catholic priest. And this movie's really good, um, as all the Knives Out movies are. No, no surprise there. Ryan Johnson tends to make good movies, um, going all the way back to, uh, Brick, which we talked about, uh,

• 1:00:47Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. There's a, there's a, uh, bonus episode on Ryan Johnson.

• 1:00:51Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, where we talked about, uh, Ryan Johnson movies. Yeah. Um, he makes great movies and, uh, this one is no exception. I really enjoyed it. Um, the mystery, I didn't enjoy quite as much as just the kind of the, um, Vibes. The ride of it all. Yeah, the vibes. The main character Jed Duplizity, Josh O'Connor is the actor who plays him, who's really good. I had never seen him in anything.

• 1:01:14Speaker 02

  He's so great.

• 1:01:14Jason Schreier?

  And I thought he did a fantastic job. Glenn Close also does a really good job collecting Dalmatians and using them to make a coat. And then also she's in this movie doing a pretty good job.

• 1:01:26Kirk Hamilton?

  Apparently deathly ill for much of the filming. She got like really sick.

• 1:01:29Jason Schreier?

  Really? Interesting. Well, she kind of, it kind of fits.

• 1:01:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:33Jason Schreier?

  Her.

• 1:01:34Kirk Hamilton?

  They filmed this in England, which is also kind of funny. It's like a lot of English actors are in the past.

• 1:01:37Jason Schreier?

  That is funny because it's supposed to be New York. So that's very funny.

• 1:01:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's supposed to be like an imitation of an English church that they kind of call out.

• 1:01:45Kirk Hamilton?

  But everybody films overseas now because it's cheaper.

• 1:01:48Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, that makes sense. Well, Kirk will talk about that a little bit next week, I think. But anyway, I really enjoyed it mostly for the vibes and for the way it explores religion. I think it would be very easy for a movie like this to be like, man, haha, fuck the Catholic Church. Like, we're just gonna satirize these demonic priests. And I think that actually it does a really good job of kind of showing some of the nuances there and some of the ways religion can be comforting. There's this one great scene that I think for me was the standout of the movie. I won't get too specific in case people haven't seen it, but basically Josh O'Connor's character puts everything he's doing aside so he can comfort someone on the phone

• 1:02:30Jason Schreier?

  who is looking to religion and looking to their priest for guidance, which I thought was a really cool moment.

• 1:02:35Kirk Hamilton?

  Played, of course, by another character from Somebody Somewhere, Maddy and my beloved show, in an incredibly perfectly cast, small performance.

• 1:02:45Jason Schreier?

  And, yeah, and also Joseph Gordon Levitt, who is in like, plays like an uncredited role in every single. Yeah, he's like a baseball announcer, like an uncredited role. Anyway, so I enjoyed the movie mostly for that. The mystery itself is a little bit like, there's some holes. There's some ridiculous stretches.

• 1:03:05Speaker 02

  It's more of like a character ensemble.

• 1:03:08Kirk Hamilton?

  It's kind of the thing with all these Knives Out movies, to be honest. Like, they're just, they're kind of murder mysteries. Stories second and they're like, they're so meta textual, they're so twisty.

• 1:03:17Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, their character studies more. Yeah, agreed, agreed. And the character study is fantastic. I mean, all the characters are great and performed extremely well and just very fun to watch and see unfold. I would have spent more time with some of them, actually. I feel like some of them might have gotten, especially the, um, the cellist, uh, who is in the wheelchair. I feel like I would have loved to see more from her. But overall, really enjoyed it. Highly recommend it. Perfect, like, Saturday night watch with your friends or your significant other. Um, just go check it out. It's on Netflix. Um, I believe Netflix, uh, funded the film and the last one. Uh, TBD if there are more, but Ryan Johnson has said he would keep making them forever and I hope he does.

• 1:03:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, I loved this movie.

• 1:04:01Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, me too. I, I mean, I, I liked how specific it was tonally and even stylistically. It's so doing this kind of horror, this like Gothic horror creep show thing. It's at times a little bit disturbing. Some of the visual imagery, there's one shot in particular of like a woman lunging forward onto a child where the camera like flips over and you're like, ah, and it's really horrifying. They do some like strobe light stuff at one point that just straight up looks like a like seventies Italian horror movie. And I was like, this is, Ryan Johnson is such a film nerd and it's cool to see him applying that to a like whole new palette. Um, and I actually, like, I didn't love the second Knives Out movie overall. I thought this was way, way better than that. And I might even like it better than the first one. It's like, it's, they're very different and I like both movies.

• 1:04:46Kirk Hamilton?

  I'd have to re-watch both of them, but I loved this movie.

• 1:04:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:49Jason Schreier?

  All three are very good at ensembles and just telling these ridiculous, creating these ridiculous characters. Ryan Johnson has gotten superb at just doing that.

• 1:04:56Speaker 02

  Oh, absolutely. And I agree. I think the second one is the weakest. It has the mystery that I think is the silliest as well and strains credulity the most, at least for me. It did and that's fine. It's like more about the characters as we say. This one does have a silly mystery, but the mystery is such a backdrop to the characters that it doesn't matter and you can really easily forget that. And that I think is really important. And yeah, I agree. I think it's the best of the three. And there's just so many great moments between Chud and Benoit Blanc together where you're really questioning what either one of them really means by what they're saying. And I just, I loved all of those conversations. They have so many.

• 1:05:37Kirk Hamilton?

  You're gonna hear Benoit Blanc say Scooby Doo. Which is the greatest part of the entire movie.

• 1:05:42Speaker 02

  You know, it's almost ridiculous.

• 1:05:45Jason Schreier?

  Who was it? Who is the ma- was it Janelle Monae who was the lead in the second one?

• 1:05:49Kirk Hamilton?

  And she was amazing. She was the best part for me.

• 1:05:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:05:52Jason Schreier?

  Well, I think that's what all of them have in common. It was Ana de Armas in the first one. Like, all of them just have these incredible leads and just performances. Like, Ryan Johnson is able to get incredible performances out of his entire cast.

• 1:06:07Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, and he does, each one has that same structure where Benoit Blanc teams up with the, like, hapless main character, who is usually the suspect as well. And then they go on this kind of wild, like, ping ponging adventure together. And it's always really fun because, yeah, each of those three actors has been exceptional.

• 1:06:23Jason Schreier?

  Well, and he's also really good at creating characters that feel familiar and a little bit cliched, but also just like have a, bring enough to the table. And the performances are so good that they still pop even despite just playing on these, like, very familiar archetypes, which I think is kind of the classic Agatha Christie lineage. Murder is to have familiar archetypes, but like, a twist on them in some way or another.

• 1:06:44Kirk Hamilton?

  He's unafraid to be political. I mean, these, these three, I just say that's like a defining element of a Knives Out movie at this point, is that each one is kind of political. And the political themes, like the whatever cultural themes that he chooses to address, tend to make or break the movie. And some other thing, in the second one, it's like, rich people and they suck. It's like, just, it's not quite as strong as-

• 1:07:04Jason Schreier?

  Well, not just rich people, rich technocrats specifically.

• 1:07:07Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, which is like, okay, but I've seen that a lot, I guess, where like, the idea of like faith and the church and like how it's being exploited versus how it actually helps people, like, that's just such rich territory that it's cool to see him digging into that. In addition to like, also like, all of the visual and like aesthetic stuff that he can draw in from, you know, spiritual films and horror movies and all of these different, these, these different types of genres that use that iconography. So it's like a way richer pool that he was drawing from than the second film, which just feels a little like aesthetically and texturally shallow to me.

• 1:07:41Jason Schreier?

  Fair. But anyway, yeah, really enjoyed it.

• 1:07:43Kirk Hamilton?

  Anyway.

• 1:07:44Jason Schreier?

  All right.

• 1:07:45Kirk Hamilton?

  Let's make another Ryan Johnson Beans Cast.

• 1:07:47Speaker 02

  I know, right?

• 1:07:48Kirk Hamilton?

  Talk about.

• 1:07:48Speaker 02

  I mean, there was a whole other Poker Face season that was amazing. And we didn't even talk about it.

• 1:07:52Jason Schreier?

  Oh, man, I haven't watched that. It was amazing.

• 1:07:55Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. I mean, come on, it's Poker Face.

• 1:07:58Kirk Hamilton?

  It's a lot of fun.

• 1:07:58Jason Schreier?

  I mean, there's so many shows that like.

• 1:08:01Speaker 02

  I get it.

• 1:08:01Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I haven't. I also haven't watched Fallout season two. I always fall off after the first season of these shows and forget to watch the second.

• 1:08:07Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, and everyone kind of says, maybe Fallout isn't as good now.

• 1:08:10Speaker 02

  Oh, I haven't seen it, but I will say, Jason, the benefit of Poker Face is that every episode remains standalone, which I so respect that Ryan Johnson is just sticking with that. And it's even more standalone than season one, where there was kind of an overarching plot that lasted the whole season, which I actually felt like was the weakest part to me. And I was like, just do Columbo. Like, we all know that's what you want to do. And he just leans into it in season two. So you can actually just watch a couple of episodes and just whenever you want, just be like, let's watch a Poker Face.

• 1:08:37Jason Schreier?

  I will do that. Next time I feel like signing up for Peacock, I will.

• 1:08:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:40Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. My understanding of season two, right, is that I've watched a few episodes, and there are definitely like, strong episodes and weak episodes. So you could just go watch the like, three real standouts or something, if you just want.

• 1:08:50Speaker 02

  I mean, I kind of like them all, but I just like the way the show works. So I'm a

• 1:08:54Jason Schreier?

  No, I will. You've convinced me. Anyway, that is it for this week's episode. We will be back next week. And once again, don't forget to check out our Pluribus Beans Cast, Spoiler Cast, in the bonus feed already, if you are a member. And if you're not a member, what are you waiting for?

• 1:09:12Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, go become one.

• 1:09:13Jason Schreier?

  Well, I don't know. You could be waiting for lots of things. It's okay. It's okay. But hey, we appreciate those of you who are.

• 1:09:19Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. Oh, and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

• 1:09:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, check it out.

• 1:09:22Jason Schreier?

  Oh, yeah. Check out the YouTube channel. Yeah, super cool. Especially if you like listening to shows. So are they gonna be Kirk? They're gonna be like, as soon as they go live for everywhere, they'll be on the YouTube, right?

• 1:09:31Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, yeah. It's just synced to our feed. So same as anyone.

• 1:09:33Jason Schreier?

  So if people want to listen to it on YouTube, like, on their computers, instead of doing Apple Podcasts or whatever, they could do that.

• 1:09:40Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, or YouTube Music. Yeah, just like another way to listen.

• 1:09:43Speaker 02

  That's awesome.

• 1:09:43Jason Schreier?

  All righty. See you both next time.

• 1:09:46Kirk Hamilton?

  All right. See you both next week.

• 1:09:48Jason Schreier?

  Bye.

• 1:09:51Kirk Hamilton?

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

• 1:10:49Speaker 05

  Maximum Fun.

• 1:10:50Jason Schreier?

  A worker-owned network. Of artist-owned shows. Supported.

• 1:10:54Speaker 05

  Directly.

• 1:10:55Jason Schreier?

  By you.