Things Are Bad In Hollywood Right Now

Kirk, Jason, and Maddy talk about what's been going on in the film and television business over the last few years: why Hollywood is in a scary spot, how covid affected it all, the parallels with the video-game industry, and of course, the big old AI question mark.

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

• 0:04Kirk Hamilton?

  Hollywood. Some call it Tinseltown. Some call it La La Land. The Big Easy, the Big Apple, the Rose City, Bean Town. People call Hollywood a lot of things these days, but what they don't call it is a town with a thriving entertainment industry. This week, we decided to talk about that, about the rocky state of the broader entertainment industry, from film and TV to, of course, video games.

• 0:30Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm Kirk Hamilton.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  I'm Maddy Myers.

• 0:33Jason Schreier?

  And I'm Jason Schreier. Hello.

• 0:35Kirk Hamilton?

  Hello.

• 0:36Jason Schreier?

  Hey, guys. You want to hear about my weekend, guys?

• 0:39Speaker 01

  Always.

• 0:40Jason Schreier?

  It's really, really.

• 0:40Kirk Hamilton?

  I guess I do.

• 0:41Jason Schreier?

  It's really quite a weekend.

• 0:42Kirk Hamilton?

  I got a little preview before we recorded. It sounded exciting.

• 0:45Jason Schreier?

  Well, I didn't tell you the really fun part. So I've been sick the last few days. But on top of that, there was a water outage in my neighborhood, and we didn't have water for about like 30 hours or something like that. And you don't, you don't really, water is one of those things where you live in a house and you're like, yeah, the water's just gonna, just gonna come. You don't really think about it until it's gone. And then you're like, oh, okay, I can't shower. I can't run the sink. I can't flush the toilet. I can't, actually, like, you get, I have to drink out of bottles. But then on top of that, my boiler also needs water to function, so I had to turn off the heat. It was below freezing in New York. I had to like sit in a freezing house. Sick, freezing, no water, no showers. It was a very fun 30 hours. I was just checking the

• 1:29Jason Schreier?

  Facebook page for my town. I've never been on Facebook so much in my entire life, every 20 minutes for updates from people. And everybody else is freaking out too about the lack of water. So water is one of those things that you really, you really start to appreciate when it's gone.

• 1:43Speaker 01

  So true.

• 1:43Kirk Hamilton?

  Man, that reminds me of when we lost power for three or four days, wait, a few years ago now, in my neighborhood during a really intense winter storm. And just that feeling of, oh, I'm in a survival situation, kind of. I was in my comfortable house and now I'm worrying about, you know, how to keep warm and, I don't know, not asphyxiate with the wrong heater overnight. Like, it is kind of shocking how quickly things can change.

• 2:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's kind of spooky.

• 2:10Jason Schreier?

  Makes you appreciate the comforts of modern life.

• 2:12Speaker 01

  Very much so.

• 2:14Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, I'm glad you're doing okay. And, you know, speaking of doing okay, TripleClick is doing okay. And the reason for that is all of you out there who support our show. We love being a listener-supported show. We love being on the Maximum Fun Podcast Network, and we love that we don't have to sell sponsorships, or ads, or do ad reads on the show, or really any of that stuff, because we just make money from all of you who support us making this show that we love to make. So if you'd like to become a member, go to maximumfun.org/join and join up. And if you do, you get a monthly bonus episode from us. All kinds of monthly bonus episodes that we have recorded over the many months that we've been making this show. The most recent one is a Beans Cast on Pluribus, Vince Gilligan's incredible new show on Apple. That was a

• 2:59Kirk Hamilton?

  very, very fun conversation. We talked about, I don't know, a lot about just the big concept of that show, which is super fascinating, and something that I could talk about forever. So it was very, very fun to record that episode. But you can get that and many, many other bonus episodes. Maximumfun.org/join. Become a member. A couple other things up top. First of all, we mentioned this last week, we'll mention it again. We are now releasing episodes on YouTube. They're audio-only, but you can listen on YouTube if that is your preferred way to listen. And we're also posting some shorts to YouTube, and also to Instagram and TikTok, where we have TripleClick accounts on both of those platforms as well. Those shorts are kind of just for fun. They're like little clips we pull out from our recording session as we're making the show. And they've been pretty fun so far.

• 3:44Kirk Hamilton?

  I feel like people are enjoying them, so we'll keep doing them. They're actually pretty easy to do. Maddie has been pulling together these clips and putting them out for people.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's really fun to put them together. So folks should check them out. They're good time.

• 3:57Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, we have a good time recording the show. It's kind of fun just to watch the clip after effect. I'm like, you know, we're pretty good at making a podcast. We have a good time. One last thing, I wanted to just grab the microphone for a second and make an announcement that is very exciting for me personally. And that is that I have finally put up tickets for sale for Strong Songs Live, which is happening this summer in Portland, Oregon. And believe it or not, you two, it is happening on July 11th at the Alberta Rose Theater.

• 4:24Jason Schreier?

  No way.

• 4:25Kirk Hamilton?

  In 2026.

• 4:26Jason Schreier?

  No way.

• 4:27Kirk Hamilton?

  It is the same date. It's a Saturday this time around. Same date, same venue as Triple Click Live last year. That was a bit of a dry run. That was my first experience with this theater. And I definitely was at the time, kind of feeling them out, like, I wonder if this would work for Strong Songs Live. That show was so great, the Triple Click show, that I immediately was like, oh yeah, absolutely. And the venue were like, you were great, you guys were great, you can definitely come back. So I will be coming back. I'm gonna have a whole band. It's like a large ensemble. I'm writing all this original music. We're gonna do covers of Strong Songs that I've talked about on the show. It's gonna be like a whole musical journey with many special guests. It's gonna be so awesome. And tickets are now for wide sale after a pre-sale that I ran for a couple of weeks. So I'll put a link for that down in the show notes. I'm sure I'll talk about it again.

• 5:09Kirk Hamilton?

  I'll be talking about it like on my own channels and I won't constantly comment your Triple Click to talk about it, but I'm really excited. And if you're at all in the area and wanna come to what I think will be a very special show, I hope you will come to Strong Songs Live. So again, that is July 11th. That's a Saturday at the Alberta Rose Theater in Portland. Come to the show, it's gonna be so awesome. I'm so excited.

• 5:29Jason Schreier?

  Are you going to record video for those of us who cannot be in Portland in July?

• 5:33Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, I believe we're even gonna do a livestream. I think it's gonna be a whole thing and I want to document it. And yeah, I think we'll do the whole multi cam video recording and really, really make a big document out of it. So, uh, yes, I will be-

• 5:45Speaker 01

  That's so exciting.

• 5:46Kirk Hamilton?

  I'll share more about that, I think, when I know. But yeah, it's gonna be cool. I have a lot of music to write, but I'm excited, I'm excited to write it and to do it, it's gonna be great.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  That's amazing.

• 5:56Kirk Hamilton?

  All right, well, let's get into this episode. Jason, you are, you're leading the way this week. What are we talking about?

• 6:02Jason Schreier?

  I wanna read a quote from a guy named Greg Peters, who is the co-CEO of Netflix, a company that you guys have probably heard of.

• 6:09Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I've heard of him.

• 6:10Jason Schreier?

  This is from Bloomberg Screen Time event, which I was at in October. And Greg Peters said, quote- This is the most competitive entertainment environment that has ever existed on the planet in the history of humankind, and it's getting more and more competitive. If you don't maintain a sense that you are constantly vulnerable, I think you will lose.

• 6:31Kirk Hamilton?

  Hmm.

• 6:32Jason Schreier?

  That's what we're talking about today, how competitive the entertainment environment is. So a few months ago, just when I had come back from screen time, I actually put out a call on this show for those of our listeners who work in the entertainment business, because I had been hearing stories from Hollywood people, anecdotally, just kind of like through friends of friends and colleagues and friends, about how awful things have gotten. And I thought that was interesting, and I thought we should talk more about it. And so we got in a bunch of emails from listeners. We'll share a couple throughout this episode. And I wanted to talk a little bit about not just Hollywood, but also the kind of the parallels between what's going on in Hollywood and what's going on in the video game industry,

• 7:11Jason Schreier?

  and what that means for the entertainment world at large, and how it's the most competitive environment that has ever existed in the history of humankind.

• 7:23Kirk Hamilton?

  What is it again? If you're not feeling constantly vulnerable, then you will lose.

• 7:28Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 7:29Kirk Hamilton?

  Jesus, Jesus.

• 7:30Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. I mean, this is the co-CEO of Netflix, remember?

• 7:34Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, right.

• 7:35Jason Schreier?

  The winner, one of the big winners in all this game, the guys who are buying Warner Brothers.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I think it's debatable as to whether they're winners. Clearly, they feel constantly vulnerable. I mean, is that, is that winning?

• 7:48Kirk Hamilton?

  There can really only be one winner in the end, so they haven't won yet.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  And that's Fortnite.

• 7:54Kirk Hamilton?

  Right, and in the end, it'll just be Fortnite.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  Not what we're talking about today.

• 7:57Jason Schreier?

  No, it'll be TikTok.

• 7:58Speaker 01

  Not irrelevant.

• 7:59Jason Schreier?

  At the end, it'll be TikTok.

• 8:00Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, that's a good point.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  That's so true.

• 8:02Jason Schreier?

  So a little bit of backstory here. In the 2010s, Hollywood was in this kind of boomtown mode. Those were the days of, I guess you could call it peak TV, certainly peak streaming. There were new shows coming out all the time on the streaming services, Netflix, HBO, Amazon, Apple, they're all paying big bucks for productions. And then a pandemic happens, and a couple of things happen as a result of that. One is that sets all have to shut down, productions. Have to shut down, movie theaters shut down, people can't actually go to the movies. So that leads to a huge, huge devastation, revenue loss. People lose their, or at least temporarily lose their jobs, at least for a few months before, before these productions started to recover a little bit and get back on track.

• 8:46Jason Schreier?

  But the other interesting thing that happened and kind of bifurcated Hollywood in some ways was this peak COVID explosion of everybody staying home and therefore watching these streaming service and services. And you see a ton of growth there and these companies start having more money to throw around. And by, I don't know, end of 2020, 2021, it seemed like some sort of recovery was in sight. That like there would be a way for Hollywood to recover after the pandemic and continue on that course of just kind of like peak streaming. And then around 2022, towards the end of 2022 into 2023, something changed.

• 9:29Jason Schreier?

  Interest rates started to get higher. There was no, no longer an ability for companies to just borrow money at essentially 0%.

• 9:40Jason Schreier?

  Content started competing for eyeballs more and more with YouTube and Tik Tok and Fortnite to Maddie's point. Layoff started, work dried up, then there was a massive strike of actors and writers, which we will get into in a little bit, but that also led to certainly work stoppages for a lot of people and work drying up for a lot of people. And now we are in this state where I think people in Hollywood are, if not leaving, wondering how much longer they can stay.

• 10:15Jason Schreier?

  A massive percent of productions have moved away from LA. The numbers are a little hard to exactly get a hold of, but there's a website called LA Film that keeps track of it. And it's going down double digit percentages every single year. Gavin Newsom, the governor of California and other kind of LA, Karen Bass, the mayor of LA, other kind of LA politicians are. Trying to implement tax credits and have implemented implemented tax credits to try to get people shooting back in California, but some of it has been too little, too late. There's the whole wild card of AI coming into the picture and everybody's looking around and saying, what, what does the future look like for us? And we're not just talking about writers and actors, some of whom had made a lot of money over the years. There are also a lot of

• 10:59Jason Schreier?

  blue collar, kind of middle class people who get a lot of work in Hollywood, costume designers and camera operators and location scouts, makeup artists, sound mixers, cinematographers, even development executives. And now you have people who have been working in this field for 10, 20, sometimes 30 years, people in their 50s sometimes, who need to switch careers because there simply isn't work anymore. And if you're in a union, which has its perks for sure, in many cases, you have to earn enough money in a given year to qualify for health benefits. So because of the lack of work, you might not even be able to get health insurance, right?

• 11:41Jason Schreier?

  So this is, this is creating kind of cataclysmic conditions for the film industry. And is it just me, or does that sound a whole lot like the video game industry?

• 11:53Speaker 01

  It really, really does, especially the COVID bubble aspect of it, which I didn't actually realize had affected film and TV as much as you're describing. I think it's really obvious to us and was at the time, why COVID would have affected video games and why so many more people who maybe played them a little bit, or hadn't ever played them, might suddenly be like, well, time to buy a Switch, time to get a PlayStation, whatever, whatever your gaming platform of choice might be to get back into it. That all made perfect sense at the time, and it saw a lot of investment into games. And then we saw that huge course correction of the layoffs in games over the past few years. Is that

• 12:37Speaker 01

  Similar? Like, were there a lot of people watching things on streaming during COVID?

• 12:42Jason Schreier?

  So two things happened. One is that, yes, a lot of people were stuck at home watching things on streaming. A lot of movies moved to or started releasing on streaming, which I think really benefited a lot of these companies that have their streaming services, even though, obviously, cinemas were a whole nother story.

• 12:58Kirk Hamilton?

  Chris Nolan was not happy about it.

• 12:59Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, that's true. Just as an example, Netflix's stock was at about $33 in March of 2020, and by the end of 2020, it was at $53. So an increase of something like 60, 70%. And then by, let's say, the end of 2021, it was trading at $66. So a gain of 100% there.

• 13:23Kirk Hamilton?

  Bing. Kirk here, editing the episode. And per Jason, I have a little clarification about those numbers. In case you don't know a lot about stocks, like me, for example, those numbers, $33, etc., those are post-split. So Netflix did a 10-to-1 stock split, which means that $10 share became 10 $1 shares, which allows more people to buy in, or at least that's my understanding, after Jason explained it to me. So basically, a $33 share is really $330. And the numbers that Jason was saying were post-split. There was a 10-to-1 split in 2025. So that's just to put those in their proper context. Okay, back to Jason's explanation. Bing.

• 14:03Jason Schreier?

  So we're talking about a time that was extremely beneficial for shareholders. But the other thing, and I think this is just as important, is that interest rates went to essentially zero. Anyone who bought a house during that period knows that mortgage rates were, like, historically low. And anyone who borrowed money during that period, which is a lot of these companies, were able to do it at these rates that essentially made it free to take out money and then use it to make big investments, which is what we saw a lot of in the gaming space. We saw a lot of VCs throwing around money, a lot of startups in video games were founded in 2020, 2021, 2022. Many of those have since either released games that flopped or since shut down. And the same sort of thing happened

• 14:45Jason Schreier?

  in film, which is, which is interesting. It wasn't, it's not quite the same in terms of startups, because that's not how the economics work in Hollywood. It's more that you have investors who are more willing to, or studios who can take out money and put them into a film's budget. And so it's more about these big investments into a film's budget, as opposed to a company. Kind of similar, if you think about it, just structured differently, right? Like, a film's production budget includes paying the key grip for X number of months to work on it, whereas a game studio's budget includes paying the animators and designers X amount of money for X amount of Y amount of time to work on it. It's just with a production budget, it's a more finite amount of time than a studio where,

• 15:27Jason Schreier?

  a game studio where it's expected to be just kind of like, you're hired here and now you work here indefinitely. So different, just different kind of structures of the economics. But it's the same sort of thing. Essentially, people were able to borrow money for zero interest and therefore they could just borrow money infinitely and spend it to try to make more money.

• 15:44Speaker 01

  Did it seem like those new movies and shows were actually doing well? Like, was there kind of a similar problem where a lot of stuff was coming out, but people weren't actually engaging with it? I mean, I know we're gonna get to this because the problem of there being too many games has got to start to be relevant to this question as well.

• 16:03Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it does feel like, it's so interesting because like with these streamers, they're so opaque about their data, then it's really hard to know, right? And a lot of times, you'll like, you'll hear stories. Part of the way that the economics changed when they moved to streaming is like,

• 16:20Jason Schreier?

  so a lot of times, if you're, if you're an actor or a producer or a writer, kind of like the top of the line on one of these films, you will have what's called points on the backend, which is like you will make a certain amount of money based on how the film does, how profitable it is. Whereas if you are, and the same happened with TV, where like you would get residuals every time your show kept airing on different networks. And after it hit a certain number of episodes, it would be syndicated and it would just be broadcast over and over again. You would make money every single time. That all changed with streaming because streaming, they could just pay you a bunch upfront and then you wouldn't get anything on the backend. And their numbers were so opaque that you wouldn't even know how well your did, your show actually did.

• 17:03Jason Schreier?

  Like, I've talked to people who have shows on Netflix who have like, or just like, I have no idea how many people watched it on here.

• 17:10Speaker 01

  Weird.

• 17:11Kirk Hamilton?

  It's super crazy. I remember Maya Hawke talking about that, Maya Hawke, star of Stranger Things, saying she had really no idea how many people had seen Stranger Things. And also saying that her, both of her parents, Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke, routinely had no idea how like movies that they had been in had done. And her point was basically, these are A-list people, like, these are the most powerful actors, and they still don't know. I think this was during the actor's strike, when they were trying to get more, you know, more transparency into how, how it did. You know, I, a thought I'm having as we look back at the 2010s and the transition into the 2020s, it's, first off, it's just, I think the pandemic can kind of distract from other changes that were also taking place.

• 17:55Kirk Hamilton?

  Because it was such a perfect fulcrum point, it occurred at 2020, at a decade break. You know, we're now midway through the 2020s, and it's like, well, that, that was when everything changed, was the pandemic hit. But there are definitely these other changes that I think are kind of reflected on the audience side. Matty, you kind of alluded to this, like, are people still watching this content? Is there just too much stuff? And part of the reason, I think, that it feels like there's too much stuff, is that people are just doing other things. You know, most notably, so 2018 is when TikTok becomes, like, rises in America, and people start using TikTok. And that's when you start to see a lot of nervousness, I think, from some of these executives at streaming companies and at video game companies, saying, you know, I, I don't remember

• 18:39Kirk Hamilton?

  when, who the first person wants to say this, I believe it was a Netflix exec, like, we're not actually competing with HBO, we're competing with TikTok, like, we're competing with Instagram. Where, you know, young people especially are just, you can get on TikTok and be entertained for four hours. And, you know, someone like me, who doesn't use TikTok, I might find that entertainment to be like, kind of empty calorie entertainment, like, I don't really like that. But a lot of people don't really see the difference, and are actually really drawn in by this short attention, just, you know, short-form video thing. So that's like a big change on the audience side, that seems to be coinciding with this downturn in the more traditional, you know, Hollywood, or even in the video game industry.

• 19:16Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, but I also think there's a question of like, does it matter how many people are watching something if it brings value to the overall streaming service, right? And sometimes people talk about this with Xbox Game Pass where you see something like Keeper, which came out last year from Double Fine. And that's the game about the lighthouse. Pretty cool game. I believe it was on Matty's game of the year list.

• 19:36Speaker 01

  It was, yeah.

• 19:37Jason Schreier?

  So, and we all enjoyed it a lot. But that is a game that I don't think a ton of people paid $30 to play. But if they had Xbox Game Pass, it's kind of, it's this perfect addition to that library where you might as well download it and play it if you have Xbox Game Pass, right? And so that brings value to the subscription service. And so you could look at, and Xbox people certainly look at the number of hours that people are playing and the amount of engagement each of these games have. But I think you can also look at it from a broader lens, which is, does the very existence of this bring more value to the subscription service?

• 20:14Jason Schreier?

  Even if it isn't necessarily played by that many people, because people are saying, oh, if I subscribe to Xbox Game Pass, I can get games like Keeper. In the same way that if you subscribe to HBO, you know that you are getting the premium brand and you can get shows like, I don't know, The Wire and Game of Thrones, even if you aren't necessarily watching them. And so I do think the math can get a little fuzzy and I don't even think there is a straight answer there.

• 20:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's really weird because then you're evaluating subscriber growth, which is actually a completely different question from viewership on individual shows. And I'm sure that many of the people, be they at Xbox Game Pass or Netflix, handling that data are not always entirely sure what exactly it is that's driving people to subscribe. Is it because they're watching Stranger Things? Or is it because, you know, all of Murder She Wrote or Cheers or whatever is still on Netflix? And that's why they're tuning in. And like, you could look in a, in a huge amount of data and try to guess those things. And I'm sure they do, but that just seems like a really difficult proposition. And it's very different from just...

• 21:27Speaker 01

  You know, the Nielsen ratings, the old school way of looking at TV shows and the old school way of looking at, you know, how movies, movie attendance impacted decisions that studio heads might have made.

• 21:38Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, we're starting to see, I, my sense is that we're starting to see a kind of collision between multiple different ways of viewing the value of the material that you have on your streaming service. I mean, David Zaslove at Warner Brothers, he has been licensing HBO shows to other streaming networks. So now you'll be on Netflix and you'll see an HBO show, or, I don't know, I mean, I feel like I'll see AMC stuff. Like now there's, Mad Men is on HBO. Like, it's starting to, like, the walls are kind of breaking down because I, my sense is, part of the reason for that decision is that it was valuable to have this material, to be like, we're the only place you can stream Mad Men, we're the only place you can stream The Wire. And then at some point, it became more valuable to actually just get a check for licensing that material to another streaming

• 22:21Kirk Hamilton?

  service, because that's actual real money and not just this kind of gooey, you know, well, it's valuable because it makes our product more valuable. Like, we're kind of seeing these, like, the brands themselves sort of dissolve in real time as these other incentives sort of take over.

• 22:38Jason Schreier?

  So I want to get into one other kind of interesting angle here, which I think also dovetails nicely with the games industry. I'm gonna read an email from someone, I won't name them because I don't know if they want to be named. I'm gonna paraphrase this. This person writes, "I have been a film and television sound mixer slash editor for over 25 years. The industry is in an odd position." This person writes, "On one hand, there is more content being created than people realize. Maybe not quite as much as before COVID, but still more than the early 2000s. On the other hand, budgets are getting constricting on every level. There are a few reasons for this. A few of the streamers are turning

• 23:18Jason Schreier?

  a profit. If they are, it's small. Streaming is pretty expensive to subscribe to. There's a lot of streamers, but finite time to watch. A lot of shows are getting, are struggling to getting meaningful audiences, et cetera, et cetera." I think this is really interesting because this is also something that the video game industry is trying to reckon with as We speak, which is if your audience is not growing exponentially, like maybe it was a few years ago, if you're not seeing the kind of double digit growth, whether it's subscription growth or revenue growth, whatever else that and your your budgets are still growing exponentially, then you need to figure out how to cap the budgets or else eventually you will just fall

• 23:57Jason Schreier?

  apart. Right. And so the big question among game companies these days is, hey, if we're not going to be able to sell these games to five to 10 million people, how can we get the budgets down so that we can sell to a reasonable amount of people, a number of people that we think is feasible, but still make a profit off of these games. And that's a lot of that's what a lot of people, a lot of people are asking, do we try to find ways to scope down? Do we try to find smarter ways to outsource? Do we try to find ways to get the amount of time down and make games in three years instead of six years, etc., etc.? These are the questions that people are asking. And I think in film, people are asking very similar questions and and have been engaging

• 24:38Jason Schreier?

  on this of like, how can we shrink writers rooms and get some of those those expensive writers out of the picture? How can we do this work on lower budgets? And one of the biggest explanation answers for that has been film outside of Los Angeles, which has has led to a lot of problems among Hollywood folks. And that I think is is just kind of and it all this also ties into the fact that people can't borrow money for 0% anymore.

• 25:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, this also explains why executives are so horny for AI, right? Because to them, even though it can't really do this, they see AI and think, oh, well, I could just replace all these expensive people with this one AI and then that will lower our costs. And because they're being pushed to lower costs, they see that as very appealing, despite the fact that like it doesn't work and everyone hates it.

• 25:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. And this is also where kind of the new stereotypes come in that streaming shows look like crap and that like lighting just isn't the same anymore. And even as somebody who's not an expert in those things, and I'm just a I'm just a mere viewer, I can see the difference, too. And I can, I feel like you can really identify what looks like a quote unquote, Netflix show and like. My wife has started to refer to certain movies as quote, "real" movies when we watch something.

• 25:53Kirk Hamilton?

  For us, it's a movie and then there's content. And we'll be like, this was kind of just content. Like, sometimes some content even looks nice. We just watched that Agatha Christie thing on Netflix, but it was kind of content anyways, like by the time we finished it. But yeah, I hear you on that distinction.

• 26:07Jason Schreier?

  Swallow your slop, Kirk.

• 26:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, and slop is another word that I've started to use to describe some of this, even though it is very pejorative. And sometimes I'm fine with what it is. And the other trend that has emerged for streaming content that we've talked about in passing on Triple Click sometimes is the idea of shows where they assume you're not really watching it and you're on your phone. And I have really noticed when I'm watching a show like that. And that's another category where I'm like, this doesn't feel like a real show. Because the characters keep repeating to me what's going on. And at no point do I need to see their facial expressions. They're never performing in action that I need to be sure I saw them do without them later saying or just repeating multiple times what action they took.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  It's really changed art.

• 26:58Kirk Hamilton?

  That is a good distinguisher between content and art. So one recent thing that I watched on Netflix that was very much art was, I thought, the new Knives Out movie. That was a good example of a movie we're watching.

• 27:07Jason Schreier?

  A real movie.

• 27:08Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I was like, this was like made to be watched. And then there's this show called The Night Agent that I watched some of on Netflix. That's very much just like one of those spy conspiracy thrillers. It was okay, but I really kept noticing the way that they would say, like, they would recap whatever just happened, or they would kind of explain things that you had just seen. And it's interesting because it comes back to that competing for eyeballs and attention question. Like, the question of attention in the last 15, 20 years is such an interesting one and like a really complicated one. There are these great books about it. Chris Hayes's book is amazing, The Siren's Call.

• 27:43Jason Schreier?

  I just ordered that at my local bookstore.

• 27:44Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, you're gonna enjoy it. It's really, really good. I feel like all three of us should read it. Only being like media professionals in 2026, it's like a very thoughtful and interesting book.

• 27:54Jason Schreier?

  The paperback version comes out next week. Quick tangent, by the way. Local bookstores, they will tell you, hey, do you want to wait for the paperback version, which comes out next week? And I'll be like, sure, that sounds good. Thank you, local bookstores. Go buy books at your local bookstore.

• 28:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, geez. Speaking of, speaking of content, or content, speaking of art, that, uh, books are very much not content, right? They're like the opposite of content. Ideally. Speaking of art, it requires attention. Like, we are so moving in this direction toward things that really, you could just kind of, you know, TikTok is the epitome of this now, but there will be something else. I don't know where, we'll be like longing for the days where TikTok was, was, it'll feel like high culture compared to whatever, whatever comes next. It'll be even shorter. Oh, god. You know, just the way these things go. But, um, but I mean, a book, like, we were just talking about books last week, like, sitting with a book, that thing takes me, you know, it takes me like a week to read a book sometimes, and it's something I have to just come back to again and again and again. It's a very different experience. So anyways, yes, support your local bookstores. But anyway, sorry, to return to the thought

• 28:50Kirk Hamilton?

  and, and finish the thought, basically, like, now it's, it's, thinking of this kind of content, this screen content, is like second screen stuff that we can make, that you can have on while you're sitting with your spouse on the couch and you're on your phone, you know, reading social media or whatever, and also watching it, like, we're not gonna be able, there's, there are only so many hours in the day, I guess. Like, attention really is inelastic at a certain point. And video games, Hollywood, like, they're, all of these different people making art are just up against the fact that they need to keep growing, and they can only expand so many different ways. You know, like, HBO can only license so many shows to get money. Sony can only put so many games on PC, or like, Microsoft can only go so cross-platform. Like, they're, they're looking for every possible way to

• 29:33Kirk Hamilton?

  make money, but in the end, you just need more people to watch than, like, maybe physically can engage with what you're putting out.

• 29:40Jason Schreier?

  Well, and there's also more of it, right? And so, we're seeing that even, even today, as the person, the, the sound mixer who I just quoted, um, from their email, just said, just pointed out, even today, there's still, like, just as much stuff, like, still tons of stuff being made and released every single week. Most of it, we never heard of, we've never heard of. Um, there's tons of good stuff out there that probably the three of us would never, if you ever scroll through Apple TV, you'll find all these shows where you're just like, what, what even is this? Wow, this is like high budget. This has, what?

• 30:12Kirk Hamilton?

  On Blank Check, they call those movies that don't exist. I feel like actually that term has sort of spread beyond and everyone just uses it now.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, they call it that on Chasing Amy Adams, too. It's become, it's entered the zeitgeist as a phrase.

• 30:25Jason Schreier?

  And I bet if you are not like an avid triple click listener and you're just kind of a casual video game fan, you might be like, wait, what? There was like an Outer Worlds 2 that came out last year. There was like all this and you you could probably have a similar experience where you're looking at all this game library and you're like, oh, this is high quality stuff that came out last year and I had no idea because there's so much of it. And we've really, we've moved away from this world of a monoculture where there's like a single show that everybody's talking about, whether it's the Seinfeld finale or even Game of Thrones might be the most recent example of this. Because there hasn't been anything like that really since then. Maybe Stranger Things to some extent, not quite the same. How many people do you know are like out there being like, yeah, the Stranger Things finale?

• 31:05Kirk Hamilton?

  That's such a good point and it's, it's, I think they're one of the really, a really great kind of era marker, like end of an epoch marker is the end of the Avengers saga and Avengers Endgame, which was 2018, right? It's like the same year that TikTok lands in America.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  Pre-COVID.

• 31:23Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, pre-COVID, the first big Avengers saga ends.

• 31:26Jason Schreier?

  I think it was 2019, the same like month or same.

• 31:29Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, right. 18 was Infinity War.

• 31:30Jason Schreier?

  Well, the reason that's perfect is because it was the exact same time as Game of Thrones, the finale of Game of Thrones.

• 31:36Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. So it's like, sorry. So I had the year a little bit wrong, but like right around this time, at the end of the 2010s, the Marvel saga reaches its kind of apotheosis or whatever, right? Their greatest peak moment. There's this theatrical release that makes whatever a billion dollars. Everybody goes, it's the same time that TikTok is coming. It's right before the pandemic. It's very clearly now, six years, seven years on. It just seems like very obviously this like moment when right before everything changed. And now ever since then, like Marvel has been stuck creatively. They've totally failed to find a purchase over and over again. But Disney just seems like in this kind of spiral. The same thing is going on with all these big Disney franchises that they own. And the whole world of entertainment has just felt like, I don't know, in this like with this malaise.

• 32:21Kirk Hamilton?

  It's just been almost diseased or something and unable to recover from it.

• 32:24Jason Schreier?

  Um. So yeah, Game of Thrones finale and Avengers Endgame came out a month apart, April and May of 2019. Um, yeah, I mean, I, I don't know. I don't know if you can really tie the Disney and Marvel malaise to like the broader Hollywood issues. I think they have their own kind of creative issues that they're struggling with. And also the, uh, uh, what's his name?

• 32:45Speaker 01

  Kevin Feige?

• 32:46Jason Schreier?

  Major's issue.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  Oh, oh, sure.

• 32:48Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, yeah, but I think that it's certainly a factor. Like, I would never say that it's entirely tied. It's just not a coincidence that all of these things, these monocultural events, all happened at the same time, right before the pandemic and before so many things changed.

• 33:00Jason Schreier?

  Right before the pandemic. The pandemic is a big thing. But so the point I was gonna get at earlier as well is that with games, you're seeing this rise of, um, just kind of, uh, or a lowering of gatekeepers, a lowering of barriers. It is easier than ever to make a game and release it on Steam. And, um, it's much easier than that to make a game and release it on Roblox or Fortnite's, uh, built-in game editor thing. Um, and, uh, that to me is an interesting parallel with YouTube and TikTok, where you are just able to make something and put it on YouTube and there are no gatekeepers and barriers. And that's been the case for a

• 33:40Jason Schreier?

  long time, granted, but, um, it just feels like interest in that, in YouTube, especially with YouTube Shorts and TikTok, has really just surged in a way where it feels like it's, um, uh, leapfrogged, uh, interest in these shows that you're seeing on Netflix.

• 33:59Kirk Hamilton?

  Man, some of this stuff is, yeah, this, the YouTube, uh, part of this is really interesting in particular. So as I've been, you know, doing research about video podcasts and learning more about it, there's been a bunch of reporting about this. So just recently, for example, Netflix just bought a collection of Ringer podcasts. So if you're on Netflix now, you'll see ads for the Bill Simmons show, for example. And these are podcasts ostensibly like they were Ringer podcasts, but now they're just gonna be on Netflix. I believe some of them will not even have an RSS feed, which to me at least means they're not podcasts.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, listen, podcast is named after iPod. We need to get back to how it used to be.

• 34:35Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. If you're not listening on an iPod, it's not a podcast.

• 34:37Jason Schreier?

  So Kirk, I listen to the Bill Simmons podcasts every week when he talks about football and Recently, like this football season, they've started mentioning like visual aids and being like, oh, it's like this. And it's so frustrating to listen to as an audio only listener. To your point, because you made that exact point in your Substack post about video versus audio, which I thought was very interesting.

• 35:02Kirk Hamilton?

  Beehive post. I left Substack behind.

• 35:03Jason Schreier?

  Sorry, your beehive post. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Your newsletter. Apologies.

• 35:07Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes.

• 35:07Jason Schreier?

  Um, yeah. And so I think it feels like that kind of the rise of Roblox and other user created content has happened in parallel with the rise of YouTube and TikTok. And taking that a step further, you look at the Roblox games like Grow a Garden and Seal a Brainrot and its kin, they are much, much bigger, at least in terms of the number of people playing them than anything on Steam or PlayStation, the traditional platformers, which to me seems like a very obvious parallel with like these TikToks that are reaching tens of millions of people that an HBO show never could.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:41Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, I think that you like completed my thought. That was exactly where I was going with that. Yes, it's like you. So Netflix is trying to compete with YouTube because YouTube is, I think, the most watched video service in the world by, I think by far. Like, I think it is like just destroying the competition.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  Even in the TikTok era.

• 35:57Kirk Hamilton?

  And we think of, you know, Netflix as competing with HBO, but clearly, I mean, YouTube is the actual top game in town. I've mentioned this before, that this year I paid for the YouTube premium subscription, which basically costs as much as a streaming service. And now using YouTube for me just feels like using Netflix because it doesn't have all the ads the way that it used to. And there's so much stuff on YouTube. And in addition to a lot of like actual, you know, produced material, there's also all this user made stuff and some really amazing stuff because of course, you know, the same, the 2010s were also the period where people got really good at YouTube. And you can go on there and like watch professionally produced documentaries and comedy series and like

• 36:39Kirk Hamilton?

  storytelling and all this other stuff. So that I think feels very much to me like Roblox where, you know, a Microsoft or a Sony or Ubisoft are trying to compete with Roblox, but what they're doing are so qualitatively different because Roblox has this huge advantage of like infinite user generated materials, a lot of which is crap, but some of which is probably pretty cool, that it's just like, in terms of sheer volume, it's so hard to compete with that.

• 37:06Jason Schreier?

  I want to slip in an AI question here because I think that is the big wild card that nobody really knows what is going, how it's going to play out. In Hollywood, unlike in video games, in Hollywood, some of the companies, some of the big studios are actually already licensing deals where some of these AI platforms can use their brands and let people play around with their brands.

• 37:33Kirk Hamilton?

  Music industry is doing this too, for what it's worth.

• 37:35Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, we haven't yet seen that in games because there's no way to use AI to make a game. I doubt there ever will be, but in games, we're seeing AI manifest in different ways. People are using it to help write code, to do research, to assist them with various things. We'll get into that. I'm sure we'll talk about that more this year. I'm planning on reporting on that more, certainly about like how studios are actively using AI because I think more of them are doing it than people realize, like right now as we speak. It's just kind of like assisting tools, not necessarily to generate art or music or voice acting, although some of them are doing that, but just as research tools, assistance tools, productivity tools, a lot of people are using them.

• 38:17Jason Schreier?

  Anyway, these film studios are licensing AI and kind of like taking the check, to your point Kirk about that cross-platform thing. And I wonder if that is going to come back to bite them later or if it's not going to matter because people just don't actually want to watch Donald Duck like run around with a sledgehammer, just smashing things or they don't want to watch, I don't know.

• 38:44Kirk Hamilton?

  Wait, is that an example of an AI-generated?

• 38:46Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, just like they don't, I guess that could be a fun.

• 38:49Speaker 01

  Because like he actually would do that.

• 38:50Kirk Hamilton?

  An animator could just draw Donald. I mean, Donald Duck does like to do that.

• 38:53Jason Schreier?

  Sure, yeah, that's true. People don't want to watch, I don't know, goofy.

• 38:56Speaker 01

  People don't want to watch Donald Duck hanging out with like Daffy Duck, unless they're watching Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

• 39:02Jason Schreier?

  People don't want to watch Luke Skywalker making out with Johnny Depp.

• 39:08Kirk Hamilton?

  Okay, I'm glad that we're getting there. I was like, we should be talking about these characters fucking because that's what people are using AI to do.

• 39:14Speaker 03

  That is what people are creating.

• 39:16Speaker 01

  But they also are creating a whole bunch of other stuff that is not necessarily like sexual or even offensive, although those things certainly make headlines. There's also just a lot of what we call slop, which is just like filler content, just nothingness. And I mean, I do engage with some short form video content, just because I do think it's interesting to see what people are making on TikTok and Instagram. And I really issue AI content on there because I just want to see what humans are making. But it's created this really fascinating phenomenon to me, where sometimes a human will share something that they've made. And like, every comment will be like, is this AI? Is this AI? Because they can't tell anymore. And then I watched a creator do that for like, this very elaborate

• 39:58Speaker 01

  cat train station that he had made for his cats. And it was clear to me that he had made it. But he made a whole follow up video where he was like, I'm gonna show you more about how I built the train station for my cats, because so many people asked me if it was AI that I wanted to show you, literally me building more of it, so that you would believe me. It was just interesting.

• 40:18Kirk Hamilton?

  This is something that's also happening in larger scale productions. So I think like two or three days after the Stranger Things finale, Netflix released a documentary about the making of the Stranger Things finale. I think before Avatar, Fire and Ash hit theaters, Disney had already released a documentary, because James Cameron is really outspoken about how they used real people to make this, and this was not AI generated. And so they're like preemptively releasing documentaries to show their work in the same way as that follow up post you described, Matty, saying, no, no, no, I made this. That does seem like something that that I think is going to become more and more common. Not just that this film was made by humans disclaimer at the end, but like real work to kind of show it, because it's going to be necessary. And actually, the final thought, you mentioning

• 41:03Kirk Hamilton?

  slop on on Instagram in particular, Matty, makes me think, I was just talking about, you know, we'll long for the days when when people just watch TikTok. Maybe that's the next thing, actually. If you imagine, there are people who love this stuff. I think they're like, maybe older people, people who just don't really care, or just engage with social media differently than the three of us. But there are totally people who will get on Instagram. And because Meta is so all in on AI slop. Like, it is just wild. Like, if it seems as though if they could, they would just have a social media network that was nothing but AI. So I mean, you can experience that if the algorithm, if you tell the algorithm that's what you want, and then you are just sitting there looking at like Shrimp Jesus all day, like just up and down. Everything is just bizarre AI crap.

• 41:45Kirk Hamilton?

  And that is kind of, you know, the next level down, like the next level of deterioration for our attention.

• 41:51Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, my mom said to me like, did you know there's like a new Breaking Bad movie coming out starring Brian Cranston? And I was like, what are you talking about?

• 41:58Kirk Hamilton?

  No.

• 42:00Jason Schreier?

  Generated by AI on Facebook.

• 42:01Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 42:02Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I think that it'll be interesting to see what the younger generations make of all this because Stealer Brain Rot is entirely based on AI. It's like a game where people are trying to steal these brain rots from each other. And brain rots are these AI-generated characters like Ballerina Cappuccino or Cappuccino Ballerina.

• 42:23Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, yeah, man. My nieces were showing me those characters.

• 42:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, like the shark with the shoes.

• 42:28Kirk Hamilton?

  They very much got a kick out of each of the Stealer Brain Rot characters.

• 42:31Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, well, you watch them and you can see why like a preteen would really love them. It reminds me, when I see some of the stuff like Skibitty Toilet, which is an AI, but or like some of the AI stuff, Ballerina Cappuccino, whatever, it reminds me of the stuff that our generation loves when we were preteens and we were watching like Newgrounds and E-Boom's World and stuff.

• 42:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, and like Adult Swim even like kind of capitalized on some of that like

• 42:52Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 42:52Speaker 01

  random quote unquote absurdist comedy and like really dark humor. A lot of it is super similar.

• 42:57Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 42:58Kirk Hamilton?

  And is there anything more random and absurdist than like some of the crap that AI spits out? Like, it really is like, yeah, it really is similar.

• 43:05Jason Schreier?

  That's what's interesting, and I'm very curious to see like if younger generations just grow up feeling like, feeling like this is just part of the culture now, this AI stuff. And then I guess you could also, I mean, there's a whole nother conversation to be had about like stuff that is like Ballerina Cappuccino, where it's something that is new created by AI and versus something that is taking AI to put your familiar characters that you love into a different situation that they wouldn't otherwise be in, kind of a different ways of looking at it.

• 43:36Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. It starts to get into this philosophical idea about like where the creative spark occurs, which is something I think about a lot. You know, if someone takes Ballerina Cappuccino and an image of that and then turns it into something on their own, you have this interesting intersection between human creativity and like regurgitated AI crap, and it's actually Who knows what that becomes? It becomes a kind of interesting amalgamized piece of art.

• 43:57Jason Schreier?

  Well, that's what Sealer Brain rot is, right? Yeah, I would say that's what Sealer Brain rot is doing. And it's so interesting, because even ballerina cappuccino, you look at that and you're like, well, this is interesting. If this was created by AI, and I guess nobody really knows the original, original thing. The videos themselves are clearly made by AI. Did someone come up with the idea to combine a cappuccino and a ballerina? Like, who knows? But even you look at that and you're like, well, if this was generated by AI, that means it was created by this thing that has synthesized millions of people's art and used, like, spat it out. And so it's just a plagiarism machine that has created this? I don't know. All sorts of ethical questions there, but um.

• 44:33Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, and to steer us back maybe to the industry a little bit, like, there then winds up being this question of, like, there are all of these interesting artistic and philosophical questions about, like, the nature of this work and what it means and what it means to us and how humans interact with it. It does seem as though it's very potent and it is, it is leading to a lot of change and a lot, it's just totally unclear to me, at least, as someone who is both basically just watching from the outside, what impact this will actually have long term on the way that these types of studios, be they in Hollywood or be they video game studios, like, the way that they're constructed and how workflow works, like, whether it will actually be the giant change that some of

• 45:15Kirk Hamilton?

  these executives seem to watch. To me, that seems unlikely, at the very least, only because, like, every time I use AI, it wastes my time and kind of sucks. And I, like, don't see that replacing people who, you know, trained, like, lifetime artisans who make something and work as a team. It just does not seem as though that will happen. But then again, I mean, what do I know? I don't work at any of these companies and I'm, I'm no expert.

• 45:35Jason Schreier?

  Let's put a pin in that, because that is something we're going to be discussing a lot more, I think, in the years to come.

• 45:40Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, that's very true.

• 45:41Jason Schreier?

  For years. Let's, let's actually end this with kind of a bigger picture question, which is, like, what do you guys think that the future looks like, both for Hollywood and for the gaming industry? Do you think we're going to see just fewer and fewer people actually be able to make a living in these fields and it just becomes even more like a lottery ticket? It was already a lottery ticket if you wanted to be an actor or a writer, moving out to Hollywood and trying to get your big break. But is that even more the case now? Is it like, are we going to see a world where the pendulum swings the other way and people go back to wanting more long form stuff? Is, is TikTok brain rot here to stay? What do you, what do you guys, where do you guys see this all going?

• 46:22Speaker 01

  I mean, I don't know for sure, but I do think that even young people enjoy a quote unquote "real" movie from time to time. I think we all do. And so that's the part of me that's optimistic and is like, there's a reason why Steal a Brain Rot is named what it is, because even the young people that play it can identify the brain rot aspect of AI and also the kinds of content that is online, and it's satirizing that, and that's what's fun and funny about it. But there is also like a huge contingent of younger people that watch like three hour YouTube videos. So it's not like they're hurting

• 47:00Speaker 01

  for long form content, it's just of a different kind. So I do think that it's going to continue to change and be probably significantly more splintered than it is now, and that it will just continue to be a total reversal of monoculture. If I had any certain prediction, it would be that, that we will just continue to have increasingly pocketed fandoms for micro famous creators and the hyper specific things those creators and their fandoms are into will just continue to sprinkle out like beautiful snowflakes into the world. I don't know if we're going to have a Game of Thrones again anytime soon.

• 47:42Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I wonder. It does seem like we're in a non-monocultural moment, but then again, nothing holds forever, right? Like, so at some point, that may well change. And I think that the hunger among people to have a unifying, you know, event or a topic, that's a real thing, and I think people miss it already. And when there's a hunger for something, someone will figure out a way to satisfy that hunger. At the same time, my only real thought, Jason relates to something you were saying about budgets a little while ago, and that is that I, that makes me feel somewhat hopeful to hear what sounds like an actual realistic understanding of the dynamics between budget and revenue. Just that people would think, okay, well, we are not making as much money from this stuff. We still want

• 48:26Kirk Hamilton?

  to make it. We just need to make it, and we need to make it for cheaper. And then, you know, if our revenue is low- Then we have to lower our budget until it's below, you know, the target revenue. The problem in some ways was like all of this unsustainable growth and people, you know, building their, their studios or their companies to these gigantic sizes expecting infinite growth when that was a silly thing to expect. And then of course, led to a whole lot of pain and a lot of layoffs and it continues to cause a lot of suffering. But I do think like, just as someone who makes sustainable art and is constantly thinking about how I can keep my budget way below my revenue, because it's really just like, my household revenue. And so I'm kind of like doing the budgets just for like my own bottom line. Looking at it that way, like I could see a larger company doing the same thing.

• 49:09Kirk Hamilton?

  And I think that's a good way to make things that you really want to make and not have to make compromises in the art that you're making.

• 49:16Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I mean, there's a school of thought in the games industry, at least. I don't know about film, because I think the economics are a little different there. But there's a school of thought in the games industry that the recent glut of layoffs that we've seen over the last three or four years, which is tens of thousands of people, is a correction to the norm. And that what happened was in 2020 and 2021, the industry got way bigger than it could possibly support. And now it is correcting to and getting itself to a more feasible area, which is horrible and ruins lives of people who, who got jobs and lost some, or people who were in the industry for decades and now can't find another job. It's just like destructive and poisonous and really, really awful. And all the executives

• 49:59Jason Schreier?

  involved have not seen repercussions, which is really interesting.

• 50:04Kirk Hamilton?

  Galling.

• 50:05Jason Schreier?

  Frustrating. And I think that if, if you're in that school of thought, you might say, well, now maybe we're at a certain point, we'll get back to the norm and the industry will be at a point where it can support itself. Who knows? I don't know. I don't know what that looks like. One thing I'll say, Kirk, to your point, and maybe this is a good note to end on, is that Tom Francis, who is the, he was the guy who made Gunpoint, his signature and tactical breach wizards, which we all loved and talked about a couple of years ago when that came out. He actually just ran a blog post a couple of weeks ago that we'll link. In the show notes, it's called four years, 15 years of indie dev in four bits of advice.

• 50:48Jason Schreier?

  And number one is stay as small as you can. And he talks about it sucks and it sure would be nice if there were more jobs, but like, we have been three full time people for a very long time and three full time, stable jobs is better than 10 jobs where you don't know where your money is going to come from in a year. And we like, like, what's the, there's like, what's the use of having more jobs if they're volatile? We've been able to stay successful by making games that are profitable and make more money. And one of the ways that we are able to do that is by staying at a sustainable level and not expanding to extreme degrees. And I mean, I think anyone who runs

• 51:31Jason Schreier?

  a company should read this blog post because it is full of sage advice, but really anyone out there at all should read this blog post because I think it's, it's kind of illustrative of how you can actually run a company for 15 years and keep it going. And obviously they've had some luck along the way, but they're also in a position where they could survive even if one of their games isn't a humongous hit or anything like that. They're pursuing sustainability over exponential growth, which turns out that's the thing you can do.

• 52:01Speaker 01

  That's why we'll never add a fourth host to triple click.

• 52:04Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, that's why.

• 52:05Jason Schreier?

  I don't know. Appa has really been auditioning hard.

• 52:09Kirk Hamilton?

  That's true. That's true. She would, she would.

• 52:11Jason Schreier?

  We would have to change the name to quadruple click. That would be.

• 52:14Kirk Hamilton?

  That's true. We'd have to talk more about yogurt and toys and kibble.

• 52:19Jason Schreier?

  I mean, we, we, more than the amount we already talked about.

• 52:25Kirk Hamilton?

  She has a take though on why she doesn't like the switch too. That could answer that question from last week.

• 52:30Speaker 01

  Finally, finally, we get a dog perspective on that.

• 52:33Kirk Hamilton?

  She can contribute.

• 52:34Jason Schreier?

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

• 52:41Speaker 04

  Hello, I'm Sierra Cotto, host of TV Chef Fantasy League. And I'm here with Max Fun Member of the Month Dan Kotnick, who has been a Maximum Fun member since 2023.

• 52:50Speaker 05

  Thank you very much.

• 52:52Speaker 04

  As the Max Fun Member of the Month, Dan, you'll be getting a $25 gift card to the Maximum Fun store.

• 52:57Speaker 05

  Cool.

• 52:57Speaker 04

  And you get a special Member of the Month bumper sticker.

• 53:00Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 53:01Speaker 04

  This is a huge one. You get a parking spot at Max Fun Headquarters HQ in Los Angeles, California.

• 53:05Speaker 05

  Sounds good.

• 53:06Speaker 04

  Is there anything else you'd like to add as Member of the Month?

• 53:10Speaker 05

  This is my opportunity to say thank you to everyone that is a part of Maximum Fun, because you guys have just created a media environment that clearly resonates with a lot of people. Being able to do that organically is really impressive. And I think that's the root of why I've been such a big supporter. And so I want to just thank you guys for committing to that goal.

• 53:34Speaker 04

  It's for members like you, Dan. And you specifically are Member of the Month for a reason.

• 53:39Speaker 05

  Thanks. Bye.

• 53:41Speaker 04

  Become a Max Fun member now at maximumfun.org/join.

• 53:48Speaker 06

  You know, we've been doing My Brother, My Brother and Me for 15 years. And maybe you stopped listening for a while. Maybe you never listen. And you're probably assuming three white guys talking for 15 years. I know where this has ended up. But no. No, you would be wrong. We're as shocked as you are that we have not fallen into some sort of horrific scandal or just turned into a big crypto thing. Yeah. We don't even really know how crypto works. The only NFC's I'm into are naughty funny things, which is what we talk about on My Brother, My Brother and Me. We serve it up every Monday for you if you're listening. And if not, we just leave it out back until it goes rotten. So check it out on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 54:33Jason Schreier?

  And we are back and it's time for one more thing. Maddie, start us off.

• 54:37Speaker 01

  I thought this would be a fun one to do this week. I just watched 2001 A Space Odyssey for the first time ever. This is a wild movie from 1968. Have you two ever seen this movie?

• 54:51Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, yes.

• 54:52Jason Schreier?

  Did you feel yourself like suddenly understanding all the references and other things you've seen?

• 54:56Speaker 01

  I, I did, but I also was amazed by how indulgent this movie is. And I don't mean that to sound insulting in any way. It truly felt completely impossible for 2001 to be made today in any way. It is like the artistic opposite of TikTok in every perspective. It is like, what if we just-

• 55:21Kirk Hamilton?

  You should put that on the, on the box for the reissue.

• 55:24Speaker 01

  That's like, that's my-

• 55:25Kirk Hamilton?

  The artistic opposite of TikTok. Maddy Myers.

• 55:28Speaker 01

  I, you know, if they reprint it, Stanley Kubrick's estate or whatever decides to reprint it, they can put that on the box. This is a wild movie. Obviously, I think, I think people are very familiar with kind of a long sort of Twilight Zone-esque episode in the middle of the movie where like an evil AI character, like, I can't do that, Dave. You've probably heard that quote before from like the evil AI in that specific chunk of the movie. And that was kind of what I knew going in.

• 55:58Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 55:59Speaker 01

  Was that I was like, oh, like, I've kind of been watching a bunch of evil AI movies lately. Like, I watched Metropolis and I watched this. I've just been on a kick with it because I don't know why. Who knows why? It's just something in the, something in the water. Um, and so that whole chunk of the movie is extremely well-paced and entertaining and kind of stands by itself as like a story about some astronauts who go into space and they work with this AI and the AI has been deemed completely infallible. But of course, it does make a mistake seemingly, and then they have to figure out how to deal with that. And that has kind of its own sort of parable-like story. But then there's just a whole bunch of other shit in this movie that

• 56:39Speaker 01

  I don't know. It's just also in there. And I, I won't spoil the end of the movie, I suppose, but I will admit that I watched it and had absolutely no idea what I had seen. And then had to Google some articles about it and read several articles and was like- All right. I guess that was what that was.

• 57:00Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it's one of those endings where you're like, maybe I missed something.

• 57:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:04Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm just not smart enough.

• 57:05Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 57:06Kirk Hamilton?

  For me, at least, I thought about it. I was like, no, I don't think it was me. I think it was the children who are wrong. I think the ending of that movie is just kind of like an anticlimax. That's weird.

• 57:16Speaker 01

  Super whack. I, it was definitely a movie where I was like, I maybe should have taken an edible before this part. I didn't. I was real sober watching it. So I don't know. That's another way you could choose to experience it if you, if you don't enjoy being sober. But yeah, I, I don't even know if I recommend it or not. I'm really glad I finally saw it. I'll say that. I do like that I have seen it. But it was extremely long and I understand why it was so polarizing on release because it is so deeply just deliciously strange for the whole first act of the movie and the third act of the movie. And then there's like this pretty understandable arc in the middle that I just described.

• 57:57Speaker 01

  That's like its own entire great story and it all makes sense and it has a beginning, middle of an end. And then you're like, all right, Stanley, you could have just had that be the movie, but he sure didn't, did he?

• 58:08Jason Schreier?

  That's why people remember from it because it was the most coherent. Although people also remember the, the opening is very distinct.

• 58:14Kirk Hamilton?

  Sure.

• 58:15Speaker 01

  It is.

• 58:15Jason Schreier?

  Playing.

• 58:17Kirk Hamilton?

  Also sprang Zara through.

• 58:18Speaker 01

  It is, although that opening lasts so long, so much longer than you could ever possibly imagine. Anyway.

• 58:25Kirk Hamilton?

  Basically remember it as the one, that one sequence from the music.

• 58:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 58:29Kirk Hamilton?

  And then that's it.

• 58:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, you kind of remember like, okay, there's the mysterious obelisk and like all the ape creatures are like sort of mysteriously compelled by it. But imagine if that was like 16 hours long. That's how it felt to me emotionally watching it. I think it's only like 45 minutes.

• 58:46Speaker 01

  Anyway, I did enjoy it on some level, but I also was just like, what is happening for a lot of it? And I appreciated that because I don't often feel that way watching movies today. So my main takeaway was, hey, you couldn't make it now. 2001.

• 59:00Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice. You think you're going to watch some more Kubrick? Have you seen some of his other classics?

• 59:04Speaker 01

  I think I might. I don't know. I'm, I, I like watching famous things that I've never seen before and as, as you both know. So who knows what's next for me? Uh, I'll probably talk about it on the, on the pod though, whatever it is.

• 59:16Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice.

• 59:17Jason Schreier?

  Kirk, what's your one more thing?

• 59:19Kirk Hamilton?

  One more thing is a video game that I am totally in love with. That is so freaking good. Yet another indie game that came out in December that if I had played it in time for Games of the Year, it really might have made my list. That game is Rhythm Doctor. This game rules so hard. It is incredibly my jam. I knew about it, I had known about it for a little while, and just sort of put off starting it up. And the minute I started playing it, I was like, oh, oh, my god, I love this. So this is one of a couple of tributes to Rhythm Heaven, the famous Nintendo series, of which I think we're getting a new one this year, which is really wild.

• 1:00:02Kirk Hamilton?

  So there's indie tributes to Rhythm Heaven, and now there is actually a Rhythm Heaven coming out. So there are a bunch of these games in the atmosphere right now. Apparently, the world needed this type of game. Rhythm Doctor is a single-button music game. So you press one button. You only tap a button. For me, actually, I wound up finding that the best way to play it was on Steam Deck, tapping the screen. So I'm kind of drumming on the screen of my Steam Deck and hoping that I don't get too excited by the music and like hit it so hard that, you know, like it becomes like a discolored and suddenly like the screen is ruined.

• 1:00:36Speaker 07

  Crack your screen?

• 1:00:36Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, which has not happened yet, but might, because it's pretty banging and I get pretty into it. The plot of this game is actually sort of a big part of the charm. So if you've played like a Rhythm Heaven game before, you know, it's a series of sort of songs where you have to kind of keep time. And in Rhythm Heaven, it's like a bunch of mini-games. You're like chopping wood, or you're making dinner, or you're frying fish, or whatever. And it's always some really silly little animation. And then you have to like do the thing, whatever it is, the activity, in time with the music. And the music is always really groovy and fun. And then it throws curveballs at you and adds like new rhythmic mechanics. And you're constantly just adjusting. It's kind of like WarioWare or something. Like it has that same feeling of like a million little mini-games. This, Rhythm Doctor is similar, but it has a little bit more of a coherent narrative.

• 1:01:22Kirk Hamilton?

  And the narrative is actually a big part of what I love about it. So the plot of this game is it looks kind of like Stardew Valley-type visual, like, you know, that stylized, maybe 16-bit.

• 1:01:33Kirk Hamilton?

  Look, you are part of a new program at a hospital where they have started bringing in remote workers who can work a sort of defibrillation device remotely to like help people's heartbeats to cure them of various things that might be ailing them. Your character is known as Dr. Finger. Now, at no point is any, does anyone point out that Dr. Finger is kind of a creepy name for a doctor. You're just an intern and your seat is a purely benevolent force, but you are Dr. Finger and you manifest on screen as, it's hard to describe, but it's a finger over a button with a very, very long arm that's like reaching from off-screen and then it just like taps the button in time. And so, the way that this starts out is like you've got, your first patient is a guy within your regular heartbeat and you

• 1:02:18Kirk Hamilton?

  need to hit every seventh beat. And the developer of this game is actually called Seventh Beat Games. And this is, this game has actually been in development for a long time. It was like an IGF finalist in 2014, I think. It's been, I think it was in early access and it finally came out. So it's been around, it's been in the ether and it's one guy, I think mainly, it was his idea and then it's a group of people who worked on it. And so this is like the end of a long road that it finally came out. So, you're like helping a guy with his heart and you have to basically hit, it'll tell you the seventh beat, which doesn't exactly mean what it sounds like. It just gives you like, it's basically on four. It's like, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. So it's, and you're kind of just doing that. And so you start and you're like, okay, I get it. And then the song starts.

• 1:03:07Kirk Hamilton?

  And then it starts kind of, I guess it, it tries to like misdirect you. It'll be like, like it'll give you a different kind of setup. So you just have to keep the pulse going in your head. This is a game that I'm like naturally pretty good at just because I am a drummer, I'm a musician. Like if you are a musician at all, I think you'll really love this game because I've found as it gets harder, it's super fun to try to keep the beat. Because sometimes you're just doing a backbeat, but it's screwing with you so much. Like it's redirecting and doing polyrhythms and like really trying to make you jump the gun. And, and then it doesn't. And then of course, as you play, you know, that's the first guy, but soon you've like got- Like a person who has like triplets in their heart. So it'll be like triplet and you're like tut tut tut and you're doing triplets. And then you have to go between triplets and like, you know, 16th notes.

• 1:03:51Kirk Hamilton?

  And so you're kind of having to like really quickly metrically modulate. And then when the game gets truly crazy, you'll be in one person's hospital room and you'll be helping their heart. And then suddenly someone else that you previously treated will start having a problem and they'll come in too. So you'll have these two characters kind of depicted on the screen as like in their hospital beds. And their two heart rates are going in parallel, but the rhythms are different. So you're layering sometimes really complex polyrhythms. Like there'll be like one is in seven and one is in four and it's like displacing. And there are times where the first time through, I'm like, uh-uh. Like when I see like, you know, a three part kind of rhythm because of me, I'm like, I'm not going to get this.

• 1:04:41Kirk Hamilton?

  And then eventually, you know, I'll go back and learn it and get it. So rhythmically and like musically, it's super fun. There are times where it kind of confounds me because as a musician, I think of rhythm a certain way. Like I learned how to read rhythm and like, I think of subdivision one way where the game is like using a much more kind of loosey goosey and kind of organic way of communicating rhythm. And sometimes I just have to look at the screen and like tap when I see that it needs me to tap. But most of the time, once I figure out what it's trying to tell me and like translate it or almost like transpose it into my own understanding of rhythm, then I can just like crush it. The music is so good. There are these original songs that play during boss fights.

• 1:05:30Kirk Hamilton?

  They're really catchy. And like I said, the narrative sneaks up on you. And then over time, it becomes kind of the story of a hospital that's like overworked and understaffed, where they're trying to like fill in for the nurses and doctors that they need by hiring these, this like new technology and trying unsafe experiments on their patients. And like the administration of the hospital are kind of corrupt or they're not, they don't have everyone's best. Interest at heart and you go inside the hearts of the nurses and the doctors as they try to like, deal with the stress of the job. And it's funny because like the pit is back for season two and I've been watching that show and that show is also about this and is really good. And it was so cool to be playing this game that had this unexpectedly kind of timely and relevant story about our actual healthcare crisis,

• 1:06:14Kirk Hamilton?

  even though it's this very cartoony and silly game, it really winds up being pretty lovely a lot of the time. Like there's, there are these love stories that are playing out over the course of a couple of days in the hospital as different patients fall in love with one another. It's like got a really great story and that's actually a big part of what I love about it.

• 1:06:52Kirk Hamilton?

  So I cannot recommend this game enough. It's so much fun. It's just like, there are times where I'm playing on my Steam Deck and I've like got one hand up in the air because it's rocking so hard. I won't spoil stuff. Like there's things in boss fights, surprises, ways the game breaks itself and rebuilds itself to try to throw you off. That once you're really in the groove, like I am just on cloud nine when I'm playing it. It's so, so much fun. It's been an incredible, like a just great little delight and I can't recommend it enough. So that's Rhythm Doctor. It's on Steam. I played it on Steam Deck. And I just, I just loved it.

• 1:07:24Jason Schreier?

  It sounds great. So Kirk, are you saying that all of the patients in this hospital have a fever and the only prescription is more cowbell?

• 1:07:31Kirk Hamilton?

  Honestly, yes. That's really the truth of it. I could have just said that.

• 1:07:37Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, that would have been a really quick way to recap. Sounds cool. All right. My one more thing is a book that came out in 2018 and it's called Cersei by Madeline Miller. And you might've seen this book floating around in 2018. I feel like it was everywhere. It's been recommended to me. With, with the, the face of what kind of looks like a Greek statue, like that statue head on the cover and gold letters, Cersei.

• 1:08:04Jason Schreier?

  This book is phenomenal. I can tell, I can see why it was everywhere, why everybody seemed to be reading it in 2018. So this is a book about about Greek mythology, and it's about the character Circe, and so it's kind of a retelling of Greek mythology through Circe's eyes. And Circe, as I think, as I knew her, as probably most people know her, is a witch who Odysseus encounters on his long voyage home in The Odyssey, which will soon be a movie by Christopher Nolan that I'm sure we'll all see and want to talk about. Hell, yes. Yeah. And Circe, my real, my only real memory of her from like the Greek mythology that I read as a kid was that she turned sailors into pigs, right? That's what I remembered

• 1:08:47Jason Schreier?

  of her. This book is 380 pages recontextualizing her entire story. It starts off with her as a young demigod, and her childhood, and growing up, and her siblings, and her parents, and we follow her entire life. Why she wound up on this island where Odysseus lands, her various encounters with all sorts of other creatures, and gods, and figures in Greek mythology, her encounters with Odysseus, of course, and much, much more. And it is a phenomenal book because it manages to fit in so much of this Greek mythology and tell

• 1:09:28Jason Schreier?

  it in such a lovely way that is just like constantly propulsive and compelling to read about. A lot of these stories you might find familiar if you know anything about Greek mythology, but it's still just like really fun to read about them in this new way and from this interesting perspective. Because Circe is not a character that you probably have thought much about. She's not Zeus, or Poseidon, or Hades, or any of the other characters who often get their due. In Greek mythology, she's just kind of like, oh, that witch who turned dudes into pigs. Like, what else you have to know about her? But reading this book, it's, it's kind of like, oh, okay, this is why she is who she is. These are the choices she made. This is the, these are the mistakes that she's made. These are the things that haunt her.

• 1:10:14Jason Schreier?

  I'm not a hundred percent sure how much of the story is Madeleine Miller's invention versus how much is part of Greek mythology, but that's part of the fun because sometimes you'll look something up on Wikipedia or something and it'll be like, oh, yes, this is actually part of Greek mythology that's thousands and thousands of years old. And one of the things that Madeleine Miller is really good at, in addition to storytelling, is the, the depths of research that she has done into Greek history and mythology and what would have been like, true at the time, what would have felt true. Not necessarily in terms of like dialogue and how people talk, that's more contemporaneous as it should be for a book that we're reading in the current generation.

• 1:10:56Jason Schreier?

  But like, the types of flowers that are growing in Circe's garden, or like how people would refer to, I don't know, Italy, which they call the West, right? At this point in time. And all sorts of other stuff like that. It's really, really fascinating and digs into like, you'll come away from this book just like knowing the names of some gods that you never knew before and knowing parts of Greek mythology that you just had no idea about, which I thought was really cool. And then even the parts that you knew about, know about. Like I mentioned before, you just get this new appreciation for them by reading it. And it was just really enjoyable. The, the book is a saga. It takes place over the course of probably multiple thousands of years, but it's a very

• 1:11:39Jason Schreier?

  fun, breezy read and I really enjoyed it.

• 1:11:42Kirk Hamilton?

  It would, it sounds like it would be a great read ahead of The Odyssey coming out, Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. Like, that makes me totally want to read it. That sounds awesome.

• 1:11:49Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, yeah, it's super cool. And yeah, I mean, obviously the entire Trojan War plays a big part in this story. A lot of it because you're seeing the entire book through Circe's perspective. Sometimes you'll get stories told by other people who would come and like, visit her on her island and then regale. There's some story about something or another. Madeleine Miller has also wrote a book called, written a book called Song of Achilles, which I think is even more about the Trojan War. But yes, in terms of Odysseus' journey, a lot of that is captured in this book. Yeah, probably, unless you don't know anything about it and just want to be totally surprised when you see the film. But yeah, I really enjoyed the book. I highly recommend it. One of those books where I look back at it and I'm like, yeah, okay, this deserved to be very popular and still deserves to be very popular.

• 1:12:34Jason Schreier?

  Madeleine Miller has not written anything since. I was just looking it up. But she is working on a book about Persephone. So that'll be.

• 1:12:43Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, nice. Okay.

• 1:12:45Jason Schreier?

  Oh, yeah, a lot of references, by the way.

• 1:12:47Speaker 01

  Like Song of Achilles, Circe, and then Persephone. She's like, this is my thing. This is what I do.

• 1:12:51Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, 100%. And yeah, if you've played Hades, you'll, you'll see some, some familiar terms and references in this book.

• 1:13:01Kirk Hamilton?

  Or Assassin's Creed Odyssey.

• 1:13:03Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 1:13:04Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice.

• 1:13:04Jason Schreier?

  All right. That is that for this week's episode. Kirk, Maddie, I'll see you both next week.

• 1:13:10Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, see you both next week.

• 1:13:12Speaker 01

  Bye.

• 1:13:15Kirk 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.

• 1:14:12Jason Schreier?

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