Help, I'm Getting Too Old For Hard Games [Mailbag]

Kirk, Jason, and Maddy open up the listener mailbag to answer some of your questions! When should you let kids start playing video games? What gaming terms should be more mainstream? And what do you do when you're just too old for this shit?

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

• 0:03Speaker 00

  It's hard to know when to introduce your kids to video games. Even harder to figure out exactly when to introduce them to TripleClick. Welcome to TripleClick, where we bring the games to you. This week, we open up the listener mailbag to answer questions about screen time limits for kids and also dogs, as well as the limits of age upon us all.

• 0:30Speaker 00

  I'm Maddy Myers.

• 0:32Jason Schreier?

  I'm Jason Schreier.

• 0:33Kirk Hamilton?

  And I'm Kirk Hamilton, and hello.

• 0:34Jason Schreier?

  Hello.

• 0:35Speaker 00

  Hello. It's us again.

• 0:36Jason Schreier?

  Welcome back, my friends.

• 0:37Speaker 00

  We made it back.

• 0:38Kirk Hamilton?

  Back at it.

• 0:39Jason Schreier?

  It is us again. You guys know how like two weeks ago Maddie won a prediction? I just lost a prediction. I don't know if you guys know this.

• 0:46Speaker 00

  I didn't know that. Lay it on us.

• 0:49Jason Schreier?

  Marathon had more steam congruence than I thought, than I predicted.

• 0:53Speaker 00

  Oh, did you put a number on it?

• 0:55Jason Schreier?

  I did.

• 0:56Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 0:56Jason Schreier?

  I did.

• 0:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 0:59Jason Schreier?

  Big, big news.

• 1:00Speaker 00

  Even though Slay the Spire 2 came out around the same time, Marathon still came out.

• 1:04Jason Schreier?

  It's true. Yeah, did not, did not take away from those extraction shooter numbers.

• 1:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:09Kirk Hamilton?

  It'll be interesting to see how Marathon does.

• 1:10Speaker 00

  It will be.

• 1:11Kirk Hamilton?

  I've been following along with it. It's very in the middle right now. It's a little touch and go.

• 1:15Speaker 00

  We live in a post, post-Higard world. Sometimes those first week numbers don't say it all anymore, and it's hard to know.

• 1:24Jason Schreier?

  Well, Marathon, you had to buy. Higard was free.

• 1:27Speaker 00

  That's true.

• 1:27Jason Schreier?

  So very big difference in the first week numbers.

• 1:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, which suggests, you know, people put the money in, so maybe they're willing to put the time in. I guess we're going to find out. But you know what? We always put the time in here at TripleClick.

• 1:38Jason Schreier?

  And the money in.

• 1:40Speaker 00

  We put the money in, kind of. Well, let's be clear here. Some of you listeners have put the money in, and those would be the wonderful folks who go to maximumfun.org/join and they become members. And what do they get in return? Something pretty good, I would say. They get a monthly bonus episode from us. We've been doing this for many years. So you got a ton of bonus ups. We got, it's in the, is it in the hundreds? It's in the dozens. It's in the dozens. I feel confident saying it's dozens.

• 2:11Kirk Hamilton?

  Not in the hundreds, but it is in the dozens.

• 2:12Speaker 00

  Whenever we hit our 100th bonus episode, we'll celebrate. That'll be a great day. But our latest bonus episode, we all watched a documentary called King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters from 2007. It was really fun. Throwback to a time when video games were talked about in a different way. We had a great time discussing that doc on our bonus feed. And next, we're gonna do a full spoiler bean cast about Resident Evil: Requiem, which we are all playing, or in Kirk's case, have completed. Very excited to talk about that with the two of you and get that one in the bonus feed. So if that sounds good to you,

• 2:55Speaker 00

  plus you want all those other bonus ups, then MaximumFun.org/join is the place to go to make it happen. Be a member and support our show.

• 3:06Kirk Hamilton?

  I can give you a number.

• 3:07Speaker 00

  Oh, great.

• 3:07Kirk Hamilton?

  The King of Kong Bean Cast, or the King of Kong episode was our 66th episode.

• 3:11Speaker 00

  That's nice. Nice round number. 66. That's pretty good. That's a lot of bonus ups.

• 3:16Kirk Hamilton?

  Several dozens. Yeah.

• 3:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a good investment.

• 3:18Jason Schreier?

  If we reach enough bonus episodes, then we get a kill screen.

• 3:22Kirk Hamilton?

  It's true.

• 3:23Speaker 00

  We never will, though.

• 3:24Kirk Hamilton?

  There's a triple-click kill screen coming up. Everybody.

• 3:26Speaker 00

  If you want to understand that, you can listen to the King of Kong episode. There is a kill screen coming up. But there's something else coming up, which is the rest of this podcast. Jason, what are we talking about today? What are we doing today?

• 3:40Jason Schreier?

  This week, we are doing Burning Questions, which means we are taking some of your hot, hot, hot listener questions and answering them. As always, you can reach us at triple-click at MaximumFun.org with your burning questions. And I'll remind people, as I always do, keep them short, keep them weird, and you are more likely to get your question read on the show. I'm gonna read this first email we got, which was, I think, from a very helpful listener who had some commentary on a previous episode, a previous And questions. Reaching out to ask for advice. My human is constantly playing with his Nintendo Switch 2, and I've been trying to communicate to him that I hate the company and everything it represents by leaving the room whenever he plays with the console. Their representation of dogs has been awful

• 4:25Jason Schreier?

  since they shamefully represented us as annoying and violent in Duck Hunt, and I can't believe he supports this company. PS5 is cool, though. Unrelated questions. What's the best dog in video games, in your opinion? My personal favorite is D-Dog from MGS5. Love you, Kevin. You guys seem nice, too. Well, that was helpful. Helpful.

• 4:45Kirk Hamilton?

  I see that there's no signature. There's just a paw print, which was kind of interesting.

• 4:49Jason Schreier?

  Yes.

• 4:50Speaker 00

  Well, you know, every fingerprint is unique. I assume every paw print is unique. I don't know. I've been watching a lot of CSI lately, and it shows.

• 4:59Jason Schreier?

  They're like snowflakes. Yeah, the best dog in video games. There are a few that I can think of of good ones. Some good ones in Animal Crossing.

• 5:09Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. Some dogs that talk in Animal Crossing. Like, the dog, the musician dog. That dog is cool. What is his name?

• 5:18Jason Schreier?

  K.K. Slider.

• 5:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, of course. K.K. Slider. Grand Finale.

• 5:21Kirk Hamilton?

  That's true. K.K. Slider is technically a dog, though he's kind of just a guy who plays guitar. Like, he doesn't actually seem very dog-like.

• 5:28Jason Schreier?

  The dog in Dispatch last year was pretty good. Beef.

• 5:32Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 5:33Kirk Hamilton?

  Beef was good.

• 5:34Speaker 00

  Beef is a really good dog.

• 5:35Kirk Hamilton?

  Can I throw out? I think maybe Beef is pretty good, and Beef is maybe channeling this dog. One of my favorite dogs in video games is Missile from Ghost Trek: Phantom Protector. Missile is truly an amazing dog.

• 5:46Jason Schreier?

  Missile the Pomeranian?

• 5:48Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes. One thing that makes Missile great is that Missile is very much a Pomeranian. And even though Missile can speak, psychically at least, with the ghost, with Cecil. Missile is like... So excitable and still talks like a Pomeranian and kind of can't control himself in the way that a Pomeranian wouldn't be able to. So the characterization of a dog, of that dog is consistent, which is something that I really appreciate about Missile.

• 6:14Speaker 00

  Are we not counting dogs that can talk? Because I mean, if we're not counting KK Slider, then my suggestion of Red 13 is not going to work because Red 13, great dog-like character, but he's kind of a person. He's kind of a guy.

• 6:29Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, he's not really a dog, but he's still great. And no, I wouldn't say that I'm disqualifying anyone, but I'm saying that my critique of KK Slider is a little bit that KK Slider isn't like that much of a dog, other than looking like a dog. He is kind of just a guitar player.

• 6:43Speaker 00

  What is it to be a dog? What are the rules of being a dog? It's more than just looking like one.

• 6:48Jason Schreier?

  Well, you have to leave the room when a Switch 2 is being played, which, by the way, a quick sidebar, we also got a note from a couple of people, actually, but here's one from Dan. I'm skipping most of the email, but just a quick quote is, "I got my Switch 2 on launch day, and when I was setting it up, I almost immediately noticed a super high-pitched whine coming from the unit," which I think is interesting. So for a little bit of context here is that last time we did a burning question, someone reached out and said, "Hey, my dog leaves the room whenever I play Switch 2, but not other consoles." And we tried to figure out why that might be. A few people have theorized that it's because the Switch 2 plays a very specific, has a very specific noise that I believe one of us, maybe Kirk, had brought up as a possibility. But yeah, that's what it seems to be, that the Switch 2 like has a very, a very high-pitched noise that maybe some

• 7:33Jason Schreier?

  people can hear, but dogs can certainly hear, which might help explain why dogs hate the Switch, but not the PlayStation.

• 7:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, it seems likely.

• 7:40Kirk Hamilton?

  Can I throw out a little internet history for anyone? If you would like to read some truly wonderful blogs that are still available in some archived forum, I'll find a link. Did either of you ever read, I believe it was a dog dot, or just dog.gawker.com?

• 7:56Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I remember that.

• 7:57Speaker 00

  No, I'm gonna find it after this.

• 8:00Kirk Hamilton?

  This was like a period of time at Gawker where people could just start a subkinja if they wanted to. And someone, I can't remember who it was, was it Alex Perrine?

• 8:09Jason Schreier?

  I think it was Max Reed.

• 8:10Kirk Hamilton?

  It was one of, it was like that era of Gawker. One of those writers started a blog that was written by a dog who became an increasingly kind of esoteric character, but there is one post in particular. It is called Serial in My Mouth. We have the art from it printed on our refrigerator. And Emily and I quote it pretty routinely. It's one of the funniest like dog voice things I've ever read about a crunchy crime scene. And we will link it in show notes and anyone who would like to read it and have a very good time can go and do so.

• 8:40Jason Schreier?

  All right. So now with the dog talk out of the way, let's get into some more questions, ideally from humans. So humans as opposed to AI, not as opposed to dogs. We welcome more questions from dogs.

• 8:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, we'll welcome questions from animals or humans, not AI though.

• 8:57Jason Schreier?

  Maddie, why don't you read this, this one?

• 9:00Speaker 00

  Sure. This is from Cam who writes, hi triple clickers. I'm a parent of two. My oldest being are almost three years old. What are your takes on the appropriate age and method for introducing kids to video games? My partner and I have been enforcing a strict no screens policy with our kids. Except for FaceTimes with family and the very rare live sporting event, screens are not a part of their lives. Looking at our toddler and her friends, we can already see how much, how too much screen time can negatively impact development, especially socializing, imaginative play, and generally engaging with the outside world. Our almost three-year-old is growing into an amazing human being and we don't want that to change. On the other hand, as a listener of this show, I obviously love video games and I'd

• 9:45Speaker 00

  love to eventually play games with my kids. How do you balance the need to minimize screen time against wanting to share your love for video games with your kids? So obviously Kirk and I are gonna take the lead on this one.

• 9:57Jason Schreier?

  Please do.

• 9:58Speaker 00

  We know all about it.

• 10:00Jason Schreier?

  How do you share games with your pets?

• 10:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, how do I introduce Warren and Samuel to gaming? How does Kirk introduce Apa to gaming? It's just a constant stress for us.

• 10:09Jason Schreier?

  So I have a lot of thoughts on this, which will not surprise you too. But my kids are like getting to that age. My daughter's six and a half and my son is three and a half. And so they're getting to that age where I want them to play games and they want to play games and stuff. And my wife and I have also enforced a very strict no screens policy or limited screens policy over the years. And screen time is kind of, it's a big topic among parents. How much screen time do you allow? And I actually, I think it's a bad term because screen time incorporating every screen is, does a disservice to what we're actually talking about here and what it represents. Because I have watched my kids watching TV and I have watched them playing video games.

• 10:50Jason Schreier?

  And those are both forms of screen time, but they, there is a vast difference in the quality of entertainment and time that they are getting out of it. When they watch TV, which we let them do every once in a while, usually once a week, maybe a little bit more than that, if there are enough snow days. But when they watch TV, they are sitting in front of the screen, like mouths agape and just eyes like glazed over and not listening or interacting with the world at all, just watching and giggling or whatever. But like, I could leave the house and after the TV time, they would be like, oh, where did daddy go? Like I said goodbye to them, everything. They just didn't even notice. They're in their own little worlds.

• 11:31Jason Schreier?

  Whereas when they play video games, and they've been playing some Animal Crossing recently, they are engaging and talking and like laughing and playing with, like talking out loud about what they're seeing and like asking me to come over and look at things or look, come over and help. And they are actively socializing in a way that they are not when they're watching TV, which I think makes it very different for their development and for their little brains than watching TV is. So I think it's really, as a parent, I think you kind of need to say like, not all screen time is the same and not all screens are the same. Granted, I'm a little bit biased here because of my job. I think the three of us all. All are because of the way that we engage with video games, which I think is very different than the way a lot of people do.

• 12:15Jason Schreier?

  But still, just seeing the the results of both, I I think it's a very legitimate thing. That's not to say, like, I still think it should be limited, but I feel, and I've been talking to my wife a lot about this lately. She's a little more skeptical than I am, but I feel that sticking them in front of a video game for two hours is a lot better for them. More beneficial in all sorts of ways than sticking them in front of the TV for two hours.

• 12:40Speaker 00

  You're essentially echoing my methodology of being raised, as you two may recall, which was very, very limited television consumption. But video games are OK. Computer time, it was OK, is really how we referred to it back then. Because like playing on the computer could encompass KidPix. You two remember KidPix? All the other kind of kid-friendly apps that were available in my childhood. It was like a child's version of Adobe Photoshop. It was awesome. KidPix ruled. People are going to write in and talk about how great it was.

• 13:12Kirk Hamilton?

  KidPix is one of those things where our like micro-generational differences mean I did not use it, but I do remember it.

• 13:18Jason Schreier?

  I don't remember that, but that, I mean, that's like being creative.

• 13:21Speaker 00

  It was so good. It was kind of like Mario Paint. It was sort of like in the family of like interactive children's games and toys and tools on a computer.

• 13:30Jason Schreier?

  Which is essentially, from a developmental point of view, the same as like putting them in front of a drawing pad.

• 13:34Speaker 00

  Precisely my parents' logic, I would say, whereas TV is, is you're just sitting there and you're not interacting as much. And I think people worry rightly a little bit more about that, but I will say, Jason, I don't think you're going to do this. I think the danger, though, is if your kids are not watching the same stuff that their peers are watching when they get older, then they'll be like me, which is a guaranteed nerd who didn't understand what anyone else at school is talking about, because I wasn't watching any of it. So you got to kind of think about that, too. But I'm not worried about you doing it.

• 14:04Jason Schreier?

  But I don't not let them watch TV. They do. No, I'm not a favor. I'm just in favor of like, I think you can have. My philosophy is stricter limitations on TV than on video games. I think video games, I'm more OK with them playing more often than watching TV, is what I would say. Especially at a young age. By the time kids are that age, Matty, I think you kind of, you have to like let the guardrails down a little bit. By the time they're 10, you, you can't really be like, no screen time. Like that's a little, we're talking about younger ages.

• 14:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:32Kirk Hamilton?

  Something I've noticed with my nieces is they've gotten older and gotten more into playing games. The quality of the game and the type of the game of game does make a pretty big difference. Like what you're describing, Jason, is definitely a best case scenario, partly because you're talking about Animal Crossing. You're talking about Nintendo games that are very pro-social and are very fun to play together. You know, I've talked to my nieces about, one of them will play like iPad games sometimes that are just, you know, it's bejeweled. It's just total match three. Just turn your brain off and press it. And that's a little, that strikes me as like a less nourishing kind of game. And it's also on an iPad, so they're all by themselves. So,

• 15:14Kirk Hamilton?

  you know, there are types of gaming, I think, that are a little more toward the type of super passive experience that you were describing with TV, Jason.

• 15:22Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 15:22Kirk Hamilton?

  And that, that seems like something that parents should be thinking about while they're making this decision, right? Is also what kinds of games are my kids playing?

• 15:30Jason Schreier?

  And you know what's also perfect about Animal Crossing? I've discovered that Animal Crossing is the perfect game for kids my daughter's age especially. Is that because of the nature of the game, you can't just sit there and marathon and get through everything. You have to wait for things to happen. So she'll be like really excited. She'll be like, I just ordered Princess Peach's slippers through the store, but they don't arrive till tomorrow. And, and she's like, so how do I get them? I was like, you have to wait until tomorrow. And so she's like, oh, okay.

• 15:54Speaker 00

  I love that.

• 15:56Jason Schreier?

  Which I think is A teaches patience, B prevents them from like sitting there and just playing all day. So I think it's, Animal Crossing strikes me as a game that, and I've tried a few with her and she's gotten really into Animal Crossing. I think that's a really good one for, for getting a kid in into games.

• 16:12Speaker 00

  Do you feel like there was a specific age where she started actually wanting to play games? Cause that was the other piece of Cam's question here was what age? Cause their kid's only three and that does seem a little early to me, but what do I know?

• 16:24Jason Schreier?

  I mean, it's a gradual thing. I don't really remember when she first started. It would, I, I think at first it would. Be like me playing Mario and she would sit there and watch me and then at different points she would kind of dabble. Animal Crossing is the first time that she's like really wanted to sit there and play a game by herself for a couple of hours. That's the first game she's gotten really into, in part because other games she just didn't have the the skill to be able to do them very well. And then, yeah, and then my son will sit there and watch, but he's a little bit more like, like, he couldn't sit there and play a game for two hours because he's not really capable of it. Although I will say it's also helpful that Mario Wonder, you can play as Yoshi and not die, which is also helpful.

• 17:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's great.

• 17:07Kirk Hamilton?

  Emily has gotten back into Animal Crossing after the Switch 2 update and it's been very fun to watch her play it. And it was something she bonded with, that one of the daughters of our friends who came over, they kind of come over sometimes just to play video games. I think I've mentioned this before because we have so many games and our house is kind of the fun house with the fun dog and the games and stuff. And it's super fun. And one of their daughters is really into Animal Crossing. And it was something that they immediately started bonding about. They're both kind of sickos on the same level. They're kind of, they're like engineering the blue flowers and stuff. They're really good.

• 17:37Speaker 00

  Oh, wow. Okay.

• 17:38Kirk Hamilton?

  And watching Emily go full sicko gremlin on Animal Crossing again has been really fun and a reminder of just all the things about that game, all the things that make it really cool. I'm, I'm interested to see if she'll get into, is it Poketopia or Pokopia?

• 17:52Speaker 00

  Pokopia, right?

• 17:54Kirk Hamilton?

  Pokopia, the Pokemon Animal Crossing.

• 17:56Jason Schreier?

  Well, we'll talk about that later. We'll talk about that later.

• 17:59Kirk Hamilton?

  I know, I know. I'm just saying, I'll be curious if she'll get into it and I'll play that game too. And just looking forward to checking that game out.

• 18:06Jason Schreier?

  All right. Next question. Kirk, you want to read this one?

• 18:09Kirk Hamilton?

  Sure. This question comes from Joey who writes, hey, Matty.

• 18:11Jason Schreier?

  Oh, this isn't a question. This is just something really cool.

• 18:14Speaker 00

  Oh, that's true. Yeah.

• 18:15Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, okay. That's true. This, this story comes from Joey who writes, hey, Matty, Kirk and Jason. I hope you guys have had a fantastic year. I know Jason is a football fan and you all are huge fans of music, capital M music.

• 18:30Kirk Hamilton?

  That is true. It should be capitalized. Joey continues, I wondered if you watched the halftime show with Bad Bunny at the Super Bowl. If you did, you saw a couple get married during his performance. That was my cousin.

• 18:43Jason Schreier?

  Amazing.

• 18:44Kirk Hamilton?

  I just thought it would be cool to let you know in case you were wondering. Yes, it was a real wedding. They reached out to him to see if he'd be able to perform at their wedding and he came up with a better idea of them tying the knot at the Super Bowl halftime show. Such a surreal experience for them. Anyways, I thought it would be cool if you guys saw it. Thanks for being awesome. Love every episode. You all dropped.

• 19:05Speaker 00

  This is so cool.

• 19:07Kirk Hamilton?

  That is amazing. I, the idea, first, the idea of writing Bad Bunny and asking him to play at your wedding.

• 19:12Speaker 00

  If you're in jury.

• 19:13Kirk Hamilton?

  Outrageous and very cool.

• 19:15Speaker 00

  And then having him get back to you.

• 19:16Kirk Hamilton?

  And then he says, oh, I don't know. Right, how would you feel about coming to the Super Bowl?

• 19:21Speaker 00

  So cool.

• 19:21Kirk Hamilton?

  Good lord.

• 19:22Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, did they, man, there's a story about them.

• 19:25Speaker 00

  We need more information, Joey.

• 19:26Jason Schreier?

  Like, okay, yeah, there's a story about them in the New York Times.

• 19:30Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, yeah, it's been, it's been talked about because it was such a kind of, I mean, amazing part of an amazing halftime show.

• 19:34Jason Schreier?

  Wow, so they didn't know him. They just, they just emailed him and then they got a, a text from someone on Bad Bunny's team. Oh, my God.

• 19:43Kirk Hamilton?

  I really have gotten the sense that Bad Bunny is like an amazing dude.

• 19:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, he seems so cool.

• 19:47Kirk Hamilton?

  That I get about that guy.

• 19:48Jason Schreier?

  It's so funny.

• 19:49Kirk Hamilton?

  He's incredibly cool.

• 19:50Speaker 00

  It's like, let me just make this couple's day.

• 19:52Jason Schreier?

  The, the funny thing about that halftime show, it's funny, I, I was in, I had a Super Bowl party here and so I was like doing some cleaning and like putting food away while during the halftime show because like I'm, the music is not really for me. But I caught bits and pieces of it. And despite the fact that so a lot of people wanted there to be all this controversy around it, it was just such a wholesome show that it, there was like, yeah, how could you disagree with the message at the end? That was just like love for like in all these countries in America, like in the American continents, love for all them, et cetera, et cetera.

• 20:23Kirk Hamilton?

  Almost pointedly wholesome, I would say.

• 20:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, I would say if anything, that's the message. Yeah.

• 20:28Kirk Hamilton?

  And I appreciated that. Yeah, I, I think he has a, he has a very strong sense of how to play his current position and how to kind of parry the haters. I don't know how else to describe it. But yeah, like it, it is so difficult to watch the show. I thought it was amazing. I, I didn't really watch the game, but I did watch the halftime show because I typically do each year.

• 20:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, same.

• 20:48Kirk Hamilton?

  Because I'm sort of the opposite of you, Jason. I have to care much more about the music and about the show.

• 20:52Speaker 00

  I'm gonna check out the halftime show. I will say, I do think performing the entire show in Spanish is an implicit political message. Perhaps shouldn't be controversial, but is with a certain type of person.

• 21:03Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I mean, yeah, I guess so. I, I, yes, I, I see what you're saying.

• 21:07Speaker 00

  It just isn't, it doesn't scan as political to us per se, because it's very silly to perceive it that way.

• 21:13Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, it was like a huge outrage point on the right. There were so many people talking about it afterwards. I mean, remember, like, right wingers ran a competing halftime show with, like, Kid Rock and stuff. This was a whole massive political deal on the right. That just came off as, to me, completely pathetic, because when you watch a bad bunny crushing it, you know, it was a pretty striking contrast.

• 21:33Speaker 00

  Why not watch a great show? Like, why, why purposefully make your life worse?

• 21:38Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, the best, the best joke I saw was, uh, the Kid Rock show had a real divorce.

• 21:46Kirk Hamilton?

  I didn't watch it, but that would be so fucking funny.

• 21:52Kirk Hamilton?

  Was that a tweet or something?

• 21:53Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I saw that on social media.

• 21:54Kirk Hamilton?

  That's an exceptional joke.

• 21:55Jason Schreier?

  I, I cannot take credit for that. I saw that on social media. Yeah, it's just so funny that that's become a flashpoint because, like, for so many reasons. But first and foremost, because people just don't seem to understand that he is an American and Puerto Rico is part of America.

• 22:12Jason Schreier?

  Anyway, let's move on. Uh, here is a question from Brian. Brian writes, "I am a 50-year-old gamer who loves tough atmospheric games, but I'm starting to enjoy them less because my reflexes just aren't what they used to be. Any advice?" And he writes a bit how he loves games, like, the style of games like Bloodborne and Silk Song, but he just keeps bouncing off of them. "Any tips for aging gamers who still crave high difficulty games? Settings that tweak, mindset changes, or recommendations for similar vibes that are a bit more forgiving? Or should I just accept my destiny and quietly move to a farm in Stardew Valley?" Kirk, any tips for aging gamers? As our most aged gamer.

• 22:57Speaker 00

  Just immediately throw it to Kirk.

• 22:59Kirk Hamilton?

  This is so, well, this is something I've talked about a lot, and I am also older than the two of you, so that kind of tracks.

• 23:05Jason Schreier?

  That's a joke.

• 23:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Is it a joke? It's not a joke. I'm actually older and like do need to think more about my deteriorating body.

• 23:12Jason Schreier?

  God, that's a, not to get real here.

• 23:16Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, that's something, I don't know, that, you know, it's funny, the other few episodes ago, we were talking about getting older and I was talking about being in your 40s and telling the two of you, well, you know, it kind of sucks in some ways. You sort of hit, I think it's 44, people say is the age where it just, you start to notice things going wrong. And I think I was being kind of overly doomerish about it because there are things about being in your 40s that are great. You really know yourself, you feel, I feel like very, very good. And actually, as I have begun to deal with and kind of treat and do more therapy and like physical fitness stuff to kind of manage, you know, various aches and pains, I'm now actually in better shape than I was when I was like 38. And so there is a kind of a, if you can recover and kind of work with it, like your 40s can be cool.

• 24:01Kirk Hamilton?

  So I don't, I don't want to just bum everybody listening out if you are not yet 40 that, to tell you it's just going to be an unending nightmare. It is not. You can, you can make it whatever you want to make it. So anyways, yeah, to answer this question, let's think. For starters, mods are your friend. I think we've talked about this before, but if you are finding that you're just a little bit slower, or it is just physically painful to try to keep up with games, like for me, it was Silk Song, that was the one that we've, that has kind of been the recurring reference point for this conversation. It was the playing Silk Song, I just was finding it was harder for me by about 20%, 15% than I wanted it to be. So every fight just took longer. That was the result of it being harder.

• 24:45Kirk Hamilton?

  And as a result, I was putting my thumbs and my hands through more repetitive strain because it was taking so much longer. And then that in turn was making me more mentally exhausted playing it. And the whole thing just felt like kind of miscalibrated to me. So then I wound up playing around with these mods where I could just, just take an edge off of it. There was like a 10% damage boost or something. So that every fight takes 10% less time. And it really just was, it was very hard to kind of find the balance. But once I found it, I never could have told you, you know, when I did a couple of fights with that mod on, and I never could have told you it was modded. It just, it was just a little bit noticeable, only because I'd been A B-ing and like doing the fight a bunch of times.

• 25:28Kirk Hamilton?

  And even that was a kind of flawed study because I did the fight enough times that I got really good at it. And so by the third or fourth time, you know, I knew it really cold. But anyways, I would say that is helpful, but of course, that's only helpful if you're on PC. Obviously, more and more games have more variable difficulty and it's important to get into a mindset where you just let yourself find a difficulty that kind of works for you and can, where you can still experience the game. And then with some games, it's just gonna not quite be the same. I mean, I think that's just the case. There will just be games where they don't put in any difficulty options. There's nothing you can do. You're on console and you can't mod it, you know, but I think that'll kind of be the exception. I don't know.

• 26:10Kirk Hamilton?

  I guess that could happen, but I know that Brian is kidding when he says, oh, I should, should I just accept my destiny and move to Stardew Valley? Like, it won't come to that. It's not anything so extreme. I think most games these days have a lot of actually really good difficulty settings. And you can play around with them a little bit and kind of find what you like. So yeah, I think just being open to that and then taking care of yourself, you know? I was listening to, I was catching up on the Besties and Justin McElroy has had surgery for some tendon stuff or carpal tunnel stuff, I think, in his hand that he's had to deal with. And he, he was giving the advice to people on this show, like, stretch your hands, do stretches now while you, you know, while it can still help.

• 26:54Kirk Hamilton?

  Because if you don't do them and you get, and you do kind of, you know, repetitive strain damage to yourself, there does come a point where you have to get surgery or some other major intervention, where if you had kind of taken a little more care and done more stretches, you know, all along, you could have avoided that. And so that kind of struck home with me, especially as a guitar player. It really just makes me, I have to remember to stretch my left hand especially. And I just really don't want to have to ever get surgery or anything like that. So I would say also look up stretches for your hands and for your fingers. There's some that you can do that are pretty straightforward that I do think help.

• 27:28Jason Schreier?

  A few people actually sent in emails asking me about my wrist brace that I wear because now that we're doing these video clips, people have seen me with that and be like, "Oh, what's he doing?" I've talked about this in the past, but I actually wear one as a preventative measure. So I don't have carpal or anything like that, but I noticed I was starting, years ago now, at this point, I noticed I was starting to get like aches and discomfort when I use my mouse trackpad on my MacBook. And then I started wearing this, it's called a Mueller wrist guard, and it's been amazing and like prevented any sort of carpal tunnel. And now, and even when I use my trackpad without using this, it like hurts and like doesn't feel comfortable.

• 28:09Jason Schreier?

  So I highly recommend if you feel like anything coming on, preventative measures can be helpful, too, I've found.

• 28:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, totally. My big, my big tip is always just get a better chair, especially if you are a PC gamer. I feel like I waited way too long in life to finally upgrade my desk chair, and that was also one of my first big fancy gifts that I got for Dina, because when we moved in together, I was like, "Oh, my God, your computer chair is like the most disgusting, falling apart thing I've ever seen," which was also my position for many years. But once you upgrade and get a better chair, it can be completely life-changing. Again, kind of as a preventative thing. Like, I almost feel like I didn't know what I was missing out on until I upgraded my chair, and I realized it feels like an absurd purchase, especially

• 28:57Speaker 00

  because really good chairs go for 500 bucks or more. But I've found it to be really worth it, because I already have a sedentary job, and hey, I want to keep sitting in the chair after work and playing a video game. So between that and making sure to stand up every hour at least once, those are my, those are my hot ideas.

• 29:15Jason Schreier?

  I just got a standing desk for that.

• 29:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's another, yeah, Dina just got one, too. Another, like, even pricier but worthwhile purchase, I would say, is adjustable standing desk where you hit the button and it just goes to your perfect height.

• 29:28Jason Schreier?

  Yep, that's what I got.

• 29:28Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, you know, relating to chairs, I got a second one of these nice chairs that I like for when I'm playing games upstairs. And I found it used. And actually, a lot of times, you can find like steel case and Herman Miller chairs at an office liquidator near you.

• 29:43Speaker 00

  Good tip, yeah.

• 29:44Kirk Hamilton?

  I would say, don't buy them new, because you can get them for way cheaper. Because so many businesses, especially right now, I mean, at least in Portland, a lot of businesses like close their offices because, you know, a lot of people are working from home and a lot of offices have closed. So office like furniture liquidators have a lot of chairs and you can usually find them for very cheap. If you are looking to upgrade, find the one you want to get, then don't get it new, you know, just go to the liquidator. Plus, then you don't have to wait for it to be shipped or anything. And then one other thought, Jason, related to trackpads that you mentioned, something I was having a problem with too, this was a work thing and not a games thing, but I use a trackpad as well when I'm working. And from clicking the trackpad, I was getting like, kind of my tendons were

• 30:27Kirk Hamilton?

  feeling irritated. And I switched everything on my trackpad in like Mac accessibility settings to just be tapable. And it took some work to kind of figure out the arrangement that worked for me. But that made a huge difference.

• 30:39Speaker 00

  I've done this too. I really recommend this.

• 30:41Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it was something I'd never thought about before. And now, obviously, I always think about it. But you can just change a trackpad to be tapping. And it's, it makes a remarkably, it makes a significant difference, the difference between pressing the trackpad down and just tapping it really quick to get it in.

• 30:55Speaker 00

  You're reminding me, I always change this setting in Resident Evil games, and I wish more games would do this. Any quick tapping maneuver that a game includes, like, okay, your Grace or Leon is fighting off a zombie, you have to hit XXXX. That game has a setting where you can just press down X. Every time, that's like my first go to option that I will change in a game, that and turning off quick time events because I simply can't be bothered. But anytime I'm being asked to hammer one button a million times, that's going to really hurt my hand. And my last thing, I've mentioned it before on this show, but my gamer pillow, if you're a console gamer and you're not a PC gamer, that has been a huge difference for me as another preventative thing where I noticed,

• 31:36Speaker 00

  like, just holding my controller. And oftentimes, I'd be like hunching in a weird position. But just by buying a pillow that forces me to sit upright and have the controller balanced on something, changes everything about my posture when I'm playing and lets me play for probably way longer than I should without harming myself.

• 31:55Jason Schreier?

  I think we've gone pretty far afield from the actual question from Brian. Listen, we're trying to help. Well, no, he's already passed that this point and he's already aging and he's wondering about like recommendations for how to fix that. But I think the mods and what Kirk recommended earlier.

• 32:10Kirk Hamilton?

  I mean, I think all of those things can can help right now, but yeah.

• 32:13Jason Schreier?

  Sure, yeah. But let's let's move on anyway. Matt, do you want to read the next question?

• 32:17Speaker 00

  Sure. Jack says, what gaming term do you wish were mainstream? For example, when my cousins were teaching each other chess recently, I referred to castling as DLC since it was added to the game centuries later.

• 32:30Jason Schreier?

  Wow, I didn't know that.

• 32:31Speaker 00

  My cousins looked at me like I had three heads. What video game term do you each wish was part of the popular lexicon? Can we just say Jack's joke was good?

• 32:41Jason Schreier?

  I didn't realize castling was added to the game later. I thought chess was never a change. I guess castling is chess, too, you could say.

• 32:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, it is chess, too. This is a good bit, Jack. I just want to affirm that this was a funny joke. And unlike your cousins, we get it and we think it's good.

• 32:55Jason Schreier?

  No, it is a good joke. I have a quick answer for this that drives me crazy. So that might be very specific to me and other reporters, but every every June, I go out to LA for Summer Games Fest. And when people ask me what I'm doing in LA, I have to be like, Summer Games Fest. And they're like, what the fuck is that? And it used to be that I could say E3 and everyone knew what E3 was. And now I have to say Summer Games Fest, which used to be known as E3, or like the use of the convention that was formerly known as E3. I wish Summer Games Fest would become mainstream so I didn't have to deal with that.

• 33:26Speaker 00

  I get that, yeah.

• 33:27Kirk Hamilton?

  That's funny. So it's funny because this question makes me think of the number of gaming terms that have become mainstream. Have you noticed, I don't know, maybe, I guess I talk to kids of a certain age, like to my nieces about slang and language. And there are so many terms that they use, like NPC and talking to chat. And I mean, a million other things that are video game terms. And it's so much easier to scan modern slang if you follow video games, because so much video game jargon has actually made its way into the mainstream. I almost think, you know, like, there could be less of it. I don't know that they're necessarily.

• 34:07Speaker 00

  Put it back in the box.

• 34:08Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I really like the idea of DLC like and I kind of feel like a lot of people do get that reference that Patrick is or that Jack is talking about.

• 34:18Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, DLC is. Yeah, I'm surprised that Jack's cousins didn't know what that meant. Yeah, it's funny you say that, Kirk, because just thinking about this, the most common slang these days, from what I've heard or seen, is the stuff about like maxing, like looks maxing and like all those people are just like slapping maxing.

• 34:37Kirk Hamilton?

  Mid-maxing.

• 34:37Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, that seems like it comes from games, so yeah.

• 34:40Kirk Hamilton?

  Or, I mean, skill issues. So many times someone will be, God, what was it? It was like Sombra, was it some beef on TikTok? And he used the term "skill issue"? And like, "skill issue" goes back to, I mean, I remember seeing that.

• 34:52Jason Schreier?

  Wait, Sombra? Like the Overwatch character? Is that what you're talking about?

• 34:55Kirk Hamilton?

  No, the singer, the pretty boy singer. Oh, wow. You clearly don't have a 15-year-old niece.

• 35:02Speaker 00

  Wow. I also thought, I also thought of the Overwatch character. It's fine.

• 35:05Kirk Hamilton?

  He is an incredibly popular, an incredibly popular young singer. There was a, he got in a whole beef. Anyways, someone calling someone else out and referring to it as a "skill issue" just takes me back to gaming forums talking about, you know, Dark Souls and saying, "I don't think it's your build. I think it's just a skill issue."

• 35:20Speaker 00

  Get good, etc.

• 35:21Kirk Hamilton?

  And the fact that "skill issue" is now, that is a widely understood term among young people. So, you know, I don't know, a lot of these terms have made their way into the vernacular. I think maybe "carrying" is the one that comes to mind for me, because I remember getting carried and we would talk about a carry. This is in Destiny, for example. Jason and I made a friend who was very good at Destiny and who could carry us to the lighthouse.

• 35:41Jason Schreier?

  Todd, shout out to Todd.

• 35:42Kirk Hamilton?

  Shout out to Todd. So like a "carry", I think would be a fun term to hear a little bit more. But then again, for all I know, like Zoomers are out there using the term all the time and be like, "Oh, that was actually totally a carry" or whatever. So I don't really know.

• 35:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, you're reminding me of one, which is "turtling", which is a fighting game term, which basically just means playing purely avoidantly and lasting in a match as long as possible, especially if you're just trying to run out the clock. It's obviously considered like a really cheap way to lose. It's kind of the same family as cheesing, which is like just using cheap, cheap shots to win some. And I remember referring to like, you remember those huge democratic debates where there would just be like 16 candidates on stage and for the primaries where we'd just be like, what is, what are we even doing here? And I feel like I referred to Joe Biden as turtling his way to the nomination and I stand by it. Where like, you know, if you're playing Super Smash Brothers and like this is a four player match and if you just stay out of everybody's way for long enough,

• 36:38Speaker 00

  you can eventually win the game. And like, that really feels like what Joe Biden did. Anyway, I feel like turtling should be a term.

• 36:45Kirk Hamilton?

  That is very funny. That's really good.

• 36:46Speaker 00

  No one knew what I was talking about. Nobody, I had to explain it just as I did now. And I think people were still kind of like, okay, yeah, sure.

• 36:53Kirk Hamilton?

  That is totally, that is a really good term that could be used. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Turtling, carrying, yeah, good.

• 36:59Jason Schreier?

  All right, Kirk, when you read this next one?

• 37:02Kirk Hamilton?

  Is this Patrick that we're up to? All right, Patrick writes, big fan of the show. With the rumors of a Witcher 3 DLC coming 11 years after the original release of the game, are there any decade old games that you would be interested in seeing new DLC for today?

• 37:18Jason Schreier?

  First of all, very exciting that that's gonna happen.

• 37:22Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I wonder what it'll be.

• 37:24Jason Schreier?

  Well, I'm guessing it's like a, like a Siri thing that sets up for Witcher 4. That would make the most sense, right?

• 37:30Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, that makes sense, I guess. I just like, I guess I mean, I wonder what it'll look like, like if it'll actually be a series of quests with a story or?

• 37:36Jason Schreier?

  That'd be crazy. It'd be so cool. If that happens, we have to like really dive into Witcher 3.

• 37:41Kirk Hamilton?

  If they had new Gwent cards, oh god, that'll have to sort of.

• 37:43Speaker 00

  Just purely a Gwent expansion.

• 37:45Jason Schreier?

  My answer to this is funny, if, will be funny for anyone who's seen my reporting over the last couple of weeks and the, or seen people echoing my reporting, because my answer is Bloodborne.

• 37:57Kirk Hamilton?

  That was gonna be mine too.

• 37:58Speaker 00

  Really? Oh man, is it like the least likely thing to ever happen? Bloodborne?

• 38:03Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, but that's what I would want to, like, if you're, if you were to ask me, what's a game that's a decade old that I would want to see DLC for? It would be Bloodborne.

• 38:09Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 38:09Speaker 00

  This is older than a decade, but I would be like, what if they just did another Citadel DLC for Mass Effect? Like, what, let's just make another one. Let the BioWare developers who remain have fun. Let them have fun and make another Citadel DLC. It's what we all want. We just want the characters to hang out.

• 38:28Kirk Hamilton?

  It is. It is what we want. Yeah, I think I would have said Bloodborne as well. Not just because that would probably mean that we would also get some sort of Bloodborne update, but it would just be cool to play some more of that game. And I've wanted to play more of that game since I stopped playing that game. So yeah, I think Bloodborne for me, too.

• 38:45Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. Man, I was talking about this on another show. Just real quick tangent, um, Bloodborne. So, I mean, uh, Blue Point shut down. I reported shortly afterwards that they had been pitching a Bloodborne, uh, remake, remaster, whatever it was, last year. And Sony said yes, but From Software said no. And it got me thinking about us, actually. Because what's interesting about this situation is that From Software doesn't own the Bloodborne IP, but they do own the Elden Ring IP. And so for the three of us, as people who built a show for Kotaku and then went on to build our own thing, it might be, I feel like it's very easy to see why a company like From would be like, no, we don't want to do Bloodborne and work on someone else's IP. We want to work on our own stuff. Like, that to me makes

• 39:28Jason Schreier?

  perfect sense. I don't know if that's why they said why, but I've been thinking about that a lot.

• 39:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:32Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, that's a very good point.

• 39:34Speaker 00

  I get it. I, I think it makes sense. I'd also, I feel like the us version of that would be if they made a really cool game that was kind of reminiscent of Bloodborne, but maybe better.

• 39:44Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. Well, and also, it's funny because it is, it's the tricky thing in this situation is that it would be like if Kotaku's split screen was dramatically different from triple click and triple click didn't actually scratch the split screen itch for a large subset of people, you know, which obviously is just a difference.

• 40:02Speaker 00

  And if people were begging, begging us to bring back split screen, would we do it?

• 40:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Come on, like, we love split screen. And I would feel a little like, hey, would I make triple click for you? And which I kind of get from feeling, you know, being like, dude, we made Elden Ring. It's like one of the best games ever made.

• 40:16Speaker 00

  Freaking amazing.

• 40:17Kirk Hamilton?

  Can that just be enough?

• 40:18Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, right. Right. And they own the Elden Ring IP. So, anyway, um, we have one final question. I will read this one. This is from Jesse. This question is for Kirk. I am a regular listener of The Distraction, a podcast hosted by Drew McGarry and David Roth for the website Defector. At the end of every episode, Drew announces that the theme song was written and performed by your very own Kirk Hamilton. I'm wondering if Kirk can tell us how that came to be, what the process is for creating a theme song to a podcast, and what the process was to record it. Do you have plans to make any other theme songs?

• 40:57Kirk Hamilton?

  This was so cool, man. I love the fact that the Defector podcast uses my music.

• 41:02Jason Schreier?

  It's so cool.

• 41:03Kirk Hamilton?

  It makes me so proud.

• 41:04Speaker 00

  It's such a good song. Can we just hype you up for a second? That song is so good.

• 41:08Jason Schreier?

  It's really good.

• 41:09Speaker 00

  I rock out to it every time I hear it. It is a bop. It is so fun to dance to.

• 41:28Jason Schreier?

  And we should, I mean, people might not realize this because it's been so long, but we should clarify here that we worked with Drew and Roth when we were all at the same company, Garka Media. The three of us were at Kotaku and Drew and Roth were at Deadspin.

• 41:39Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, that's, so that's, that's at the root of this story. So yes, we worked alongside of those guys when they were at, um, man, it's so funny. They were at Deadspin. I have not said the word Deadspin in so long that I, like, all my brain was thinking was Defector. So good on them. Man, also, by the way, I just saw a bunch of Defector headlines on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. They were sourcing Defector, uh, talking about, I believe it was talking about biathletes. They had a bunch of funny biathlon headlines on Defector and they were running them as their reference point on that show. So that was just very cool to see that someone at Last Week Tonight is like a Defector reader and wants to, wants to share their work.

• 42:19Kirk Hamilton?

  So anyways, uh, yeah, so we were at Kotaku. I left, uh, you know, a little while before you two did. So this was kind of during that interim period where there was new ownership. There was a lot of conflict. This is when they were getting ready to quit en masse, which is what happened, that everyone at Deadspin quit over editorial differences with the new leadership and they went and started Defector. So when that happened, I was so proud of them and so excited. It was such an exciting thing to see this whole newsroom of writers who also like, who I had admired so much for so many years. I was always so impressed with Deadspin and just, they were very aspirational, talented people that I looked up to. So it was so exciting to see them like take this stand together and go launch this thing. Um, it's still really.

• 43:05Kirk Hamilton?

  It's so cool that it's still going. So when that happened, I just wrote to Tom Ley, I think, who is, he is at the time, and I believe is still the EIC of Defector. And I just wrote him an email and said, dude, first off, I think this is awesome. Like, anything that I can do, I'd love to write music for you guys, for anything that you're doing, if you need it, just let me know. And then he wrote back and said, actually, yeah, we're, you know, we're gonna be launching a new podcast with Roth and Drew. And yeah, like, why don't we talk about a theme song? So then I just met with those two, and Drew was really, Drew McGary was the big kind of, he had the vision for what he wanted. It's very true. And he like brought in a couple of rock artists that he really liked and kind of some examples. And I just went off of that and then gave him a couple of sort of

• 43:50Kirk Hamilton?

  loose prototypes. There are a few different types of, you know, styles that I, that I sort of wrote and shared. And he had a really strong idea of what he wanted. So I kind of worked with that and, and you know, kind of just built it out and then sent it to them.

• 44:06Jason Schreier?

  When you say, Kirk, when you say you kind of worked with that, do you like, when you hear, if he's like, I want this to be in the style of AC/DC, do you like, listen to a specific type of chord progression or type of riff? Like, is, do you get really technical? Or are you just like, I have an idea of what that sounds like, I'm just gonna riff until I find something that works?

• 44:23Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it's a little more of the latter. I mean, it's, you know, you kind of hear, it was Bob Mould, I believe, was the, the guy who Drew McGary, who like Drew just loves Bob's music. I think Bob has been a guest on The Distraction. I might be wrong about that, but I'm pretty sure he has been. Who's a great rock musician.

• 44:49Kirk Hamilton?

  And also the kind of, actually, the Last Week Tonight kind of groove, I think, was one of our reference points. This like guitar-heavy, driving thing. And so you hear a little bit of that and it's pretty clear, okay, I get what they're going for, like what kind of guitar I'll use, what kind of tone, what kind of sound. And then I just sat down and like figured out a basic groove and a chord progression and a melody and didn't flesh it out too much because I wanted to make sure that I was going in the right directions. There's kind of a bit of- You do a bit of work and you pause and then you send it to the person, then you wait, you know, and the client gets back to you. So it was that kind of thing, which I don't do a ton of work like that. I have, in the past, I used to do more, but it's really fun to do it when I do it. It's always a lot more work than you think it's gonna be.

• 45:31Kirk Hamilton?

  And in this case, it was fun because I wanted to do something for Defector. Like, it was, I was so proud. They, they paid me. I mean, it was a paid gig, but I was, I would have done it for free. I didn't care. I just wanted to make some music for them. So I'm still very proud that it came together. And yeah, I am actually very happy with that piece of music. I think it rocks. I think it's pretty, I think it's pretty good and it fits their show, which, which also makes me very happy.

• 46:05Jason Schreier?

  Very cool. All right. Well, thank you to everyone who submitted questions. We've got lots of good ones. We'll probably do another mailbag pretty soon because we have a, a, a

• 46:13Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 46:13Jason Schreier?

  bag stuffed full of great emails. But just once again, if you want to reach out to us, triple click at maximumfun.org. All right, let's take a little break and then we'll be back with one more thing.

• 46:29Speaker 03

  Hey, it's TV Chef Fantasy League. You know, the podcast where we watch cooking competition shows and we treat them like fantasy sports.

• 46:36Speaker 04

  Right now, we're getting ready for Top Chef Carolinas.

• 46:39Speaker 05

  We spend all year covering these competitions, but now it's time for the main event.

• 46:43Speaker 03

  The apex predator of competitive cooking television shows.

• 46:47Speaker 04

  Tune in, draft a team, and play along.

• 46:50Speaker 05

  With your hosts, Ciara Cotto.

• 46:51Speaker 03

  Mike Cabal on.

• 46:53Speaker 04

  And if you want to weigh.

• 46:54Speaker 05

  New episodes every week at maximumfun.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 47:01Speaker 03

  Wonderful is a podcast where we talk about things we like. That's hard to sell in a promo like this, so we've enlisted the help of piano rock superstar Billy Joel to tell you about some of the topics we've covered. Take it away, real Billy Joel.

• 47:13Speaker 06

  Titty Rock's been on Lake Sun, Wilson's shy of circle time Sega Dreamcast sees a salad tower of annoyed. Keep me up, eat time capsules, Wayne's world cheese bulls, Wallace Stevens donkey gone, fun size almond joy. They didn't start the podcast, except that's not true, they didn't 22. They didn't start the podcast, no they actually did, that was in fact a fib.

• 47:39Speaker 07

  Listen to Wonderful every Wednesday on MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks, Real Billy Joel.

• 47:45Speaker 06

  No problem, Griffin.

• 47:47Jason Schreier?

  And we are back. Kirk, Maddie, it's time for one more thing. Let's talk about Pokopia. We were alluding at this a little bit earlier, because that is my one more thing. I've been playing this. This is the latest game from Nintendo for the Switch 2. It is, Pokopia is like a Pokemon, Pokemon utopia, I suppose. And the idea of this game is that you are inhabiting this, this ruined world where all the Pokemon and all the humans have disappeared. It's kind of the destroyed version of Canto from the Pokemon games, and you have to rebuild it, and find Pokemon and bring them back to your village and stuff, and recruit them and whatnot. And a lot of people have made comparisons to games like Animal Crossing and Minecraft, and there's a little bit of that stuff there, but really, this is Dragon

• 48:32Jason Schreier?

  Quest Builders 3, just called Pokemon Builders. It's like a new Dragon Quest Builders games, or called Pokopia. It's a new Dragon Quest Builders game with Pokemon attached to it, and therefore, I am enamored of it. I am really enjoying what I've played so far. I haven't played much, but you can tell, and so this is made by Omega Force, which is the developers of Dragon Quest Builders, and you can very much tell that, like, I didn't realize, I knew it was gonna be inspired by Dragon Quest Builders, I didn't realize it's gonna be straight up a new Dragon Quest Builders game. And if you've played those games before, these are brilliant, very underrated games. You can see all of the flourishes, like, all the tiny little details that you would notice if you played one of these games are back

• 49:14Jason Schreier?

  in full space here. Like, for example, you'll be walking around your little village, and every time you do something cool, like solve a quest, or like, build something new. In Dragon Quest Builders, and therefore in this game too, all of your residents will come over to you and they'll all cheer and start clapping and stuff and get really excited, which is just like a little detail that like those games have and now this game has. The biggest difference between this and the Dragon Quest Builders games is that those games have combat and have like boss attacks and people come and try to destroy your village and stuff like that. There's no combat in Pocopia. It's a nonviolent game, so it is more like Animal Crossing in that front in that you're spending all of your time just kind of like inhabiting this village and building out habitats for your creatures.

• 49:58Jason Schreier?

  That said, there's some cool twists of its own that I think help make up for that. For example, each type of Pokemon you can get, you can kind of recruit to your village by building a very specific type of lair. So like some Pokemon might only be lured in if you put four grass tiles together. Others might be lured in if you put a tree and then some grass tiles under it. If you want Hitmonchan, who's like a fighting Pokemon who will teach you how to smash stuff, you have to put up a bench next to a punching bag and then he'll come and start punching away at the punching bag. So very specific stuff like that. I am not a big Pokemon person. I don't think any of us are. We don't talk about it a lot on this show, but this game, I think because it doesn't have that boring

• 50:43Jason Schreier?

  Pokemon combat that I've never really gotten into, this game is a lot more appealing for me and I'm really enjoying what I'm playing so far, mostly because it's a new Dragon Quest Builders game essentially. And so, yeah, I might try to get into this with my kids. Maybe after I'm done playing it through, I'll let them have a file on there. Because just like Animal Crossing, it seems like the type of game that like they would really enjoy. It's all about building. The controls are a little trickier in this one, I think, because you have to like really play around with 3D space in a way they might not be ready for just yet. Because it's got that Minecraft ring of like moving blocks around and digging them out and just like Dragon Quest Builders. Did either of you play Dragon Quest Builders or its sequel? Yeah, Kirk, you did. You played a little bit.

• 51:27Kirk Hamilton?

  I played a whole bunch of the first one.

• 51:28Jason Schreier?

  Oh, you played a bunch. Okay.

• 51:29Kirk Hamilton?

  A bit of the second one. Yeah, you got me into it. It's a great game.

• 51:31Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The second one was amazing, so much better than the first. And just like those, like this has same sorts of undertones. There's a story, there's dialogue from all the Pokemon. They're all talking constantly, which is very funny to see like Charmanders and Bulbasaur's interacting and like with actual dialogue exchanges, talking to each other. It's very cute. I'm enjoying it more than I expected. It's been extremely well reviewed and critically acclaimed. I imagine it might be a game of the year contender by the end of the year because I think this is a special one. And I'm looking forward to playing a lot more, again, pretty early on. I'll talk about it more down the road if I, if I like wind up sticking with it and playing a good chunk of it. But yeah, I'm enjoying it a lot.

• 52:15Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice. Yeah, Emily is almost certainly going to play this and I'll follow along with her and then maybe play a little myself, but I'm also just excited to watch her play.

• 52:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, I want to check it out, too.

• 52:24Jason Schreier?

  It's cool. Yeah. Downside for some people out there, I imagine, will be that it's a Switch 2 exclusive. But that's, that's going to happen this year, I think, is we're going to start getting some games that are pretty cool. It's, yeah, because it's like, it's been pretty easy, I think, to stay away from upgrading over the last year. There haven't been any real, I mean, Donkey Kong was cool, but there hasn't been a real killer app that makes you feel like I have to get a Switch 2 right now. But maybe this year, maybe throughout next year, it might be time. And that begs the question of like, are Switch 2 prices going to go up? Should you get one now if you want one before prices go up? Lot of things to think about there. All right, Maddie, what's your one more thing?

• 53:07Speaker 00

  My one more thing is a Netflix show Dean and I have been watching. That's called How to Get to Heaven from Belfast. We're not done with it yet and it is a mystery. So I feel like I'll have to check back in and tell everyone if the mystery ends in an unsatisfying way. But the reason why we're watching this is because it is made by Lisa McGee, who made Dairy Girls, which was a one more thing that I had a while back. It's like a hilarious, kind of slightly autobiographical comedy set in Ireland about like being a teen girl during the troubles and kind of mixes like the poignancy of that with a lot of just riotous hijinks that this group of teenage girls get into at Catholic school.

• 53:51Speaker 00

  And it's, it's so funny. I really recommend Dairy Girls still. And I think that this show has moments where it's very funny. And even though it is like, It's women, adult women. They're all 38 and their friend in high school who they haven't spoken to since they were all 18, died under mysterious circumstances. So they're like returning to their hometown, their small town for the first time in 20 years and kind of looking, haphazardly looking into this mysterious death, even though they have no detective experience and don't know what they're doing at all. It's definitely a comedy, but it's up and down. I think Lisa McGee's really at home, writing comedy and like having

• 54:34Speaker 00

  this kind of like female friendship. Everyone sort of love, hates each other and makes fun of each other dynamic that I think is really effective. And when it's funny, it works really well. The pacing of the mystery, I could take or leave, but I feel like I'm watching this because I just really wanted more Dairy Girls and that's like almost enough for me. And I, I don't know. I wish it were a little stronger, but if you just really wanted more of that and wanted something that felt a little bit like Dairy Girls, but for some reason, there's a mysterious death at the center of it that the women are investigating. How to Get to Heaven from Belfast is, is a show. I will let you all know what I think of the end when I get there, but-

• 55:15Kirk Hamilton?

  Have you been watching with subtitles?

• 55:17Speaker 00

  Yes, because I, I will admit, I can't, I can't always understand their accents. I'm an American and they have unique slang, but that is all like part of the charm of it, I think, is that I kind of watch it and I'm like, oh, okay, that's an interesting way to put that. All right. That's like also the charm of Dairy Girls, for which you also need subtitles, I would say.

• 55:37Kirk Hamilton?

  Yep.

• 55:37Speaker 00

  But Kirk, you watched the pilot and you kind of agreed. It's a little up and down. I think it gets stronger as it goes, but it's, yeah, it's, it's a ride.

• 55:44Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, we, we're rewatching Dairy Girls.

• 55:46Speaker 00

  Oh, sure.

• 55:47Kirk Hamilton?

  And that show is just, it's, it's just so good. I like could just watch it over and over and over. We're, I just laugh so hard. And yeah, I don't know. We watched the first episode. I'll be curious what you think when you finish. I was a little, it wasn't that I didn't like it exactly. I was sort of up and down on it. And by the end, I just sort of, there were other things to watch, and so I haven't gone back to it. It just seemed like the tonal mix of, it's like Yellowjackets plus Dairy Girls. It has this Yellowjackets feeling of something happened when we were young. This Gothic fear that follows us, we're gonna, it's a mystery, but I'm seeing ghosts. Like, it has that kind of hallucinogenic nightmare quality that Yellowjackets has. But then also Dairy Girls wackiness.

• 56:29Kirk Hamilton?

  And I was a little, I just wasn't a little, I was a little unsure on the mix of tones there.

• 56:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a tough, it's weird to have those two tones in one show. Like, nobody has ever been like, what if Dairy Girls and Yellowjacket Season One were put together into a show? But Lisa McKee did that.

• 56:45Jason Schreier?

  At least one person could say that.

• 56:48Speaker 00

  Lisa McKee and a series of Netflix executives made the decision to do that. So.

• 56:52Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I mean, I love that she's giving, that they're giving her, you know, carte blanche to do her thing. Because she's clearly pretty amazing. So yeah, I'll be curious what you think when you finish it. Definitely let me know.

• 57:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, much like Yellowjackets, which I was so high on at the beginning. And I mean, that's sort of like a different example. This is an eight-episode series. But I'm also like, is it gonna end here? Are we gonna keep stretching this out? Is like another kind of inherent question I have with this kind of structure of show. In part because of Yellowjackets disappointing me so much with Season Two. After which point I stopped watching because I just was like, I don't, I don't want to keep just dragging myself across this finish line personally. But yeah, I think it's tough. I think it's really tough to strike that balance with a long-running mystery series and have it feel satisfying in the end.

• 57:35Jason Schreier?

  All right. Last but not least, Kirk Hamilton, what's your one more thing?

• 57:40Kirk Hamilton?

  My one more thing is, I guess it's technically a novella by Sawa Ichikawa called Hunchback that I read on the recommendation of my friend Steph, who reads a lot of great books and tells me about them. And she basically said, this book is wild. You should just read it. And I said, okay. And I didn't look up anything about it and I just read it. And this, because it's a novella, is quite short. I read it and I would say under two hours, around two hours, very quickly. It was, it's very much a one-sitting kind of a thing. And it is really remarkable and I wanted to recommend it to everybody. It is not like anything I've ever read. I almost don't, I don't know. It was such an interesting experience to go in totally

• 58:24Kirk Hamilton?

  blind, but I suppose it would never hurt to know a little bit about it. This is a book, or I suppose a novella, about a first-person protagonist who is, has a severe disability. Congenital myopathy is what it is called, and it is basically a sort of developmental problem where your spine and bones don't, they kind of bend and make it so that a lot of your organs can't properly develop. And as a result, you can't fully breathe correctly, and mucus and sort of breathing are a huge problem to the point where kind of everything in your life becomes very, very difficult. And this is a condition that Sao Ichikawa

• 59:07Kirk Hamilton?

  has. And that's very much what the story is about. It is the perspective of someone with this kind of disability, you know, something really life-altering, where your, everything about your life has to be different than it would have been. And it's so intense, it's very visceral, it's very funny at times, it's so inward-looking, and I came away from it with this feeling that I guess only great books can give you, where you just feel as though you've experienced someone else's life. And I felt like my whole perspective on disability and life just expanded, you know? It was, it didn't blow my mind exactly like that, that would be overselling it. It just expanded me somewhat. I have a new

• 59:50Kirk Hamilton?

  appreciation for certain things about what it would be like to live with that kind of disability. And it's just a really wonderful story. I kind of want to reread it because it's very dense. It covers a lot of ground, you know, it's a lot of inner monologues. So it's someone just thinking about literature, and fiction, and television, and sex, and romance, and desire, and life, and inheritance, and wealth. And it's just so many different things, because it's this character who is just, I don't know, whose mind is just very active. So I really just found it surprising. It has a really interesting ending that I found provocative. It's such a short read that the ent- Intensity of it didn't wear me out. I felt like I could hang with this like

• 1:00:32Kirk Hamilton?

  very intense experience that it takes you on. And it was really cool to read something like this, you know, it's kind of the opposite of a Brandon Sanderson epic, right? It's not just a big pleasing, you know, slice of pizza. It is a pretty intense and very, you know, flavorful little bite of something that you have never tasted before. And I thought I would make that my one more thing, just for anyone out there who thinks that sounds interesting. So I highly recommend it. This is a great, a great story.

• 1:01:04Jason Schreier?

  And this is translated, this is translated from Japanese.

• 1:01:07Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, sorry, I should, I should specify, this is translated by Polly Barton, who gets a special credit in this and who did a wonderful job, because it is incredibly well-written and so engaging. And the voice of the protagonist is a very important part of the story. But it was written in Japanese, Ichikawa writes in Japanese. And so it was translated and it is like, as far as I can tell, an incredible translation job. And that alone must have been a fascinating process. So anyways, really a hell of a thing. Super recommend it. You both would love it. Anyone listening who thinks that sounds cool, you would get a lot out of it. So one more time, that is Hunchback by Sao Ichikawa from 2023. Really a remarkable novella.

• 1:01:47Speaker 00

  Sounds really cool.

• 1:01:48Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:49Jason Schreier?

  Alrighty, that is that for this week's episode. Thank you to everybody who sent in questions. Thank you to everybody who listened to our podcast. Thank you to everybody who listens every week to our podcast. We appreciate you all.

• 1:02:02Kirk Hamilton?

  We appreciate you.

• 1:02:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:04Jason Schreier?

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

• 1:02:07Kirk Hamilton?

  Yep, see you both next week.

• 1:02:09Speaker 00

  Bye.

• 1:02:12Kirk 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. Follow us at tripleclickatmaximumfun.org and find links to our merch store and our Discord server in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

• 1:03:10Speaker 06

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