What It's Like When Your Game Flops

Veteran game designer Nels Anderson joins the show to talk about his latest game, Generation Exile, which didn't reach the audience he was hoping to reach. Nels talks about the development challenges, what he thinks went wrong, and what's next for his company, Sonderlust Studios.

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

• 0:03Speaker 00

  Hundreds and hundreds of video games have already been released this year. Is that inspiring or just a record of how many great games we haven't heard of? Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we bring on game developer Nels Anderson, who put out a game called Generation Exile that just couldn't seem to hit with people. It's fun to talk about success, but let's not forget the other side.

• 0:30Speaker 00

  I'm Maddy Myers.

• 0:31Jason Schreier?

  I'm Jason Schreier.

• 0:33Kirk Hamilton?

  And I'm Kirk Hamilton, and hello.

• 0:35Speaker 00

  Hello. We're back again.

• 0:37Kirk Hamilton?

  Here we are.

• 0:38Jason Schreier?

  Can I say something real quick? I want to do kind of an addendum to a previous episode because I got a message about this. A few weeks ago, I was like, we were talking about that blog post that was about AI and that how it was found out to be written like.

• 0:51Speaker 00

  Oh, no, another addendum.

• 0:53Kirk Hamilton?

  Ongoing saga, really. You already got one addendum.

• 0:56Jason Schreier?

  But then, but then I said something that seemed kind of contradictory that I need to elaborate on, which is that afterwards, I was basically like, I can always tell when something's been written by AI. I just want to be very clear. I can always tell when something's written, been written by AI and not edited afterwards. The reason we couldn't tell with that blog post is because it was, it was written by AI and then purportedly written by AI and then added edited afterwards, such as replacing all the M dashes with semicolons, et cetera, et cetera. What I'm saying is if something is raw, written by AI, it is very easy for me to tell.

• 1:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think we did clarify that because we also went on to describe my experiences trying to tell which freelancers are and are not using AI. And I was explaining how it becomes very difficult if the person generates something in AI and then rewrites it on their own.

• 1:43Jason Schreier?

  Yes.

• 1:43Speaker 00

  And I think that is going to become something that we continue to debate as to what is and isn't creativity? What is and isn't truly coming up with an idea yourself? I mean, I don't think it has.

• 1:55Jason Schreier?

  We will certainly discuss more.

• 1:57Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. That question is going to be really important. Like, or if a small part of something is AI-generated, you're playing a game and one song is AI-generated. And you didn't even notice as it went by because so many other things were handmade. Or you're listening to a song and one synth part was AI-generated. You know, like that, that kind of thing is going to be a really common and is a kind of much more complex part of the conversation.

• 2:20Jason Schreier?

  It's so funny you say that because there was a game that was like controversial. I think Tetele was telling me about this, that there was a game where like, it was an interesting game and then all the music was just generated by AI. And the developer was like in the comments defending it. It'd be like, this wouldn't exist if not for AI. And people were like, well, why does it need to exist if you couldn't be bothered to create it? And yeah, really fascinating stuff.

• 2:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think that's just going to keep happening. But hey, you know what isn't generated by AI? This show or all of our bonus episodes.

• 2:51Kirk Hamilton?

  I thought you were going to say, you know what is going to also keep happening? Episodes of Triple Click.

• 2:55Speaker 00

  That is way better. I love that. Episodes of Triple Click are going to keep happening. That's the Triple Click promise, people.

• 3:02Kirk Hamilton?

  The episodes of Triple Click will continue until more.

• 3:07Speaker 00

  We obviously have Triple Click every single week. That's going to keep happening, but we also have bonus episodes and there's just one way you can get them, folks. It's to go to maximumfun.org/join and become a member. And if you do that, you will get the huge cash of every monthly bonus app we have ever previously recorded, including several in which we are slowly watching all of the TV show, The Sopranos. Our most recent mega, mega bonus episode is about seasons two and three, and it's like two hours long, something like that.

• 3:46Jason Schreier?

  Almost three hours.

• 3:46Kirk Hamilton?

  It's like two and a half hours.

• 3:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a really meaty bonus app, but there are different ones of different lengths and check them all out. The next one we're going to do. Is about a TV show that I've never seen, but I think you two have both already seen it before, similar to The Sopranos, but also not at all, because the TV show is real different. It's called Players. So Jason, why don't you talk about Players, because you've seen it before and I haven't seen it yet.

• 4:11Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, so Players, it's a mockumentary by the creators of American Vandal, and it is hilarious. It is this incredible look at this esports team called Fugitive Gaming that plays League of Legends. And it's kind of like a send up of like sports documentaries, like The Last Dance, except it's about this esports team. But it's also, just like American Vandal, even though it's at its core very funny, it's also a very human, emotional story. So it's fantastic to watch. I love it. We're going to be rewatching it and talking about it, but we're also going to talk about some of the broader themes and esports and stuff. So it's hard to find, so if you can't find it, you can't watch it. I had to like pay 20 bucks on YouTube to stream it.

• 4:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, that might be the best way to watch it.

• 4:54Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, that might be the best way. If you don't want to watch it, that's totally fine. This bonus episode, we're going to make sure it's listenable and fun to listen to and interesting, even if you haven't seen it. So we're going to talk about it in a broad way. But if you can watch it, it's incredible. I highly recommend it.

• 5:07Speaker 00

  I will be watching it and excited to see what it is like.

• 5:12Kirk Hamilton?

  I'll be very curious what you think, Maddie. It's a wild ride.

• 5:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, but we aren't going to, we aren't going to keep talking about bonus ups. We're going to get to the meat of the episode now. Jason, what are we talking about today?

• 5:24Jason Schreier?

  So today, we have a really interesting candid conversation with someone who released a game that not very many people played. We talk a lot to people who have made successful games on the show, and now we're going to talk to someone who kind of did the opposite. So our guest today is Nels Anderson, who is a veteran game developer. Kirk and I actually know Nels. We've been friendly for a long time. He was on the show back when it was split screen at one of our GDC interview episodes. And he actually, he reached out not too long ago because he wanted to offer his perspective on releasing a game in early access. And what happens when things don't go well?

• 6:09Jason Schreier?

  He's worked on games, including Death Spank, Mark of the Ninja and Firewatch, the fantastic walking simulator released by Campos Santo, the indie studio that Nels helped cofound. That would then go on to be purchased by Valve after Nels left. Nels left Campos Santo to start a new independent studio in 2017 called Sonderlust Studios that released a game recently, last month called Generation Exile. That is kind of part visual novel, part city simulator. And it's really, it's just kind of a grand strategy game.

• 6:51Jason Schreier?

  And it is about the environment and eco, like friendly themes. And he released it and he told us that it has not done particularly well. And so we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about what it's like to spend many years of your life on a project, on a game that comes out and doesn't resonate with quite as many people as you wanted. We're going to talk to him about that whole process and why it took so long and lots of other good stuff. So without further ado, let's bring in Nels.

• 7:31Jason Schreier?

  And we are joined by Nels Anderson. Hello, Nels. How are you?

• 7:34Speaker 03

  Hello, I'm good.

• 7:35Jason Schreier?

  Hello, Nels.

• 7:36Speaker 03

  Hi.

• 7:38Jason Schreier?

  Nice to see you, man.

• 7:39Speaker 03

  How are y'all?

• 7:39Jason Schreier?

  We are doing okay. Congratulations on launching a video game. Generation Exile is of course out right now as we speak.

• 7:48Speaker 03

  It is. It exists in the world.

• 7:50Jason Schreier?

  It exists in the world and there's a lot to get into. We're gonna get into some of the nitty gritty of launching a game of 2026 and what that's like. But first, let's back up a little bit. So people out there might know many of the games you've worked on, like Mark of the Ninja and Firewatch, but I actually want to cut to 2016 when you decided to go even more independent than you already were. So you were at a place called Campos Santo that would later be purchased by Valve. What made you decide to start a new company after that?

• 8:22Speaker 03

  Because I'm stupid.

• 8:25Kirk Hamilton?

  There we go. Starting off spicy.

• 8:27Speaker 00

  That wasn't the reason back then, though.

• 8:29Speaker 03

  That's true.

• 8:30Speaker 00

  Back then, you probably had a good reason.

• 8:33Speaker 03

  No, I mean, it was really like, so the setup with Campo Santo on Firewatch was there was kind of a locus of most people were in San Francisco. I was here in Vancouver and then Ollie Moss and James Benson were in the UK. So it was like, that experience kind of demonstrated to me that it's possible to have that kind of just like, we can actually be, we don't need an office with only people in the same geographic location. And there were so many incredibly talented people, both here in Vancouver and folks elsewhere, that I knew that I'm like, well, it would be really rad to be able to work in this way with a bunch of these folks. And also, you know, Campo had been talking a little bit about what they

• 9:18Speaker 03

  wanted to do next. And then obviously, we know where that story goes. They got acquired by Valve. But certainly at that time, the creative interest was like largely building upon a lot of the learnings from Firewatch, right? So like, the next thing would have been like a first person story driven exploration narrative thing, which was cool. But I also just made one of those. And because we can be artistic and say I'm a dilettante and not simply someone with an attention disorder, that I've never made the type of same type of game twice. Because like, why utilize all those learnings? You could just throw them away and start over knowing nothing every single time.

• 9:58Speaker 00

  Oh, man.

• 9:59Speaker 03

  So that was, that was also part of it. I think that, you know, my interest was like, okay, what else is out there to do like creative design game wise?

• 10:08Kirk Hamilton?

  To put this timeline in, in perspective for me, so they announced this game, right? Was it called In the Valley of the Gods? This was the follow up to Firewatch?

• 10:15Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 10:15Kirk Hamilton?

  Had you already announced you were leaving Campo at that point?

• 10:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, I had, I had departed at that point. Like, there was like a very hazy notion, I think shortly before I left, but it was, you know, even when Firewatch came out, there's still like, you launch a game, but you're still doing support for quite a chunk of time as well. So what the next thing was, was like quite hazy, but it was certainly still going to be in that same like mechanical design format.

• 10:40Jason Schreier?

  So did you have a plan at this point when you're so you're going indie, you start your own studio, you bring some people over. Did you have a financing plan? Did you have a game plan? What was kind of the next those, those few months after you left Campo Santo? What were those like?

• 10:53Speaker 03

  What I did was I had a human child. So that, that took off.

• 10:57Jason Schreier?

  Perfect timing.

• 10:58Speaker 03

  Yep. My child was born about a month after Firewatch came out. So that, that, uh, both his physical size as well as his size in my consciousness continued to balloon over that time. So that was also very consuming. And just a giant parade of, I don't know what I'm doing about any of this. But once that at least vaguely stabilized. Fortunately, at least in this country, there's this entity up here called the Canadian Media Fund or the CMF. It exists primarily to fund like film and television productions made up here in Canada, but they do have a dusty, halfway forgotten corner. That's like, oh, also video games, I guess.

• 11:36Speaker 03

  So back in 2000 and 2017, managed to secure prototyping funding from the CMF. It's not like an art grant. It's like an interest free loan. But that's like kind of the second best source of funding one can hope to get. And so we were able to take that prototype funding, make enough of a like rough skeleton of what would eventually become Generation Exile. And then we're able to take that around to various more traditional funding type entities. And eventually we signed a funding arrangement with this entity, I guess, called Kowloon Knights, which is a fund. They're not like a publisher. They don't do like, oh, we'll actually do the marketing or the loc and we'll have like an assigned producer.

• 12:19Speaker 03

  It's not that. It's like, we will give you money. We will give you advice and then everything else you will provide via those funds we have given to you. And that, you know, that's kind of how we'd always worked in the past anyway. So that seemed like a perfect fit. And they were, you know, incredible to work with. I think that fund has largely wrapped up, but most of the same people are now running Kepler Interactive.

• 12:40Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, the people they did, uh, Claire Obscure.

• 12:42Speaker 03

  Most notably, correct. Um, and so probably between when we have started this conversation and now, Claire Obscure has cleared more funds than our project ever will. So they are doing just fine.

• 12:56Jason Schreier?

  We'll get to that.

• 12:57Kirk Hamilton?

  I have a kind of budgetary follow up, I guess, or a question coming from the perspective of, I think, how a lot of people who don't work in game development think about how games are funded, which is that Firewatch was very successful. And then Campo, a studio that you at least, I think, co-founded, was bought by Valve. Like, did you have money coming in from that game's sales or from the acquisition that you considered part of the, like, funding picture for putting together something new?

• 13:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, so it wasn't much. So I never owned any equity chunk of Campo Santo for various, like-

• 13:32Kirk Hamilton?

  Okay, got it.

• 13:33Speaker 03

  -international law and taxation reasons, because I was a citizen up here in Canada. So I had an entity, like a legally distinct entity up here that was like contracting for the same amount of money every month. That was like wages, essentially, with Campo Santo. And so everybody at Campo did have a revenue share arrangement from Firewatch, but that, the Firewatch earnings were already split between Campo and Panic, who, like, funded the production of Firewatch. So then of the Campo chunk that was left, there was a small portion allotted to all the individual people. In brief, there was a small amount, but it was like, not that much, and spread over, you know, six, seven years. Certainly not

• 14:16Speaker 03

  enough to fund even one person making a video game, let alone multiple. So it was really the CMF funds initially, and then that funding from Kellin Knights that actually, like, afforded us making our game.

• 14:29Kirk Hamilton?

  Got it.

• 14:30Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, so, okay, so at the end of 2017, while you're getting the CMF and then eventually taking it out to publishers and funders and getting that money, I assume at that point you did not think you would be shipping in 2026. Can you tell me a little bit about, what was the kind of, what was the projection, what was the plan, and what went awry?

• 14:48Speaker 03

  I mean, what, obviously, there was that, you know, whole global pandemic thing. And so even though our working practices were insulated from that, the general life toll, non-zero, the intention was always to stay relatively small, particularly at the beginning. So- With a game like this, they're so complicated and so many pieces have to touch so many other pieces that if you just slam a ton of people on it once without kind of having built up enough of all the various systems so they can like actually interact and you know, talk to each other so to speak, that it just, you just end up having to like generate work for people to do, but then you don't know actually is that thing exactly correct? And so it can be

• 15:33Speaker 03

  a big old mess. So we stayed with like a relatively small cadre of people for like quite a long time. Even going in knowing I'm like, oh yeah, these things are really complicated. It's one of those things that you can know, but you can't really know until you experience it. And then you're like, oh, I get why almost nobody makes games like this. Okay, cool. And the people who do-

• 15:55Jason Schreier?

  By games like this, you mean city builders?

• 15:57Speaker 00

  Yeah. Describe, describe the elevator pitch.

• 16:00Speaker 03

  So yeah, Generation Exile is a sustainable solar punk city builder where you are essentially rebuilding a society inside of a generation ship that has departed from Earth due to ecological collapse of our planet due to, you know, excessive desire for growth. Completely unrealistic, utter fantasy, totally made up, not at all, who ever could have thought? So the idea was, kind of the inception idea of the entire game was, you know, the emergent narrative stuff that lives in like a Crusader Kings or a Rim World, the player-driven, non-deterministic, like it's different every time type emergent stories that live in those games, I find experientially like incredibly compelling and a thing that like kind of only exists

• 16:44Speaker 03

  in games. But, and I say this as someone who loves CK and Rim World and Dwarf Fortress, like those games are for crazy people, crazy people like me, but they're also for crazy people, right? So it's like, okay, well, can we get at some of the emergent narrative stuff that lives in those games, but maybe set it on top of a bedrock of like a slightly less inherently complicated game, right? Like rather than, you know, a big paradox, you know, Europa Universalis, Hearts of Iron type grand strategy game, what if it's a little, what if it's a city builder, which is like a little bit more discreet, contained, familiar, right? And then we discovered that actually that is, doing that is way more

• 17:26Speaker 03

  complicated than one might think. Like, I'm still trying to figure out-

• 17:35Speaker 03

  Exactly where so much of that complexity came from, but I think part of it is when you have a game where ultimately what you do is you move little guy around the screen in whatever format that might take, including little guy being like a gun in your eyes are the guy, that that necessarily bounds what the game is about. And I don't mean in terms of fiction. I just mean like in terms of experience. What is the game about? Like what do you do is kind of like inherently person constrained. But when you don't have that, then it's like, what's the game about? And now your constraints are like, well, what can a board game be about? And the answer is, well, whatever the hell you write in the manual and then whatever pieces of wood, cardboard and plastic you put in the box.

• 18:20Speaker 03

  It can just be anything. And that seems empowering. It is also means that you have no like firmament that you're building on at all. But then you're just staring into this like infinite possibility space. And so that's itself challenging, but I think that that property is why if you look at strategy games, there are pretty like discreet lineages of game and stuff is a lot more like iterative in conversation within that lineage. It is actually quite difficult. So just because like so many of these just like invisible assumptions depend on the way that all the systems interact with each other. And you kind of can't, not nearly as easily can just pick one bit out of it and put it in here.

• 19:04Speaker 03

  So like, oh, we'll take the emergent narrative stuff from your Crusader Kings-ish type things. And we'll put it in the city builder. It'll just work. I mean, not that we thought it would just work, but the the integration difficulty there, I think, was significantly higher than we imagined.

• 19:23Jason Schreier?

  So did you ever think to stop, to to go in another direction? Cause like, uh, there's only, I don't know, my personally, there's only so long. Well, I mean, there's only so long. I personally would be willing to ram my head against the wall of something that's not working. I'm curious. And I don't know. Are you happy with what you ultimately wound up with?

• 19:45Speaker 03

  Um, I mean, I think we ultimately got to an interesting expression of some of those ideas. Right? Like, I don't think, you know, the thing we shoved out the door was like, oh, this is some horrible, the half-baked trash. But well, here you go. Like, I think we ultimately got it there. For good or for ill, and the answer actually is probably a bit of both. Like, I have a disposition toward being unable to not see something through no matter what. And obviously, as we were, you know, iterating through, like, we tried all kinds of different, like, experiments within the actual systems of the game itself. So it wasn't just like, oh, this one thing will force it to work no matter what. But Stunner, doing a new thing, really hard, it turns out.

• 20:30Speaker 03

  But I think also, a confounding factor with all of this is, you know, like, a big, systems-driven strategy game. It's so hard to evaluate any of it until almost all of it exists, right? You have to build like 90% of the systems in the game before you have any idea if any of it's working or not. Right? Where it's like, you know, you can't, the, the, the prototype of civilization that, oh, the only thing that works is the tech tree. It's like, that's not, that's not anything, right? Like, everything that exists, like, sure, you would have, like, literally the software where you could have the branches, then you click on a thing and then you get it. But like, the actual game there is like, okay, well, like, am I, how, okay, what's the trade-off of getting this type of unit versus this type of technology? Well, that depends on like, well, now, units have to exist and like, combat has to exist and your economy has to exist.

• 21:15Speaker 03

  And like, just all of this stuff has to be there at, at like, at least a relatively complete level of at least like, resolution. Otherwise, just none of it makes any sense. So then you're in the situation where like, okay, well, is this not gelling just because we don't have enough critical mass of all the bits talking together? Or is it something a little bit more fundamental?

• 21:35Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm struck by the fact that you're describing the endpoint of what sounds like a pretty intense learning process, where you've learned all of these things and now you're kind of like, okay, I've learned all this stuff, here you go. I'm interested, though, in your decision-making process still, because I just think that's something that a lot of listeners can relate to. The idea of finishing a project and wanting to try something completely different. But when you were doing that, though, like, did you talk to anyone who had worked, worked on games like this or who had experience making them?

• 22:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, a bit. You know, I remember chatting pretty early on about to Soren Johnson, who was at For Access for ages on the various SIVs and then has left to start his own shop. And they made the Mars Trading one that's kind of like Mule, oh my God, Offworld Trading Company, and then more recently Old World. And, you know, there was useful learnings in there, but also, I think, and maybe now I realize what Soren was actually saying is that like Old World is just him fixing problems that he saw in SIV, right? And again, that's kind of in that, oh yeah, like these games exist in like pretty specific lineages. But certainly, there's nobody I talked to who was like describing that broad, this is how

• 22:48Speaker 03

  the design of strategy games works. And maybe it's a thing that like, oh yeah, if you're, you know, if you live in this format, this is like pretty intuitive to you, maybe. And I'm doing a thing that's distinct is difficult. And you never know if it's going to work until it does or does not.

• 23:05Jason Schreier?

  Sure. So, okay, so you're working on this game, you're plugging away at these challenges for many, many years. At what point did you start thinking about the marketing of it all? Because in the past, you've worked with publishers that handled that side of things. Now, because of your funding deal, as you mentioned, you're expected to handle it yourself. And something that we will definitely get into is the kind of the launch of the game and the not reaching the player comp that you would have liked, which is something you've been open about. But was there a point when you started thinking, okay, we need to, we need to figure out how to reach people with this game? How are we going to do that?

• 23:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, that had been a consideration for, I'd say, most of development. The, you know, even though, yeah, Ninja was like technically published by Microsoft and with Firewatch, Panic did a ton, like a lot of that still was driven by us internally as well, like a significant amount. Yeah. So that consideration was always there kind of from the beginning, you know, and we'd had a pretty deliberate strategy of, okay, we don't want to try to find an opportunity to announce the game with as much like visibility. As possible because you got that's like an arrow in your quiver that you can't unfire. Like, once the game is announced, it's announced, right? So we ended up being able to announce the game at the PC Gaming Show in 2024.

• 24:27Speaker 03

  Like, they PC Gamer actually sent a film crew up here, did like a little mini documentary thing. Like, they usually, for every given PC Gaming Show, they'll do like three or four, like, "Oh, we'll actually talk to the people making the game in addition to just like, "Here's the trailer for the game." And that announcement trailer, you know, we worked with Derek Liu, who's probably one of the best, at least like, independent game trailer editors in the planet. So, you know, okay, how do we capture as many eyeballs as possible? And just in terms of the announcement, right? And try to get that, like, snowball going. That was there from the beginning. And then similarly, you know, like, okay, and then we'll have an updated trailer at the PC Gaming Show 2025 that also concords with the demo for the game being in next best.

• 25:10Speaker 03

  Like, in general, I would say that we, and again, this isn't like, you know, defensiveness or anything, but I'd say we, like, tried to follow best practices as much as they exist. The, I think the challenge is that, one, you know, certainly, I probably underestimated just how time-consuming so much of this stuff is. If anything, maybe now, more so than, I don't know, five, seven, 10 years ago, is that it all tends to be this, like, halting problem where, when so much awareness is driven particularly by, like, content creator, influencer, whatever, coverage and promotion, that there's this halting problem where many creators don't want to cover a thing unless they think there's interest in it.

• 25:52Speaker 03

  But then now there's this, like, standoff of like, well, I'm not a first mover problem, where no one wants to be the first, take a chance on a thing that doesn't have people connecting with, unless, you know, you already have validation, so to speak, via, like, hooded horse is publishing your game, so people will kind of like take it as read that, okay, well, this isn't going to be like complete junko trash, right?

• 26:14Jason Schreier?

  Right, or it has X number of wish lists or something. Well, backing up for a second to that, so that's an interesting one. So, and it's funny you say, kind of doing the quote-unquote- Right things, uh, cause that is also a playbook from 10 years ago and things have changed so much since then. But putting that aside, you're in this PC gaming show that is, if I remember correctly, that's like part of Summer Games Fest, right? Like they do it around the same

• 26:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 26:38Jason Schreier?

  So I guess the advantage of that is that you get eyeballs. I'm not sure many eyeballs that one gets in particular, but, um,

• 26:44Speaker 03

  Quite a bit. Not as much as like the main Jeff Keighley thing, but like,

• 26:48Jason Schreier?

  Not as much as that one, but a good amount.

• 26:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly.

• 26:50Jason Schreier?

  Um, but so that's the pros. You're getting eyeballs. I guess the potential downside is that you're getting kind of announced at the same time as dozens of other games are getting announced. And so you might get lost in the shuffle there. Did you find that to be a successful strategy? Did you get good kind of metrics from that? What was that announcement like for you guys?

• 27:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think so. I mean, off of that, obviously I could dig around in the big jiggety jig chart in the Steamworks backend, but I think that initial announcement was like easy, well into the five figures of like wish lists on Steam, which like,

• 27:23Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, pretty good.

• 27:24Speaker 03

  All things considered, I mean, obviously ain't a barn burner, but like, it's not bad. It was, it was, yeah, it was certainly, you know, again, relative to our scale, which is, which is like a half dozen people, right? It's like, okay, cool. This, this seems at least like, we haven't completely missed the mark. I guess it wasn't like, and silence, 44 wish lists and we know 42 of them. Um, it was nothing like that quiet, right? So we're like, okay, let's seems, at least it wasn't like a bad sign.

• 27:52Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. Okay. So, um, yeah. So that was effective for you guys. Like you're happy that you went with that decision.

• 27:57Speaker 03

  I think so.

• 27:58Jason Schreier?

  The reason I mentioned that, the reason I mentioned that feels like a playbook for 10 years ago is because it feels to me like marketing, like all rules of marketing have just gone out the window in 2026 and we are just in a totally different spot. So, okay. So then moving forward, you guys launched in early access last year.

• 28:13Speaker 03

  Last November.

• 28:14Jason Schreier?

  In 2025, um, in November of last year. And that's when you came out and you said publicly, like, hey, we just launched this thing in early access and crickets. Tell me a little bit about that experience. Like what were you expecting when you launched it? What kind of setup did you did ahead? Did you do ahead of the early access launch? Were you trying to build a community? Like what was your kind of plan and what went awry?

• 28:37Speaker 03

  That's a, that's a $55 million question, ain't it? Um,

• 28:42Jason Schreier?

  Oh, is that the budget?

• 28:45Speaker 03

  Fifty-five million dollars.

• 28:49Speaker 03

  Ignore that golden bookshelf behind me.

• 28:53Kirk Hamilton?

  Just to be clear, you're saying that is far more than the budget.

• 28:56Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 28:57Kirk Hamilton?

  Just so the listeners don't get the wrong idea, because some actually might, and we should be clear about that.

• 29:01Speaker 03

  Oh, my God.

• 29:02Jason Schreier?

  Also, we're not on video, so they don't see that there is actually no golden bookshelf.

• 29:06Kirk Hamilton?

  They don't see all the gilding.

• 29:07Speaker 00

  They don't see that there's sixteen golden bookshelves there.

• 29:12Speaker 03

  It's so hard to know because, like, there's so much of this stuff, especially, whatever, in the broader world, gets talked about as if there's all these universalities, which are like absolutely not true, right? Like, oh, make sure you put fucking forty TikToks up of your game every week or whatever. It's like, that works great for some games, that will not move the needle at all for other games that are otherwise like just as quality, marketable, whatever, right? So there's already a challenge of like, what to do that's appropriate for your title, the type of people you're trying to reach, et cetera, et cetera, is itself like extremely muddy. But, you know, when we launched, I think we had around like thirty-five, forty thousand wish lists,

• 29:57Speaker 03

  which again, like, perfectly fine, right? And it's the kind of thing where, you know, in general, you can be like, okay, you know, obviously not, it's not like one hundred percent of those people show up minute one and click purchase, and some people purchase without ever wishlisting, but you can kind of take that number and be like, okay, within your first month, you'll have like fifteen, twenty-five percent, like, that's normal average-ish. But in general, you can be like, okay, conservative, eh, around here, like, a good, solid outing here, and then, you know, crazy edge conditions on either side, right? And so, looking at kind of how things have been going, we're like, okay, this is probably gonna be fine.

• 30:36Speaker 03

  But then, when it came out, it was like, oh, no, it is so, so much below even the most conservative of projections.

• 30:43Speaker 00

  In terms of the wishlist numbers, you mean, like, the percentage of people that actually followed through? That percentage was way lower than.

• 30:50Speaker 03

  So there's, yeah, there's two factors, there's like using wishlists as proxies. For how many, because some people will purchase it without ever wishlist it again. So then you've got like, okay, well, that's a decent proxy measure still though. So but the both the number of raw purchases, but then also, and this is the one that continues to be the most difficult to try to like be understand, come up with like a clear understanding, analysis, explanation, whatever of the actual wishlist conversion as well. Like in Steam, it'll show you like, okay, this is your, this is how many people actually had the game on their wishlist and then clicked add to cart, right? Relative to other games on Steam, here's where you are and ours is much below average.

• 31:29Jason Schreier?

  So yeah, what do you do when something like that happens? Is there anything you can do? What was your kind of internal discussions when the game launched and didn't hit the audience that you were hoping for?

• 31:41Speaker 03

  It's a great question. Um, I mean, so obviously there was looking at the sentiment, right? And while, uh, while I probably would ultimately be more bummed out if the situation was people played the game, they're like, yo, this game sucks. Like at least that would be a little bit more explanatory. Like at least there'd be like a clearer, okay, I guess it's just like, it's just not that good. It didn't really some, we missed some very big things in here. People who actually played it were like into it. You know, obviously I'm not gonna be like, it's the greatest game ever. Get the hell out of here, Sid Meyer or anything like that. But it wasn't like, I mean, whatever, obviously everyone thinks their own baby is cute, et cetera, but being as distanced as I can be, like, I don't think the game is like significantly below average.

• 32:26Speaker 03

  And then when we were, you know, looking at sentiment, I put this post up on Reddit that a bunch of people responded to. And, you know, there were several currents in there. You know, there was one kind of like big through lines in her response. Like there were certainly some subset of people who were just like, I just don't play early access games. I simply won't. And I think. Maybe, well, obviously, and this has always been the case, that like, there's a certain crop of people for whom they're like, "Early access is just not for me. I'm gonna wait till it's 1.0 and done." That I think that the pool of people who are even like, kinda open to that, has gotten smaller. And I think in general, the sentiment around early access as like, from like, an audience-facing perspective, is one of like skepticism and like, it's got kind of a stink on it.

• 33:10Speaker 03

  Particularly if the game isn't like, and it's six bucks and it's like, pocket money purchasing. If it's like, you know, priced the way like a normal strategy simulation game is, that there is a lot of skepticism around, just like, early access as a thing. It's like, "Well, is this game just gonna get abandoned after a week, etc., right?" And then the other big through line was people are just like, "I just don't understand what the game is." And we're like, "Okay, well, alright, maybe that's..." Maybe there's like some, you know, whatever, communication marketing as far as like, concept-type challenges in there. Plus, maybe there's just like, some amount of people are just like, not into early access thing at all,

• 33:51Speaker 03

  and that ratio was higher than we thought. We're like, "Okay, how on earth do we even continue to pay, to keep making this game, because it's not gonna be from its earnings?"

• 33:59Jason Schreier?

  Well, can we just back up a second, Elsie? That reaction you're talking about is from the Reddit post you made after the launch had happened. Was there, what was the strategy for actually getting people to even know about the launch? And just to give you a personal example, I mean, you had emailed, or you had messaged me, and you were like, "Did you know that this..." And I was like, "I had no idea this was out." I didn't even get a press release about it, which seems like a flaw. That seems like a bit of a problem. But like, were you doing press? Were you guys doing any sort of like, reach out to streamers? Did you hire PR people? Did you hire marketing people? Like, what was that kind of calculation for you ahead of the early access launch?

• 34:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, so at the early access launch, in brief, I sent so many emails to so many content creators and so many various outlets as well.

• 34:44Jason Schreier?

  So you were handling it?

• 34:46Speaker 03

  Largely, largely me, correct. You know, I think, like, in general, how to approach particularly talking to press. What's like, "Well, the game is just early access." Not being like, would you like to review the game? Because like, by definition, it's not done. So it's essentially like, okay, well, it's just kind of news updating. That type of coverage, right? And certainly, there was coverage of the early access launch in the places that you kind of hope and expect that it would be, right? Like, PC Gamer's website, and Brock Paper, Shotgun, and Eurogamer, and stuff like that. You know, there were some write-ups of like, the way that usually early access coverage is, where it's like, it's an impressions type thing, right? Again, those were like, you know, it wasn't like, ah, and the game is perfect and flawless, right? But the type, the sources of friction weren't like, I don't think significantly out of bounds

• 35:30Speaker 03

  for like, the states that many early access things are in, right? But yeah, for that, for the early access launch, we're largely doing that under our own power. We did not do that for the 1.0 launch. I knew it would be a tremendous amount of work, and it was work that I was gonna do to the best of my ability. But I did not recognize perhaps the degree to which it is just like, it's, it takes so much goddamn time. Oh, my god, so much time. And then that's also has to be balanced against, but you still gotta keep making the video game.

• 36:03Kirk Hamilton?

  Related to the early access thing, the numbers you were talking about, you know, with the wish lists and then looking at the conversion, does Valve contextualize any of that for early access? Like, you were looking at how you're doing relative to other games. Was that like, relative to other early access games? Is there a way to distinguish that? Or were you just sort of comparing yourselves to like, games that fully launch in 1.0?

• 36:25Speaker 03

  I would have to double check, but I think that is broken out comparably to other early access titles at that stage of thing, because the, so much of the stuff in that backend is a little bit opaque. But I'm pretty, because the, the conversion rate counter and how it compares to other titles, it did reset when we went 1.0. So I think that does indeed mean that it was just amongst other early access games as like a cohort, or whatever.

• 36:53Jason Schreier?

  How many copies did you sell?

• 36:54Speaker 03

  At early, in around the early access month, it was about 300.

• 37:03Jason Schreier?

  Okay, about 300. And so, you were in early access for about six months, and you guys entered 1.0 release in April of this year. And you said you were doing things differently. Can you talk about how that went? Did it, did it, did, did things like, turn out any differently, based on your approach?

• 37:21Speaker 03

  Nope.

• 37:24Kirk Hamilton?

  What was your approach?

• 37:25Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, you were saying that you were handling everything yourself in November, and then you changed things this time. What did you do differently?

• 37:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, so in another positive turn, living in the country that we do, or at least I and most of the folks do, there's a totally separate, unrelated to the CMF program called Creative Export Canada, and it's run by the Ministry of Heritage up here, and it's for like, all kinds of Canadian cultural works, period. Like, everything from like, dance performances, to fashion, to like, film, television, and then also, it includes video games. So, it is, that funding grant exists primarily to export Canadian cultural works to other locations in the world. So, we were able to use that grant to then have an actual PR

• 38:14Speaker 03

  firm, like, help out and do the full-on blasting of emails and connecting with content creators and do all of that stuff.

• 38:22Jason Schreier?

  Still did not receive a press release about the game, by the way.

• 38:24Speaker 03

  Well...

• 38:26Jason Schreier?

  I'm sorry to say.

• 38:27Kirk Hamilton?

  The Canadian government can maybe talk to the PR company.

• 38:30Jason Schreier?

  A little bit better. And then, yeah, and it's like, given that, I mean, that says a lot about the state of the games market today, that you put in money to hire a PR firm, and it didn't move the needle at all.

• 38:46Speaker 03

  Yeah. I still kinda don't completely get it.

• 38:51Jason Schreier?

  So, did you sell another 300 copies? Was it around the same? Was it more of a just kind of, oh, this is a 1.0 and people didn't really notice?

• 38:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, we, you know, we did a couple big content, like, you know, we went through early access, like, genuinely, you know, we didn't, we didn't, you know, intentionally, I mean, obviously, with a giant systems-ish game like this, like, you can kinda always keep adding more stuff, right? But we did have a pretty specific, it's like, okay, to at least have a thing that is, you know, feels to us complete, and has the major, all the beats that we were imagining existing in this game. Okay, it's gonna take, it's about this much stuff, can we get, what is the, what is the most expen- Delicious way we can get there and maybe some of the nice to haves are not going to be nicely had. So we did a couple of big content updates throughout that early access period between November and April.

• 39:44Speaker 03

  And you know, there was again, a small uptick of interest at each of those content launches. So you know, at the end of the day, I think we're sitting around like just shy of 2,000 units sold, which is like, it seems like a big number, but then you do the math and you're like, wait a minute, that has to cover payroll for a half dozen people for how long? Oh.

• 40:06Jason Schreier?

  So what's the answer to that? What do you do moving forward?

• 40:09Speaker 03

  There was a reality, certainly, that could have been like after one week, uh, post the early access launch in November, like some people, probably smarter people than me, would have simply been like, this is not ever going to go anywhere. Time to walk away, buy and just like left it.

• 40:30Speaker 03

  You know, it was, as I mentioned earlier, like the signs were not so absolutely clear, cut and dry, that that's the best, that is, that is the only advisable course. And at least for me, like contributing to that just culture of disposability that seems to be pervading so many aspects of life, not just video games where it's like, hey, if this thing isn't immediately connecting, just throw it in the trash. And then also it would kind of be contrary to the whole goddamn games themes too, right? That, you know, it would be both a disservice to the, to us as, as people who spent so much time on this thing, as well as like the people who did show up and were interested in the game to simply be like, I didn't immediately catch fire, we're done, sorry.

• 41:13Speaker 03

  Uh, this thing will just sit eternally incomplete forever, right? That felt very bad as a thing to do. So we just continued to get it to that 1.0, like as robustly, no, in, in as robust a fashion as we could. Um, but how we covered that time was digging around in the couch for as much coinage as we possibly could, being smart about borrowing and some tax credits and things like that. So we were able to get it over the line, but. Certainly at this point, you know, the revenues from the game would not sustain continued to develop. It's just like mathematically, it's simply impossible, right? Like, you know, but since the, you know, the game isn't, at least it feels like to us, like complete,

• 41:56Speaker 03

  you know, we achieved at least some form of a thing that isn't just like an abandoned disposed work. And now we're like, okay, well, in what turned out to be a rather salient hedging of bets last fall, in a very compressed amount of time, I filled in another CMF application for prototyping funds. That was by some miracle successful. And that, that program, it's, you know, as we were kind of talking about earlier, like in particular, getting funding for making a prototype, especially now, is like impossible, or you're getting terms that are like effectively usury. It's outrageous, right?

• 42:39Speaker 03

  So the CMF existing to provide effectively like an interest-free loan on prototyping stuff that then potentially turn into full production funding with them, or if you get with some other entity, you just pay them back dollar for dollar and that's it. You're free and clear, is incredibly valuable thing.

• 42:55Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, nice to not be in the United States. Okay, so, so that's what you just, so, so yeah, that's your next thing.

• 43:01Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 43:02Jason Schreier?

  Is you're going to be working on a new prototype.

• 43:03Speaker 03

  But that funding is like project-specific and so you cannot spend one beaver emblazoned nickel on the project, aside from the one that you applied to them for, and it has to be a new thing, etc. So it was just like running on fumes to get Generation Exile over the line. And now we're able to start discharging those funds on prototyping a new thing.

• 43:28Jason Schreier?

  Are you gonna make an entirely new kind of game?

• 43:31Speaker 00

  That's what I was gonna ask.

• 43:32Speaker 03

  Kind of.

• 43:33Speaker 00

  You don't, okay, but you just explained that throughout the course of this process, you learned how to make a strategy game.

• 43:41Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 43:42Speaker 00

  But never, never again.

• 43:44Speaker 03

  Of this nature, no, so.

• 43:48Speaker 03

  No, no, no, no, so the, every, every video game hates being made, right? Like all of them.

• 43:54Kirk Hamilton?

  There's the quote of the episode.

• 43:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's true. I don't remember where I heard that, but I heard it from somewhere and I'm like, that is maybe the truest thing I've ever heard in my life.

• 44:03Kirk Hamilton?

  That's a good one.

• 44:04Speaker 03

  But this game in particular, like, it really, it really hated being made. So for the next thing, I was like, okay, one, what, what am I, like, obviously, the overriding interest has to be like, what am I interested in doing, right? Because without that, like, there are far, far less stressful and challenging ways to ensure that one can cover their rent and groceries. But then also, I'm like, okay, what is something that I at least feel relatively confident that is designable by myself and everybody else at Sondreless that will maybe this time leverage some prior expertise?

• 44:42Speaker 03

  So the, obviously, we're obviously not, the thing doesn't even, it exists as an empty, currently Godot project, we'll see if that sticks or not. So there's nothing but like pure premise and concept, but it is hearkening more towards something that I both enjoy a lot and also feels rich design-wise, but does have that property of little guy move around on screen in that like, we can prototype, say, three minutes of the video game and it will not require building 90% of the goddamn video game to do that.

• 45:14Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice.

• 45:15Jason Schreier?

  So are you thinking about market research this time? I recently had a conversation with the CEO of Atari for a story that'll be up pretty soon, and it was really interesting, he's an interesting guy for a lot of reasons. One of the things he told me is that his first couple of years on the job, he was greenlighting things based on Viz and that didn't work so well and games that he greenlit were not selling. And then he started thinking a little bit more about getting market research in there, kind of looking at, at, doing more proper kind of finance stuff and projections and thinking about what the market wanted and working for that. Is that something that you're thinking about after this experience with Generation Exile?

• 45:54Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, that was, that, that thinking occurred for Generation Exile as well, right? Where we're like, okay, you know, like, people like these big strategy games that have emergent stories in them, like. There's a reason why people kind of conceptualize Crusader King separately from a lot of the other Paradox. You know, Victoria, Europa, Universalis, Hearts of Iron, etc., right? Like, there's something about CK that is like a little bit more distinct and resonant and hit a bigger chunk of people than all those other Paradox grand strategy titles did. So this was a thing that we were thinking about, like, from the jump. But for reasons, some of which I would probably be able to identify, others remain to me mysteries, that particular constellation of stuff just didn't line up. It's very difficult to directly compare, like, any two games,

• 46:37Speaker 03

  even just like a broader constellation of games, in anything but like kind of the highest level. And with almost anything, you can find some amount, you can find information that will, like, let you tell whatever story you want to. For the type of things that we would be making at our scope and scale, like, it's not just like one single outlier title and everything else equivalent is like crickets, right? Like, you can kind of find some picture that tells you whatever you want, kind of, right? But like, all that is to say, like, we did as much due diligence as we could, but I do not think there's any actual, like, yes, we did the market research and we know exactly what to do. I don't, I just don't think that is a thing that, like, exists. It's just, you, you can, I think you can get to a point of like,

• 47:21Speaker 03

  are we making a tremendously bad decision? No? Cool.

• 47:27Jason Schreier?

  So I guess let me reframe the question, which is, what, after this experience of spending a lot of time on this game that didn't resonate with people quite as much as you wanted, what is your takeaway for the next project? And how are you, like, what are you thinking in terms of strategy to hopefully try to avoid that for this one?

• 47:45Speaker 03

  I certainly hope so. I don't think I can survive this again.

• 47:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, that, a part of that is, you know, spending even more time thinking about, what are the properties of this that will? It's a difficult thing to explain where I think the takeaway that some people have right now in 2026 is just like just puke out the cheapest fastest thing you possibly can that is immediately parable that is incredibly simple. And if it catches cool, if not just bounce and go on to the next one.

• 48:17Kirk Hamilton?

  And also it needs to be co-op and you need to be doing something viral with your friends.

• 48:21Speaker 03

  Correct, exactly. That's that you understand the the broad things that I'm gesturing at. And just for me, one as a format that doesn't appeal to me a ton. And sure, that might be the case right now, but also 24 to 36 months from now, is that still going to be the thing that people are interested in? Like, this is also part of the eternal challenge of all of this stuff, right? Like, you know, obviously, the the highway of burning cars of various like live service shooters that all seemed like it would be a good idea when Destiny was huge and then the three to five, seven, however long years it takes to make them. Then at the end of the road, nobody wants them. So that's also part of the challenge, right?

• 49:02Speaker 03

  And again, you know, I'm not, it's easy for it to sound pejorative. It's not. But it's not even that they're shallow. It's it like those just like wacky viral co-op shit with your friends type games are fun, right? But like, I guess they're not really like about anything. They're about having fun with your friends, right? And like creating something that facilitates those experiences can genuinely be goddamn beautiful, right? But like, as the person creating the thing, like, they're not really like about anything, really, right? Like, that RV game, it's like, what is that about? It's about like, oh, it's fun to do stuff with your friends, and that rules, right? But if the broad trend of what to do if you're a relatively small game studio is just to make things that are like kind of shallow,

• 49:47Speaker 03

  a little bit disposable, or at least like aren't really about anything as like a creative work or whatever, like, I don't want that to be the takeaway, right?

• 49:56Kirk Hamilton?

  I mean, there are a lot of games that are about something that are successful. I'm kind of like, to me, to push you to be a little more specific, or maybe a little less specific about some of your thinking. Let me, yeah, let me rephrase that. A little less specific, like, not just like, okay, you don't want to make a friend slap game, sure. But what are you thinking just keeping your values intact?

• 50:16Speaker 03

  There we go, there we go.

• 50:17Kirk Hamilton?

  The philosophies that you have as an artist, the things that you want to make, the kinds of games that you believe in. Games that are about something that means something. Certainly, that's true of Generation Exile. That's true of everything you've worked on. Keeping that intact, like, how do you think you might approach your next game differently?

• 50:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a good way to frame this very long and meandering walk. I think, so, yeah, holding true that there is this just broader challenge around like, attention, comprehensibility, whatever, that I think for us, a lot of thinking about is like, okay, well, how can we make it clear? The appeal, that's, that's maybe like a not yucky way to talk about it, like, what is the appeal of the thing we're working on? And how can we make that manifest like as quickly as possible? Because I think it is the case that right now, you know, you have, you have an incredibly, incredibly thin window to like, get something to actually lodge in someone's mind. And if that doesn't happen, that opportunity is gone, maybe forever.

• 51:16Speaker 03

  And just another slightly different, like slightly easier, more comprehensible thing will fit in there instead. And that's it. So I think that like, the window of, you know, ability to like, get someone's ultimately attention is very, very, very thin. So we're like, okay, well, how can we, for the thing that, you know, we're working on? How can we make the appealing parts of that like, very clear? But not in a way that's like, oh, we'll just build the entire thing to be like, shallow and immediately recognizable, right? Because I think that, you know, there still is space for, you know, something that has the, again, this is not the, exactly the same ring or anything like that, but like, you know,

• 51:58Speaker 03

  there isn't like a cool six second video blueprint that in any way conveys like, why that game is so unbelievably incredible and compelling, right? Just that core notion of like, you're exploring this house and then every time the house rearranges itself every day. But that now you have this like little seed in your mind of like, be able to wonder about the thing in a way. It isn't like the game isn't so immediately parseable that you know exactly what you're going to be doing in a way that something that has like a higher degree of virality or like comprehensibility or whatever. Like what is the appeal there, right? And I think that it's like, okay, well, what is our version of of that?

• 52:32Jason Schreier?

  Well, what Blueprints did, I mean, to kind of get at what you're you're going after here, Blueprints had a few things going for it. One, it was obviously very highly rated and word of mouth helped a lot, but it was also the people behind it, Raw Fury, the publisher behind it. They were putting on a pretty hefty PR campaign months in advance. They were talking to press. They had a great interview with our colleagues, Steven Totillo, about the game. He was streaming. They were building a community and talking to fans early and getting people kind of interested in the game with a drip feed of talking about it. And there was a lot of outreach that they did ahead of that game that kind of primed it to be a success, which seems like it's a necessity these days. Is that something that you're kind of looking at or thinking about?

• 53:17Speaker 03

  Totally, totally, right? And I think, you know, part of that is also it becomes a little bit self reinforcing too, right? Because like, okay, well, that initial outreach, it's if you have that, you know, comprehensibility, that appeal, that a reason why someone should care about this thing. Okay, well, that becomes easier to then generate. It's like these positive feedback loops, right? So certainly, yes, a great degree of any amount of future budget planning, as well as like production planning and staffing and all of that is like, okay, yes. How do we, how do we ensure that those, all those gears are turning, but in a way that isn't compromising, like just making the game itself, right?

• 53:55Speaker 03

  Because it is like a bit challenging. It was like, hey, come into our Discord for this game that isn't out yet and you can do something.

• 54:04Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. You want to have the game there, right? I mean, Blueprints did a good job of marketing, but also the game was there and they, and the central idea of it was immediately appealing. Like it came across pretty, you saw, I watched a six second trailer of that. I saw the rooms redrawing when you, when you open a door and I was like,

• 54:18Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, that's what I mean.

• 54:19Kirk Hamilton?

  That looks, I get it. Like I see the visual style. I see that it look, what it looks like, how it moves. And I'm like, oh, that looks cool. And then I see that there's all this. Buzz around it and the people that I know are like, dude, this game's amazing. And I'm like, okay, sold. Like, so there is like, the content of the game itself matters quite a bit in this equation.

• 54:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, I think, I think that is, that is the, the bedrock that everything sits upon is like, okay, yeah, the thing has to be like, strong and compelling in and of itself. And then you then also need to stack all this other stuff on top of it. And it really is about, okay, well, how can we just try to have as many of these things like pointing all in the same direction as possible? That's all. Just make a really good video game and then talk about it in a really good and compelling way. That's all you have to do.

• 55:01Jason Schreier?

  That's all, that's the solution here. Out there, if you're listening, the secret to success.

• 55:05Speaker 03

  Joe, we solved it.

• 55:07Jason Schreier?

  We have to wrap things up, but Nels, before we go, I have to ask one more question, which is, how are you feeling after this? Like, you've been through, now you've been through some big hits. Firewatch especially was a humongous hit. And now you've been through a game that was a little bit less of a hit, but you also finished it. I mean, you also, like, after eight years, you, you came out with a game, you finished it, it came out of early access, you put in that extra effort. I imagine you were feeling a lot of things. Can you try to, try to sum them up a little bit? What, what are things like for you?

• 55:40Speaker 03

  Ah, yep. It's extremely complicated. Um, it really, like, yeah, it's, it's, it's so much. And again, it's easy for some of this stuff to end up sounding like sour grapes, or like we were owed anything. And I do not believe that is the case in, in any way, right? Like, you know, there, everyone only has a finite amount of time to spend doing anything. And I think that, you know, as, as someone creating something that you're ultimately asking someone else to spend their time with, that like, you have to earn that every single time. And so that is the case always. And I think that will always be my disposition. And yeah, it's, it's very difficult. Um, because like I said, I don't, I don't feel like we were owed anything, right?

• 56:23Speaker 03

  But it's also just the, had things just been like, kind of on the softer end, right? Like, you know, around that, like, most conservative side of projections, it would be a lot easier to kind of square, like, oh yeah, you know, this falls within bounds, right? It being so much further below that.

• 56:44Speaker 03

  It really, it really does a number on ya, right? Where you, you, you spend so much time thinking about like, you know, what did we miss? Like, what, it's just like, what does this say about my own competence? Like, thinking about the people you've like ultimately let down. It's, it's a lot. And again, just because we worked on a thing doesn't mean that, you know, therefore inherently people somehow must show up and spend their time with it, spend their hard earned coin with it. Certainly nothing like that. It really is more just like, you know, at the end of the day, I would certainly much rather like struggle for the right reasons than to succeed for the wrong ones.

• 57:26Speaker 03

  So the fact that, you know, we did get something over the line. As, as quipped, every video game hates being made. And the fact that we were able to wrest this one into reality at all, in, in the, in the form that it ultimately ended up being, I think is something to be proud of. But like, it's also really, yeah, it's rough to be like, I thought we were making something that at least like some reasonable number of people. Like, there was something here that could connect with people, right? That there was like something here that people would like want to pay attention to and care about. And having to square all of that with like, okay, maybe not. And you can just never also like really know, right? You don't get to like A B test reality and be like, oh, if we just done blah, instead of blah, it would have been, so you're just kind of like,

• 58:09Speaker 03

  I don't know, you, you, you book up a whole bunch of therapy appointments, that's for sure. And then you're also just like, ah, you try to look at the, you know, the, the qualities in the thing that you can appreciate and be proud of. And as well as yourself as a creative, you're like, okay, well, what things did we do well? And what things did we want to do differently in the future? And that's kind of all you can do. Still is a little bit of a bitter tonic on top of all of it. And it's just like, man, yeah, I don't, if people ask me how I'm doing, I just kind of make a sound and they go, I don't know.

• 58:43Jason Schreier?

  Well, I hope this was a useful therapy session for you among your other ones.

• 58:48Speaker 03

  You guys can, yeah, you guys can send me the invoice, no big deal.

• 58:53Speaker 03

  No, I mean, I, yeah, I do think that there is merit in, you know, just like being honest and talking about this stuff. It's easy to hear from the people who made a thing that turned out far better than they ever could have possibly imagined. But I do think there's, you know, value in also being like, and what's the other side as well? So I appreciate it. It's always lovely chatting with you all. So, yeah, thank you.

• 59:14Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, man.

• 59:15Jason Schreier?

  Nels Anderson, thank you so much for coming on the show and for being so candid about this stuff. People can, of course, check out Generation Exile on Steam. And yeah, thank you for coming on the show, Nels. We appreciate it.

• 59:29Speaker 03

  My pleasure.

• 59:30Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, thanks, man.

• 59:31Jason Schreier?

  We're gonna take a break and then we'll be back with one more thing.

• 59:38Speaker 04

  Thank you to all the Max Fun members who supported us during Max Fun Drive. You're helping us as we try to put more good into the world. And as part of putting more good into the world, we've opened our annual post-drive charity sale. Max Fun members at $10 per month or more can purchase Max Fun Drive keychains featuring designs for shows across the network. And all members can buy our charity-exclusive keychain starring Mikey, our little microphone buddy from this year's Max Fun Drive. This year, we've decided to send the proceeds of the charity sale to the Center for Constitutional Rights. They're dedicated to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change, tackling issues like human rights abuses, racial injustice, and sexual and gender-based violence. These folks are fighting to make things better.

• 1:00:22Speaker 04

  So to get your keychains and support the Center for Constitutional Rights, head to maximumfun.org/charitysale. And if you're not yet a member, you can still get in on this. To support the show you're listening to and get access to bonus content and the charity sale, just click the link in the show notes. The sale is live now and it ends on Friday, May 15. That's maximumfun.org/charitysale. And thanks again.

• 1:00:50Speaker 05

  Sleep is important, but it's difficult sometimes. I'm John Moe. On Sleeping with Celebrities, famous people help conk you out by talking in soothing voices about unimportant things. Maria Bamford on parking. I parked in a bus stop. That's just not right. I am not a bus. Roxane Gay on airports.

• 1:01:13Speaker 06

  My favorite airport is Indianapolis. It has a really smart layout.

• 1:01:18Speaker 05

  Alan Tudyk on yardsticks. You hand somebody a yardstick, yardsticks become part of the family. Granted, it's a weird idea, but it's lots of fun and it works. Listen wherever you get podcasts.

• 1:01:34Jason Schreier?

  And we are back. Thank you again to Nels. That was really cool. It was really great to hear from him. But now it's just the three of us back for one more thing. Maddie, why don't you kick us off?

• 1:01:45Speaker 00

  Sure. So Dean and I are watching a show called Couples Therapy. And when I was writing this in the document, I was like, are the guys gonna think that I'm just gonna talk about me and Dina going to couples therapy? That would be unhinged behavior.

• 1:01:58Jason Schreier?

  Well, it says in the one more thing Paramount Plus.

• 1:02:00Speaker 00

  I know. I was like, I'm gonna make it really clear. This is a television show.

• 1:02:03Jason Schreier?

  Well, I actually, I assumed that you were going to couples therapy on the Paramount lot with David Ellison as like your therapist?

• 1:02:10Speaker 00

  It's, no, it's actually all online. It's, it's part of Paramount Plus. It's a service they're offering.

• 1:02:14Jason Schreier?

  Got it. They're offering AI therapists.

• 1:02:16Kirk Hamilton?

  You gotta diversify your streaming services. Yeah. Movies, TV, therapy.

• 1:02:21Speaker 00

  It's an incredible television show. I don't know if you two have heard of this. It is essentially a reality TV show that presents actual couples who are going to couples therapy. And you get to watch their sessions. And, okay, so here's, here's how it works. It's hosted by this woman, Dr. Orna Goralnik. She's pretty famous. She had a pretty hit podcast where she did this same thing where people came on the podcast and did couples therapy. And then I think that's what launched her television show career. It's had four seasons already. There's gonna be a fifth one. The show is definitely successful and I can see why, having watched it. We haven't watched all of it yet, but I'm gonna recommend how you would start with it. So Paramount Plus.

• 1:03:03Jason Schreier?

  Is this exploitive?

• 1:03:05Speaker 00

  So I don't, I don't think so. Everybody knows what they're signing up for. So when Dean described the show to me, I was like, okay, so I'm, I Maddie, I'm automatically being kind of judgy of anybody who would agree to go to therapy in this way. Like, are all of these people gonna be narcissists? Like, what kind of person agrees to go to couples therapy on TV?

• 1:03:22Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, you mean not go to couples therapy, but to go on TV?

• 1:03:24Speaker 00

  On TV and have it broadcast. I was like, I, and I, I wouldn't say that that's entirely. Enough for me, my apologies. In that sense, where I'm just kind of like, what, why wouldn't you just go to couples therapy privately? I do think that's an inherent structural. I don't want to see problem, but it's, it's something about the show that's interesting where you're like, what kind of person wants to air these grievances publicly?

• 1:03:47Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I mean, it's also always going to be performative.

• 1:03:49Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 1:03:50Jason Schreier?

  Performing.

• 1:03:50Speaker 00

  And it is a performance. There's definitely an element of performance to all of it. But I do think the show changes as it goes along. And part of why I say that is because since Paramount Plus is not a good app, it will do this thing where when you start a new show, it just starts you on the most recent season as opposed to starting at the beginning of a show. I don't know why it does this. If anybody listening right works for that app, please fix this. So we accidentally watched season four.

• 1:04:17Jason Schreier?

  Also help Maddie get her therapy properly.

• 1:04:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, help me get, help me get in touch with Dr. Orna. No, really. I, I, I don't want to do this ever in my life. Um.

• 1:04:27Jason Schreier?

  It sounds horrifying. That's the last, the last thing you want. You're like feeling vulnerable enough going to a couple of therapy to be doing it on TV. I can't imagine the type of person.

• 1:04:35Speaker 00

  But this is why the show is fascinating. I, look, I think it's, I think it's like the kind of thing where you have to watch it and just see if you can take it or not. And if you think it's fascinating or not, I, I happen to. So we started with season four and then we went back and watched season one. And those two seasons are very different. And I'm really glad we started with season four because the couples on season four are really grounded. You root for several of them and you kind of feel like you understand their problems and how they came to be here. And it feels much more human. And I think that perhaps people saw the show and kind of realized like, okay, I'm willing to be on this show.

• 1:05:14Speaker 00

  I, I think I understand what it is. Whereas if you watch season one and you start there, all the couples are like really performative. And the show feels more performative and I think is harder to watch. So.

• 1:05:29Kirk Hamilton?

  Are the problems that they're having like more kind of red zone bad?

• 1:05:32Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:05:33Kirk Hamilton?

  Couple problems in the first season?

• 1:05:34Speaker 00

  In the first season, yeah. And they're way more stressful, like way more where you're like, I'm maybe not rooting for. Any of these couples.

• 1:05:40Jason Schreier?

  Like they're in crisis. These are couples in crisis.

• 1:05:43Speaker 00

  Yes, exactly, exactly. Whereas in season four, you're kind of like, okay, these are kind of more grounded problems and maybe even things where just kind of an every man could relate, or at least like, understand where the people are coming from. So like, you can kind of tell that the dynamic of the show is changing over time and that people watched it and that they're like, okay, there's sort of a structure to the show that I understand. But there's an inherent kind of warriorism to the show that is, makes it a kind of guilty pleasure territory, I would say. And it's not for everyone, but I do think it's really interesting. I think it's a bizarre result of the reality TV phenomenon, but I also think that it's interesting. And I don't know, I've gotten something out of watching it enough that I recommend it.

• 1:06:27Speaker 00

  And I think it's a fascinating artifact of our time. So anyway, it's called Couples Therapy. It's, it's sounds like what it is, and it is what it is. I recommend just going to season four.

• 1:06:36Jason Schreier?

  I cannot imagine more, anything more horrifying.

• 1:06:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I think it's not for everyone, Jason. I said what I said.

• 1:06:45Kirk Hamilton?

  Could see it being interesting. I'll have to watch it. I have all these thoughts, but um, because I have a lot of thoughts about Couples Therapy and I think it's actually really great. But they may not have anything to do with this TV show, so I'll maybe save them for a different conversation that we'll have at some other point.

• 1:06:58Jason Schreier?

  It's just, it's just so hard to imagine people actually being open and honest and doing the things you need for Couples Therapy.

• 1:07:05Speaker 00

  But, but just like with any other reality TV show, Jason, people forget the cameras are there over time and you can kind of tell that they become disarmed and that they aren't thinking about themselves as being on a show. I mean, I'm, I'm imagining that that's true. Perhaps they never forget, but I think they do. And I think that, that, I mean, we kind of see that happen in any reality series or documentary that's well made, right? Where eventually people just forget about the cameras and they're just like, whatever, I'm just gonna do this. But, but again, it is sort of inherently only including people who are willing to air all of their grievances publicly. And you gotta make what you will of that when it comes to the couples on the show.

• 1:07:44Jason Schreier?

  Fair enough. Man, sounds wild. Kirk, what's your one more thing?

• 1:07:48Kirk Hamilton?

  My one more thing is a show that I referenced a couple of episodes ago. Manny, I think I mentioned it to you.

• 1:07:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, I really want to.

• 1:07:54Kirk Hamilton?

  Watch this. And then I, you know, I'm, we're still watching it. Emily and I both love it. It's so good. I just wanted to make it my one more thing to give it its due and actually properly recommend it. This is the show Margot's Got Money Troubles, which is an adaptation of a novel by Ruffey Thorpe from just a couple of years ago, which makes me think this is one of those noted author writes book and it is immediately optioned before it's even published type situations, which I can imagine a screenwriter reading this book, or in this case, I think that it was actually Elle Fanning, the star, and being like, I want to make this. So I'm going to option it before it even is published because it's a really great story. So this is, I'm going to talk about the show. I haven't read the book. Emily

• 1:08:39Kirk Hamilton?

  listened to the audiobook, which incidentally is read by Elle Fanning, the star of the show, which is like further evidence that she is very attached to this story and like wanted to, wanted to make a show out of it. And Fanning is one of the executive producers on this show, along with Nicole Kidman. The showrunner is actually David E. Kelley. So this is a really star-studded production on Apple of this book adaptation. It's co-produced with A24. There's clearly a lot of money behind it. The cast is totally amazing. It's got Elle Fanning, Nick Offerman, Michelle Pfeiffer, Greg Kinnear. Nicole Kidman is in it. She's got a small role, but she's fantastic. Everyone is really bringing it as well. This is like, everyone really cared and tried to make something good. And it

• 1:09:22Kirk Hamilton?

  is really, really good. This is a story of Margot, who is a young woman attending Fullerton College in Fullerton, California. She is a writer, I think a quite gifted young writer, the daughter of a single mother who used to work at Hooters, but now it works at Bloomingdale's. This is a fact that winds up being relevant in the story, and of an absent father who is a pro wrestler. So her mother and father are played by Michelle Pfeiffer and Nick Offerman. Her father was kind of a, he's kind of a gruff and grumbly guy, a Nick Offerman type, named Jinx, who was a pro wrestler for a long time and then had a really bad back injury, became addicted to opioids, his whole life kind of fell apart. And he's

• 1:10:04Kirk Hamilton?

  never been really a part of her life. So Margot now, of course, is going to college. And she gets into an affair with a professor at Fullerton College that quickly results in her becoming pregnant. The professor is totally useless. He like basically offers to help her get an abortion and she decides, you know what, I actually want to keep this baby. And then he completely is like, I'm not going to be part of this, like, and, you know, vanishes. So she's left kind of alone in this really difficult situation where she is pregnant, she has decided she's going to keep the baby, and she has almost no support. So we, the first few episodes are really just getting to know her, getting to know her mother. It really kind of reminds me of Lady Bird, that film. Have I, did either of you see?

• 1:10:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, I liked it. I liked it a lot.

• 1:10:49Kirk Hamilton?

  It's a great movie. It's Greta Gerwig's first, a kind of autobiographical story of a daughter and a mother. Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf plays her mother. Anyways, kind of similar energy there with like this prickly relationship between a daughter and her mother, a mother who worries for her daughter and the choices that she's making. And then it kind of shifts. A couple of episodes in, Margot has the baby, her son, so she now has an infant, her first a baby, and then eventually an infant child that she's taking care of. Her life just really changes. She winds up dropping out of school. And then she discovers that her talents as a writer make her kind of work on OnlyFans. So this is a, this winds up being a story about OnlyFans and about kind of existing online and figuring

• 1:11:34Kirk Hamilton?

  out who you are and how that kind of thing works in the modern age.

• 1:11:38Jason Schreier?

  Sorry, what do you mean her talents as a writer make her work?

• 1:11:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, like is she doing like skits?

• 1:11:43Jason Schreier?

  I would think something else makes you work on OnlyFans.

• 1:11:45Speaker 00

  Well, she looks like Elle Fanning, so that's probably.

• 1:11:47Jason Schreier?

  No, I know, I know. But that's why the writer part, I was just tripped on.

• 1:11:51Kirk Hamilton?

  So it's that she, you know, she wants to express herself. She wants to be a writer and she's this very creative person. And as she builds a persona on On OnlyFans, she names herself The Hungry Ghost and comes up with this whole kind of narrative and a persona around who she is. So she's doing, she's like bringing her creativity into this role, providing like titillating photos. You know, she's not like shooting sex scenes on video, like she's just kind of showing her boobs and stuff on camera.

• 1:12:17Jason Schreier?

  Got it.

• 1:12:18Kirk Hamilton?

  I think in the book, there's a lot more, as Emily described it, it's kind of like post-pregnancy body horror. There's a lot of just stuff about the ways that pregnancy affects your body. And I do think that part of the story, at least in the book, is that her breasts just get way bigger. And so she's like finds herself the object of attention online in a way that she wasn't. In the show, that's downplayed and it's really, it's more that she's just good at titillating people. She has a sense of humor. She's very creative. And then she brings that on, you know, in an ongoing way on the show into like her persona. Like she does build this whole persona. She starts working with two other women who are already big on OnlyFans and they build this whole storyline. They are doing skits. They're like acting out these big, these big sequences and she's being helped by Jinx, her father, who has come back and kind of is helping with her son

• 1:13:03Kirk Hamilton?

  because he's a pro wrestler.

• 1:13:04Speaker 00

  That makes sense because like pro wrestling has a similar, like really big performance aspect.

• 1:13:10Jason Schreier?

  But also incredibly weird that your dad is helping you show pictures, show your boobs.

• 1:13:16Kirk Hamilton?

  It's, it's funny and the whole thing is very wholesome. The way that they depict it is actually really great. And the way that he finds a way to help and just, it's it's just a great story. It's a really feel-good kind of a story that I think does depict some of the like misconceptions or the ways of the generational divide and the ways that people think about any type of online sex work. Certainly the way that each of her parents reacts to finding out that she is, you know, that she's doing work on OnlyFans. Her mother is in the process of marrying her boyfriend, played by Greg Kinnear, who is very religious. He's a pastor of some kind. And so, but he's a really nice guy and he's like trying. So there's this whole interesting thing there. You can kind of imagine Greg Kinnear playing this character.

• 1:13:58Jason Schreier?

  Uh huh, uh huh.

• 1:13:58Kirk Hamilton?

  Anyways, we're a couple of episodes from the end, so I haven't finished it, but I'm far enough in and have enjoyed it enough to say it's a very easy recommendation. It's not like an incredibly provocative or Difficult show, but it is, I would say, notably well made. It's beautiful looking. They put a lot of money into it. It just has this feeling of a product, like of a creative work that people spent time on. There are these beautiful sequences of just, I don't know, they go to a party and the lights and the way that they depicted, it just feels very vivid and lovely.

• 1:14:30Jason Schreier?

  Those Apple budgets.

• 1:14:31Kirk Hamilton?

  They, yeah, I want A24, I think. I think Apple is giving money to production companies like A24 and then saying, okay, we will fund something like this with, you know, A-list actors, a lot of talent, and we'll give you the time and the budget you need to like actually make something that sort of stands up. And it's definitely, it definitely is that. So, um, so I really recommend it. I think, you know, it's a, it's a pretty easy recommendation and, um, and a great show. And I'm really looking forward to the final two episodes.

• 1:14:58Jason Schreier?

  Awesome. Um, all right. My one more thing is a book that I teased a little bit last week called London Calling by Patrick Redden Keefe. Uh, this is a tremendous book. It's a work of nonfiction about a boy in London who suddenly jumps off of the balcony of a building and is found dead in the Thames River shortly afterwards.

• 1:15:22Kirk Hamilton?

  The Thames, I believe.

• 1:15:23Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I was gonna say. It's pronounced Thames, but. I'm gonna pronounce the Thames, because that's how it's written. No, the Thames, the Thames written River afterwards. Patrick Redden Keefe, for people who don't know, is a longtime journalist. He's written a bunch of books, including Say Nothing about the troubles in Ireland. Uh, he's written Empire of Pain about oxycodin and the Sackler, uh, Sackler family.

• 1:15:45Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, that's the one I know.

• 1:15:46Jason Schreier?

  And, uh, done a bunch of other stuff. He's written for The New Yorker, a bunch. And this book is really cool. And the way he describes how he even found this story is really interesting, which is basically he was doing, he was on the set for the TV show adaptation of Say Nothing when someone came up to him and basically said, hey, you should hear this story and meet this couple. And he met this husband and wife whose son had died and that led him down this rabbit hole of this story. I don't want to say anything about it, or I don't want to say much about it, because part of the, um, really riveting nature of this story is. Just hearing how it goes down and and the kind of the rabbit hole of his death and the questions of was it really a suicide? Was it an accident? Was it something more nefarious?

• 1:16:30Jason Schreier?

  Oh, actually, it turns out that this kid had gotten himself wrapped up in criminal activity potentially, or at least some lies before his death. What could that mean? What is that going to lead to? Eventually, it gets into some interesting history about Russian oligarchs and London that I didn't know about. But basically, it's a ride that I think is worth just kind of starting from the beginning of this book and reading it. A lot of people out there have probably heard of it. It's it's been very successful. It's been a New York Times bestseller for a while. So it probably won't be a shock. Like, you've probably seen it in the front of your local bookstore. But I do highly recommend it. It's really good. It might be my favorite of Patrick Radden Keefe's books that I've read

• 1:17:15Jason Schreier?

  so far, largely because it's about just this one specific story, rather than some big picture narrative that tries to link a bunch of characters together. This is really a more hyper specific story that also kind of broaches some big themes about lies and deception and sadness and grief and all sorts of other interesting stuff. So yeah, really good. Also, lots of journalistic questions surrounding it. I think that are really interesting, just in terms of how he told it and how he told it. Not not like bad, not like murky ethical journalistic questions, but more like the way he wrote this book is very much, and he acknowledges

• 1:17:56Jason Schreier?

  this at the end, it's very much like told from the perspective of the family. And he has a lot of empathy towards the family and and kind of spent a lot of time with them while writing this book. And that, I think, just is really interesting from a journalistic point of view, that he chose to approach it that way, rather than the a little bit more of a zoomed out point of view, or a more cold and distant kind of perspective from the family of this kid. But anyway, worth really worth reading, I think. It's called London Calling. Patrick Radden Keefe. I highly recommend it.

• 1:18:28Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice. Yeah, that sounds great. I will, I will put it on my list.

• 1:18:31Jason Schreier?

  You should. Put it on your, on hold at the library. It's probably got a million holds.

• 1:18:35Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, my endless.

• 1:18:36Jason Schreier?

  On your endless queue. Yeah. Well, you did get to King Sorrow. So hey, that was, that made it through the queue.

• 1:18:42Kirk Hamilton?

  Slowly but surely, working through it.

• 1:18:43Jason Schreier?

  All right. That is that for this week's episode. Once again, thank you to Nels Anderson for coming on the show and being so open about, it's very easy to be open about success, not so easy to be open about failure. So we really appreciate him coming on. And thank you to Kirk and Matty for always being here.

• 1:19:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, we're gonna keep being here.

• 1:19:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Thanks to both of you too. This was fun. And yeah, and very, very interesting. I will see you next week for another interesting episode of Triple Click.

• 1:19:14Jason Schreier?

  See you about next week.

• 1:19:16Speaker 00

  Bye.

• 1:19:19Kirk 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.

• 1:20:17Kirk Hamilton?

  Maximum Fun, a worker-owned network of artist-owned shows supported directly by you.