What's Going On At Xbox? [Mailbag]

Why is Xbox in such dire straits? Kirk, Jason, and Maddy open up the mailbag and take some of YOUR listener questions, mostly about Xbox but also about a couple of less bleak topics.

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

• 0:03Kirk Hamilton?

  Welcome to 2026. It's a year where you're going to be hearing about the same handful of people and companies over and over and over with no end in sight because they own everything. Welcome to TripleClick where we bring the games to you. This week, we are talking, of course, about Xbox again, as their new leadership is reportedly planning a bloodbath of layoffs and studio closures in the coming weeks. Cool. Great. Let's get into it.

• 0:30Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm Kirk Hamilton.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  I'm Maddy Myers.

• 0:33Jason Schreier?

  And I'm Jason Schreier. Hello.

• 0:34Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 0:35Kirk Hamilton?

  Hello. Hello, my friends. It's so nice to see you both.

• 0:37Jason Schreier?

  Hello. Did you guys see that the New York Knicks are NBA champions?

• 0:41Speaker 01

  I did see that.

• 0:42Kirk Hamilton?

  I did. I figured you were probably excited about that.

• 0:44Jason Schreier?

  Well, I'm not that excited, as we discussed last week. It's not like I'm a Knicks fan, but New York is pretty crazy. It's very funny to see like grown adults walking around with Knicks jerseys everywhere and people just talking about them constantly. It's there's excitement in the air.

• 1:00Kirk Hamilton?

  Given everything else that's happening, it's nice that there's just this thing that people are excited about that is really cool. I mean, I watched the highlights from that game. Was it game four? The game with the incredible comeback? That was some amazing basketball.

• 1:13Jason Schreier?

  It's funny you say that because all of them, in every single game, the Spurs were up by double digits and four of them, the Knicks came out to win.

• 1:21Kirk Hamilton?

  There was the one, though, that was like a record-breaking comeback.

• 1:22Jason Schreier?

  The one, yeah. Game four was the one. They were down by 29.

• 1:25Kirk Hamilton?

  Farthest anyone's ever been behind. And they won in a buzzer beater, right?

• 1:28Jason Schreier?

  It was a buzzer beating. It was like a tip in with one second left. It was insane. It was bonkers. It was like, yes, this is some incredible basketball being played.

• 1:37Speaker 01

  Got to be excited about that.

• 1:38Kirk Hamilton?

  Pretty cool. Speaking of incredible basketball being played, if you like sports, you could listen to a bonus episode we recently recorded about esports and a show called Players. And that is my way in to talking about the fact that we are listener-supported and people should consider signing up to become a Maximum Fun member to support our show. If you become a member, you get bonus episodes like the one I just mentioned, and a whole bunch more. But also, you just support us making this show that we love to make. Every week, we don't sell ads on the show. We don't have sponsors. We don't deal with any of that. We are not beholden to anyone. We just make the show. We own the show, and we're very happy to be a part of our network Maximum Fun, which is a listener-supported

• 2:21Kirk Hamilton?

  network. So, maximumfun.org/join. Go there. Sign up to become a member. Get a ton of bonus episodes, including a recent one about the show Players, the directors of which are going to be making an interesting-looking DC show, we just found out, which is kind of cool. A show about Jimmy Olsen.

• 2:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm excited for that.

• 2:40Kirk Hamilton?

  And a million other bonus episodes. This month, we will be doing a spoiler cast about 007: First Light, which we all played and are in the process of finishing. So that'll be a kind of bond conversation. There's a lot of stuff we didn't get into in the triple play on that game, because there are so many one-off things that are fun if they're unspoiled. So I think it'll be a really fun conversation about sort of what makes bond bond, and what that game does well, and what maybe, what could be improved in the next one, if indeed IO gets to make the next one. Yeah. So anyways.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  Let's hope so.

• 3:12Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, let's hope so. Maximumfun.org/join. Become a member. Support TripleClick and Independent Media. Before we get into our topics for the day, a quick correction. Last week, I made the mistake of talking about a Star Trek show that I haven't actually watched. And while I said that, I still made a mistake about it. So last week, I mentioned an upcoming Star Trek, it looks like horror survival game from Team Buber, Buber Team. It's called Star Trek: Shadow Frontier, and it stars Ro Laren, a notable Bajoran character from Star Trek: The Next Generation, who I mentioned. I think I kind of said I had mixed feelings about her, just because some of her episodes aren't my favorite episodes

• 3:54Kirk Hamilton?

  of TNG. But she's a cool character, and has like, a lot of potential as a character, and is really widely, widely beloved. And she's gonna be the main character of this game. I also said she was on Deep Space Nine, because I thought she was, and I've never watched. Deep Space Nine, I think I said as much, but as it turns out, Ro Laren was not on Deep Space Nine, but a fun bit of trivia. So originally, the creators of Deep Space Nine wanted to get Michelle Forbes, the actress who plays Ro Laren, to be on Deep Space Nine, to have Ro Laren be a character, because Deep Space Nine has, you know, like Worf is on that show, there's characters from, um, from the next generation.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  DNG, yeah.

• 4:32Kirk Hamilton?

  It like, it takes place at the same point in the timeline. And then Michelle Forbes turned it down, so they wrote a new Bajoran character, a character named Kira Naris.

• 4:40Speaker 01

  Kira Naris.

• 4:41Kirk Hamilton?

  Kira Naris, who is played by Nana Visator.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  Amazing character.

• 4:44Kirk Hamilton?

  Who is a beloved character now.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  Love her.

• 4:46Kirk Hamilton?

  And I understand that Deep Space Nine, Matty, you have seen it, it's kind of a lot about the Kardashians, right?

• 4:51Speaker 01

  It is, it is, among other things. It's funny that I didn't catch this, but it's because I watched these two shows at the same time, because they are set in the same time period. So I should have caught you and I didn't.

• 5:01Kirk Hamilton?

  And you're, and you're racist against Bajorans and you think that all Bajorans look the same.

• 5:05Speaker 01

  But I do think the Kardashians are a superior race and I am in favor of everything I do.

• 5:09Kirk Hamilton?

  Right, right. Who hasn't met a Kardashian and thought, oh, you guys are cool?

• 5:13Speaker 01

  There's a really great Kardashian character on that show.

• 5:15Jason Schreier?

  Is this named after the Kardashians?

• 5:17Speaker 01

  No.

• 5:18Kirk Hamilton?

  No, the Kardashians were actually named after the Kardashians, so it goes the other way around.

• 5:22Jason Schreier?

  Have they done a show called Meet the Kardashians?

• 5:24Speaker 01

  No, but there is a really fun Photoshop of that in the TripleClick Discord.

• 5:28Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, I think that that, I think that

• 5:30Speaker 01

  It's a common joke.

• 5:30Kirk Hamilton?

  Comparison has been made many times.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  Common bit.

• 5:32Kirk Hamilton?

  So anyways, yeah, the Bajorans and the Kardashians, of course, have a lot of complicated history and you would want to have a Bajoran character on a show with a lot of Kardashians. We don't need to go too in depth on this again.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  We've already gone so far into this.

• 5:42Jason Schreier?

  You're already way too in depth for me.

• 5:43Kirk Hamilton?

  I, I heard from a lot of people about this, of course, and then in the conversations I was having have, you know, said many times, like, I finished Next Generation, Emily and I watched it, and I think our next watch will be Deep Space Nine, when it's time to watch it. It's always hard with those old network shows where there's like 400 episodes every season.

• 6:02Speaker 01

  There's so many apps.

• 6:03Kirk Hamilton?

  But I know that show is supposed to be great.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  It is.

• 6:05Kirk Hamilton?

  So anyways, I just wanted to issue that correction, to remember not to get over my skis, especially when talking about Star Trek. And one fun fact that I had kind of forgotten, that I will, I will close this correction with, is that Michelle Forbes, who played Ro Laren, Also played Admiral Kane on Battlestar Galactica. Now that makes sense, there's a lot of creative overlap between Battlestar Galactica and TNG specifically, because Ron Moore, who created Battlestar, was a writer and wrote some of the best episodes of TNG. But Michelle Forbes turns up and I'm sure a lot of people watching the show were like, "Oh, my God, it's Rolarin playing Admiral Kane, who's this major antagonist during like, maybe the best arc of that show." I, of course, had no idea back when I watched Battlestar, because I hadn't seen TNG.

• 6:48Kirk Hamilton?

  And so now I've learned that in the process of learning about this mistake that I made. And I think that that's a pretty cool, fun fact.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  It is cool.

• 6:55Kirk Hamilton?

  So anyways, all right.

• 6:57Jason Schreier?

  When you guys talk about Star Trek, I think I know how my wife feels when I talk about sports.

• 7:01Speaker 01

  Have you not even seen Battlestar Galactica, Jason? I feel like you would like that show.

• 7:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Wow, that would be a fun one for a rewatch sometime. That would be like, really good Beans Cast stuff. That's a great show, Jason, you would really like it.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  It does have some seasons that are bad, I think, but it's also got some great seasons.

• 7:19Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, I'm not, I'm not saying it's a flawless show. It would just be an incredibly fun show to watch and talk about.

• 7:23Jason Schreier?

  Hard sci-fi is generally not for me.

• 7:27Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, Battlestar's not that hard. But it is nerdy, if that's what you mean.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think you could, I think you could tolerate it. Star Trek, I don't know, but I think Battlestar might be your speed. But hey, that's not what we're here to talk about, is it?

• 7:39Kirk Hamilton?

  No, unfortunately, we are not going to talk more about sci-fi TV. We're going to talk about, well, we're going to answer some questions and also talk about some depressing industry news. Jason, why don't you take the reins?

• 7:50Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, so this week, we're going to do a Mailbag episode. It's going to be a little bit of a bridge, because we're mostly going to talk about what's in the air at Xbox right now. But we are, we're also going to throw in a couple of other questions, so this isn't just like, totally a bummer episode. But the news has started getting out, and it's important to talk about. So let's start with a question from Joe. Matty, why don't you read this one?

• 8:14Speaker 01

  Sure. Joe writes, "Hey, TripleClick, I'm just seeing the news about Microsoft potentially shutting down multiple studios, including Double Fine, but also that they are negotiating to go independent. My question is, why wouldn't Microsoft just let them? What's the benefit in shutting down a studio as opposed to them going independent? Thanks, love the show."

• 8:34Jason Schreier?

  So, okay, little bit of context here. So about a week ago, after Summer Game Fest, I reported on Bloomberg that Xbox was planning on big layoffs. In conjunction with that report, Asha Sharma, the new CEO, sent out a memo that, I don't know if you two read, but it was pretty damning. She talks about-

• 8:55Kirk Hamilton?

  I did read it.

• 8:56Jason Schreier?

  She talks about a plummet in revenue, profit margins sinking. She says, she uses the words, quote, "This cannot continue." She talks about a reset. It became pretty clear what's going to happen. Starting this week, the week of June 15th, the picture started to become a little bit clearer as some studios started informing their staff about what was going on. And so what I reported on Monday is that Xbox is currently in negotiations with leadership at Double Fine, Compulsion, and Ninja Theory, because they're all on the chopping block. And a few things could happen. One is that they could spin off maybe smaller versions of themselves. They could go independent, try to find financing elsewhere. Some of the studio heads have money from the acquisition that maybe they could use to try to buy back themselves, buy themselves back.

• 9:41Jason Schreier?

  Another thing that could happen is just that another game company comes in and buys them. And so there's a lot of negotiations going on as all that happens. One thing that I think is important to note is that there have been headlines saying like, "This studio is shutting down, Xbox is shutting down the studio." That has not happened yet. Xbox is planning on shutting down these studios, but there's still this kind of negotiation period. And the layoffs themselves, the execution of all these cuts is not going to happen until after Microsoft's fiscal year ends, which is on June 30th. So shortly after that will be the actual, the act's actually falling. So yeah, I mean, as far as Joe's question, like, why wouldn't Microsoft just let them go independent? I think there's a lot of factors.

• 10:25Jason Schreier?

  The biggest one is the IP. Who owns the franchises that these studios have created? Because for companies, it's beneficial to own. Like, if you're Double Fine and you're like, "Hey, we want to go independent," one of the negotiating points will be like, who owns Psychonauts as a result of that?

• 10:42Kirk Hamilton?

  Can I interject here to ask you a question, both of you, but Jason, I think you might remember this. Wasn't there initially something with Xbox and Psychonauts and a question of like, did Xbox help, did they publish Psychonauts to begin with and then they had to get the rights from it? Like, this is almost this full circle thing, or it's always been Xbox, Double Fine and Psychonauts? What am I remembering here?

• 11:03Jason Schreier?

  That's funny. Yeah. Well, so Xbox was publishing Psychonauts, but Xbox canceled it. So the rights reverted back to Double Fine.

• 11:10Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. That's what it is.

• 11:11Jason Schreier?

  And then Double Fine wound up going with, I believe it was Majesco to actually publish the first Psychonauts. But yeah, Xbox, man, it really is full circle because what happened back then was that Xbox had a change in leadership and the new leader came in and canceled Psychonauts.

• 11:25Kirk Hamilton?

  Mm hmm. So, you know, the more things change.

• 11:28Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. Well, actually, if you guys watch the Psychodyssey doc, well, you guys, obviously, if people out there watch the Psychodyssey documentary, there's one scene that is kind of, that is pretty interesting where they've just been, they've just signed a letter of intent with Microsoft and Microsoft's going to inquire them. And part of the paperwork they have to do is like, go and dig up all the papers, like proving they own the rights to like, all of these games that they own, like Brutal Legend and stuff like that. And as a result, Microsoft can then do things with them, like put them on Game Pass especially is one of the big parts of this whole equation. And I thought that was really interesting, just getting a little inside baseball into the kind of the hoops you have to jump through to actually get acquired. You have to prove you own the franchises that you, that you own.

• 12:11Speaker 01

  Isn't there also a potential downside to going independent in the case of any of these studios, which is that in order to afford to do that, they might have to just seriously lay off a significant chunk of their employees and...

• 12:25Jason Schreier?

  Yes, that is 100% what's going to happen.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  I mean, just to sort of speak directly to Joe's question, there isn't just a pure benefit to going independent.

• 12:34Jason Schreier?

  Well, I guess Joe's question is about the Microsoft end of it. For Microsoft, that part doesn't matter.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  And it sounds like Microsoft could potentially let them, but that it is a bittersweet situation for any of these studios, I think.

• 12:47Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I mean, yeah, absolutely. And so in this case, what we're going to see is that even if there are acquisitions or spin outs, yeah, there will almost certainly be layoffs as a result of of that. It's possible that like a Double Fine or a Compulsion or a Ninja Theory spins out or is bought, but it's significantly smaller than it was before because whoever, whether they're privately owned after that or owned by someone else, that's a lot of salaries to pay for. And you have to kind of like figure out what you can actually afford to keep on.

• 13:18Kirk Hamilton?

  Jason, could you walk us through maybe the possible things that someone at a Double Fine or a Compulsion, like, you know, a studio head or the people at those studios are doing right now? Because I'm, you know, I'm sure they're all, everybody's really stressed out and everything is kind of up in the air and it must be very difficult. But I'm kind of just wondering, and I'm sure a lot of listeners are wondering, what is, what are you, you know, you're maybe trying to find investors? Like, what are you doing right now if you're at one of those studios?

• 13:42Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. And so it's worth noting that it's like, it's not just those three. Those are the three that I've confirmed. And the reason I've confirmed those three is because those three have addressed their staff in some way or another. There's some studios where maybe a studio head has been told, hey, here's what's gonna happen. But they decided, they decided not to tell their staff because they don't want it to be public and they want a chance to negotiate just kind of privately before it enters the public record. Other studios might believe that their staff deserve to know as early as possible so they could start looking for jobs. And also, they believe it's beneficial for this to be public. So that's worth noting here. Like, also, that's worth noting as part of this is that like, this is going to be a bloodbath. It is going to be

• 14:23Jason Schreier?

  more than these three. I can say that for sure. And it's gonna be cuts all around. I mean, the, the, the full picture of this won't be clear for another couple of weeks, but it's gonna be real bad for people who are working at Xbox. I wouldn't be shocked if we wind up in a world where Xbox is like doubling down on just the big franchises and that's it.

• 14:46Kirk Hamilton?

  That's what Sharmad said she wants to do, right?

• 14:48Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I mean, she said she wants to put more investments into Fallout and Elder Scrolls and so on and so forth, which, I mean, makes total sense of that. That they had this hit show without an actual new game to correspond to and take advantage of that success is pretty wild.

• 15:03Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, though focusing on those to the exclusion of everything else is a strategy.

• 15:07Jason Schreier?

  That's the big question.

• 15:08Kirk Hamilton?

  I would at least question that.

• 15:09Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I mean, that's when you get into this whole idea of of like margins and what they actually mean, right? Like, I talked a little bit about this on Blue Sky. I think just to clear up for people what a profit margin actually is, it's basically the percentage of your revenue that you're keeping as profit. So if you have $100 in revenue, but you've spent $97 and you only keep $3 of that $100, that's a 3% profit margin. So you're essentially, you're spending $97 to make $3. So a profit margin doesn't reflect actual like profitability in terms of the amount, because that 3% could be $30 billion.

• 15:46Jason Schreier?

  You could be making obscene amounts of money and still only have a 3% profit margin if you spent $970 billion to make that $30 billion. So it doesn't reflect profitability, what it reflects is efficiency. And so if you're a business like Microsoft and you have Azure and other areas of your business that have incredibly high profit margins, then why are you spending $100 billion on Xbox to only make $3 billion when you could be spending that money on Azure and making $40 billion? Et cetera, et cetera. That's kind of the simplified version of how the math works in terms of margins.

• 16:23Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I mean, as far as what studio heads are actually doing right now, I don't know 100% what the answer is to that question. I think a lot of them are calling up lawyers or bringing in maybe agents to scour the scene and see what else is out there. What other kind of buyers are out there? Because a lot of people lean on like agencies to be like, okay, can you connect me with this publisher and see if they're interested in buying us? Or can you connect me with this potential investor and see if they want to find us? Maybe one of these companies will be, one of these studios will be like, hey, I can go and find a publishing deal at this other company. Maybe we'll go independent, but with a publishing deal, or maybe we'll be acquired. And they have to figure out what that looks like.

• 17:06Jason Schreier?

  Probably calling up accountants and figuring out what the money looks like. And then as far as the negotiations, I mean, I, this is not, this is me just kind of speculating because I don't know what the conversations are like between, say, Tim Schafer and, and people in the Xbox sphere right now, but like, it could be conversations like, hey, what does this look like as far as this IP? What kind of commitments can we make to get this IP back? Or like, what kind of deals can we strike regarding that IP and what that looks like? Could we get Psychonauts back if we agree that the next Psychonauts game will be on Game Pass in perpetuity? Like, that, that sort of thing can be the kind of the horse trade of it all. And it's really complicated because there are like so much money at stake and so many people's livelihoods at stake here.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it probably depends on how each of these studios is actually doing financially, which we also can only speculate about. And for each of them, there might, I imagine, be a different question of whether going independent, quote unquote, is even possible. For some of them, it might only be possible to be sold elsewhere. So then I would think the networking and wheeling and dealing that the studio heads are doing could be very different. And also, what is the actual valuation of each of their IPs? That is one of those things that feels kind of like magic numbers to me, because I'm not an expert in this. But I think even if you are, there's a little bit of vibes associated with

• 18:34Speaker 01

  that, because it's like, okay, what, what is Psychonauts 3 actually worth if it were to exist? And, and perhaps it's Tim Schafer's job to make the argument of how much he thinks it could be worth, how much he thinks it could sell as compared to two or even one. And that speaks to how valuable his company is. But then also, he has to consider how valuable is any other possible game that Double Fine could ever create and how valuable is each of his employees? I mean, that- It's so stressful to even fathom to be thinking about those numbers and making those arguments.

• 19:07Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I can't even imagine. If you're a Double Fine, I mean, right now, you've just released Keeper, which the three of us liked, and Killn, which I don't think any of us have played. Not a lot of people have played that game. Not exactly critically acclaimed. I believe it's in the 60s on Metacritic. And neither of them really reached huge audiences for various reasons. And I don't think either of them were profitable. I don't know, though. I can't say that for sure. But I mean, just based on the numbers that we do see on Steam, it doesn't seem like either of them made much money. That said, what a company like Double Fine would typically do, or any indie studio would typically do, is they would be signing

• 19:50Jason Schreier?

  deals to fund the future of the studio. So like, before Double Fine was acquired by Microsoft, it was not funding itself largely based on its own cash reserves and sales of previous games. It was funding itself based on contracts for future projects. And so what stressed them out was they were constantly looking for new projects and trying to pitch new projects and doing the traveling roadshow thing with publishers and sometimes having to sign bad deals because they didn't have much of a choice in the matter. That changed when they were bought by Microsoft. If they were to go independent again, it would again turn into that model where they're funding themselves based on contracts for future games. Right now, after Killn and Keeper, they have a new game that Tim Schafer is spearheading. They mentioned this in the end of the Psychodyssey doc in the epilogue.

• 20:35Jason Schreier?

  They mentioned that Tim Schafer has a project of his own. So it's possible that they spin out and either keep working on that with Microsoft and Microsoft funds them to keep working on it, or maybe they find another buyer for that project as part of this whole process. I don't know. It could look like a number of different things. And it could mean that they have to lay people off who don't fit into that or who they can't afford to keep employed along the way as part of that. I don't know.

• 21:03Kirk Hamilton?

  Matty, something you were saying about trying to determine the value of Psychonauts. Video games are an industry and people need to sell things, but it's just, it's such a challenging thing to do. I mean, just thinking about this as a creative work and something that actually tells a meaningful story and means something to the people who made it. I make art and I don't have to sell it or think about how much it's worth. And that, I think, is a good way to make art. And it must be so hard to look at something that you've made, that's been so hard to make, that's so meaningful, and in Psychonauts' case, like, really genuinely great, and then have to put a number sign, you know, a number at the end of it. In particular, because after the Xbox acquisition, they were basically

• 21:46Kirk Hamilton?

  told, "Well, this, you're coming to Xbox," you know, this is like during the Phil Spencer era, "you're coming to Xbox and this is going to be on Game Pass, and like, we're all about Game Pass. So, as a result, you can just make this really cool, artistic, beautiful thing, and it's fine." And then, you know, I'm sure when they started on Keeper, this is like a Lee Petty, I would guess, passion project. The art in that game is beautiful. Lee Petty is an artist and art director. It's, he made something just totally gorgeous and weird and cool. And yeah, maybe only, whatever, some small number of people played it relative to the Call of Duty. But they were, again, they had been told, like, "Well, just make Keeper. Make a cool game about a lighthouse. Like, it's gonna go on Game Pass. It'll be cool." And so, they finally could just start thinking about their

• 22:30Kirk Hamilton?

  art as art, as just a thing that they want to make. And so, "Hey, Lee Petty, all right, man, it's time. Like, make this cool thing." And then, that changed. And of course, this happens when you get bought. This is one of the, we've run into this in media, right? You get bought by someone, they tell you things are gonna keep being the way that they were, and then the market changes, they're, you know, they're, the incentives change, they change what they're telling you to do, and suddenly, what you're doing isn't good enough. And that seems to have happened here, and that is like, kind of at the heart of all of this. Like, there's, Jason, I watched your video that you posted today about, talking about Xbox. It's fantastic. I would recommend anyone listening to this, go watch it. Just 'cause you go through the whole story of Xbox, and it's the story of just changing directives, you know, starting in the Don

• 23:13Kirk Hamilton?

  Up until today, the Asha Sharma era. And that's something, I think, a really important point that you make. I think a lot of people look at these studios who are now in trouble. And they look at games like South of Midnight and Keeper and even Psychonauts 2 and say, wow, you know, those studios were always kind of not selling that well and it was always hard for them. So, you know, the implication being, oh, it's kind of their fault. You know, they weren't going to survive in this cutthroat business. And so the fact that Microsoft is cutting them loose is like a market correction. But it's important to remember that game pass mandate and the way that they were brought in and like what they were told to do and how that has now changed. And the rug has been pulled out from under them and suddenly it's all accountability,

• 23:56Kirk Hamilton?

  you know, margins and you have to be making a whole bunch of money, which is supremely unfair, honestly.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I feel like it is.

• 24:04Jason Schreier?

  You're getting punished for like making, listening to your bosses a few years ago.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, and making these games that, to kind of list them off again, these are critically acclaimed games, but maybe didn't sell gangbusters like Call of Duty numbers, as we might say, because very few things do. But it didn't even sell maybe half of that, which is South of Midnight, very critically acclaimed game, very personal game.

• 24:26Jason Schreier?

  Well, hold on, I want to pause there for a second. That's not, that has like a, hold on, I'll double check the exact number because critically acclaimed in some ways, but it has a 77 on Metacritic. So we're not talking about a game that has gotten like unanimously rave reviews for what it's worth.

• 24:41Speaker 01

  Sure, maybe it's better to say critical darling for this kind of game because it's like a game that's really special to a lot of people, but maybe doesn't have the high Metacritic score or the widespread appeal. Or maybe I should say mainstream appeal because they're games that are trying to take an artistic risk and be about something really specific.

• 25:02Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I think that's a better way to put it is that it's like, it really appeals to a certain person and to that person it means a lot, but it's not going to be appealing to everybody.

• 25:10Kirk Hamilton?

  And it like mattered to the person who made it, right? Like, sorry, that's also worth.

• 25:13Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, of course. But the reason, the only reason that I mentioned the Metacritic is because I think if you are a studio that does make critically acclaimed games that maybe don't get commercial success and you could be like, hey, this got in. Eighty eight on Metacritic, it just didn't get the sales it deserved. Then you have a much stronger case to make if you're trying to fight closure from someone like Asha Sharma. But if you have something like South of Midnight, it's very easy for numbers people to be like, "Look, this was not widely well-reviewed either."

• 25:39Speaker 01

  It's tough too, because I have really mixed feelings about how important Metacritic has become to these studio conversations. Because Polygon and Kotaku were never on Metacritic. We didn't score video games anymore. Both of those sites used to score games in various ways and stopped over time. And a lot of websites, as a result of that, are not on Metacritic. We're not here to talk about games criticism as an industry. But I do just think it's interesting how Metacritic in particular has become such a lightning rod for studio decisions and arguments. But regardless, my point is, these are studios that were making, I would say creatively daring games. Because again, that's what they were told to do.

• 26:19Speaker 01

  Make specific games and personal games that speak to specific audiences and then add a perceived value. Again, we're talking about vibes-based numbers here to Game Pass, because there's so much variation on the platform. That's part of what they were asked to do, at least in my perception, of the public messaging of how all of these games were described. And that's why it feels unfair, because it's like, they did read the brief. They did complete the assignment. They did make games that spoke to maybe not everyone in the way that a Metacritic score or mainstream appeal or even wide sales would demonstrate. But I know people who really love each of those games, not just like them, but adore them.

• 27:04Speaker 01

  And are like, "This was my absolute favorite thing, maybe ever." And like, that's just sad to me, to think that Xbox is pivoting away from being a company that also houses special little games, or at least smaller games.

• 27:20Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it's both sad and it's also a huge problem, because Xbox controls so much of the games industry. Like, this is definitely, yet again, a symptom of the fact that so much art is being funneled through an increasingly small number of companies. And they're just churning them into these massive portfolios that then are suddenly subject to new requirements as this huge company decides, "Oh, we actually need to make money this way or that way." Or like, "The way that we were doing things wasn't working, so now we're going to just completely change." And this, I mean- This is what is happening at streamers as well. This is what's happening at Spotify. Like, this is all of these companies that have consolidated an entire style of art.

• 28:01Kirk Hamilton?

  Spotify for music, a handful of streamers for movies and TV shows. And I mean, this is increasingly happening, right? This Warner Brothers Paramount merger is happening. And soon, like, the guy who owns Skydance now is gonna own both Paramount and Warner Brothers and like, combine all those streaming networks into one huge thing. And then this is also happening in games, where like Xbox bought this substantial percentage of the whole games industry. And for a while, okay, that seemed fine, because they wanted to have a variety of different games. Now, to think of them just being like, okay, well, it's only gonna be these sure bets. Halo, Fallout.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  Which are they even sure bets? I mean, we don't need to talk about Halo Infinite today, but...

• 28:45Jason Schreier?

  Fallout, Elder Scrolls, Call of Duty.

• 28:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, those are maybe better examples, yeah.

• 28:49Jason Schreier?

  And Halo, definitely.

• 28:50Kirk Hamilton?

  The idea of them doubling down on those, like, sure, I guess that makes sense in some kind of business brain way in a very narrow sense. But it's not actually how like a thriving, you know, like, industry works. It's not how great things are made that excite people. Like, the biggest games of the year, like, Subnautica 2 is one of the biggest games of the year. That's like from a pretty small developer. It's like a pretty small game. There are just games like this that just come out and then become a phenomenon. Like, it's not, you have to allow those things to exist. You have to allow people to do new things. I just saw this clip from Noel Gallagher, that's this great Noel Gallagher quote, where he says, "People didn't want Jimi Hendrix. Jimi Hendrix just gave them Jimi Hendrix."

• 29:34Speaker 03

  The consumer didn't [bleep] want Jimi Hendrix, but they got him. And it changed the world. And the consumer didn't want Sergeant Pepper's, but they got it. And they didn't want the Sex Pistols, but they got it. [bleep] the customer. The customer doesn't know what he wants. You fucking give it to him and he likes it.

• 29:51Kirk Hamilton?

  And I think he has like, I think his takeaway is fuck the customer, which, okay, obviously he's Noel Gallagher. Like, people are gonna agree with everything he says, but he's making an important point. Like, you don't, you can't just go off of like, what's already successful. You can't just focus us everything and be like, okay, well, Call of Duty is successful. That's the only thing we're gonna make. Like, that's not actually a winning business strategy. So anyways, the fact that this company is so huge, that they control so many different studios, when they make a decision like this, it has a huge effect on just the, on the entirety of an art form around the world. That is a huge problem, and this is great evidence of why.

• 30:27Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I mean, I think there's a little more nuance here for what it's worth. I'm always empathetic with the developers, but I also think a large part of this conversation is how long these games are taking to make. And that's a, that's a problem with many, many factors, including just kind of bloat and people, people putting more time into things than maybe they need, putting a lot of pre-production into things, things going off the rails. I mean, we, we all sell Psychodysy, and you can watch that documentary and learn a whole lot about how games are made, including many of the human mistakes that developers are making along the way that lead to this thing, including a lot of micro things, right? In that developer, there's a lot of talk of like, well, we got to this sprint, we got to this milestone, and we only finished 80% of what we set out to do, which is like,

• 31:12Jason Schreier?

  maybe a lot of little micro decisions along the way by individuals. Maybe this individual like, did 80% of what they could do, and maybe if they had like, I don't know, like, for various reasons, maybe that was inefficient, maybe some faults of their own, some faults of other people. It's just kind of little things that really add up. And so, I think, I think there's a little nuance to the conversation of just kind of like, hey, let these people make art. And I think in some degree, some of them were allowed to just kind of like, be making art. Let me put it in another way, I think it's, it's much easier to just allow Jimi Hendrix to be Jimi Hendrix when it's like, one guy who can write songs like, as, as, like, in short periods of time, or like, even at its longest.

• 31:56Jason Schreier?

  Like a few months or a year, whereas in game development, it's just so many more moving pieces and takes so much longer and costs so much more that it's a lot harder to allow for that. I mean, you mentioned some not a two, like that team had a massive hit on their hands. And yet it's much smaller than some of these studios that were are are being affected here. And maybe that speaks to part of the problem, too. Maybe some of these studios are are too big for various reasons, including them being part of Microsoft and Microsoft encouraging that.

• 32:25Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. I mean, the thing I'm talking about with like this new initiative to double down on what already works. That's kind of what I'm talking about with the Jimi Hendrix thing. Let's actually, can we stay on what you're talking about and look at how it intersects with the size of Microsoft and the fact that Microsoft bought all of these studios? Because that I think is an interesting, it's very naughty. It requires a very nuanced understanding of what's going on because, you know, imagine that there is no, none of these studios are going to be bought. And in a way, kind of rescued the way that's like the double fine was where they were like in trouble. They were trying to finish Psychonauts two, and then Xbox kind of came in and gave them an out and gave them a way to finish the game.

• 33:04Kirk Hamilton?

  Imagine if a studio and a theoretical studio is taking too long, they're burning too much money, they're not shipping their game. Then they just are going to run out of money and have to close down or lay people off. And that's kind of the way it normally goes. And now we have a world where an Xbox can just come in and buy them and say, hey, this will pay, we'll pay for this. We'll let you finish it. And then what would have been corrected by, well, you can't afford to keep making this, you're out of money. Like what would have been corrected just by those harsh circumstances. Suddenly those circumstances go away and the studio can then just take a really long time making the game. And they were, you know, presumably some of these studios were told that. How do you think about that, you know, that is like, was Microsoft doing a disservice to these studios?

• 33:48Kirk Hamilton?

  By coming in and buying them and telling them, go ahead, take all the time you need.

• 33:51Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I mean, it could be, I don't think, to be fair, I don't think Microsoft is coming in and saying, take all the time you need necessarily. But yes, yes, you're 100% right that not having that pressure, not having that fire under your ass can lead to like worse products. Because you just don't. Or you just take your time, you don't feel that sense of urgency 100%. I think that is, that is totally true. And like, we've talked before about how the best creativity comes from limitations. One of those limitations is financial, uh, are, one of those limitations is a financial one. And I think when you don't have that anymore, because you're part of Microsoft, that can restrict what you do creatively, that, or that can, by, by not restricting what you do creatively, it can kind of like, put, put brakes on your creativity. It's kind of the paradox there.

• 34:36Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, so I guess I would at least, just to kind of offer, I guess, a final thought, or to come back to that idea of the size of Microsoft. That I think is, uh, like, worth thinking about. That downside of the size of a company like Microsoft is that not only does each decision that their executives make reverberate around the industry and cause these massive changes because they're just in control of such a large percentage of it, but also because, like, some of those decisions can just like distend, or like totally blow everything out of whack and, and actually make it harder to make art in some ways that are not easy to predict as it's happening. Just because there's so much money, they're buying so many different studios. It like totally threw a wrench into things and created this artificial weird environment

• 35:21Kirk Hamilton?

  for a few years that now is having these terrible repercussions down the road. Bing, Kirk here, I'm editing the episode, and I had another thought listening back to this that I just wanted to kind of add. It's not a complete thought, but it occurs to me that some of what I'm talking about here, some of these critiques of what Microsoft has done that I'm articulating, they're kind of free market critiques. They mirror some critiques that people have for state support of various industries, or even the arts, to say, you know, well, the market will actually dictate what works. And so that'll lead you to make the best possible thing, or the best possible art. And in this case, what's crucially different is that it is not the state supporting the art or the industry, it's a publicly traded corporation.

• 36:06Kirk Hamilton?

  It's just so large that it's almost become similar to a state entity. So I just wanted to point that out. The parallel occurred to me as I was editing it, and we didn't mention it in the episode, but it's just some food for thought and something that I would throw out to all of you out there. Okay, back to the show.

• 36:22Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, let's get to this next question because it's very related. So this is from James who writes, hi Trip, I had a games industry question that I felt you three would be able to shed some light on. After all the layoffs and studio closures of the last two to three years, would game developers in the industry be better off if there had never been a COVID bump to the industry circa 2020 to 2021? Or even with the chaos came that came, was that burst of money and funding and jobs worth it on the whole? And extrapolating further from that, this is me, not James, but in addition to COVID just kind of blowing up the games industry and leading to all this growth because people were stuck at home and had nothing to do with play, but play games, COVID also led to zero interest, 0% interest rates, which led to all of these acquisitions, including Microsoft deciding to spend $69 billion on Activision, which leads to exactly what you're

• 37:07Jason Schreier?

  talking about, Kirk. So, God, it's, it's hard to, it's hard to see much of a positive in, like in the long run from all of that.

• 37:18Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I mean, there's definitely like shorter term positives that I think we just don't see. So that's one to at least mention. You know, I think about, okay, what if some company swooped in and bought Strong Songs from me for $10 million?

• 37:31Jason Schreier?

  Is that your price? Is that what people out there should, should hear?

• 37:34Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm just imagining a number that's so big.

• 37:36Jason Schreier?

  Spotify?

• 37:36Kirk Hamilton?

  I guess I'm imagining a number big enough to do the thing I'm about to talk about. But basically, they pay me $10 million, they buy Strong Songs, and then four years later, this is, say, gets bought by Spotify or something, some, some podcast network, four years later, they shut the show down. They're like, it's not making enough money, we're pivoting to something else, like, you know, no more Strong Songs. And I've lost, I don't own my show anymore. But I did get $10 million. And I would say that's like a very obvious version of this, but I'd say this is probably true for a lot of people who work in video games, that it could be getting bought by Microsoft allowed you to buy a house. Like, it could be it allowed you to pay off all your student loans, it allowed you to be in a better position, even if you did get laid off.

• 38:17Kirk Hamilton?

  Like, I think a lot of people who, you know, there were a lot of smaller benefits, I guess, to this huge economic boom that happened during COVID. It wasn't just Microsoft got to buy a bunch of studios, it was also a lot of people working in games. Got a lot of money that they could use just for their families or for themselves. And that was probably like a really vast good, just on a scale that we don't really see. It's a thing that is worth thinking about when considering this question.

• 38:44Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I mean, everyone at Double Fine got a bonus as a result of the Microsoft acquisition. We saw that happen on the documentary.

• 38:50Kirk Hamilton?

  And those bonuses don't just mean like, oh, you get to buy a cool new guitar. You know, it can mean like a down payment, you pay off the down payment on your house or whatever. Like you, you know, something, it can be really life changing for a lot of people.

• 39:00Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I heard what it was for Double Fine. I don't remember the exact amount, but it was like mid five figures. If I remember correctly, it wasn't an insignificant amount.

• 39:08Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 39:09Speaker 01

  Something that's been hard for me to tell, in part because the figures are so massive and spread over such a long period of time at this point, is whether the COVID bump has just been a correction that we're seeing now and whether all of the layoffs that have happened in the intervening years since that COVID bump are just taking the game, games industry back to how it was before, or perhaps how it would have already been if COVID had never happened, which is of course, something that we could never possibly know because we don't live in that alternate reality. And also maybe all kinds of other things happened in that alternate reality where COVID didn't happen. Maybe there was another series of events that happened in the tech industry.

• 39:54Speaker 01

  Maybe AI did or didn't happen, or different things happened with it in investment. I don't know. This is getting very sci fi to me when I try to picture, picture all these alternate realities. But that is a question that I keep having even now, when I see these layoffs is to what extent is this a correction to the COVID bump, which was massive and can't be undersold?

• 40:15Jason Schreier?

  It's a great question because if you say, okay, this is totally made up numbers. I don't know the exact numbers, but like, let's say COVID led to there being 200,000 people working in the games industry, whereas without COVID, it would have been 150,000. Again, made up numbers, don't like, these numbers are meaningless, except just me pulling them out of nowhere. And now, after all these layoffs, we're back to 150,000. And yes, it's a great question, Matty, of like whether we would have been here regardless. And COVID just that bump just unnecessarily hurt a lot of people's lives. I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. One thing I'll say is that like what I thought, if you had asked me this like a year ago or two

• 40:57Jason Schreier?

  years ago about the current spate of layoffs, I would have been like, yeah, it's a COVID correction. Like, this is, this is pretty typical. Feels like 2008 after that recession, et cetera, et cetera. Now, 2026, in June of 2026, this feels more like a complete change in how the video game industry is going to work moving forward. And I think a lot of that is just kind of companies looking at US costs of game development and getting the F out of here as games start to cost $400 million plus to make.

• 41:33Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I mean, we've been saying, and you in particular, Jason, have been saying that the video game industry is unsustainable for a long time, a lot longer than COVID.

• 41:42Jason Schreier?

  And now we're here.

• 41:42Kirk Hamilton?

  So that's also worth keeping in mind that while a lot of what's happening is related to the COVID bump, you know, this industry has been operating unsustainably, you know, cooking way, way hotter than it can cool off for, I don't know how long, you know, decade, two decades? I mean, for just an incredibly long time, the check was, you know, the bill was going to come due at some point. And it feels like, maybe it is. Maybe that's what's happening.

• 42:06Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. Let's read a few more questions before we wrap things up and try not to end on a super downer note. Matty, or Kirk, why don't you read this next one?

• 42:15Kirk Hamilton?

  All right, this comes from Chris, who writes, "Hey, all. After the news broke that Destiny 2 would no longer get new updates moving forward, you each shared stories about how Destiny led you to form new friendships that have continued outside of the game. I've had that experience as well, and also credit Destiny for leading me to Kotaku's split screen. After I started playing the original Destiny, I came across Kotaku's posts about the loot cave and the other oddities of the game, which naturally led me to find early episodes of your podcast. I have become a weekly listener since. I just wanted to say thank you to Bungie for creating a game that allowed us all to make both real and parasocial friendships that will far outlast the game. And thank you to Kirk, Jason, and Matty for all the fun and interesting discussions."

• 42:57Jason Schreier?

  That's nice.

• 42:57Kirk Hamilton?

  That's nice. Little thing that we can thank Destiny for.

• 43:00Jason Schreier?

  Man, Destiny's so special.

• 43:02Speaker 01

  It is. It is special. And we used to be a Destiny podcast.

• 43:06Jason Schreier?

  Let's do a couple more. Matty, why don't you read this next one from Jacob?

• 43:10Speaker 01

  Sure. This one's from Jacob who writes, "I am just reading Press Reset and while reading the story of Zach Mumbach, a question popped in my mind. Why do corporate execs earn so much money? And what is their actual job? What was Bobby Kotick's day like when he was at Activision?" Great question. Do we know the answers?

• 43:30Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I feel like, Jason, you probably have the most complete answer to this locked. I mean, this relates to like CEO pay and how it changed in the 80s and 90s.

• 43:38Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I mean, we don't have to get into all that. I mean, the answer to why do they earn so much money is because they are increasing shareholder value and therefore they are like getting a big part of that. Because like most of CEO pay is tied to stock. Like most of when you hear about a pay package that's like $30 million for this CEO this year, almost, almost like 90% plus of that is in stock. They're not getting a paycheck that is like $30 million a year. So theoretically, like because they are doing well as a creator of shareholder value, their pay is going up as a result of that. The question of how that money, how that number got so high is a whole nother one that we don't have the

• 44:20Jason Schreier?

  time to get into now, but it's pretty wild. As far as the actual day to day of a CEO, it's interesting. I mean, it could be a lot of things. I think it very much depends on the day. Sometimes there are company decisions and crises that like make their way up to the CEO, but basically the CEO hires people to triage that stuff and decide when's a decision actually needs to go up to the CEO. So if there's a company crisis, like some big PR disaster, or like California government suing you for sexual misconduct, that is probably going to make its way up to the CEO and the CEO will have to be involved in decisions. Other stuff might be just kind of lower on the hierarchy. In Bobby Kotick's

• 45:00Jason Schreier?

  case, because Jacob asked specifically about him, he was very hands on with a lot of stuff. He was very invested in the business and wanted to make decisions on his own. So a day to day, I mean, I don't know, it could be anything from like speaking to the company and giving your CEO CEO speeches to like addressing investors, to having board meetings, to like going and visiting studios and checking in on the progress of projects and getting kind of like paper presentation, PowerPoint presentations and like documents from different studio heads about like how things are going. Could be just kind of like dealing with day to day crises and just kind of management issues and HR issues and it could really range, but a lot of it is really just kind of dealing with Wall Street.

• 45:45Jason Schreier?

  If you're a publicly traded company, at least dealing with Wall Street and your board and talking to analysts and making sure that everyone understands the direction you're going and that nobody is frantically selling off your stock.

• 45:56Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I mean, this is like what Asha Sharma has been doing for the last couple of months. The the main character energy of Xbox over the last couple of months has been so exhausting. Like, I don't care that much about Xbox and just find myself constantly reading posts about them and seeing them announcing new things. The amount of stuff that they're just doing and the way that they're messaging it. I mean, that's clearly her job right now is going out and explaining to everybody her strategy and that includes her own employees, like people at Xbox and

• 46:27Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, well, not only well, what Asha Sharma has been doing, and I could speak to this specifically because I know is she's been going around and having meetings with like all sorts of people on the org and asking their advice. One of her first questions to everybody is like, what advice do you have for me? Because she's so new to this business and learning, trying to learn how it works. It's, it's, I mean, to her credit that that's what she was trying to do and she's trying to wrap her head around it. We'll see what the results of that actually lead to, but that's what she's been doing is a lot of touring and talking to people. I mean, one of the things about being a CEO of one of these massive companies is that you are essentially responsible for

• 47:08Jason Schreier?

  10,000, 20,000 people, which is pretty mind boggling. Like, that seems like an impossible thing to manage. No company should be that hard.

• 47:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:17Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, and that outsider perspective, it's kind of the perspective of the, you know, the consultant that you bring in to determine who's going to be laid off, the guys from Office Space. What is it? You do here. Uh huh. The bobs. So if you come in with her perspective and you and you kind of lean into that position, it's then helpful for you're basically being the, in this case, hatchet woman. You're coming in and saying, I don't really know everything about this. So everyone just tell me, what is it you do here? You know, what advice do you have? And then, all right, well, we're going to now lay off however many people. Because I, from the outside, just came right in and I looked at everything and I saw all these problems and here's how I would say we're going to fix them. Which is like definitely one very common perspective that leaders or people put in

• 48:01Kirk Hamilton?

  this position take, the outsider perspective.

• 48:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're also just responsible for such unfathomable amounts of money that it is very stressful to me to picture. And like, like anyone else, I do tell jokes about CEOs sometimes and their pay and how ludicrous it can become and what are they doing all day? But really, I do not envy Asha Sharma or even Bobby back in the day when he was doing that job because even though it might seem like, oh, they just must live this blessed life, riding, riding private jets around and, and you know, being, doing whatever rich people do. We've all watched Billions, we, we know what they do, they're private chefs, et cetera. But their actual jobs seem horrible to me.

• 48:48Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, how many of the people on Billions seem happy?

• 48:50Speaker 01

  None of them. And isn't that kind of the point of that, that show and of succession, which is kind of like the even darker counterpoint to Billions in some ways, which is that these are unhappy people with jobs that are stressful in ways that I'm like, companies shouldn't be this big, really, because it's, it's, it's beyond human fathoming to picture how much money this really is. And yet, we put people in charge of managing companies this large. And also, there are boards that are holding them accountable. And I, I feel like the tone of Asha's messages always kind of speaks to me as like what I'm imagining the board is telling her of like, how long have we been funding all these freaking tiny companies that are giving us nothing and we're paying all these people? And like, you got to figure out who to get rid of, girl.

• 49:35Speaker 01

  Like, I, I can only picture the amount of stress that, that she's being put under as this new person and how she now is like, I don't know anything about this and yet I have to make these massive financial decisions. I, even if I don't necessarily agree with all of them, I sure wouldn't want to have to make them. And I don't know what I would do differently. I don't have any advice, Asha. If you were asking me for advice, I don't know what I'd tell you.

• 49:56Jason Schreier?

  A few years ago, someone who was in the C suite of one of these big gaming companies told me something that has really stuck with me. And maybe this should have been obvious to me, but I hadn't thought about it until this person said this. And what they said was essentially, if we are, we as a company, if our stock is, is on par with or below the S and P, then we are failing at our jobs because our job is to make our stock so attractive that people want to buy it, like whether it's retail investors, individuals, or more, more commonly, kind of like these funds like BlackRock or Vanguard that are representing the investments of everybody, like 401ks and whatnot, your, your average person's retirement

• 50:39Jason Schreier?

  fund. We want to be attractive just as an individual stock and, and be outperforming the S and P because otherwise, why wouldn't you just invest in the S and P and just find something that is like investing in the broader stock market instead of our specific stock? So if we're not hitting more than whatever it is, 7%, 8% a year, then we are failing to do our jobs. And this is why we get paid the big bucks to do that. Yeah, that's a lot of pressure. That's a big responsibility to have to outperform the S and P every year.

• 51:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. And especially since a big chunk of your salary, quote unquote, is literally those stocks. So also you, are you even making as much as you quote unquote, should be making as a CEO? If you aren't ensuring that the value of those stocks is as high as it possibly can be, they really are working for it, I guess.

• 51:27Jason Schreier?

  Well, and then also at that point, when you're so rich that like the numbers are kind of meaningless to you, and you don't have to think about what groceries cost or what your gas bill is going to be, then it just becomes this game in your head where you're just watching the number go up. And you're like, I want this number to be as high as possible. That's how I win at capitalism.

• 51:44Kirk Hamilton?

  And it like can fundamentally break you as a person. I mean, we are having this conversation in the context of Elon Musk becoming the world's first trillionaire by playing this exact game we're describing, better than anyone ever has, which is basically just moving stuff around and doing creative stuff with stock until he has a trillion dollars. And also he's like a sociopath who's ruining the world. Like he is, this is not like, oh, well, okay, this is how it goes. And everyone just has to play the game like this is a, this is a bad system. This is like a real problem. I'm just gonna say for the record.

• 52:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:15Kirk Hamilton?

  We need to reform this. This like needs to be changed. It's out of control and it's destroying the world.

• 52:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. And like the kind of person who wants to become a CEO and then is very successful at it is someone who will be really good at playing that game, which then leads us to circuitously always be in the position you just described.

• 52:31Kirk Hamilton?

  Not a coincidence that so many of the people running our world are also

• 52:35Speaker 01

  sociopaths.

• 52:36Kirk Hamilton?

  Terrible people.

• 52:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. Cause they're really good at the game.

• 52:37Jason Schreier?

  I think we've talked before, and I think I believe pretty strongly that there should be like a cap on the amount of money that a person can have. And nothing like, like it should be like a healthy amount, like

• 52:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, it could be really big.

• 52:49Jason Schreier?

  A hundred million or something like that.

• 52:51Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 52:51Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, maybe not a trillion. But something else that I wonder if there should be just kind of a cap on for a healthier society is the number of people that can be employed at the same company. Like if one company such as Microsoft has hundreds of thousands of people, that to me seems like an unhealthy, just kind of a status of society. And you could argue the other way, the, the counterpoint to that is that like, well, growth is an important part of being, watching is like an important part of the economy. And there has to be some sort of growth. Otherwise everyone will just get eaten alive by inflation, yada, yada, yada. But I don't know, surely there's some way that we can build an economic system.

• 53:24Speaker 01

  Monopolies are also bad. We're supposed to regulate monopolies typically.

• 53:27Jason Schreier?

  Right, exactly. At some point, the US decided to stop doing that.

• 53:30Kirk Hamilton?

  I mean, we've all maintained a garden. I just, it's possible to have growth without just letting everything overgrow and like choke itself out.

• 53:37Speaker 01

  Or choke other gardens, every other possible garden on the street.

• 53:40Kirk Hamilton?

  I don't know. Gardening is a very old art form. Like this is something that humans know how to do. It is possible. Like it does not have to be just like infinite growth or everything is pruned down and can't thrive. Like there's a middle ground. There is a way to do this. I'm confident.

• 53:53Jason Schreier?

  A hundred percent. Let's do one last question. That's a little bit of a lighter note to end this conversation on. This is from Paul. Paul writes, hello, as an aging millennial who was first online in the late 1900s, AKA 1998, I have a great nostalgia for the myths and rumor month.

• 54:09Kirk Hamilton?

  The late 1900s, that's really good.

• 54:12Jason Schreier?

  For the myths and rumor mongering of that era of gaming, is this something you can all relate to? What contemporary games do you think would have been excellent fodder for Game Facts Forum disinformation and conjecture? Still trying to resurrect Aerith and get Mew out from under that damn truck. Paul?

• 54:28Speaker 01

  Of course I remember this.

• 54:29Kirk Hamilton?

  I mean, one comes to mind for me, and that's going to be Grand Theft Auto VI. And that's because Red Dead Redemption II is one of my favorite games, and the original Red Dead Redemption also. Though, this is true of GTA V, but for some reason, I think because of the wilderness of Red Dead Redemption, it feels even more mysterious. And just the ghosts, the hauntings, the strange things, the urban legends around those games have persisted for so long. Our former colleague Patricia Hernandez was always really great at covering that stuff and tracking down the people on the forums, talking about them. Not actually just in those games, but in a lot of games. But I totally, like, I'll throw those out there. Those continue to have myths around them because they're just so detailed, they're so rich, the worlds are so believable, that you could believe there is some weird hidden, you know, ghost or alien or monster.

• 55:13Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. My thought was Elden Ring, and how it would be, it's very easy to imagine if Elden Ring came out in 1998, all these like, facts that were saying, here's how to resurrect the queen in Elden Ring, and it sends you on this rabbit hole. By the way, I don't know if you guys did this, but I actually had printed out guides back in the day and like, followed this kind of, these bullshit misinformation instructions.

• 55:34Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, really?

• 55:35Jason Schreier?

  It was for Final Fantasy VI specifically, and people would just come up with these ridiculous conceits. It would be like, if you fight this dinosaur 600 times, and then walk back and forth in this train 2000 times, then you get back to the castle and you'll find Edgar waiting for you on the throne, and he'll give you this thing that lets you unlock this character from Final Fantasy IV inside of Final Fantasy VI. And I definitely, as a child, believed one of them and like, followed all the instructions and was like, damn it, I was fooled.

• 56:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's too bad. I never got taken in by them, but I did really love the mythmaking around this. I feel like games like Blueprints and Animal Well actually tap into this sensation, which is part of why we love them, is because it's almost like they're made by people who grew up reading this kind of mythmaking around a game. And we're like, what if the game actually did contain some extremely esoteric secret and like finding the secret would be its own reward? And also, especially in Blueprints, like, it does feel like there could always be something more around that corner, I think, because it's not really, it's still not done yet, right? Like, isn't he still saying that it's not actually technically?

• 56:46Jason Schreier?

  He still has to add Dirigea blocks.

• 56:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right. Dirigea blocks is still missing.

• 56:51Kirk Hamilton?

  Dirigea blocks is gonna unlock the whole, the true ending.

• 56:54Speaker 01

  I mean, I kind of believe that. Like, that, that does kind of feel like an old Game Box thread, where it's like, Dirigea blocks is actually gonna be the secret.

• 57:01Jason Schreier?

  You just have to play it 4,000 times.

• 57:03Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. You have to get all, every single spot on the leaderboard of Dirigea blocks, and that'll open a door in the commissary.

• 57:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then, or like, you get a certain spot at a certain score. I don't know. We're all gonna print something out, and it'll tell us some absurd thing that we have to do.

• 57:18Kirk Hamilton?

  Now, I really hope that happens. That would be so cool.

• 57:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, right on. It could happen.

• 57:21Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. And, well, that's a good one, because that one, I think, came the closest of it. Like, you had to actually, like, use a fax machine, or a printer to, like, make an origami and get one of the craziest secrets in that game. Yeah, that's a good pull. Okay, cool. Let's take a break, and then we'll be back for one more thing.

• 57:42Speaker 04

  Ready, go. Knock, knock. Who's there? We got this. With Mark and Hal? You knew this one.

• 57:50Speaker 04

  We can't put that out as an ad. We just did. New episodes every week on MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts. Now it's Hewin and Rock. Hewin and Rock? Yeah. How do you hue something in rock? With a chisel. There's only one Hewin Rock, and it's Huey Lewis. And the news is, we got this. Mark and Hal is available every week on MaximumFun.org. I walked right into that.

• 58:14Speaker 05

  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.

• 58:27Speaker 06

  Teddy rock spin on Lake Sun, Wilson Shaw, Circle Time, Sega Dreamcast sees a solid tower of annoyed. Keep me up, big time capsules, Wayne's World cheese balls, Wallace Stevens donkey gone, fun size almond joy. They didn't start the podcast, except that's not true, they did 22. They didn't start the podcast, no they actually did, that was a fact of fib.

• 58:58Speaker 05

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

• 59:05Speaker 06

  No problem, Griffin.

• 59:07Jason Schreier?

  And we are back, Kirk, Manny, it is time for One More Thing. I'll do a quick one first. My One More Thing is a game called Adventures of Elliot, which came out this week. It is a new game from Square Enix. It's an HD2D game from the team Asano, which made like Octopath Traveler and Triangle Strategy and a bunch of other HD2D games, pretty cool hardstyle. This game is fun. It's silly. It's a Zelda-like slash mono-like, so it's an action game where you have a bunch of weapons, like swords and a shield and arrows and bombs, and you go around this big world. And also you travel through time and you have this fairy who keeps you company and is just one of the most irritating characters to ever exist in a video game.

• 59:51Jason Schreier?

  The story is kind of inane and there's a lot of it, and the characters are all just like these, what's it called, Mary Sue's, except like your main character Elliot is a dude Mary Sue. I don't know.

• 1:00:02Speaker 01

  They call that a Marty Stu.

• 1:00:04Jason Schreier?

  Marty Stu, I love it, where he has no personality and no character traits or flaws other than I am a hero who loves to go on adventures and save the world. And everybody he meets, he just saves them immediately. It's one of those types of stories, which is very irritating to play through, but the game itself is It's pretty fun. You can use this fairy to like teleport you and cast fire and stuff like that, which is cool.

• 1:00:27Kirk Hamilton?

  Cool.

• 1:00:27Jason Schreier?

  Some cool abilities, some silly rudimentary Zelda like puzzles in it.

• 1:00:33Jason Schreier?

  I'm enjoying playing it. I wouldn't say it's mind blowing or anything or that you guys have to jump in the way, the way that like me and the Hollower was, but it's, but it's fun. It's like a good bit of, of fun that I'm enjoying just kind of monotonously going through. The time travel in it is not really used very much in interesting ways, but it's there.

• 1:00:53Kirk Hamilton?

  A good bit of fun that I'm enjoying going monotonously through.

• 1:00:56Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:57Kirk Hamilton?

  Mission Shrier, triple click.

• 1:00:59Jason Schreier?

  That's my, you can tell how articulate I am after talking for so long.

• 1:01:02Speaker 01

  That's a box quote.

• 1:01:05Jason Schreier?

  Anyway, Adventures of Elliot, it's, it's fine.

• 1:01:09Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice, it's fine.

• 1:01:11Jason Schreier?

  Kirk, what's your one more thing?

• 1:01:13Kirk Hamilton?

  My one more thing is The Burrows, a TV show that I watched on Netflix over the weekend that I thought was okay. It could have been better, but it.

• 1:01:25Jason Schreier?

  The trend year is just things that are fine.

• 1:01:27Speaker 01

  Hey, I like mine. It will get to me, but.

• 1:01:30Kirk Hamilton?

  It's funny. So I watched this at the, I also watched Disclosure Day over the weekend, which I also thought was fine. And I have a, I actually have like, I want to talk about that movie, but I decided not to because I want to talk about it with people who've seen it. Like, I kind of don't want to spoil it. So anyways, instead, The Burrows, which is actually kind of similar in some ways. I wound up watching that too and sitting there watching another, this is a very Spielberg inspired TV show with another, you know, grand orchestral score that sounds very old fashioned. It's kind of got, you know, sci-fi creepy sci-fi elements and was just pretty similar. So anyways, The Burrows, all right. So The Burrows is a new show produced by the Duffer Brothers, the two brothers who

• 1:02:12Kirk Hamilton?

  created Stranger Things. Its showrunners are named Jeffrey Addis and Will Matthews. They created the Dark Crystal Age of Resistance show for Netflix, which is the puppet follow up to the Dark Crystal that I thought was actually really good. It was not watched by that many people, but it was amazing. They did the whole thing with the puppets. The making of for that show is like one of the coolest things I've ever seen. So these guys kind of know what they're doing when it comes to genre follow-ons and this kind of storytelling. Basically, what it is, is it does feel kind of like the Netflix algorithm or like the data people at Netflix saying, okay, so people really liked The Thursday Murder Club,

• 1:02:53Kirk Hamilton?

  the film adaptation we made about the senior citizens of the retirement home who solve a murder. They really liked A Man on the Inside, the show with Ted Danson about a retired guy who moves into a senior living community and solves mysteries. And Stranger Things was our biggest hit. So what if we made a show that was a bunch of senior citizens living in a retirement community and then it's Stranger Things? And that is what this show is. And I am almost certain that that is exactly why it was made.

• 1:03:21Jason Schreier?

  Do you think it came from like a ChatGPT prompt?

• 1:03:24Kirk Hamilton?

  No, I don't think, well, maybe, but I don't think they're really-

• 1:03:28Jason Schreier?

  Like the concept, not the show itself, but the concept for it, like, hey-

• 1:03:31Kirk Hamilton?

  I doubt it only because it's so clear cut and I do know that Netflix does a ton of data analytics and that all these streamers do and that they just have these mandates, you know?

• 1:03:40Speaker 01

  You don't even need ChatGPT for this. We can already come up with this without it.

• 1:03:44Kirk Hamilton?

  They just have a board at Netflix that's like, these five things, you know, are the kinds of movies that people like.

• 1:03:50Jason Schreier?

  Just stick them in a blender. You don't need the model. You just stick them in a blender.

• 1:03:53Kirk Hamilton?

  Exactly. And I think that literally is like how they're approaching pitches and like, especially on their own internal stuff as opposed to projects that they're buying from outside. And in this case, this is like, well, what are the, you know, what are we gonna do? We're gonna do this. That said, it is like, as the setups go, really strong. So the cast of this is incredible. Alfred Molina is the lead, who people will know from Frida as Doc Ock, of course, in Spider-Man 2, an incredibly charismatic actor that I love. Alfie Woodard is another lead. She is great. This also has Gina Davis, who is fantastic in it. And I could keep going. Clark Peters from The Wire. Is married to Alfred Woodard's character. Jenna Maloney is in it. She plays Molina's daughter.

• 1:04:37Kirk Hamilton?

  And on and on, there's a bunch of, there's some really fun cameos, actually, of other people who are kind of in their 70s, actors who a lot of people will recognize. Ed Begley Jr. is in it for a bit, too. He's fun. So it's like a great cast of mostly septuagenarian actors in this community called The Burrows. It's in New Mexico. And it's kind of like, it's like the, is it called The Villages? There's, in Florida, there's this famous retirement community, like thousands of people live in it. It's almost all white. It's like pure Trump country. It's kind of, it's wild. Like, it's like a whole massive community, like, like 7,000, 8,000 people live there. So it's like, not just a retirement home. It's like, you know, infrastructure and like, you know, a commercial district, stores, and like, I don't know, a movie theater, that kind of thing. And The Burrows is kind of like that, but in New Mexico.

• 1:05:22Kirk Hamilton?

  So it's in the desert. It's very spread out. There's houses everywhere. There's a whole big commercial center. And you come there, once you've retired, to live with your spouse or on your own, to make new friends and be part of a community. And these folks have all moved there. And Alfred Molina's character is kind of the central character. And he's moving there after his wife just died. And he is like grieving her loss. Like, she died like really suddenly. And he is like really, really like destroyed over it. And she was the one who always wanted to go live in The Burrows when they were, you know, ready to move. And so now he has to go there by himself. And he's kind of alone. So it's a good setup for a show because, you know, he is a great actor. He's dealing with like this very visceral grief.

• 1:06:06Kirk Hamilton?

  And then, of course, once he gets to The Burrows, he meets his neighbors, who are all these actors that I've mentioned. And then it starts to become clear, there's like something bad happening. There's like, maybe some kind of monster is sneaking in. One of his neighbors dies mysteriously, and he sees this horrible thing, you know, over his body and realizes like, okay, what's going on? The two people who run The Burrows are very creepy and weird and seem like maybe they're not on the up and up. And so, of course, this little Scooby gang of senior citizens, you know, comes together to solve this mystery.

• 1:06:38Jason Schreier?

  They should have called it The Thursday Monster Club.

• 1:06:40Kirk Hamilton?

  I was thinking also, A Man on the Upside Down.

• 1:06:44Speaker 01

  Oh my god, that's good too.

• 1:06:47Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm sure these jokes have been made. Yeah, The Thursday Monster Club, that's a good one. So yeah, it's, once I give you that setup, you can just imagine the Netflix pitch meeting where they're like, yup. Like, greenlit, get all the actors you need, make this thing.

• 1:07:02Jason Schreier?

  Can I read, can I read the premise that's on Wikipedia?

• 1:07:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:06Jason Schreier?

  This is very funny. Quote, "In a seemingly picturesque retirement community, a group of unlikely heroes must band together to stop an otherworldly threat from stealing the one thing they don't have: time."

• 1:07:20Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, that's probably, that was probably like the pitch line, right? Yeah, so this, the show has a lot going for it. I mean, Melina is great, Gina Davis is great, Alfred Woodard is really great and has probably the most dramatic, she and Melina have the most dramatic material to work with. So it's fun watching these actors, they're all really good. This show is like pretty thin a lot of the time. It started strong and I was like, oh, is this gonna be great? Because as it turns out, older people are, I think, much more interesting often than younger people. Like, older characters have a lot more going on. Watching someone dealing with the grief of a life lived, of pondering what this final chapter will be, you know, that is like actually compelling stuff.

• 1:08:02Kirk Hamilton?

  And when you get an actor like Melina playing the grief of losing his wife, it's like immediately very affecting. And it's a great kind of, you know, emotional through line to connect to this supernatural thing. And then have the, of course, there are echoes of what's happening to the, in the supernatural storyline with his grief. And it's like all kind of tied together. So that's all cool. Unfortunately, I think that the script of this show is just too lightweight. It's too predictable. Halfway through, I just started feeling a little bit listless, like I was watching content. And that was disappointing because it started really strong. And I was, I was actually like, oh, am I gonna be really into this? And then by the end, I just felt like, oh, they just couldn't quite execute. And I shouldn't say that it's not still worth watching.

• 1:08:45Kirk Hamilton?

  Like, I don't know, like, in this age where there's just a lot of things that you just kind of put on, it's better than. A lot of stuff, like I mentioned.

• 1:08:53Jason Schreier?

  What a record, Jason.

• 1:08:55Kirk Hamilton?

  It's just this world we live in where so much stuff is like this, where you just put it on and you're like, all right. And it's wild because it's like Alfred Molina and Alfred Woodard, and there are like elements of it that are inspired. I mentioned the score, Joe Pizzano composed the score, and it's really cool. He's going for this John Williams thing. And it was interesting, having just seen Williams bringing a really old fashioned score to Disclosure Day. I just feel like I've been in that world and it reminds me of something that's kind of missing from a lot of modern films. This orchestral, these leitmotifs, these melodies, you know, a little piccolo playing when something mysterious happens. Identifiable acoustic instruments playing in the score and not just like thrumming beats and orchestral-ish sounds.

• 1:09:36Kirk Hamilton?

  That's really cool. I like the music. I like the kind of energy that it has. It's this kind of Men in Black meets Close Encounters, you know, meets Cocoon kind of thing. That's really neat. These are cool inspirations, but it still does have that feeling of this is something we know you're gonna like. We're just giving it to you again and it doesn't go beyond that. And then there are just plot holes. There are just moments in the story where you're like, oh, why did, what? Like, they just kind of got away with that? Like, oh, that just worked out? Like, oh. And then by the end, like the final couple of episodes, I'm like, okay, I'm gonna predict every single thing that's about to happen. Like, the next, the whole resolution of all of this is so completely predictable to me because I'm familiar with the source material.

• 1:10:19Kirk Hamilton?

  And it's just like, never surprising, and I found that disappointing as well. So I, you know, take that for what it's worth. Like, it's, it's pretty good. The actors really are great. They elevate it. If them being in it makes it worth watching, if they weren't, it would just be whatever. But these actors really are all a lot of fun and it's just cool to see them all. Gina Davis is so great. It's just fun to see her having a good time. She's always so much fun. So, yeah, kind of mixed on it, but better than it could have been. It's The Burrows. It's on Netflix.

• 1:10:48Speaker 01

  Glad they all got a paycheck. I like all those actors, so.

• 1:10:51Kirk Hamilton?

  For sure.

• 1:10:51Jason Schreier?

  Manny, what's your one more thing?

• 1:10:53Speaker 01

  My one more thing is a game called On Together. I guess I'm gonna call it a game, but you'll see why I'm hesitant when I describe what it is.

• 1:11:01Jason Schreier?

  Okay.

• 1:11:02Speaker 01

  Uh, so I work from home. We all know that because we all do that. And sometimes it's very lonely working from home. I really enjoy having one other coworker at mothership.

• 1:11:16Speaker 01

  It helps me a lot, but sometimes I really miss having a lot of coworkers. Like I used to have at Polygon and Kotaku and Mary Sue, which were the three jobs where I started really working from home full time. And like having a digital coworking space was really pleasant. And I just kind of accepted like, okay, my digital coworking space is very small now. And also I do solo things outside of mothership that I am the only worker on any other project I do, and I am doing it alone. And I do live with my wife who works from home as well, but she has meetings all day and so she has her own office so that she can do that. So we're not really like coworking per se.

• 1:11:57Speaker 01

  So On Together is a coworking online game where you create an avatar and you go to a virtual place, like a fictional world, and you set up your little laptop and you hang out with other people who are working. And it is so adorable.

• 1:12:16Kirk Hamilton?

  Mark Zuckerberg's dream.

• 1:12:17Speaker 01

  I know, it's the metaverse.

• 1:12:18Kirk Hamilton?

  This is interesting.

• 1:12:19Speaker 01

  It's very cute.

• 1:12:20Kirk Hamilton?

  So you're, when you say working, you do your actual regular work.

• 1:12:23Speaker 01

  Yes, and so.

• 1:12:24Kirk Hamilton?

  It's like a second life.

• 1:12:25Speaker 01

  And yeah.

• 1:12:25Kirk Hamilton?

  You're just having an avatar somewhere.

• 1:12:27Speaker 01

  You have an avatar somewhere and there's a variety of ways that you can minimize the game. So you can minimize it so small that you kind of just see your little character in the corner of the screen and she's on her laptop. Or you can have it as kind of like a bookmarked size thing that's like a long strip on the side of your screen or at the bottom. Or you can full screen it and like have it all on one screen if you have multiple monitors. And what it does for me is that it also has all these additional tools inside the game that are pretty well designed. This game's gotten kind of buzzy this week. I first read about it in Teen Vogue and I think part of why it's buzzy is because it has all these other tools inside of it. So one of them's a Pomodoro timer. I'm sure you guys are familiar with this conceit.

• 1:13:11Speaker 01

  You work for 25 minutes, you take a five minute break, et cetera. The timer and the. This game allows you to set it for any amount of time that you want. The break can be as long as you want. It can recycle as many times as you want. It's automatically set up to go for four times and then stop. And it'll like play a little chime for you when it completes. And there's like a ticker over your head when you set off the Pomodoro. So like everybody else you're co-working with can see like, oh, like Maddie's working under Pomodoro. And she's at 22 minutes right now and it's ticking down. And everybody has like a little like ID card in the game. So like you can click on them and you can put whatever you want. You don't have to fill it out at all, but like most other people do fill it out and they'll say what they're working on and where they live.

• 1:13:54Speaker 01

  And like one person I was co-working with yesterday had set their Pomodoro timer to be like one million, like one bajillion minutes. And their profile just said, the Pomodoro is counting down to my death. And I was just like, okay, I guess. Like, so people like really have fun with it. And there are also like all these silly little activities that you can do in the game. If you take a break, there's a fishing mini game that's actually pretty fun. You can like go buy yourself a virtual snack if you want. I haven't really engaged with any of this stuff because I don't really care.

• 1:14:25Jason Schreier?

  Have you met anybody? Like, have you talked to people?

• 1:14:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, and there's like a chat and you talk to people. And like, like yesterday, we all talked about what we were having for lunch around lunchtime. And then we all went back to work, but largely like no one talks. They're just sitting there.

• 1:14:37Jason Schreier?

  Okay, so you haven't developed like any actual relationships?

• 1:14:39Speaker 01

  No, but I've only recently started playing this game. So I guess I can get back to you if I make a friend.

• 1:14:44Jason Schreier?

  And you're using it every day?

• 1:14:46Speaker 01

  I, I've only used it yesterday and today, but it's sort of this phenomenon called focus sharing, which is basically just, okay, we're all working and we're all working together right now. And it's like a way to trick your brain. It's pretty effective where like you see other people working and you're like, okay, I gotta get, I gotta get my things done now. And that's why people go to a cafe to work or a library to work. It's very similar to that. And there's even like a virtual library in the game. Like you guys get what I'm saying. Anyway, it's, it's really adorable. I don't know if it's going to work for me forever, but Zoe was out of town for a minute and I was like, let me try this and see if this is fun. And it was really fun and a little less lonely for a couple of days of my life. So if that's.

• 1:15:25Speaker 01

  That sounds cool to you and you like Pomodoro timers. This one has a very, very cute and visually pleasing and sounding Pomodoro timer in it. So even if it's just for that, it's pretty good at that. It's called On Together.

• 1:15:37Jason Schreier?

  I would love to hear more. I like, if you wind up using this consistently, I would love to hear like what it's like for you over the course of the next few weeks.

• 1:15:43Speaker 01

  I'll let you know. I'll let you know. I, I tend to burn out on tools like this. So I can't promise I'll use it forever. Cause I feel like I, there's not enough going on in it. Um, if that makes sense, that I, I don't know that I'll stick with it forever, but maybe I will. Maybe I'll get super into it and be like, this is my main thing. Uh, for now it's really cute and I'm enjoying it. And there's a lot of these kinds of productivity games, they're often called, that like include to do lists and Pomodoro or whatever other thing. Where you can kind of like log your work hours and like create tasks inside of a game and then it'll hold you accountable and like gamify things by like giving you tokens or whatever for completing tasks.

• 1:16:22Speaker 01

  I don't really need stuff like that, but I did like working with other people in this kind of like online work MMO. That was the part that I thought was really fun and just, I don't know, it just added some lightness to my day that I really enjoyed. So yeah, if that sounds fun to you, check it out. It's called On Together. It was 10 bucks on Steam.

• 1:16:44Kirk Hamilton?

  Very interesting. Yeah.

• 1:16:45Jason Schreier?

  Wow.

• 1:16:45Kirk Hamilton?

  I'll be, I'll be curious to hear more about it if you use it.

• 1:16:47Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. Mark Zuckerberg, if you're listening, this is the feature that you were not able to create.

• 1:16:52Speaker 01

  I mean, look, I don't think he understood what people actually want.

• 1:16:57Kirk Hamilton?

  No, you don't think this would be better if you had to wear a huge headset and had no legs? That wouldn't improve the experience.

• 1:17:04Speaker 01

  I do feel like the cuteness and aesthetic of the designs really helps the game. It's very visually appealing. It has kind of an animal crossing look to the character designs.

• 1:17:14Jason Schreier?

  Very pastel.

• 1:17:16Speaker 01

  Yes, it's very pastel and cutesy and that, that helps. I think having, having it be something visually attractive in the corner of your screen kind of motivates you to keep it open as well, I would say.

• 1:17:27Jason Schreier?

  All right. Well, that is it for this week's episode and we'll be back next time, next week, same time, same channel.

• 1:17:36Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. I will see both of you then. I'll see you both in, in a week.

• 1:17:39Jason Schreier?

  See you guys next time.

• 1:17:41Speaker 01

  Bye.

• 1:17:44Kirk 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.

• 1:18:42Speaker 06

  Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network.

• 1:18:45Speaker 05

  Of artist-owned shows.

• 1:18:46Speaker 06

  Supported. Directly. By you.