Is Nolan's Odyssey The Elden Ring of Movies? [Mailbag]

It's an episode full of questions this week as Kirk, Maddy, and Jason reach into the mailbag for some hot, hot queries. Is FromSoftware basically Christopher Nolan? Why do companies shut down game studios instead of spinning them out? And when is life like a video game?

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

• 0:03Jason Schreier?

  If you are listening to this, I sure hope that you either have wax in your ears or you're tied to a mask. Otherwise, good luck. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the siren song to you. Today, we are opening up the mailbag and answering some questions about all sorts of things. We got some good ones this week. I'm excited to get into it.

• 0:30Jason Schreier?

  I'm Jason Schreier.

• 0:32Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm Kirk Hamilton.

• 0:33Speaker 02

  And I'm Maddy Myers.

• 0:34Jason Schreier?

  Hello.

• 0:35Kirk Hamilton?

  Hey, hello.

• 0:37Speaker 02

  Hello. We're back.

• 0:39Kirk Hamilton?

  We are. Here we are. Back to make a podcast.

• 0:41Jason Schreier?

  We are back for another episode. We have sailed the seas and fought the gods and made it home.

• 0:49Kirk Hamilton?

  This is the same thing you said before our Odyssey.

• 0:53Speaker 02

  But that's why it's a perfect segue.

• 0:55Jason Schreier?

  I actually said that at the end of our Odyssey episode, and so it transitions.

• 0:59Kirk Hamilton?

  And at the beginning of our Odyssey. I was just listening to it.

• 1:01Jason Schreier?

  Into.

• 1:02Kirk Hamilton?

  This is like a Christopher Nolan movie. You repeat an idea multiple times and then reference back to it. So you learn new things about it in a different context.

• 1:09Speaker 02

  It says something different about us now that we're saying it again. It means something new.

• 1:14Jason Schreier?

  Get ready for 10 years of this. So if you would like to know what we are referencing, you should become a Maximum Fun member and help us make this show possible because in addition to supporting the show, making it so we can do this every week, you will also get access to our monthly bonus episodes, including the one we just did about the Odyssey, a very fun conversation about Christopher Nolan's excellent new picture. And to do that, you can go to maximumfun.org/join and sign up and support Triple Click and get some cool stuff. A massive backlog of bonus episodes, including the one we just did.

• 1:56Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I might put a little teaser of that in the feed.

• 1:59Jason Schreier?

  It's exciting.

• 2:00Kirk Hamilton?

  Then people get to hear a little bit of what you're missing out on. So we should definitely join that. It was a great conversation, I think.

• 2:05Speaker 02

  Very, very fun.

• 2:06Kirk Hamilton?

  I think it was a really good episode.

• 2:08Jason Schreier?

  And one other thing that you should know is that we will be playing through the video game Soma as our yearly Triple Click predictions bet game and talking about that in two weeks on August 13th. So if you would like to play along with us, you should do so by then.

• 2:27Kirk Hamilton?

  Can I make a little Soma note slash recommendation, possibly for the two of you, but for listeners as well? I started playing that and was reminded that there are two ways you can play through Soma. So Soma is a pretty scary game at times. It is a horror game, and you have to creep away from very scary monsters that hunt you through some of the environments. And you can play it in safe mode, which means that the monsters will not hurt you. They'll still be there. They're still scary, but they don't hurt you. But the thing to keep in mind is that you can't actually switch midway through your game. So you have to choose at the beginning. And I would say, look into it if you're thinking about playing it. And if, especially if you get scared of stuff, or if you just find like

• 3:11Kirk Hamilton?

  stealth, like being hunted sequences where a monster is kind of present and you're having to do stuff around the environment while a monster hunts you. Like, if you find that stressful and you just want to hang with the story, go for safe mode. It's fine. The story is the main thing, and that's what we're really going to be talking about in our episode. The story is what makes me love the game. So just wanted to warn people that it doesn't, I don't know if it tells you, like, you can't switch midway through if you decide you're not liking, you know, being killed by monsters. So bear that in mind as you're making that decision.

• 3:42Jason Schreier?

  That's very annoying that you can't switch.

• 3:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. I appreciate knowing this because I had been having this internal debate as someone who had previously played Soma in scary version and found it pretty stressful. And I was like, do I want to play safe mode for the second time through? And I'm thinking I will, because I already know what it's like to sneak past those guys. And apparently, I need to make that decision just one time. So thanks, Kirk.

• 4:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I'm thinking the same thing because I played it already. And I kind of just want to remember the story and go through all of that. Yeah.

• 4:14Speaker 02

  Jason, the choice is now up to you. As a first time player, won't judge either way.

• 4:19Jason Schreier?

  Having played through a demo of Alien: Isolation 2 at Summer Game Fest and completely hated that experience, I think I will be doing safe mode for this one.

• 4:29Kirk Hamilton?

  It's not, and it's not as stressful as Alien: Isolation.

• 4:32Speaker 02

  It's not, but I get it.

• 4:33Kirk Hamilton?

  But it's the same kind of gameplay. So for sure, it's a good reference.

• 4:36Jason Schreier?

  Very unenjoyable experience for me. All right. Today, we are doing some burning questions. We have gotten so many good questions that we might have to do another burning questions next week, too, because we got this massive backlog full of great emails from listeners.

• 4:50Kirk Hamilton?

  You all are coming through.

• 4:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:52Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, we got some good ones. As a reminder, you can always reach us at [email protected]. Please keep them short and keep them safe. Keep it simple. Keep it safe. Keep it secret. Keep it safe. Keep it simple. Keep it short. All right, on with it. Let's do this first question. Kirk, why don't you read this first one from David?

• 5:16Kirk Hamilton?

  Sure. David writes, Hello, Jason, Maddie, and Kirk. I'm a 42-year-old listener and longtime gamer, and I have a question that's been on my mind for a bit. Do you ever have a complicated relationship with games? Not just burnout, but that nagging feeling that maybe you're wasting your time? For me, it tends to happen when I try a few games in a row that just don't click. I start wondering if I should be putting that time and energy somewhere else, until I get to one of those special games that makes me remember why I love them so much and everything makes sense again. What do you two think?

• 5:51Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, all the time.

• 5:53Speaker 02

  Totally. Very relatable.

• 5:55Jason Schreier?

  It's, I feel like we're in a little bit of different, a different position because everything we play can be considered for work in some capacity, whether it's a full-time job or kind of a most of our jobs, in the case of me and Maddie, or in the case of Kirk, a podcast job, part, part-time job, gig, whatever you want to call it.

• 6:16Kirk Hamilton?

  A part of my.

• 6:17Speaker 02

  Kirk's a part of the gig economy.

• 6:19Kirk Hamilton?

  It is a part of my overall employment picture.

• 6:23Jason Schreier?

  Your overall, Kirk, it's so funny when people ask me what you're up to these days. And I'm like, yeah, he's a full-time podcaster. That's just, that's just what he does. He's a podcaster.

• 6:30Kirk Hamilton?

  That's what, yeah, most of what I do anyway.

• 6:32Jason Schreier?

  Podcaster and musician, which is pretty cool.

• 6:35Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, live performer, live entertainer.

• 6:39Jason Schreier?

  Live jazz, jazz act, Kirk Hamilton. So I think I found it most pronounced, I mean, I feel this with a lot of games regardless of like always feeling like I'm playing them for work purposes. And like, I'll get something out of them, at least to talk about them on the show or something like that. But I do feel it very, in a very pronounced way when I am playing like a live service game like Destiny, and I'm just like, why am I doing this? Why am I watching these numbers go up? This is a real waste of time. And have felt it before with other kind of monotonous games as well.

• 7:13Kirk Hamilton?

  Maddie, how about you?

• 7:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, me too. I, I feel like it's funny that we're bringing up the work aspect because I, if I'm having a tough time with a game or a series of games for work, I will go full existential crisis and be like, have I actually made a grave error in my career direction? And should I be covering something else? I mean, it's been a while since that happened to me.

• 7:37Jason Schreier?

  How many times a week does that happen to you?

• 7:39Speaker 02

  Luckily, luckily, zero. It's more like it's happened to me a couple of times over many, many years of doing this. But there, you know, we've all had that happen, especially if you're playing multiple games in a row for work that you don't like, and you start kind of catastrophizing, or at least I do. And I start being like, are video games just bad now? Are they just making bad ones? Are they going to never make a good one again? And then I don't know what happens. I'll take a break, or I'll just finally play something incredible. And I'll be like, it's fine. I'm fine. Everything's going to be okay. There's still something incredible about this art form that I find exciting and tantalizing and compelling and all of those gooey words that mean nice.

• 8:18Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it's a relatable question for sure. I actually, David's question made me think about a review of mine that I recently reread from 2013 for our recent episode on the remake of Assassin's Creed 4. I'm going to read the opening of my review of Assassin's Creed 4 Black Flag. "The loading screen is always the same in Assassin's Creed. Your character stands clad in the robes of his people, armed to the teeth and surrounded by empty space. A desaturated digital landscape fades into the distance and out of sight. You press the thumbstick forward and he begins to jog. What's left to do but run? And so you run." I shudder to think how many cumulative hours I've spent trapped in Assassin's Creed

• 9:03Kirk Hamilton?

  loading screens, running. Six, eight, half a day perhaps, staring at a screen, watching a man trapped in a digital construct within a digital construct, sprinting endlessly, and getting nowhere. That was the opening of my review from 13 years ago, so.

• 9:20Jason Schreier?

  Hold on, there is no way you've spent that many hours. Like, that loading screen is, what, like, a minute, like, at most, when you're, like, waiting for the game?

• 9:30Kirk Hamilton?

  I played a lot of Assassin's Creed at that point, so.

• 9:33Speaker 02

  And it depends on the console.

• 9:35Jason Schreier?

  Six hours?

• 9:36Speaker 02

  Like, some of them are taking a while to load those games. Sometimes you're in there for a few minutes.

• 9:41Jason Schreier?

  Let's say it's, like, max a minute, right? That would be, so 60 minutes would be an hour. To get to six hours would be 360 loading screens that you watch for an entire minute. I don't know about that one.

• 9:52Kirk Hamilton?

  Entirely possible.

• 9:53Speaker 02

  It's still a lot of wasted time. Even if it's, like, only 30 minutes, it's still, like, wow, that loading screen, though, it's, it makes you think. It makes you think about what you're doing with your life.

• 10:04Jason Schreier?

  So this is a sale, this is an advertisement for the PlayStation 5, really, where there's no more loading screens.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  Solid-state drive, baby.

• 10:10Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I mean, I've always found those Assassin's Creed loading screens to be rhetorically useful. And rather than nitpicking my math, I think the idea that I've always felt this way.

• 10:20Jason Schreier?

  This is a show where we nitpick math, Kirk. I think you just have to accept that.

• 10:24Kirk Hamilton?

  I suppose it is. So anyways, I've always felt this way. This is certainly relatable. Man, I feel it lately, you know, I've, I've mentioned this before, but there are just, it takes a lot for me to not want to be just, like, practicing guitar. Guitar has gotten really fun, as I've gotten better over the last few years. And I love practicing it, and it's such a similar kind of thing to do. Like, it's, it uses my brain similarly, it's a similar kind of pursuit. It requires repetition. But then the guitar is, like, you're playing the blues and stuff, like, I'm, like, getting better and getting to, like, expressing myself and connecting to something really cool. So I just, there, it takes, it's a higher bar for a game to clear now, where I'm sitting there, like, "All right, I'll play a little bit of this." And I just start thinking, "Man, I should

• 11:09Kirk Hamilton?

  really be practicing." But then, you know, as David says, I think, as we've all said, then the right game comes along, and before you know it, you're back in love and playing something wonderful. I think Blueprints was that way for me last year. I really remember feeling a little bit of, I was a little bit in a funk, and I wasn't sure, "Oh, Blueprints is just really gonna do it?" And then, you know, I played 100 hours of that. And actually, recently, I've been finishing Cairn, the rock climbing game that I mentioned earlier this year. What a game, holy shit. Man, it's still my favorite game of the year. It's so amazing. Again, I really went back and, like, I'm finishing it, I'm, like, playing the whole thing, which is a real commitment. It's really involved and difficult. It's like a Dark Souls game. It has that same feeling. And it's just got me. And I have

• 11:52Kirk Hamilton?

  that same feeling of just, like, "Oh, man, I'm so into this. I just want to keep going. I want to experience more. I want to get better and see the rest of the story." And so it's, it's nice to have those games that make me feel that way.

• 12:04Jason Schreier?

  Kirk, I got Amanda playing Blueprints on the Steam machine. She just got to the underground for the first time.

• 12:12Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, really? Oh, so she's doing well. Nice.

• 12:15Speaker 02

  That's a nice moment. That's a cool moment.

• 12:17Kirk Hamilton?

  Frustick is playing it, too, because they finally put out the colorblindness.

• 12:20Speaker 02

  That's so exciting!

• 12:22Jason Schreier?

  He and I talk about this every day.

• 12:23Kirk Hamilton?

  I know, because it's so his kind of jam. Yeah, I know he's been talking with you a lot about this.

• 12:27Jason Schreier?

  He's actually about to come to my house in three hours. We're about to talk more about this.

• 12:30Speaker 02

  Just he's only coming over for Blueprints time?

• 12:32Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, now Amanda can join in.

• 12:33Jason Schreier?

  Well, it's very funny. I was actually gonna talk to them both about this, because she's, like, still early on, hasn't gotten to Room 46 yet, and he's, like, in the endgame stuff. And he is, as you guys know, and anyone who listens to the besties knows, he's such a spoiler phobe, and, like, so freakish about spoilers, that he'll get mad if you, like, tell him instructions for a game or something like that.

• 12:54Speaker 02

  Well, even our listeners know that, because he came on our show to talk about Animal Well, and we had to, like, force him to talk about the game, and he was really reticent to do so.

• 13:02Jason Schreier?

  So he's gotten to the point where he, like, actually needs nudges, because there's a point in Blueprints Endgame where it's impossible to do by yourself, unless you have a freakish brain or something like that. But, like, he's so resistant to it that I keep telling him, like, "Trust me, you need this nudge." And he'll be like, "Wait, give me, give me, give me some time," and it'll take two weeks.

• 13:21Kirk Hamilton?

  And just stare at this wall.

• 13:23Speaker 02

  That's amazing. That's hilarious.

• 13:25Jason Schreier?

  Funny. Talking about this every day.

• 13:27Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm just really glad that he gets to play it, because it was, it was, you know, seeing someone who is so well-suited to a game not be able to play it for so long was, I was frustrated on his behalf.

• 13:37Speaker 02

  Maybe you should create a scavenger hunt for him in real life, where he has to solve a puzzle to get the hint, and that way he'll feel like he's still really experiencing. Jason, you have time for this, right? You don't have anything else going on?

• 13:50Kirk Hamilton?

  Just develop an ARG, fair enough.

• 13:52Jason Schreier?

  Well, I try to give nudges that are, like, like, subtle enough, but you do have to figure it out.

• 13:57Kirk Hamilton?

  You're very good. It's a skill that most people develop when having a friend play through Blueprints, and you've developed it very well.

• 14:03Jason Schreier?

  All right, let's do another question. Matty, you want to read this one?

• 14:06Speaker 02

  Sure. This one is from Luke, who writes, "I was once waiting for my commuter train when a woman approached me explaining she had just come from a nearby craft fair where her phone had died and she needed to contact friends of hers she was staying with in the city. She didn't know their number, but I offered to let her use my phone to send them a Facebook message. After sending the message, she reached into her tote bag and pulled out a gorgeous hand-painted plate from the craft fair and presented it to me as a token of her gratitude. I could practically feel the completed Quest XP flashing above my head. Have you ever had a similar encounter where your reality followed video game logic for a moment?"

• 14:44Jason Schreier?

  It's so funny to imagine her, like, ruffling through her bag and just seeing, like, "What is some shit I could just, like, unload on this person in exchange as a token of my appreciation?" This is so funny. I love the story.

• 14:57Speaker 02

  I love it. Do you two have an example? Because I actually do have one.

• 15:01Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, let me hear yours.

• 15:03Speaker 02

  It's not similar to this one, but it was a moment that made me turn to Dina and be like, "This is a video game. We're in a video game right now." So I'm gonna count that as close enough. So we recently moved apartments, and we have a room that doesn't have a ceiling light anymore. So we've had to buy some fixtures for the room, so that's not dark. And we bought one of those lamps, like, a stand-up lamp that has three lightbulb sockets in it. And it came with light bulbs, but they were really, really dim. And so we were like, "Okay, like, let's just replace these light bulbs." And we quickly found out that it was, for one, a closed circuit, or whatever you call it, when you can't have one of the light bulbs not be screwed in. And we also found out that it only takes a specific either voltage or wattage, which we'd never determined, but we tried a series

• 15:48Speaker 02

  of different light bulbs, and we're, like, looking at the numbers on the bulbs and doing math, and, like, full video game puzzle mode of being like, "Okay, so these two lightbulbs and this one work together, but those are three different colors, which is going to irritate us. So can we find three bulbs in the house, or on the internet, whatever, in the hardware store that will be the right colors, but also divide into three in terms of the power that they're drawing?" Anyway, we managed to do it, but it was hilarious. And even when the three bulbs arrived that we ordered, that we were like, "We think these are gonna be perfect," they actually didn't end up working, and we ended up having to do more math. It was utterly ludicrous, but great. It was great.

• 16:28Jason Schreier?

  Man, if only you could reload, too, before you made the order.

• 16:32Speaker 02

  I know. We wasted so much time.

• 16:34Kirk Hamilton?

  That was a really wasted run.

• 16:35Speaker 02

  I know, I know. I wasted so much on that run, and I needed to just, like, already know the puzzle solution, so that I could keep advancing towards playing video games in my living room.

• 16:43Kirk Hamilton?

  Maybe that knowledge that will be helpful later, in a later puzzle.

• 16:47Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it's foreshadowing.

• 16:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, the puzzle of the numbers on the light bulbs is actually, like, foreshadowing for something else that's gonna happen later in life. You never know.

• 16:54Kirk Hamilton?

  Life is kind of a metroid brain, yeah.

• 16:56Jason Schreier?

  At least you weren't in a Assassin's Creed loading screen, otherwise.

• 17:02Kirk Hamilton?

  That's true.

• 17:02Speaker 02

  It was a lot more brain-stimulating than that, in that moment, for sure.

• 17:05Kirk Hamilton?

  You weren't just running forward into empty space.

• 17:07Speaker 02

  No, definitely not.

• 17:08Kirk Hamilton?

  I, can you think of one, Jason? I can't, I can't really, but I do have a little, have something to add.

• 17:14Jason Schreier?

  I don't have a specific, like, video, "I'm in a video game" moment, but my life and my job is sometimes video game, like, specifically detective, detective game, deductive game.

• 17:25Kirk Hamilton?

  I feel like part of why you like those games, for sure.

• 17:27Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I mean, or vice versa. I don't know. It's kind of all linked in my head. But, like, occasionally I'll be working on a story, and I'll need to fact-check something. And so it'll be, like, a lightbulb flashing moment, when I'm, like, going through a document, a court document or something, and I'll see a number, and I'll be like, "Yes, that is the number that I already knew is true, and this is confirmation of it," or something like that. But I haven't had the, the, the fortune of doing someone a favor and them handing me a token from their bag as appreciation.

• 17:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I hope that happens someday to me.

• 18:00Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I do. I also hope that happens to me one day.

• 18:02Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, and I mean, sort of similarly, like, if you've played a Guitar Hero game, where you play a guitar solo and people cheer, like, I just played a guitar solo and a bunch of people cheered. So.

• 18:11Speaker 02

  This is exactly like Rock Band.

• 18:13Kirk Hamilton?

  I was like, "Wow, this is just like Rock Band." I did not actually have that thought at the time.

• 18:18Speaker 02

  And if you got one wrong note, did they immediately start booing, like, really loudly?

• 18:23Kirk Hamilton?

  And the music, the band kind of stopped.

• 18:24Speaker 02

  The whole band stopped.

• 18:26Kirk Hamilton?

  It was just like, "Boo, get off the stage."

• 18:27Speaker 02

  It's like the least realistic part of Rock Band, but it's so powerful and horrible.

• 18:31Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, yes, very powerful. Yeah, no, my main thought is, this makes me think of all of the times where video games have just sort of bled into life, which is a different thing than what Luke is talking about, that kind of Tetris effect. And actually, talking about Blueprints, because Blueprints is set in just a house that you're sort of walking through. I remember, I can't remember what house it was. There were a few different houses that were like somebody else's house that I would go visit. And it was when I was playing through blueprints and just having that feeling of like, seeing a shovel leaning up against the wall and being like, oh, man, yes, there's a shovel.

• 19:08Speaker 02

  Oh, great. I can finally use that later. It's like,

• 19:10Kirk Hamilton?

  Right, I'll be able to dig up so many gems.

• 19:13Jason Schreier?

  This just happened to us. Oh, my God. So we just, we were at the Botanical Gardens a few days ago for a work, a big work of at Bloomberg, like rented out the whole park and had families come. It was really cool. But on top of the elevator, there was a little sign that was like elevator control room panel here. And Amanda's like, it's like blueprints.

• 19:33Kirk Hamilton?

  I gotta rewire this.

• 19:34Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 19:35Speaker 02

  I was gonna, I mean, there's also gardens and blueprints. So it's like, were you going in and being like, well, where's the little puzzle box that I have to solve?

• 19:42Kirk Hamilton?

  Looking for little mounds of dirt.

• 19:44Jason Schreier?

  We saw mounds of dirt and we started digging them up.

• 19:46Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 19:47Jason Schreier?

  All right, let's do some more questions. This is from Stuart. Stuart is asking if people report on Blizzard and Riot games differently. He writes that, I'm gonna paraphrase a little bit, Riot has this like incredibly interesting output of games like Arcane, like League in Arcane and Riftbound and Riot Forge and the enormous success of Teamfight Tactics in China, especially in China, he says. And he says it's more interesting than Blizzard's output in their time. But compared to Blizzard, he says, I hear far fewer games journalists talking about engaging with what Riot puts out on podcasts and news posts and excitement, whereas Blizzard's is a lot more, is covered a lot more. And so he's

• 20:28Jason Schreier?

  asking, what gives? He says, it feels though, if Blizzard had half of Riot's output in the past decade, those projects would be getting twice the media attention that Riot's stuff does now. I have a couple of theories about this. I'm gonna give you guys two theories that I have to answer this question, because I think it's an interesting question, and it's true, Riot has become a lot more successful than Blizzard in many ways, but gets, does not get covered quite as much. So I have two theories. One is that most people who talk about games, such as the three of us and our friends at the Besties and a lot of other, just kind of like podcasts that people are listening to, are millennials who grew up with Blizzard games and not Riot games. Riot started much later, and so people

• 21:11Jason Schreier?

  like us don't have, or people our generation don't have the same attachment to Riot stuff.

• 21:15Speaker 02

  This is the everyone is 37 theory, but video game version.

• 21:19Jason Schreier?

  It is. And if you were 37, that means you were, what, seven or eight?

• 21:24Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 21:25Jason Schreier?

  Blizzard games are starting to come out and, and if you're 37 in 2026, that means you were, you were seven in 1996, which is when Diablo I came out. So yeah, there you go. But the other thing, and I think this actually might be the bigger thing, is that Riot's games are entirely PvP, whereas Blizzard's games, a lot of them have PVE campaigns and stories, and PVE is much more interesting to talk about than PvP. It's very difficult to talk about PvP in an interesting way, to report on it in an interesting way. There's not a lot to get there. That's why, despite the fact that Team Fortress 2 is one of the biggest games in the world, nobody is covering it on a regular basis unless something crazy happens involving stuff like outside of the game, like hackers or other kind of drama

• 22:10Jason Schreier?

  that doesn't involve the game, as opposed to the new Diablo where there's a new story and there's stuff to kind of sink your teeth into and talk about in a critical way. So I think Blizzard games generally have that. And even something like Overwatch, when people talk about Overwatch, they're generally talking about the story and the lore and stuff that's kind of around Overwatch, the esports, whatever it is, that isn't just the games themselves. So that's, those are my two theories.

• 22:35Kirk Hamilton?

  That second one is a good theory, I think. That feels right for me as someone who doesn't really actually play games by either company that much, really. I guess I play Diablo a bit, but not a lot. And yeah, that character story thing, the fact that there's this slightly different focus on character and story, like as you mentioned in Overwatch, how just people know Tracer and Diva and Winston, they just know these characters because of the little movies they made for them, because everyone played a little bit in that game. It's similar to how with Marvel Rivals, like I don't play that game, but I get press releases about it and I see news about it. And I just know who all those characters are, because they're all Marvel characters. And like Riot has kind of struggled

• 23:17Kirk Hamilton?

  with that. It's a little interesting to look at Rivals, or to look at Riot's recent attempts to kind of bridge that gap with transmedia stuff, because that show Arcane was set in the League of Legends universe. I watched the whole thing. It was great, especially, it started really great. And I think it got a little in the weeds and maybe crowded too much into its second season, but it was far from a bad show. It was very, very well made at times, like really kind of amazing. And watching it, like when we then went back and watched Players, the TV show that we did, a Beans Cast on, there's a whole thing about Heimerdinger in that, where he's like, Heimerdinger, you're playing as Heimerdinger. Heimerdinger is a character in Arcane. And having watched it, I was like, oh, I actually know who Heimerdinger is, like in the lore of League of Legends now. I know what that means. And then I know

• 24:02Kirk Hamilton?

  all these other popular characters too. So in that respect, it was a success. Like when I see people talk about Jinx now, I'm like, yeah, Jinx, I remember her. She's like that main character from that show. Maybe not quite enough, but they are kind of trying to move in that direction. And I could see if they can do that more, they could kind of make the characters land a little more in the broader culture and just make people pay that different kind of attention to them.

• 24:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think the other difference is that Riot has League of Legends and a lot of the other games that Stuart lists, and even Arcane are related to or direct spinoffs of League of Legends. And that's because League of Legends is one of the most popular games in the world. Not as much here in the United States, but in the world, it's extremely popular. And I think that the barrier to entry for a very difficult PvP game, like Jason said, if you're not already in, you're gonna be turned off by that, because also it's been around for years. So you're like, okay, well, it's probably too late for me to understand it now. And that, I think, makes it very difficult to sell from a coverage

• 25:09Speaker 02

  at a mainstream media outlet perspective, or at least that's something that we ran into at Polygon. Like people, we talked about this on the Players episode too, because I talked about kind of getting people to read esports stories and how there were some difficulties with that. And we talked about League of Legends specifically. People should check out the bonus feed. It's so good, you guys. But, but honestly, I do think, I think that single player game piece is interesting too. I don't know if you two remember when people were talking about the 2021 Game Ruined King of League of Legends story. I remember hearing that was really good. And I kept being like, oh, I should check it out. I should check it out. And the reason why I never did is just because I'm like, yeah, I don't know what any of League of Legends characters are though. So like, I just couldn't get

• 25:51Speaker 02

  myself over that hump, even though I actually heard it was like a really good turn-based, turn-based RPG. And I like turn-based RPGs, so that should have been my thing. And like you, Kirk, like I could have also just watched Arcane, but I don't think that would have actually gotten me to start playing League of Legends. That makes sense. But so it's like, they're almost there. But I do think that that is a really key difference from Blizzard, where they have standalone games. You can kind of pick one and decide that's yours. Like when you go to BlizzCon, you can like get a pin for each of your games that you play and like get a Diablo pin or a StarCraft pin or like they really allow fans to identify themselves by which Blizzard franchise they are a fan of. Whereas I feel

• 26:34Speaker 02

  like if you're a Riot Games fan, you're into League of Legends probably. And maybe also all these other things as a result of that.

• 26:40Kirk Hamilton?

  Valorant or whatever. Yeah. And if Blizzard does have one game that's a little more like that than their others, it's Warcraft or One Universe, it's Warcraft, and then World of Warcraft. But those have a single player history and a lot of different kinds of people play them. They weren't just PvP games.

• 26:54Jason Schreier?

  Well, also, World of Warcraft is a lot more community oriented than League of Legends or Valorant are, because again, it's PVE, so you're teaming up with your friends. And so the reason that things like BlizzCon exist is because all these people get their guilds together and hang out with all these people they've been playing with for years and years and years. League of Legends, of course, you have friends who you play with, but you're not going and meeting new people and like forging new friendships a lot of the time because it's PvP. And chances are, if you're playing with other people, they're yelling at you.

• 27:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, nobody's getting married in League of Legends.

• 27:24Jason Schreier?

  That is true. Not a lot of weddings.

• 27:26Kirk Hamilton?

  Huge 10 emails from people about some person who got married.

• 27:29Speaker 02

  Being like, we actually got married in League. Okay, honestly, I'm so impressed if you got married in League. Please write in.

• 27:34Kirk Hamilton?

  It's gonna be sick.

• 27:36Speaker 02

  How did you do it?

• 27:37Jason Schreier?

  Two people are getting married in League and the three other players are yelling at them.

• 27:41Speaker 02

  I'm defending them.

• 27:41Jason Schreier?

  Because they're missing, they're missing their bots. It's like, come on, what are you doing? What the hell?

• 27:46Kirk Hamilton?

  I can't believe you picked that dress.

• 27:49Jason Schreier?

  All right, let's keep going.

• 27:50Speaker 02

  Oh my god.

• 27:51Jason Schreier?

  Kurt, read this next one, please.

• 27:54Kirk Hamilton?

  Sure, this is from Levi who writes, "If you died and in the afterlife, you were allowed to see any statistics about your life, what stats would you want to know? Personally, I would want to know where I ranked in terms of running speed in all of history, or how many people were secretly into me." Those are two good ones for Levi to kick us off.

• 28:13Jason Schreier?

  That last one is a little bleak. I would not want to know that. That's so depressing because it's like, think of all the opportunities you missed.

• 28:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, but who cares? I'm happily married.

• 28:25Jason Schreier?

  At this point, sure. Here's another bleak one. Imagine finding out how many, like, potentially important or life-changing or like, interesting emails were sent to your spam filter.

• 28:38Speaker 02

  Oh, god.

• 28:38Jason Schreier?

  And so you never got to see them.

• 28:39Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, that's an interesting one.

• 28:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, I feel like I'd always want to know, like, what would happen if things went slightly differently? Like, if I had taken different jobs or, like, almost like the multiverse.

• 28:51Jason Schreier?

  Is that a statistic?

• 28:52Speaker 02

  I know it's not. Statistics-wise, I just want to know, like, how intelligent am I? I know there's no good way to measure that in our world. That's test for it or debunked and useless. But I'm like, I do kind of want to know how smart I am. Is that an egotistical answer? Whatever, it's the truth.

• 29:10Kirk Hamilton?

  I would want to know, first of all, how many hours I spent in Assassin's Creed loading screens in my entire life.

• 29:16Jason Schreier?

  That would be good. And then we could see if I was.

• 29:19Speaker 02

  That we would know.

• 29:20Kirk Hamilton?

  I know. I would want Jason to be there. So presumably, we both die.

• 29:23Speaker 02

  Well, we're all three going to die at the exact same time.

• 29:26Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 29:26Kirk Hamilton?

  We're at a live show and, like, the ceiling collapses.

• 29:29Jason Schreier?

  That's the triple-click guarantee. That we will all die together.

• 29:33Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. Part of our LLC operating agreement has a death pact. Near the end of the agreement.

• 29:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's weird that we all agreed on that.

• 29:40Kirk Hamilton?

  Some section says, "death pact."

• 29:41Jason Schreier?

  And we all make it to 100.

• 29:43Speaker 02

  There's no way to vote out of it either. Like, we baked in that we can't not have that happen.

• 29:47Kirk Hamilton?

  Right, no, yes. That one's binding.

• 29:49Jason Schreier?

  It was an odd decision.

• 29:50Speaker 02

  We did have to sign the contract in blood, yeah.

• 29:53Kirk Hamilton?

  Sign that part in blood. I actually just initialed in blood, but apparently that's still binding.

• 29:58Kirk Hamilton?

  So I would want to know that. I would want to know how many A-list celebrities routinely listen to either strong songs or triple-click.

• 30:07Jason Schreier?

  Oh, that's good.

• 30:09Speaker 02

  That is good.

• 30:09Kirk Hamilton?

  Because I know for a fact, I know there are celebrities, and I guess maybe not A-list, or what even is A-list? I know there are other celebrities that listen to strong songs, and I know there are big people in video game world that listen to triple-click.

• 30:21Jason Schreier?

  Which ones? Wait, how do you know this?

• 30:22Kirk Hamilton?

  No, I can't, I can't, I can't betray.

• 30:24Jason Schreier?

  What is this tease?

• 30:26Speaker 02

  I'll betray one for myself. I will say Ronan Farrow read my Last of Us Part II review and started following me on Twitter, and that was a huge deal for me. To me, Ronan Farrow's an A-list celebrity.

• 30:38Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I think, and I would, right, I would, I would probably define celebrity fairly broadly, like, people that I really admire. But also, it's fun to know that whatever, Tom Cruise listens to triple-click or something.

• 30:47Speaker 02

  That'd be crazy if he did.

• 30:49Jason Schreier?

  Matty, it's funny you say that because, so Ronan, Ronan is a big gamer. I've talked to him a little bit.

• 30:54Speaker 02

  It's not that weird that he would.

• 30:55Jason Schreier?

  But a while, a while back, Matty, he also started following me on Twitter, and my first thought was, oh, my god, what did I do?

• 31:03Speaker 02

  Is he looking into me? Like, what? Luckily, there was like a specific, like, cause and effect. It was like, oh, he retweeted my review and then started following me. He's not going to destroy my life.

• 31:14Jason Schreier?

  It's such a kudos to, it's like such a credit to his reputation.

• 31:16Speaker 02

  His investigation capabilities is that I'm like, well, you know what? Ronan, you're not going to find anything. Really boring life over here. Mostly lightbulb stuff, mostly dealing with lightbulbs. That's about it. So Jason, do you have any celebs following you or no? Do you know of any?

• 31:30Jason Schreier?

  On Twitter? Well, I don't use Twitter anymore.

• 31:32Kirk Hamilton?

  I feel like you probably more than the two of us.

• 31:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:34Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I've had some interactions, like Kumail Nanjiani is like a big gamer. And so I've talked to him a little bit about that sort of thing. Yeah, a couple of people here and there, but like, I don't know if any of them are secretly, if any A-list celebrities are secretly listening to triple-click.

• 31:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, write in.

• 31:51Jason Schreier?

  Get us up. Let me know.

• 31:53Speaker 02

  We're inviting people to write in a lot this time.

• 31:55Kirk Hamilton?

  That's the fun thing about making a show like this.

• 31:56Jason Schreier?

  In the games world, I mean, I think in the games world, none of these are A-list celebrities, but like, certainly there are people who are relatively big names who listen to our show and follow us because I've heard from them.

• 32:07Kirk Hamilton?

  And follow all of our advice about what we're doing professionally.

• 32:11Speaker 02

  We only ever hear from them that we got everything perfectly correct.

• 32:15Jason Schreier?

  Exactly.

• 32:16Speaker 02

  And all of our takes are perfect and great.

• 32:17Jason Schreier?

  Exactly.

• 32:18Kirk Hamilton?

  I have one other thought related to this question, and that is that the thing I would always, I would like to know, like, the pointless superpower that I would love to have, I've probably mentioned this on the show in the past, but I'll just mention it again, is just being able to know with pinpoint accuracy where any one object is, which obviously could be used to, for great and terrible ends, you know? But I would just want to know, you know, like, what happened to my car that I drove when I was in high school? You know, where is it now? Is it in pieces, maybe? Has it been, is it in some junkyard somewhere? Like, where is it? Or, you know, that, whatever, that toy that I lost that I still think about sometimes? Because I just don't know what happened to it.

• 32:54Jason Schreier?

  That's good.

• 32:55Kirk Hamilton?

  Just being able to, like, see on like, a kind of, you know, Batman map of the world, and then it's kind of highlighted, and I can zoom in and just see wherever that thing is sitting. You know, where that microphone that I sold off seven years ago? Like, who's using that right now? You know, and it's like at Madison Square Garden, and it's the main microphone. It'd be kind of fun to just know random objects and like, what became of them.

• 33:16Jason Schreier?

  You just wish everything had an air tag on it.

• 33:19Kirk Hamilton?

  Right, that I could see in like, a perfect 3D model of the world.

• 33:22Jason Schreier?

  Let's keep going. Matty, read this next question.

• 33:24Speaker 02

  This one's from Nick who writes, "Hi, triple-click. As much as the recent Xbox news sucks, it seems to have a silver lining. The affected studios, or at least most of them, will continue to exist. Why do companies like Microsoft and EA normally shut studios down instead of letting them spin off? And why is this different?"

• 33:43Jason Schreier?

  It's, this is a little bit ironic, and Nick couldn't have known this, but we're recording this the day after Double Fine, which is one of those studios announced that they're laying off 23 people, which is about a quarter of their staff.

• 33:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, pretty significant for their size.

• 33:57Jason Schreier?

  Part of the explanation here is that there's going to be layoffs and that it's not much of a silver lining for some of these people. And Compulsion will undoubtedly be laying people off as well. I think the main answer to this is that, like, usually it's not an option for the studio heads. I think in some of these cases, the studio heads themselves had been put in a position by selling their companies where they had some money and could potentially help get the studio going after the sale. And the other thing, I think the main explanation here is the IP rights. So in this case, both Compulsion and Double Fine, the two companies that were allowed to spin out, both of them negotiated their way into getting control of their IPs.

• 34:42Jason Schreier?

  So like, Double Fine is leaving Xbox and gets back control of Psychonauts and Brutal Legend and whatever else, or whatever else they own. I don't know exactly what that list is. Sacking, because it's, Xbox really wanted sacking, but that was, that was a real sticking point. No, sacking point. But no, the IP.

• 35:01Kirk Hamilton?

  Sacking was a cool game.

• 35:02Jason Schreier?

  No, it is, it is a cool game.

• 35:04Kirk Hamilton?

  I think I gave it a kind of.

• 35:05Jason Schreier?

  They should do a remaster of that.

• 35:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Mixed review when it came out, but I really have come to really like it.

• 35:08Jason Schreier?

  It was a fun, fun concept. But anyway, so the answer to that is usually because of that. And so like, if you're EA and you're shutting down Visceral Games, the thing that makes Visceral valuable is Dead Space. Otherwise, it's just an expensive studio in San Francisco that would be very hard to maintain as an independent studio without being able to say, we're going to make a new Dead Space game, and so we're going to get funding to pay for our staff. And so if EA said, "Hey, Visceral, do you want to go and spin out?" It would be impossible for them to do that and pay for themselves without having the rights to Dead Space. And so sometimes it's more preferable to get the severance from EA that you would get in, in, in shutting the studio down.

• 35:50Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, and I can understand why Nick sees this as a silver lining in, just in specifically the Double Fine case. Just because the version of this story where Double Fine is shut down and no longer exists, that is a very heartbreaking outcome. Obviously, this is as well.

• 36:05Jason Schreier?

  That's true.

• 36:06Kirk Hamilton?

  And it really sucks that so many people were laid off. But imagining that where, like, truly Double Fine dies, and we're sitting here and everyone is like, doing eulogies for Double Fine, and just the feeling of like, man, wow, they, they got bought by Microsoft and it killed them in the end. Like, that would have been a pretty awful outcome. Not that the current outcome is all rosy, but at least Double Fine still exists.

• 36:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, and they have the opportunity, one hopes, to maybe build back up and be successful in an indie model. I just don't, I don't know what the future holds. I'm trying to be optimistic, though.

• 36:38Kirk Hamilton?

  Fingers crossed. I'm rooting for them, for sure.

• 36:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:40Jason Schreier?

  I have a theory. I have a good theory, actually.

• 36:42Kirk Hamilton?

  It could be bunnies.

• 36:44Jason Schreier?

  It may be bunnies. No, I have a, I have a theory. We'll see if this comes to fruition. But there is a game publisher that was started last year by the people who all quit Annapurna. If you remember that story, there were like, 26 people who all quit Annapurna Games, and they started a new publisher. They were funded by this private equity firm, Havalley Investments, led by this former games agent named Ophir Lupu. And so they then bought the catalog of Private Division, which was the label Undertake II that did like, Outer Worlds, the first Outer Worlds, and Ancestors, and a bunch of other stuff. These guys, Fictions, are actually publishing Beast of Reincarnation, which is a new game from Game Freak, the Pokemon people. I know I just dropped a bunch of names here, but Fictions is the important one.

• 37:29Kirk Hamilton?

  That's out really soon, right? That comes out in a couple of weeks.

• 37:31Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, that's about to come out. Fictions is the important name here. They're a publisher, they have money, and guess what? One of the top executives at Fictions, Greg Rice, former biz dev guy at Double Fine.

• 37:42Kirk Hamilton?

  I didn't know that's what Greg was doing now.

• 37:44Jason Schreier?

  And so my theory is that Fictions is going to find some way to make a deal with Double Fine and potentially.

• 37:51Kirk Hamilton?

  I've got a theory. It could be Fictions.

• 37:53Jason Schreier?

  There you go.

• 37:55Speaker 02

  I think it's a good theory. Or it's a good idea. Maybe one of them is listening and now they'll do it. I don't know. Again, everyone in the games industry who listens to Triple Click takes our advice. Cause I know we're right.

• 38:05Jason Schreier?

  It's true. Um, all right. Let's do another question. This is from LJ who writes, with the monumental release of Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, the praise it is receiving reminds me of the accolades thrown around about Elden Ring, a monumental achievement for the medium from a director at the peak of his talents. This made me wonder, is From Software the Christopher Nolan of games? They both make massively popular entertainment with huge budgets and managed to do so with a somewhat prestigious flair, at least compared to typical, typical triple A blockbusters. Do you agree with that comparison? What other analogues would you draw? Is Rockstar James Cameron? I love this question. This is a great question.

• 38:45Speaker 02

  Is Rockstar James Cameron is the perfect tag on this? And like, just sent me reeling when I first read this, LJ.

• 38:52Jason Schreier?

  I feel like Rockstar is a little bit more Scorsese.

• 38:55Kirk Hamilton?

  Rockstar is Quentin Tarantino.

• 38:56Speaker 02

  Oh, sure.

• 38:58Jason Schreier?

  No, no way. No, Tarantino is way too indie to be Rockstar. Like Rockstar is like such big budgets.

• 39:04Speaker 02

  Publicly, so I feel like personality wise, there's some energy there of like.

• 39:09Jason Schreier?

  No, I think Rockstar is Scorsese.

• 39:11Kirk Hamilton?

  Scorsese doesn't quite feel right though, because Scorsese, in addition to making mob movies, makes so much like artistic kind of, you know, non, non-mob movies. I don't know.

• 39:20Jason Schreier?

  So, I mean, Rockstar used to do that too. Well, Red Dead, Red Dead is totally Scorsese.

• 39:25Speaker 02

  Coming up with a Rockstar one is so much harder than coming up with like what From Software is.

• 39:30Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, I want to start with LJ's actual comparison of Christopher Nolan to FromSoft, which I really like. I, it's purely based on vibes. Obviously they're just completely different.

• 39:40Speaker 02

  This is an absurd comparison in the first place.

• 39:42Kirk Hamilton?

  Forms of media, different, a whole creative team and one director with obviously his own, it's just completely different. But there is just sort of this like similarity, actually, like where they both do stand apart as these, just, just as LJ says, as these artistic triumphs that are also massively successful, that do it by leaning into the best elements of the medium in which they're working, where Nolan's films are so cinematically adventurous and cool. And also people really respond to them and the way they respond to movies. You know, FromSoft games are so video games, they're so good at being video games. They're difficult, they're so thorny and twisty and naughty and complicated. And like, you know, we obsess over them in the same way.

• 40:25Kirk Hamilton?

  And so there is actually, like, the root of this question is coming from, I think, the, the root comparison is a very strong one.

• 40:31Speaker 02

  Let me give you an alternative theory, which is, is From Software the David Lynch of games? Because I also think that Chris Nolan has a lot of work that's fairly accessible, even though it's also still prestigious and artistic. Some From Software games are really weird and like turn off a lot of people. And like, I don't think of like early days of From Software as having kind of the same impact on people as early Chris Nolan films. I think of people being like, these are niche and weird and you're kind of a masochist if you like From Software, in the way that people think of David Lynch's work, where it's really influential, really powerful, really cool and artistic, but also you have to be kind of a masochist to enjoy Eraserhead. I don't know, it doesn't totally work.

• 41:16Speaker 02

  This is all vibe space.

• 41:17Jason Schreier?

  I don't think David Lynch has had the same level of commercial success as From Software.

• 41:20Speaker 02

  True, so true. The commercial success part doesn't, doesn't work.

• 41:23Jason Schreier?

  Well, that's what makes the Nolan comparison so good, is the artistic plus the commercial.

• 41:27Kirk Hamilton?

  And you can go back to Memento and, and Demon's Souls or something. I mean, I guess going back to King's Field or whatever and further, like, it's a little different.

• 41:35Speaker 02

  King's Field is really the Memento.

• 41:37Kirk Hamilton?

  But the earlier Nolan was definitely stranger.

• 41:39Speaker 02

  No, you're right.

• 41:40Kirk Hamilton?

  And then like, who is Kojima? If, cause Kojima's kind of a filmmaker anyways.

• 41:44Speaker 02

  Kojima is Kojima.

• 41:45Kirk Hamilton?

  But maybe he's a little bit David Lynch-y.

• 41:47Speaker 02

  I think he would love if we said that.

• 41:50Kirk Hamilton?

  He would love that. I mean, he'd love to be compared to any of these.

• 41:53Speaker 02

  The highest compliment we could possibly give.

• 41:54Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I don't know if there's a good comparison. I think Nintendo is kind of like the Chris Columbus of, of the video game industry.

• 42:02Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, I could see that.

• 42:03Jason Schreier?

  The family friendly, like some all timers, some good classics.

• 42:06Kirk Hamilton?

  I think Nintendo is the Spielberg. I, I think, cause Nintendo is so successful. And I think of Chris Columbus as a little bit of a Spielberg knockoff. Like he's, he does not do what Spielberg does as artistically or as well. Nothing really against him. He's made some good movies, but he's made a lot of movies that are kind of whatever.

• 42:23Jason Schreier?

  Interesting, but Spielberg has taken some, some real risks that Nintendo doesn't really.

• 42:28Kirk Hamilton?

  I think Nintendo takes so many risks. That's kind of what's amazing about Nintendo.

• 42:32Jason Schreier?

  No, I guess, okay, no, risk is the wrong word.

• 42:34Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm playing Splatoon Raiders right now and it's like, how is this the big shooter?

• 42:37Jason Schreier?

  Risk is the wrong word. Risk is the wrong word. Spielberg has gone into, let's say, more, more.

• 42:45Kirk Hamilton?

  Spielberg made a Holocaust movie.

• 42:46Jason Schreier?

  Mature territory.

• 42:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. Nintendo's not, what is Nintendo's Schindler's List?

• 42:51Kirk Hamilton?

  What is the Schindler's List of Nintendo lineup? That's really what we're trying to answer.

• 42:55Speaker 02

  What an upsetting question that LJ has provoked us.

• 42:57Kirk Hamilton?

  Super Mario Galaxy 2 is the Schindler's List.

• 43:00Jason Schreier?

  The answer to that question is Yoshi's Woolly World, first of all. Second of all, yeah, that's, that's what I was looking for. It's more like Nintendo doesn't, doesn't take the kind of artistic risk or like the, Nintendo won't have the conversations that Spielberg is willing to have. Maybe because I just think of them as more childish, I suppose.

• 43:19Kirk Hamilton?

  Sure. I think the interest, the comparison kind of holds up for me because Spielberg is like not, he is always trying something new. He's sort of a, you know, he's like an IP unto himself in a similar way that Nolan is now. I mean, Nolan, I think occupies a kind of similar space, albeit the movie world has changed quite a bit from when Spielberg was at the height of his powers. But still, it's like one of, like the director whose name is just means something really specific and, and important. And Nintendo is kind of that way as well. Like they do, they've been doing it for a very long time. They've covered a lot of ground. They're comfortable in so many different areas and they're very much just like Nintendo. And you know, when Nintendo puts out something, you're gonna check it out and it's probably gonna be good. Steven Spielberg is very similar in that way.

• 44:04Kirk Hamilton?

  He's had his misses, but like, he's covered a ton of ground. He's made movies in like every style. He's always coming back and he's been with us for a very, very long time and is even still making movies. So it's like, I think there's, there's a parallel there. Obviously quite a bit of differences, but a little bit of a parallel too. What a fun question.

• 44:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, what a, what an utterly silly question.

• 44:25Jason Schreier?

  Wait, okay, I have one more, one more to throw at you guys. Tarantino is id Software. Id Software is the Tarantino of the video game industry.

• 44:35Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I was thinking about who it would be. All right, say more.

• 44:38Jason Schreier?

  I think that's, well, I mean, just kind of like very influential, um, a lot of commercial success in the early days, um, maybe a little, little bit now.

• 44:47Kirk Hamilton?

  Reservoir Dogs is Wolfenstein 3D.

• 44:49Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, yeah. And like Doom is like, it's Pulp Fiction, yeah.

• 44:53Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, okay, I like that. That whole.

• 44:56Speaker 02

  I don't even agree with this. I'm just coming up with ideas to make it work.

• 44:58Jason Schreier?

  Well, the violence, the violence.

• 44:59Kirk Hamilton?

  The hateful eight is like rage or something.

• 45:02Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, some weird, some weird styles a little bit later on.

• 45:07Kirk Hamilton?

  That's funny.

• 45:08Jason Schreier?

  And, and yeah, and then kind of like, uh, has just disappeared maybe? I don't know, maybe we'll see what happens with it.

• 45:15Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I guess, and it hasn't quite made the pivot to like these kind of broader, you know, the, the sort of, some of his more recent stuff that's a little more, I don't want to say artsy, it's a little less lurid. I guess I don't even know, like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood actually is pretty lurid. So maybe I, maybe I take that back.

• 45:35Speaker 02

  I feel like we're illustrating one of the difficulties of the question here because like now that we're throwing id Software in there, I'm like, well, but the original id Software had these big characters in and of themselves who were auteurs. Like you had the Romero and Carmack dynamic and like all the other guys. I mean, I, of course I've recently read Doom, Guide Masters of Doom, so I'm kind of biased here.

• 45:54Kirk Hamilton?

  You're right, we're personifying a studio.

• 45:56Speaker 02

  But all those guys are gone. So it's like, we're now talking about a version of id Software that's super, super different from the original one. So like having Tarantino encompass the entirety of id Software is utterly laughable.

• 46:08Kirk Hamilton?

  It just doesn't work, you're right.

• 46:09Speaker 02

  But that's why this question is hilarious and in fact, good, because it is silly and it doesn't matter.

• 46:14Jason Schreier?

  Well, actually, I mean, it's actually fitting for From Software because you have Miyazaki who's been there.

• 46:18Speaker 02

  Right, that's almost why I feel like it's easier.

• 46:20Kirk Hamilton?

  And presumably a lot of other people as well.

• 46:22Speaker 02

  For like auteur-led studios, whether it's fair to say that those auteurs have creative control or not, I think it's a little easier for us to make comparisons between them and movie directors, which comes with all the thorny considerations that movies have as well. Like who's really in charge of everything?

• 46:39Kirk Hamilton?

  Or Japanese studios where there's a more consistent, you know, lineup of people working there. Like the staff is just more consistent.

• 46:45Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I mean, I also think that from what I've learned about Japanese studios, the kind of the auteur vision sort of thing is a lot more like, kind of prevalent at, at Japanese studios, where in Western studios, sometimes we see someone as being an auteur, but actually it's like some other people below them who have a way more like say and, and kind of input into what the final product turns out to be. I think just because of the way Japanese development culture works, there actually is a lot more, there's a lot more hands-on from the, the person on top and a lot more just kind of auteur-driven, uh, uh, direction.

• 47:18Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm just enjoying imagining Quentin Tarantino stops making movies, but like the people who used to work for him keep making movies as Quentin Tarantino movies.

• 47:28Speaker 02

  That's the world that we live in right now.

• 47:30Kirk Hamilton?

  And everyone's like, man, this new Quentin Tarantino movie is great. And then some critics are like, actually, you know, it's not even the same guy.

• 47:38Speaker 02

  But like, no one really cares about that because like that criticism doesn't matter to people.

• 47:41Jason Schreier?

  The collective of people known as Quentin Tarantino. Let's, let's read one more real quick. Kirk, why don't you just read this last one real quick?

• 47:49Kirk Hamilton?

  Sure. John writes, I'm 47 years old and I have been gaming my entire life. I wait until games are under $10 on Steam and slowly work my way through my back catalog. My son is 12 and plays three free to play games. He puts free in quotes, Roblox, Fortnite and Brawl Stars. He has spent well over $500 on them. Every holiday, all he asks for is virtual money for these games so that he can buy the latest skin, weapon, or hero. But that's the thing. There's always a new skin, weapon, or hero. He is literally bought into a cycle that will only end when he stops playing the game. Kids these days, am I right?

• 48:26Jason Schreier?

  Oh my God. Jesus fucking Christ. Okay. I have a quick anecdote to share. So I will never let my kids play these games, first of all. Second of all, my daughter has this elementary school yearbook that she got from her school and the sixth graders all have this section, because this elementary school ends at sixth grade. So the sixth graders all have a section where they all get these little interviews. It's very cute. And in the interview, they put favorite game slash app as like one of the questions they're asked. And a bunch of them are like Roblox and Minecraft and YouTube and just kind of the stuff you'd expect. But there's one who put Hollow Knight. And then there's two, two different kids who put Undertale. One put Undertale slash Delta Rune. So some of the kids are all right.

• 49:09Speaker 02

  Those three kids are going to form a podcast in 20 years. And when all three of us die on the same day, you can all stop listening to us, of course, and listen to that podcast.

• 49:20Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, they'll take over Triple Click. Triple Click will go on, just like Tarantino, but it won't be the same Triple Click.

• 49:25Kirk Hamilton?

  Those, and those children will have to sign the blood pact. Once they overwrite our blood with their blood, then we are finally free.

• 49:32Jason Schreier?

  For Tarantino, it's a very bloody blood pact. I mean, our, our old boss, Steven Totillo, his policy is he won't let his kids, he'll let his kids play anything, but not free to play games. Like specifically, that is the rule. No free to play games, which I personally think is an excellent rule. Like keeping, keeping kids away from any predatory stuff, anything that is like trying to get you to spend money beyond what you were just paying for the price of a game, I think is, is just a good habit in general. And that's my plan with my kids is like, they can play anything, anything on my Switch. They can play stuff like as they get older, they can play stuff that's more appropriate for them, yada, yada, but no Fortnite, no Minecraft. They can definitely play, but

• 50:12Jason Schreier?

  no Fortnite, no Roblox, like none of the free to play stuff. All right. So thank you again to everybody who sent in questions. We might do another burning questions next week, or at least another one in August. We'll see, because we got so many good ones. Once again, you can reach us at [email protected]. Let's take a break and we'll be back with one more thing.

• 50:38Speaker 03

  In 2026, our comedy podcast, Sawbones, is one of the most reputable sources for medical information. Does that make me feel great? No.

• 50:47Speaker 04

  No, me neither. But I do like to think we're doing our part in making sure that we're fighting the pseudoscientific misinformation that has pervaded modern society.

• 50:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, but we're, we're doing our part over here on Sawbones every week. A marital tour of misguided medicine. It's not all serious stuff. We're still getting into all the wild, weird ways we used to try to heal people over the years. But we're also trying to keep tabs on the evolving situation.

• 51:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, we can talk about drinking raw milk and eating mummies. It's Sawbones.

• 51:13Speaker 03

  That's right. It's Sawbones. It's every Tuesday and it's on maximumfun.org or wherever you get a podcast these days.

• 51:23Kirk Hamilton?

  On Judge John Hodgman, the courtroom is fake, but the disputes are real.

• 51:29Speaker 05

  Brian would say, I'm the Gumby of this family. He's just not.

• 51:33Kirk Hamilton?

  Claiming to be Gumby is an ungumby-like claim.

• 51:37Speaker 06

  No, it's just Gumby and I being our authentic selves.

• 51:41Speaker 07

  So what's your complaint? Too many sauces? There are no foods on which to put the sauces. Have we named all the sauces on the top shelf yet? Not, not even close.

• 51:50Speaker 03

  You economize when it comes to pants.

• 51:53Speaker 07

  Truly, it's not about the cleanliness of the pants?

• 51:55Speaker 03

  Well, why isn't it? This is what I want to know. Judge John Hodgman, fake court, weird cases, real justice. On maximumfun.org, YouTube, and everywhere you get podcasts.

• 52:08Jason Schreier?

  And we are back. It is time for one more thing. Maddie, start us off.

• 52:12Speaker 02

  Sure. I've been playing a video game called Hell Clock and it's really cool. Have you two heard of Hell Clock at all?

• 52:18Jason Schreier?

  No, good name though.

• 52:20Speaker 02

  I know, isn't it? It came out exactly.

• 52:22Kirk Hamilton?

  It's a real Spider Mansion name.

• 52:24Speaker 02

  I know. It's almost like we gave him advice. Came out a year ago and they just put out DLC, which is how I heard about it. Cause a couple of friends of mine were checking it out with the DLC drop. And it's so cool. So Hell Clock is a rogue light, rogue-like, whatever. It's one of those. It's, I can't be bothered to know the difference between those terms. It's similar to the video game Rogue, if you've heard of that. Or in my case, it's similar to the video game Hades. But it has a clock in it. This is like the main difference. Got a hell clock, you see? So when you're descending into hell, there's a timer and that fundamentally changes how a run works and your psychology around the

• 53:09Speaker 02

  run. Because instead of the run ending with you dying, it could end with you dying and getting reset back to home base. There is a ticking clock which forces the run to end at a certain point, no matter how far you got. And that encourages you to level up your character back at home base more frequently. And one of the things that you can level up is the clock itself. You can extend its time. But also the abilities in this game are so cool. They are like interlocking stacking abilities that kind of turn you into more of like a vampire survivors type of a murder machine, such that you proceed through hell significantly faster, the more, the more abilities you cultivate and the more you stack them. So for example.

• 53:54Jason Schreier?

  So hold on, just to zoom out for a sec. So this is an isometric action RPG.

• 53:58Speaker 02

  Isometric action RPG. Yeah. Kind of like Hades. Like you're looking down, you're, you're going through hell.

• 54:02Kirk Hamilton?

  Kind of grittier. I'm looking, I'm looking at footage of it. It's like a little more Diablo vibes.

• 54:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I guess I'll take a little pause and I'll explain like what the vibe is because the vibe is part of why I'm playing it for so long. Cause I actually love the atmosphere of this game. And then I'll explain the stacking abilities and how fun they are. So this game is made by a Brazilian development team and it is about a historical event in Brazil called the Canudos massacre that I knew nothing about. And now I know more about, in part because of this game and also because I just wanted to read about it after this. Cause I was really interested in it. So this was this historical event in the late 1800s. Let me see if I can explain it really quickly. This super religious Catholic mystic guy became very popular with marginalized people at the time, like newly freed slaves

• 54:48Speaker 02

  who didn't have resources and money, indigenous people, other just people who were marginalized by society ended up following this guy because they felt really unsupported by the Brazilian government. They ended up creating this sort of commune slash town called Canudos and the Brazilian government went there and killed everybody because they perceived it as a threat to the government. Because it was, despite that it was like this religious enclave, it was also like this really far left extremist kind of ideology that was like really fascinating. And even now historians are kind of like divided on how to characterize this guy. Because it's like, was he this cult leader? Like, should we like kind of not see him in a good light? Or was he like this kind of hopeful figure? So Hell Clock depicts him

• 55:30Speaker 02

  as a hopeful figure. And they don't name the guy who founded Canudos by name, but it's kind of like implied that that is the setting here and that's what happened. And it's right after the massacre. And you're this regular guy who is suddenly having to fight the Brazilian government, except in this version of the world. Heaven and hell are real. Catholicism and all its trappings are real. And the Brazilian government is led by, or the military at least, is led by the literal Antichrist. And so all of these demons from hell are what are massacring the people of Canudos. And you have to descend in hell to rescue the guy who like saved all of you. And that is, it's like a very,

• 56:11Speaker 02

  very religious game in the way that like Diablo is, and you could argue Hades is, although it's about an ancient religion. But it also just has like, it has really cool aesthetics and vibes and like history lesson wise, I think it's very interesting. And it's like a very Brazilian game, like very Brazilian team. Um, so anyway, the, the ability stacking, this is the other reason to keep playing the game and why it's fun. So it is an indie team. I will say there's like a lot of weird difficulty spiking. I don't think the balance is perfect by any means. And I think part of that is because like, they're called relics. I think a lot of them are like auto-generated, procedurally generated. So like, sometimes you can kind of break your character as well.

• 56:50Jason Schreier?

  Is the game an early access?

• 56:51Speaker 02

  No, it was out. It's out. It's out, baby. They're still updating it and they're still putting things out for it. But like, I just wanted to warn people that since it's an indie, it's not, it's not as like. Uh, smoothly polished as a Diablo, for example, there's, there's definitely some spikes in it where I'm like, okay, interesting. Like this is made by a smaller team. Um, so basically, you know how in Hades, like everything kind of revolves around the dash mechanic? In this game, you're like a gunslinger. So you can, your dash is on a cooldown. So like that also is something that kind of alters the game. So even though it's isometric, you're auto aiming and like you see a couple zombies and you can automatically aim at them and like kill a couple guys and then like keep, keep walking instead of dashing.

• 57:36Speaker 02

  And like that, that's like how you start off. You're just individually killing guys by hitting the fire button. And then eventually you like get an ability where, okay, maybe the dash mechanic cools down faster every time you kill someone. Okay, great. Now you can dash more. Then maybe you unlock an ability where you suddenly have like a circle of spinning knives around you, but that's on a cooldown, except maybe you can have that power up with either every time you kill somebody or every time you dash. And then you stack those things on top of each other and like you, or you have an ability that's like tied to your health, for example, like you can tie your dash to your health and be like, okay, I'm gonna dash, but it's gonna take away some of my health every time. And then you get a different ability that you're like, this is going to give me health every time I kill

• 58:20Speaker 02

  someone. So then the faster you kill the zombie guys, the more your abilities continue to stack and you just have to like, keep paying attention to like your levels and try to move as fast as you possibly can through each level, which is its own challenge. And like, this is kind of like what we were talking about with Mina the Hollower and like, I feel like other games where you like have stacking abilities and you need to just create like a murderous hurricane guy.

• 58:43Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. Build crafting.

• 58:44Speaker 02

  And like, it's, it gets really crunchy, um, at a certain point.

• 58:49Kirk Hamilton?

  This looks dope as hell. I'm watching footage of it and just like the fully powered up characters are insane. It does look like Vampire Survivors.

• 58:55Jason Schreier?

  So this came out a couple of years ago.

• 58:57Speaker 02

  It came out one year ago. Yeah. The, the DLC just came out this past week.

• 59:01Jason Schreier?

  DLC just came out. Okay.

• 59:02Speaker 02

  It's like an annual DLC. Yeah.

• 59:04Jason Schreier?

  Okay.

• 59:04Speaker 02

  So like, that's why I'm playing it and, uh, it's really fun and cool. And I learned about the Canudos massacre, but also the game is very cool and fun. So yeah.

• 59:13Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, the art, man, that cutscene art, it's kind of like, looks a little like Preacher, like those comics. It's kind of got that.

• 59:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. And like they have, they do have an English voice cast that's pretty good, but the Portuguese voice acting, really good. So that's how I've been playing it and hearing it. It's got spooky music and sad voice acting for a sad situation.

• 59:33Kirk Hamilton?

  I also enjoy that the developer's name is Rogue Snail, which is a fun name for a developer and also makes you think of Rogue Amoeba who make audio software. And both, like a rogue, unlikely thing, a little bit Spider Mansion-y as well. So they, they know how to name things.

• 59:48Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. Rogue Snail, Hell Clock.

• 59:50Kirk Hamilton?

  Hell Clock.

• 59:51Jason Schreier?

  I like it. I'm into it.

• 59:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's fun. I, I'm not sure if I'm gonna beat it. Cause like, again, like I said, I, at this point I have so many relics and so many abilities I'm stacking and like it's getting really unwieldy and like.

• 1:00:01Kirk Hamilton?

  The ARPGs like this, kind of sometimes they run out and you're like, alright.

• 1:00:05Speaker 02

  I'm like, this is gonna run its course with me emotionally, but it has very much captured my imagination this week and I've really, really enjoyed it. And this is like one of those games where you look at a Steam review and somebody has 135 hours and like a negative review and you're like, okay, yeah, sure dude. Like, there, there are a couple of those in there and, uh, I get it. Um, but yeah, it's called Hell Clock. It's, it's really cool.

• 1:00:25Kirk Hamilton?

  I see. Yeah, it looks great.

• 1:00:26Jason Schreier?

  Kirk, what's your one more thing?

• 1:00:27Kirk Hamilton?

  My one more thing is a book that I just finished. I finally listened to all of the Dungeon Crawler Carl books. Maybe I'll make that my one more thing later so I can talk a little more about those.

• 1:00:38Jason Schreier?

  You finished all of them? Oh my goodness.

• 1:00:40Kirk Hamilton?

  I listened to them. Yeah, there's eight. They were like my soundtrack for getting ready for the live show. I was basically not listening to much music because I was just so focused on the show and then I just listened to those Dungeon Crawler Carl. What a fun experience that was. Um, but no, the book that I read was a normal book that I returned to, uh, you know, I returned to reading actual books and it was really great.

• 1:01:02Speaker 02

  Normal book? Actual book?

• 1:01:04Kirk Hamilton?

  A non-audio book, I should say.

• 1:01:06Speaker 02

  Okay. I couldn't tell if that was a slight diss to Dungeon Crawler Carl.

• 1:01:12Kirk Hamilton?

  No, no. Um, no, a printed book of words that I'm reading instead of an audio book that I'm listening to. You're right, that wasn't very clear.

• 1:01:19Jason Schreier?

  Instead of a collection of RPG mechanics.

• 1:01:22Kirk Hamilton?

  Of course, I listened to the audio books of Dungeon Crawler Carl. The only way, in my opinion, to listen to, experience Dungeon Crawler Carl is the audio book. But no, with, with this book, uh, I read it. The book is a book called Still Life by the author Louise Penny, who I'm sure some listeners will know because she is a very celebrated mystery author who has been writing, well, I know this series, the Armand Gamache novels, named for Armand Gamache, the detective, um, the Quebecois detective, who is the central character of this series. So there are many returning characters, the residence of a small town in, uh, outside of Montreal called Three Pines. And Still Life is the very first

• 1:02:05Kirk Hamilton?

  one. This is a recommendation from my friend Steph, who along with the two of you and my sister, plenty of other people, is one of my go-to book recommenders. And I feel very lucky that I have these people in my life who read a lot of good books, who have good taste and recommend them. That's really something that I've tried to cultivate and I feel very lucky. And Steph has great taste in books and is always telling me about great ones. And, um, I've been reading a lot of murder mysteries lately, uh, many of them recommended by you, Jason. And had been talking with her about them. There's a murder club, um, the, uh, Anthony Horowitz books. And those were cool, but, um, she is like, you know, these Louise Penny books, I think she's read all of them. There's 19 or something. Um, you should really read them. They're great. So I got Still Life from the library.

• 1:02:50Kirk Hamilton?

  This is a book from 2005 and holy shit, it's really good. Um, from the beginning, it is unlike any of the other murder mysteries I've been reading in a number of ways. Um, it is very much a murder mystery. A woman is killed at the beginning. Armand Gamache and his team are called in. He works for the sort of Quebec, you know, police, like sort, it's kind of, I think broader than a local police force. It's, you know, all related to how Quebec like distributes police power, but he's essentially like a state investigator, I guess is how I would think of it. And he comes in to investigate this murder along with his team and you get to know his team, but also you get to know all of the people in this small town and the people who knew this woman who was killed.

• 1:03:34Kirk Hamilton?

  And what makes it so remarkable, it's partly the writing. Louise Penny, I think is a beautiful writer of words. The sentences are gorgeous. The way she picks these arresting images and ways of describing feeling, the choices she makes with like the thoughts that her characters explore in any given moment are so striking. It's just been a while since I read a murder mystery that was written with such interest in like humanity and character and emotion and history. And just, I don't know, she's a really empathetic writer. And I mean, the very opening scene is Armand Gamache, um, finding a dead body and, and examining it.

• 1:04:18Kirk Hamilton?

  And just the, the way he's described initially, the way, the thoughts he has, it's, it was so striking. It like completely shook me. And then I just tore through the book. Bing, Kirk here. I'm editing the episode now. I'm gonna cheat a little bit because I meant to bring down my copy of the book so that I could actually read a couple of paragraphs from that opening chapter to convey what I'm talking about. And now I'm editing the show and I've got my copy of the book here. So I'm gonna do that. This is actually starting with the second paragraph. We have been introduced to the woman Jane Neal, who is lying dead. That is the very start of the book. She is an elderly, uh, beloved resident of this small town, Three Pines. And we begin then the second paragraph with Armand Gamache. And I'm just gonna read a couple of paragraphs to convey what, to me at least, makes Louise

• 1:05:03Kirk Hamilton?

  Penny's writing so special. "Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sirete du Québec knelt down, his knees cracking like the report of a hunter's rifle. His large, expressive hands hovering over the tiny circle of blood marring her fluffy cardigan, as though like a magician, he could remove the wound and restore the woman. But he could not. That wasn't his gift. Fortunately for Gamache, he had others. The scent of mothballs, his grandmother's perfume, met him halfway. Jane's gentle and kindly eyes stared as though surprised to see him. He was surprised to see her. That was his little secret. Not that he'd ever seen her before, no. His little

• 1:05:43Kirk Hamilton?

  secret was that in his mid 50s, at the height of a long and now apparently stalled career, violent death still surprised him. Which was odd for the head of homicide, and perhaps one of the reasons he hadn't progressed further in the cynical world of the Sirete. Gamache always hoped maybe someone had gotten it wrong, and there was no dead body. But there was no mistaking the increasingly rigid Miss Neal. Straightening up with the help of Inspector Buvoir, he buttoned his lined Burberry against the October chill and wondered." And that's the end of the introductory section of the book. I just think that's really great. Okay. Back to my broader description of this wonderful novel. Bing.

• 1:06:27Kirk Hamilton?

  Another thing that Penny does that I think is really cool and is quite a bit different from any, I think, any murder mystery that I've read, certainly, is she has an omniscient narrator who is constantly bouncing around each scene. So you'll be in a scene, you know, a sort of dinner party with this group of old friends in this small town, and you'll jump from person to person to person with no warning. It's just, it's all very organic and smoothly handled, but it'll be one person's perspective. And then the next thing you know, it's the thoughts of the person that that guy was talking to. And she just does this through the whole book. It's, she never really sticks with one perspective. You'll get to, you know, Armand Gamache will get a chapter and he is the investigator. So he's thinking through, you know, what may have happened. But then suddenly you'll

• 1:07:11Kirk Hamilton?

  be hearing from the guy that he's with, who's like a suspect. And so you will see the suspect's perspective and many other people's perspectives. And it winds up creating this incredibly rich sense of community. And because she's such an empathetic, wonderful writer of characters, the characters just come to life immediately, like very, very early in the book, after this woman has been killed, who is like a pillar of the community and beloved by everyone. All of her friends get together for a kind of a mourning party, or actually, it's even before she's died. They get together for a different reason, to like, help their friends cope with something bad that's happened. And just, I was amazed. Within like, three pages, I knew all of these characters. Like, I knew what their deal was. I could tell

• 1:07:53Kirk Hamilton?

  them all apart. I could remember their names. Because she draws the characters so well and is aided by the fact that she's jumping into their perspective really quickly. So I really highly recommend this book. It is, you know, essentially a murder mystery. It is a whodunit. It has a very satisfying, I think, payoff. But so much of the, what made it so rewarding to me was just getting to know all of these people and the little subplots and sub-stories that I learned about over the course of this investigation as Gamache and his team kind of turn over rocks and upset the balance in this small community and we get to know everybody. And I can't believe that there are so many more. Steph tells me, you know, well, I'm glad you liked the first one because they just get better. And there are books that focus on individual characters that we're just getting to know.

• 1:08:38Kirk Hamilton?

  There are really flawed characters in this first book, who I gather go on to become, you know, mainstays of the story and grow and become fan favorites. I'm so excited to be starting out this series. And I wanted to throw it out there because I was just totally unaware of Louise Penny. I was not aware of these books, even though they are very well regarded and she is a very successful mystery author. So that is my recommendation for Still Life by Louise Penny. And more broadly, I think of the Armand Gamache novels, which I'm very excited to be starting.

• 1:09:08Jason Schreier?

  I'm sold.

• 1:09:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, that sounds great. I had heard of Louise Penny, but I didn't like, know what the deal was with her. So I really appreciate the pitch.

• 1:09:16Kirk Hamilton?

  She is great.

• 1:09:17Jason Schreier?

  The omniscience, moving around between characters feels very Stephen King-ish.

• 1:09:23Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I guess he does do that from time to time, but he also restricts his chapters to a certain character's point of view. And then sometimes he'll just zoom out and tell you future events.

• 1:09:32Jason Schreier?

  No, it'll bounce around between characters.

• 1:09:34Kirk Hamilton?

  It's a little different, I guess. But yeah, it would be interesting to go and do a like, point to point comparison, just so, yeah, to understand the style.

• 1:09:40Jason Schreier?

  Usually he'll do segment breaks, to be fair, between, when he's doing that. Anyway. Okay, my one more thing is also a book. It is a book in one of our favorite genres, which is very wealthy people doing bad things and interesting things happening to them. Tragedy befalling them. It's a book called Alan Opt's Out by Courtney Maum. And it is a book about this ad executive who is very wealthy and lives in a posh Connecticut suburb, a fictional town called Belleport, where they have very strict rules about how, how

• 1:10:24Jason Schreier?

  much your lawn must be mowed and whether you're allowed to have certain things on your property. And his name is Alan. And Alan, after missing out on something important at work, has a mental breakdown and decides to opt out.

• 1:10:40Kirk Hamilton?

  You can leave.

• 1:10:42Jason Schreier?

  Of his, of his life. And at the same time, his wife is, is trying to social climb within the Belleport community and trying to join this kind of secret society, like women's social club called the Queen Anne's. And she's trying to do this while her husband is having a little bit of a breakdown, which causes some, some, some problems. And their two kids, meanwhile, are dealing with problems of their own, including one of their daughters thinks that she can talk to animals. It all makes for a very, a very interesting story that was very entertaining and fun to read, in, in large part because of the characters

• 1:11:25Jason Schreier?

  in this Belleport community, all doing ridiculous things and saying ridiculous things.

• 1:11:30Kirk Hamilton?

  And this is a funny book, right?

• 1:11:31Jason Schreier?

  It's a funny book. It is a very entertaining book.

• 1:11:34Kirk Hamilton?

  Comedic book.

• 1:11:35Jason Schreier?

  In between each chapter is kind of like, a, a look at like, I don't think they call it Facebook, but it is essentially a Facebook page for the Belleport community. And you'll have these kind of like, messages being exchanged by oftentimes the women of Belleport, who are very concerned with like, the things that are going on at other people's houses and are talking about this constantly.

• 1:11:55Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, and it's like, it's like Episalaris style, like, where'd you go, Bernadette?

• 1:11:59Jason Schreier?

  Uh huh.

• 1:11:59Kirk Hamilton?

  Kind of, oh, nice. Awesome.

• 1:12:01Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. So we're seeing some of the, the kind of, the events unfold through those little chats in between the chapters.

• 1:12:07Kirk Hamilton?

  Funny way. It's a good, great way to convey jokes, like about, okay, we need to talk about what just happened. You know, that kind of thing.

• 1:12:13Speaker 02

  We all understand posting. Everyone can, can get that.

• 1:12:17Jason Schreier?

  There's also an excellent Queen Bee character who you just truly love to hate, and who comes in and plays a pretty major role in the story. And yeah, I don't want to say much more about what happens to Alan and his lifestyle and how things change. But it's very entertaining, very entertaining read. I recommend it. Very reminiscent of like, your friends and neighbors and other stories in that vein. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the, the description for this book is like, for fans of something, something and Taffy Brodesser, so, yes. Yeah, it's called Alan Opt's Out.

• 1:12:55Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice, that sounds great.

• 1:12:56Jason Schreier?

  It's called.

• 1:12:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, it sounds good.

• 1:12:57Jason Schreier?

  I recommend it. All right. That is that for this week's episode. Thank you again to everybody who sent in questions. Thank you Kirk and Maddie for being here and for agreeing to die at the same time as me. I really appreciate that.

• 1:13:10Speaker 02

  You're welcome. Anytime, dude.

• 1:13:11Jason Schreier?

  I think our listeners.

• 1:13:11Kirk Hamilton?

  I mean, once you make a blood pact, you can't really go back on it. But you're welcome.

• 1:13:14Speaker 02

  No regrets. It's fine. I'm ready.

• 1:13:16Jason Schreier?

  No regrets. Actually, the date is tattooed on all of our skin.

• 1:13:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, but we won't reveal it. He'll know when it happens.

• 1:13:24Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, if you find it, then you'll have power over my soul. And I can't have that.

• 1:13:27Jason Schreier?

  We might reveal it one day, but it will only be as a world premiere at the Game Awards.

• 1:13:33Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. If a number of certain circumstances are met, then it will be revealed. But that's also in the contract, which of course, no one will ever read.

• 1:13:42Jason Schreier?

  One of the circumstances that Jeff Keighley has to unveil it for us.

• 1:13:46Speaker 02

  That's only one of the circumstances, though. It's really complicated.

• 1:13:49Kirk Hamilton?

  And Jason, revealing that circumstance, actually, per the contract, it was on this day, July 29, 2026.

• 1:13:55Speaker 02

  Right, I forgot about that.

• 1:13:56Kirk Hamilton?

  We must reveal the Keighley circumstance to the world. We've now fulfilled that. So that's a good thing.

• 1:14:01Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it's a good thing I remembered to do that.

• 1:14:03Speaker 02

  I know.

• 1:14:04Kirk Hamilton?

  We would've had to bing in and do it. And I think, I don't know if it would've, it would've actually worked. So it's good that you remembered.

• 1:14:09Jason Schreier?

  No, it can't be a bing. That's the, yeah.

• 1:14:12Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I was trying to remember. That was a little qualification.

• 1:14:15Jason Schreier?

  But there is a clause that says that post-death bings are allowed. So like, when those new people take over.

• 1:14:22Kirk Hamilton?

  And all that implies.

• 1:14:23Jason Schreier?

  Well, right. Well, so what's gonna happen is that new group of kids is gonna take over TripleClick.

• 1:14:28Speaker 02

  Right, right, right.

• 1:14:29Jason Schreier?

  But bings will still happen. And they'll still be Kirk binging it.

• 1:14:32Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes. And the question will be, did I record these before I died? Or?

• 1:14:36Jason Schreier?

  After. I mean, that'll be some people's question. We'll know the answer.

• 1:14:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:40Kirk Hamilton?

  We'll know the answer.

• 1:14:41Speaker 02

  We won't reveal it.

• 1:14:44Jason Schreier?

  We will not. Not even in a bing.

• 1:14:45Kirk Hamilton?

  No, we won't. Well, until the next great revelation comes, this was a lot of fun, as always. And yeah, I'll see, I'll see the TV next week.

• 1:14:52Jason Schreier?

  See you both next time.

• 1:14:54Speaker 02

  Bye.

• 1:14:57Kirk Hamilton?

  TripleClick 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 G. J. 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. TripleClick 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.

• 1:15:55Speaker 03

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