Soma's AI Horror Story Is Even More Relevant Today

The Triple Click gang talks about SOMA, the 2015 sci-fi horror game that tells a riveting story about brain scans. They talk about the game's strengths (the story!) and the flaws (the voice acting...) as they prepare to send their consciousnesses into space.

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

• 0:04Speaker 00

  This is not an episode of Triple Click. It's actually a copy of the original episode, but it's completely identical. So, does it matter?

• 0:13Speaker 00

  Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we talk about SOMA, a futuristic sci-fi horror game in which you play as a copy of a man's brain scan, and then a copy of that copy, and a copy of, you get it.

• 0:30Speaker 00

  I'm Maddy Myers.

• 0:31Jason Schreier?

  I'm Jason Schreier.

• 0:33Kirk Hamilton?

  And I'm Kirk Hamilton. And hello, my friends.

• 0:35Speaker 00

  Hello. But is it really us, when you think about it?

• 0:39Kirk Hamilton?

  Who can say? It's my voice.

• 0:40Speaker 00

  It is.

• 0:41Kirk Hamilton?

  It feels like me. When I look down, I see hands. Human hands.

• 0:44Speaker 00

  The listeners have no way of knowing.

• 0:46Jason Schreier?

  You can tell it's us because our noses vibrate while we talk.

• 0:51Kirk Hamilton?

  Wrong game, Jason.

• 0:52Speaker 00

  No, no, no. That's next week. That's next week. But hey, you listener, you might not even know which video games we're talking about yet. We'll get to that in a minute. Before we do, I just want to say, we also like movies here at Triple Click. We also, we also talk about movies every now and then, especially on the bonus feed. And that bonus feed is something you can only get if you're a Maximum Fun member. So if you went to maximumfun.org/join, for example, you could become a member and listen to our episode about The Odyssey, the Chris Nolan movie that we all enjoyed very much and had a lot to say about. And way back in the archives, you can hear us talking about all kinds of other games and other Christopher Nolan films

• 1:37Speaker 00

  from time to time.

• 1:39Jason Schreier?

  You're making it seem like that's all we do is talking about Christopher Nolan.

• 1:42Speaker 00

  We're actually a Chris Nolan podcast. But we have done that in the past. But, you know, we also spill the beans about all kinds of video games we've played that we don't spill the beans about here on the main feed. And talk about ourselves. Talk about our personal lives. There's just a real diversity of content in the bonus feed. So it's kind of up to whoever's introducing the show in a given week to decide what they want to focus on. But today, I went with Chris Nolan, apparently. But what's coming up is another, another cool bonus ep. Next time around, we're going to do another in our series of Spilling the Beans About the Sopranos episodes. We're going to do a big episode about seasons four and five. We're watching those right now.

• 2:25Speaker 00

  And then we'll be convening to discuss them. And you would have to go back and listen to our episodes on seasons one, two, and three before you listen to those. Or not. I don't know your life. Listen in whatever order you want. And that is, of course, assuming that you're listening to that bonus feed at all, which you would do by going to maximumfun.org/join, being a member, and supporting our wonderful, wonderful show. But hey, you're in the main feed right now. Let's get back to main feed business, shall we? Kirk, you have a public service announcement for our listeners.

• 2:59Kirk Hamilton?

  I do. I really have to. Really, one very quick one is that last week I talked about using an ozone machine to get a gross smell out of a room. I kind of underplayed how ozone is not healthy for people. And I added a little update to make that clear. But I do want to just say, there are instructions on the ozone machine. You should just follow them. You're not supposed to just, like, breathe ozone. It's, it is not healthy. So keep that in mind.

• 3:20Jason Schreier?

  So you're saying we should be destroying the ozone layer?

• 3:22Speaker 00

  Right.

• 3:23Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. Well, I still haven't actually looked into that. So I'll have to do an update about that next week.

• 3:26Speaker 00

  You'll have to do an update on that later.

• 3:28Kirk Hamilton?

  Okay. The real public service announcement, though, I wanted to tell a quick story. And it's the story of how I, I won't say I almost got scammed, but I encountered a scam. And it got a lot further than I would have thought it would. And I wanted to tell the story as a way of just sort of sharing with people how this can happen and a little bit what it feels like. So yesterday, I got a call. I got a message on my phone from a man saying that he was a sergeant with the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office. And could I call him back? And it sounded just like a guy. So I just called him back. I had been taking a nap. I was just sort of like, oh, the sheriff's office. Okay, I guess I'll call them. Because I don't really know how the sheriff's office contacts you. I call him.

• 4:13Kirk Hamilton?

  And really quickly, it, things kind of escalate. And he's telling me that I was supposed to be in jury duty this day. Now, here's the thing. I did get a summons for jury duty for either that day or the day after. For this week, it's, we're recording this on Tuesday. And it was for this week. So I was kind of thrown. I was like, oh, wait a minute. But I deferred that because I couldn't come. And I told him that. I said, oh, well, online, you know, you can defer to a later date. And I did that. And he's like, well, this was a grand jury summon. So this was a different thing for a different court. And you weren't in court. And the judge called your name, and you were absent. So now, we have you down as absent from court. So I'm immediately, like, kind of on the defensive. And I'm like, this is really weird. What's going on?

• 4:56Kirk Hamilton?

  But I also, I think I'm talking to a sheriff's deputy. So anyways, I won't tell the whole story. But it kind of proceeds. And it's this fairly breathless, like, very aggressive scam, where they're pushing me and telling me, this is a really big problem because this grand jury is a really big deal. And you can't actually talk to people about it because of the way grand juries work. But we just have to verify that someone else signed for you because you were supposed to receive this thing. And it, it was really interesting because I just was kind of going with it for a while. And I was kind of freaked out. Like, I was like, this is really upsetting. Like, wait, what's going on? Like, I, you know, I deferred the thing. Like, I don't want to be in trouble, mostly thinking, I'm going to have to go deal with some paperwork. This is going to be a huge pain in the ass.

• 5:40Kirk Hamilton?

  But also, you know, you're talking to people who you at least think are the police. And it just kind of puts you in this other headspace. And then at some point, while I'm talking, Emily, my wife, is there with me. And she holds up a newspaper that says scam on it. And I kind of finally slowed down enough to be like, oh, like, wait a minute. This is ridiculous. And then I started realizing, like, wait, they're calling me back from, like, unlisted numbers. And they're like, this one guy keeps saying 10-4 every time he, every time I say something to him.

• 6:10Speaker 00

  He was getting in character.

• 6:11Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. He's like, I'm a cop. And then the more, like, the farther I get from it, now that I am very sure it was a scam, the more I'm like, wow, there were red flags all over this. But it was interesting in the moment to be kind of taken in. It was very creepy to be just talking to these guys, you know, to just have this conversation. And then, and I kind of want to share that, partly because I think this is a very common scam. I wound up, you know, I talked to a lawyer friend of mine. She's like, dude, none of that is how things happen. Like, the sheriff doesn't call you about jury duty. They don't tell you the details of a grand jury, like, over the phone. You don't have to drive down inside. So like, none of this happens. They'll email you, or, you know, like...

• 6:47Speaker 00

  Send you another angry letter. Who knows?

• 6:49Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, this is completely unrealistic. And, you know, and of course, like I said, it became very clear in retrospect. But it is a very common scam. I called the courthouse to tell them it happened. And they're like, oh, yeah, this happens all the time. One happened just earlier today. I'm like, I think you should warn people about this a little bit more.

• 7:05Jason Schreier?

  Did they actually know that you had jury duty that day? Or is that just a coincidence?

• 7:09Kirk Hamilton?

  It's an open question. I don't know. The guy at the courthouse said it was a coincidence. I'm not so sure. The timing was so perfect.

• 7:15Jason Schreier?

  Well, the reason I ask that is because The Wall Street Journal actually just published an article about the jury duty scam. And apparently, they go after just people randomly, not necessarily going through, like, lists of jury duty. I don't know how they would possibly know that you actually had jury duty that day.

• 7:30Speaker 00

  That coincidence is wild, though. Like, the fact that it was a coincidence, I feel like is part of why you were probably taken in. Because it was so creepy that they got you right on that day.

• 7:39Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, because I was already thinking, oh, right, I had jury duty today. It could be that they play, like, the odds and there are certain days that are more likely to be jury duty or something. I really don't know. And I actually don't even know what they were going for. I think, because I got to a point where I basically, I put the guy on hold for a second. And Emily was like, I think this is a scam. And then I just slowed down. And then I unmuted him. And I was like, is this real? And the guy was like, sir? Now, sir? You have to stay on the phone. And I was like, oh, this, I was like, I'm going to talk to my attorney. I'll call you back. And I just, like, hung up. And that was the end of it. And then they tried calling me a bunch of times, and then they stopped. So anyways, it's, you know, it, it fell apart very quickly. But yeah, I really don't know. And they didn't get to the point where they were like, we need to verify your identity. What's your social security number? Or whatever it was going to be.

• 8:23Speaker 00

  Right. Which I'm sure that's had to be where it was going. Because they couldn't actually direct you to go somewhere. Because where would they have you go?

• 8:30Kirk Hamilton?

  Bing. Kirk here with a little update as I'm editing, just in light of what Maddie said. I actually read the Wall Street Journal article that Jason referenced. It was from just a couple of days ago, which means, yeah, the scam must be getting pretty widespread. And it is a pretty harrowing article. It talks about a even more aggressive version of the scam that got a woman in Tampa, where they were telling her she was going to be under arrest, and she had to make bail. And she was driving all around. And in my scheme, they were actually trying to get me out of the house as well, get me into my car, even though I'm not sure if there's actually an in-person part of this scheme or if they're just trying to destabilize you and then get you to send them money on PayPal. Anyway, just wanted to mention that and recommend that article since we've temporarily become a true crime podcast. Okay, anyways, back to our conversation.

• 9:14Jason Schreier?

  I just feel bad for this guy. He thought he had you. He thought he was gonna make thousands of dollars.

• 9:19Kirk Hamilton?

  I bet you that they actually get this far with a lot of people and then it falls apart. I have been kind of, you know, this has been helpful to kind of put things in perspective of how easily how easily you can get pulled into this, or at least I can. I do think that once they asked for my social security number, I probably would have been like, wait a minute.

• 9:36Jason Schreier?

  Well, he was probably gonna ask you to go and like withdraw some money to pay for like bail or something and drop it off in a sketchy location.

• 9:42Speaker 00

  No, they've built a fake police station. It's very elaborate. It's kind of like Ocean's Eleven.

• 9:47Jason Schreier?

  Nathan Fielder shows up when you get there.

• 9:50Kirk Hamilton?

  And the way this works is they give you the real addresses and real names and stuff because it's very easy for them to get all that information and just make it seem legit enough. Anyways, I just wanted to tell that story because I don't think of myself as a gullible person. It was more just a matter of the minute you get into that mindset, the inertia hits and it was really striking being a part of it. It was it was kind of disrupting, like it really kind of messed me up. I was pretty out of it for the rest of the day, just like, it was it was really jarring to have this like crazy stressful situation drop on me and then to just realize halfway through, wait, this whole thing is bullshit. And I wanted to mention that because I think these scams are getting pretty common.

• 10:27Kirk Hamilton?

  I think the one thing that I will be doing differently going forward, this is something I already do with email, but the key whenever you get a message from someone that's like, this is important, you're in violation of this, or this is so and so notifying you of this. In email, right, you never click the link in the email. You just go directly to the website in your browser. If it's like, I'm from the IRS, go to the IRS and contact them through their website. And then if it's for real, it'll be fine, like they'll tell you. And the same thing is true with your voicemail. Like, go and look, if someone from the sheriff's office calls you and leaves you a number, don't call that number they left. Go to the sheriff's office, call them and say, hey, this is so and so, you know, did you call me? I got a message from someone.

• 11:10Kirk Hamilton?

  And maybe they did, and if that's fine, then if they did, they'll tell you whatever they need to tell you. But that's kind of the rule I'm putting in place is any inbox, anyone I don't know who contacts me, assuming that it looks legit enough to at least warrant a follow up. I'm going the long way around to get back to them, like through the official channel, rather than using whatever contact information they sent me. Hopefully that'll pare things down and that ends my scam PSA and my scam story for everyone.

• 11:37Speaker 00

  Ooh, and that puts us on a spooky journey.

• 11:42Kirk Hamilton?

  And now that we're hearing strange voices that we're, and we're not sure who's talking to us, it is time for us to talk about Soma, about my pick for this year after I won the predictions bet, Frictional's game Soma, which we have played through and are gonna talk about, complete with spoilers. You have been warned for this now 11 year old game. We're gonna spoil the story, which is, you know, an interesting one to spoil because it's not actually full of shocking twists. It's just a very complex story, I think, with a lot of interesting ideas. But it is something that I think would be more interesting to listen to, let's talk about it if you've played it. So just a heads up on that. Yeah, we're gonna talk about Soma. So this game, just some really quick background on it. It was released in 2015,

• 12:27Kirk Hamilton?

  created by the Swedish developer Frictional Games. They had a breakout hit a few years earlier with Amnesia: The Dark Descent. They made a name for themselves in the world of kind of first person spooky horror. And this was kind of the rise of the horror game where you don't have any way of fighting back. So you're just hiding from scary things that are hunting you through a level. But this was a much more ambitious game for them than Amnesia: The Dark Descent, narratively, in terms of design, really all of it. It was a big, a big moment for them and has wound up garnering a real cult following. I think a lot of people really respect this game. And actually, the timing is is pretty cool on this because Frictional will be releasing a spiritual successor to Soma called Ontos,

• 13:11Kirk Hamilton?

  which is coming out, it sounds, I think now they pushed it to 2027. There was a pretty cool reveal trailer for it. It's got Stellan Skarsgård. They definitely upped their their budget for their voice cast for this game. And it looks neat. It looks a lot like Soma and I'm excited for it.

• 13:25Jason Schreier?

  Which is good, because the voice acting in Soma is a little tough.

• 13:28Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm guessing that they that they marked that as an area for improvement. So anyways, we played through this game. I had already played it, but I played it again. I at least played it on safe mode so the monsters couldn't hurt me. And I'm curious what the two of you thought. Bing, Kirk here, editing the episode and just wanted to mention, because we're gonna be talking about Soma, that suicide does come up in this conversation because it is a topic that the game wrestles with in a number of different ways. So just wanted to mention that. That is something we will be talking about in this conversation. All right, back to the episode. Bing. Jason, I'm gonna start with you. I'm nervous because I feel, I'm worried that you're gonna be just like, I hated it. I hated this game. I had a bad time. But I want to know what you thought of it and I am looking forward to talking with both of you about it. So Jason, kick us off.

• 14:13Jason Schreier?

  I probably would have had a real bad time if I hadn't played on safe mode, but I'm so glad that I did. I'll tell you something funny, which is that I was playing through in safe mode and I kept finding these little kind of like masses, biological masses and sticking my hand in them. And like the screen would shake and like get weird for a minute. You'd see like cracks on the screen for a minute. And I kept thinking I was like doing some hidden thing behind the back, behind, behind the games, like mechanics that would like lead to some ending changing if I got all of them or something. And only much later, when I was like looking at a walkthrough, I realized that it was a health refiller that I never needed because I was playing the game in safe mode. Yeah, I'm so glad I played in safe mode because the couple of times I did die by like falling off of something,

• 14:58Jason Schreier?

  the checkpoints were so annoying that I was just like, if I had been dealing with monsters killing me, I would have been so annoyed by this game. No, I enjoyed it. I thought it was pretty cool. I enjoyed the story. I enjoyed poking around in this world and like space stations and exploring. I thought it was really striking looking and they do a lot with what they have. And ask some interesting questions about identity and and control and personalities and what humanity is, what it means to be human. I definitely had some gripes, but my gripes are not like, I didn't enjoy playing this. My gripes are like, the characters are behaving in ways that I like, wouldn't expect them to.

• 15:39Jason Schreier?

  Particularly Simon, your main character, how quickly he just is like suddenly calling Catherine Cath and like just all buddy buddy with her when, and just like has grown, just how quickly he adapts to this situation, rather than being like, what the fuck, where am I? Is this some sort of psychological torture experiment? And he just accepts the reality that he's in, rather than just like asking a bunch of questions and being totally horrified the way I would have. But aside from that, I actually did enjoy the game.

• 16:11Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice. Well, I'm very glad to hear that. Matty, how was this for you? You've played this before, right? So this was your second time?

• 16:16Speaker 00

  I had played this before, which was, which will be interesting to talk about because I don't totally remember all the choices I made the first time around. But if I know me, I made the exact same choices this time around. And I don't need to remember it all. But yeah, the first time around, I actually played it through side by side with a friend of mine who had played the game before and who is very good at horror games. And I notoriously on this show, I get very scared by things. And this game, not in safe mode, is pretty scary and stressful. And as Jason said, annoying because these, these monsters are kind of slow and kind of irritating to avoid at points.

• 16:59Speaker 00

  It's not, it's no Mr. X in Resident Evil 2. They, they can't move that quickly. And you can't direct them around or kind of kite them around the way that you might want to. So I do wish that I had had the opportunity to play it in safe mode back in 2015. I don't think that was available then. But I had the next best thing, which was somebody I could pass a controller to and just be like, please get through this part for me. So I, I did get that experience at that time. And that was, that was a very positive experience and I liked the game a lot. It was really cool to replay it in safe mode, way better experience. And I might even say the preferred experience because there's no break in the story this way.

• 17:42Speaker 00

  Like you aren't constantly being reset back to where you were if you die. And you can actually just experience the environmental storytelling and read all of the logs without really having any potential anxiety of, oh, what might happen if I stop and read something right now? And you can just enjoy how spooky the circumstances of the game are, which we're going to get into and which I have always thought are really cool, really fascinating. I love this idea of people scanning their brain and putting it into a robot and the nature of who you are. That is what this game is about, is the idea of scanning your brain and putting it into something else, some other object. And what would that mean about you and and what is the nature of the self?

• 18:25Speaker 00

  And I think that is a strong part of this game and it's still strong, I would say, 10 years later. I still really like the story this time around.

• 18:33Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I had a similar experience to you. I found that I still really liked the story and was struck by a few things about it. Like I said, I played it on safe mode, so we all did. The first time through, I did not. I played it all the way through in dangerous mode.

• 18:48Speaker 00

  It's called normal mode, but it should be called dangerous mode.

• 18:52Kirk Hamilton?

  Safe and Dangerous. Yeah, and it definitely changes the experience. I think it's interesting that Frictional decided to add a safe mode after, I think it was like in response to players saying, you know, I really am bothered, like, it's just annoying being hunted by these monsters and I just want to experience the story. And I think there were a number of reviews of the game that said as much, just, this is a really cool story. It honestly doesn't need the monsters. You could just move through these, you know, this series of underground habitat or underwater habitats and uncover this narrative and it would be really neat. And I think they decided, yeah, okay, you know what? That's not the exact vision we had for the design of this game. Obviously,

• 19:33Kirk Hamilton?

  they designed it to be this very tense experience where there are these moments of sort of real trial, where you're trapped in the bowels of some station trying to like power on some generator or something and there's this horrible thing down there with you and you're a long way from safety and you finally get it turned on and it's coming for you and you run down a hallway and it chases you. A lot of these horror sequences that are really intense and are very clearly like they're designed to gradually get more intense over the course of the game until in the final few chapters, you're in, you're doing these really awful, like really scary, dark, long sequences. When you get to the abyss and you're on the like floor of the ocean, there's this huge anglerfish monster hunting

• 20:14Kirk Hamilton?

  you and the wind is like the, in the water, you know, it's like a current is blowing you. It just feels like you've gone through so much to finally get to the end that when you do get to the end and you're finally making these big decisions and, you know, learning how the story ends up, it feels much more like you've gone on this really intense journey. And that's the experience they designed. It's cool playing it through it the other way, though, where it's less intense. It's a little more like Simon walks through a series of creepy environments and sees a lot of messed up stuff and learns about a messed up thing that has happened and then gets to the end of his story. It's a little more even keel, I guess, but that doesn't make it any worse. And yeah, the questions that it's raising and the various plot developments are just as interesting and just as thought provoking.

• 20:58Speaker 00

  And scary, arguably. I, I think there's still a psychological horror element that is present regardless, especially with the, the kind of two endings that we can talk about and the idea of that.

• 21:12Jason Schreier?

  I, I just want to point out, it's called frictional games, not frictionless games.

• 21:16Speaker 00

  So true, Jason.

• 21:17Jason Schreier?

  Safe mode is really not the intended way.

• 21:20Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it's really off brand.

• 21:21Jason Schreier?

  We all played this the wrong way.

• 21:22Kirk Hamilton?

  That should have been developed by their sister studio.

• 21:25Speaker 00

  You should have had like a frictionless games logo that came up.

• 21:28Jason Schreier?

  That would be funny if it changed the name of their studio.

• 21:30Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. It's like, I think their logo is a gear, so it's just like a circle.

• 21:34Jason Schreier?

  Send off the edges.

• 21:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:37Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I think in particular, the most horrifying idea that this game introduces is the idea of copying yourself and then being left behind or like facing the fact that there are now two copies of you. And I definitely found that this landed differently for me now that we are in an age where that kind of copying is happening in slow motion right in front of us and is actually a reality in some ways that we're kind of not even dealing with as a society. And I guess, I want to talk about the game, the design and all of that, but let's go there first, since that's such an interesting and juicy idea. It's an idea that's come up in some conversations I've been having with people about AI lately.

• 22:19Kirk Hamilton?

  There's just so much with AI to think about. It's hard to like pick a lane. So it's one thing that I hadn't really been thinking about until recently. The ideas, the privacy idea of AI specifically related to an AI making a copy of you and that, you know, like, uh, Google, for example, they have a profile kind of of all of us. They just have been building it for years and years where it's kind of anonymized, but they basically know a lot of stuff about you and they know your age and marital status and whether you have kids and like what you like to buy and where you live and kind of increasingly granular data to which they have had just basically unfettered access for years and years. And we just kind of treat it like that's fine, that they just get to have all

• 23:01Kirk Hamilton?

  that data, right? Obviously, data rights activists don't think that that's true and there are increasingly loud voices arguing against this, but there are a lot of people who think it's, if not fine, inevitable, or they just don't think about it at all. So as you get all that data, you can feed that data into an AI and create a version of you, of anyone. And a lot of offices are starting to do this. This was most famously happening at Facebook most recently. If you remember, Zuckerberg talked about how he had done this to himself and then he was going to start doing it to all of his employees. And I don't know, I can't remember where they're at on this initiative now. There was a lot of backlash, so maybe they slowed this down.

• 23:41Speaker 00

  Really?

• 23:41Kirk Hamilton?

  But basically they're like, the idea was, and I'm, you know, these are, this is kind of speaking broadly, not an expert here, we're going to log all of your inputs into Slack or, you know, work messaging, all of your work, everything that you do, it's all going to be recorded. And what you're doing is, you're not just training your replacement, you are training a copy of you that will then be owned by, in this case, Meta. So then if you get laid off, they just fire up the clone and the clone can literally sit there and like respond to people over text in the same way that you would and do the work that you would do. Now, I don't know how totally possible all that is yet, but this technology is out there and this is happening. So we're kind of in a world already where

• 24:23Kirk Hamilton?

  there are people who can just start building copies of all of us. And, you know, we're not that old. So over the next 20 years, this technology will improve to the point where it isn't even going to look like it does in this game where you go into this big machine and they scan your brain and then there's a copy of you, you know, under the sea 100 years later. It's just going to be that there are these eternal weird kind of digital amalgams of every person. And that is, I think, a really pressing issue that we need to be dealing with as a society and like drawing lines around and drawing boundaries around because it's essential to ourselves and who we are and kind of us as individuals. So anyways, it made me think about all of that. I'm curious if it made the two of you think about that stuff, too.

• 25:05Jason Schreier?

  How would you like society to deal with this and confront this issue?

• 25:09Kirk Hamilton?

  I mean, the very, we can begin by passing some laws about it and we can maybe.

• 25:13Speaker 00

  Oh, regulation of any kind?

• 25:14Kirk Hamilton?

  Establish some better privacy laws.

• 25:16Jason Schreier?

  Should the law, should the law be, should the law be that if the, the copy left behind gets killed, gets disconnected? Is that, is that how we should do this? Like, which, which copy gets priority?

• 25:29Kirk Hamilton?

  People should look at Oregon's Senator Ron Wyden. Our two senators are doing a lot of good work in data privacy. And data privacy is something that we should be taking more seriously because it isn't just, you know, abstract, like advertising profiles. It is stuff like this. Like, it is coming down to your history, your memories, your actions and activities can be owned and controlled and cloned by someone else. And it is something we should take seriously. And this kind of fiction does, as much as it is, you know, a little bit outsized, I think that it does really underline the urgency of these issues and why we should be taking them on head on.

• 26:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, this version of the story is probably speaks to the fact that it came out 10 years ago, because I do feel like the 2026 version of this is one that really speaks directly to the idea of a corporation owning your, yourself and having that self continue to work. And maybe you have no say in what that work looks like or what it, what it is. And it might be moral quandaries against what you would have believed in, et cetera. This game does not navigate that and instead is much more concerned with the idea of the soul and this, um, almost like idealized version of a copy of yourself that is much

• 26:42Speaker 00

  more pure, at least as depicted in this game, than the version of like, okay, the version of Google that has read every single Google document I've ever written, for example, which is, in my case, at least a huge amount of writing and work that would at least make somebody who had a really powerful LLM be pretty good at imitating my writing style. But this version, the soma version, would be the version that has all my childhood memories as well and doesn't just have my digital self or my writing voice. It has like every memory I've ever had. Like, that's kind of this brain scan fantasy. And the characters in soma are really, there's like kind of this implication that those personalities were used to like make robots more productive perhaps, but that's not really the meat of

• 27:26Speaker 00

  this game. The meat of this game is this idea of whether your memories constitute you in some more cerebral way and whether that memory file living on is something that is alive and something that shouldn't be deleted because it's alive. And that central question is. A kinder one. It's a very 2015 one, whereas I feel like the modern day one would be more about corporations owning us and our work and what we create.

• 27:58Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, that is definitely a different, like a sort of, something that locks it to the time in which it was made, because it was developed, you know, even earlier than 2015. So this was kind of Obama era. We were still feeling pretty good about technology.

• 28:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:10Kirk Hamilton?

  And Carthage Industries is the name of the company that does own everything. So there is a kind of Wayland Yutani behind all of this stuff, down on Pathos 2, but they're not really villains in the way that you can very easily imagine that they would be today. Or even if you look at something like Horizon Zero Dawn, like Ted Pharaoh's, that like, this was already the rising age of the evil Elon Musk type, like tech oligarch evil dude. And this game is not really interested in that, even though playing it makes me think about all this stuff because of where we are right now. And yeah, you can very easily imagine that a modern day version of it would be a little bit more like that, for sure.

• 28:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, it is interesting, though, that like, characters like Catherine and her aims are not presented as necessarily villainous, and I would say are largely heroic. And that's like, the happy ending is the idea of preserving these brain scans.

• 29:01Kirk Hamilton?

  Do you think that's a happy?

• 29:02Speaker 00

  I don't know, but I, well, I guess we could get into it, but.

• 29:06Kirk Hamilton?

  So let's get into it. Before we get into it, I think, so let me summarize a little bit of just what's going on in this game, just because I think some people listening to this won't have played it. And also, I can just refresh anyone who didn't play through it for this conversation, just to give a very, very like, quick overview, that what happens is this guy, Simon Jarrett, has a car accident. His brain is horribly injured and is bleeding. He's bleeding internally and he's slowly dying. And there's nothing really medicine can do. So he goes and gets an experimental brain scan. He lives in Toronto. This is in like, 2015. The brain scan will allow these doctors, who seem fairly shady when he shows up there in this kind of rundown office.

• 29:42Speaker 00

  It's like one of my favorite scenes in the game, actually. It's that weird, non-doctor's office that you go to at the beginning.

• 29:46Kirk Hamilton?

  They're barely there. And they're like, don't worry about it. We're gonna scan your brain. And they're gonna help him diagnose, like, new treatments that he could try. So he scans his brain and then immediately just wakes up in this bizarre underwater facility, where there's no other people, and there's horrible kind of amalgamated robots that are talking like they think they're people. And there's these awful sea creatures everywhere. And there's like this growth, this like, black growth that's covered all the technology. And he kind of slowly realizes, oh, he's in a robot body. He's not in his own body. And his brain scan that was taken back in 2015 was stored as one of the like, early prototypes for this technology, that then later turned up down in this underwater lab, where, to actually run it down, I'm pretty sure this is what happened, they were using

• 30:30Kirk Hamilton?

  this technology to allow engineers and technicians to control robots remotely. And then, by supercharging an AI, went to this like, bioelectrical thing called the WAU, W-A-U. The WAU developed a way to actually copy someone's consciousness into a like, digital construct. And then, as that was happening, a comet struck the Earth. It is now 100 years after 2015. The comet killed all life on the surface. The people on Pathos are the only people left alive. And they wind up coming up with, kind of on the fly, this plan to copy everybody's consciousnesses onto a hard drive and launch it into space in something they call the

• 31:12Kirk Hamilton?

  Ark, which will then allow them to live for thousands of years in a digital paradise, free from the world which has been destroyed. So that's kind of some of the questions that we're dealing with. And that's like, the gist of the storyline, though there are a lot of developments and plots that happen.

• 31:28Jason Schreier?

  Simon really just grows to accept very quickly his new reality. I was convinced for a while that this was like, some sort of hallucination, or like, that he was, I don't know, in like, a nightmare, or a psychological experiment, or something, before it's revealed that this is the real future. And you don't find out for a while, until like, more than halfway through the game, that Simon actually died pretty quickly, after he gets in that chair. It's like, maybe a couple of weeks afterward?

• 31:58Kirk Hamilton?

  It's like a month or two. Yeah, you get the log where they're like, sorry. It's funny, because the, like, the treatment they prescribe is like, well, do those exercises, you know? And it's like something, drink that tea, like, it's nothing. And then he just is like, dies.

• 32:12Jason Schreier?

  And then it's like, oh, turn for the worse, he's dead. Yeah, it's funny, this idea of like, it's a coin flip if you're gonna stay in your current consciousness, or move to wherever you're transferred. Simon, I guess, lucked out this time, and then was not so lucky at the end of the game.

• 32:29Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, that's a really interesting question, that is kind of unclear to me, like, how that works. This is, one of the fundamental questions in this game, is that when you're scanned, a copy of you now exists. And there's initially a theory, so something that happens on Pathos, when they begin scanning people. There's a guy, what's his name? Oh, Mark Serang, this is one of the characters who comes up. And I would say that one, one of the shortcomings of this game, and I have plenty of critiques of it as well, is that there are so many names and so many people, that it's just hard to remember who's who, because you don't see the faces. You're just, you're like, just reading logs, for the most part. And then you start to see some faces, I guess, a little later. But this guy, Mark Serang, he was, he was like, an intelligence analyst. And he gets scanned for this Ark

• 33:14Kirk Hamilton?

  project that Catherine came up with, and then kills himself immediately afterward. So he decides, okay, I'm gonna die, because then, there will only be one copy of me, and that's how I can ensure that I get to live on the Ark forever, and not get stuck down here, at the bottom of the ocean of a dead world. And then that kind of becomes contagious, which is a very scary and believable idea, that when he says that, he starts telling people, like, this is what you have to do. And then more people are doing it.

• 33:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, before he does it, of course. He kind of creates this like, pseudo-religion almost, that again, I agree, feels very believable.

• 33:47Jason Schreier?

  It's a Jonestown situation.

• 33:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, except, it's like, a AI version of Jonestown, where they do actually have consciousness in this Ark. Like, it's real and documentable, in a way that heaven is not. And so, you kind of understand the logic of it in a really sad way.

• 34:06Kirk Hamilton?

  I do, but, and I, it seems like the kind of, it seems like a real leap, to think, oh, well, why on earth would my consciousness jump into the computer? But then, we actually do see it happen. So it is kind of, because it happens to Simon, at the very beginning of the game. So it is kind of demonstrated that that does happen, which, the one bit of, kind of metaphysics in this story, where it is a science fiction story, for the most part, but the fact that when Simon gets the scan, he then awakens in the robot body, as if no time has passed, does indicate that this actually happens. Like, you can get scanned and wake up in the other person. And then it happens again later. He scans into the deep sea body, and it happens yet again. And he then sees his old copy that he left behind. And like.

• 34:47Speaker 00

  Just foreshadowing.

• 34:49Kirk Hamilton?

  It's a cool, it's a cool device, because it allows them to play with this question of the coin flip, which is very scary, and kind of like, a dread-filled moment, even though, it's the one thing in this story that is just kind of impossible. Or it just feels like, okay, well, we're just gonna add a little bit of magic to this whole thing, even though everything else is kind of fantastical. It is sort of scientifically based, a little bit. Bing! Kirk here, with an update after we published the episode. It's been really cool seeing people talk about the game in our Discord and elsewhere. And I wanted to kind of add to that thought that I just articulated, because reading other people's thoughts has got me thinking about it a little bit more. And there's definitely another interpretation of what the game is doing, that I think is worth mentioning, because I'm kind of coming

• 35:34Kirk Hamilton?

  around to it. Basically, there's a way to read this game as saying, that at no point does the coin toss ever happen. That every time there's a scan of Simon, there are just two copies of him. And the game is just choosing which of those two to show you. And Catherine understands this the entire game, and is basically just manipulating Simon, and allowing him to believe that the coin toss is a thing. That when he scans himself, he might actually awaken in the new body, when he definitely won't, just an identical copy of him will. So when the game presents those jumps, like, when Simon 2 scans into Simon 3, the deep sea body, that's just the game choosing which perspective to show us. And that theory is bolstered by the fact that, at the end, it shows us both Simons. It shows us the Simon

• 36:16Kirk Hamilton?

  that stays behind. And then, after the credits, it shows us the Simon that awakens in the Ark. And when he awakens, he's like, hey, cool, awesome, it worked, I jumped in. So I've come around to that interpretation. I think that makes a lot of sense, actually. It's clever, and it's in keeping with the game's overall storytelling philosophy. So I wanted to add that here as an update, because I think it's pretty cool, and it feels worth including it in this conversation. All right, back to the episode.

• 36:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, it is an attractive scientific concept, though, right? Like, the idea that you could freeze your brain and all of its memories perfectly in time and then transplant that somewhere else and that it would, again, maintain every memory that you had up to the precise second that you froze it. Like, that, I think, is, it is magical. It's not, I mean, how are they uploading the brains? Like, these are the things that it's like, you gotta just not think about that. Like, where are they going?

• 37:09Kirk Hamilton?

  You were talking about before, oh, if it used all my Google documents to create me. But, you know, as we live our lives online, we work online, we, you know, exist online more and more and more, like, it is more and more possible to copy what amounts to memories, because there's this question of, you know, well, what is a memory, other than just a record of something that I did, that I kind of created for myself? And if you, you know, really pulled together all of someone's chats, their work chats, their personal chats, all their text messages, every voicemail they've ever left, every FaceTime and Zoom call that's ever been recorded, and their Google documents, and their email, and on and on, you do start to get something that starts to be somewhat indistinguishable from the version of them that is still separate, the version that remembers their childhood and all that.

• 37:53Kirk Hamilton?

  But, like, it at least raises these questions of, like, where is that line? And obviously, by presenting it the way they do in this game, that it's, you have this perfect snapshot that's just all of you, and you don't even detect, like, any kind of a transition that happened. Like, that is pretty extreme. But it does, it raises the question for me in a way that I found kind of challenging at times.

• 38:13Jason Schreier?

  So, the question that I find really interesting is, is it saving humanity to send our consciousnesses to a little satellite that is pretending that we're all in like a paradise, an idyllic fantasy world? It's kind of interesting, because it's like, wouldn't you rather be there in the metaverse of it all than the Ready Player One universe, than in the reality of being in that underwater hellscape? It's, I don't know if you could call it saving humanity, but seems preferable to be in the matrix than to not.

• 38:54Kirk Hamilton?

  I guess. I remember the first time thinking that the Ark sounded like this dream that was out of reach. And the way that this game ends, we should say, like, to just throw the ending out there to provide context for this conversation. So Simon gets all the way to the end with Catherine. They have this kind of prickly relationship. Catherine is, like, not a people person, but she knows how to get the Ark fixed and working.

• 39:15Speaker 00

  I love Catherine. Can I just say, I really enjoyed her as a character.

• 39:20Kirk Hamilton?

  She's good, as a sort of disembodied head that he's carrying around.

• 39:22Speaker 00

  As Jason has intimated, Simon is kind of frustrating at times. And, like, I don't know, for lack of a better word, just slow. Like, he just is slow on the uptake. And, like, a lot of times, I felt like I was one step ahead of Simon, and so is Catherine. And at various points, she's sort of, like, leading him along.

• 39:40Jason Schreier?

  To be fair, he does have a serious brain injury.

• 39:43Speaker 00

  He does. And I wondered about that, and I wondered if that was actually part of the implication of Simon, is that we, the brain scan that we have of Simon is a very damaged scan. And so then, in that sense, I'm very compassionate to Simon. Of course, he's

• 39:54Kirk Hamilton?

  Convenient way to

• 39:55Speaker 00

  Having trouble picking up

• 39:57Kirk Hamilton?

  Writing problems, I guess.

• 39:59Speaker 00

  Perhaps. I mean, I don't know if that's intentional, but we can supplant that idea onto Simon and help it, help have some compassion for how frustrating he can be, in the sense that, like, when you get to that final choice that you're about to describe, Kirk, it was very obvious to me what was going to happen, especially after you've already experienced it once, when Catherine transfers Simon's consciousness from one power suit into another power suit, and one of them is left behind, and it's a perfect copy of Simon, and you have to decide whether to delete it or not. I was like, oh, there's gonna be a copy of Simon on the Ark. And, like, clearly, Simon is just merrily traipsing along, like, can't wait to get to the Ark, Catherine. And she's like, sure, buddy, that's where we're going.

• 40:44Speaker 00

  We're going to the Ark together. I don't know, I liked that for her.

• 40:49Kirk Hamilton?

  I do relate to Catherine's frustrations with Simon sometimes, where she's like, dude, I've explained this to you multiple times. Though I think she does kind of lead him on. I think she allows him ignorance and doesn't explain things.

• 40:58Speaker 00

  She has flaws, for sure.

• 41:00Kirk Hamilton?

  She's a bit manipulative. Though, actually, that final moment isn't a choice, to be clear. I had remembered it as a choice, but it is not. The ending of this game is the ending of this game. There are choices in this game. I'd say the biggest one, well, yeah, the biggest one is whether to destroy the WoW or leave it. We can talk about that maybe a little later. But the way that this ends is, you get all the way to the, what's it called? The rifle or something?

• 41:23Speaker 00

  The space gun.

• 41:23Kirk Hamilton?

  The gun. Oh, it's just the gun. It's like a huge, like, gun that will launch this satellite into space. It's pretty cool, like, at the bottom of the ocean, where they can fire it from there because it generates so much heat that you have to put it at the bottom of the ocean, which is just a cool idea. So you get there with the Ark, you go through hell to get it there with Catherine, and then Simon keeps saying, and we're gonna copy ourselves onto the Ark, right? And then we're gonna launch it into space and be on the Ark. And Catherine's like, yeah, totally. And then you're at the very last moment, you're outside, you know, next to the gun, you're hitting the copy button as it's counting down to launch. The, like, progress bar is going super slow, and Simon is like, come on, what is, no! And Catherine gets copied, and then Simon hasn't copied yet, and it's about to launch,

• 42:06Kirk Hamilton?

  and then it pushes to the very end, and it copies, and he's like, yes, we did it! And it launches, and then, of course, Simon is just alone at the bottom of the ocean. And Catherine says, well, yeah, you copied over, but he's up there and you're down here. And now you're just in the darkness forever as a robot. And that's the end of the game, is Simon, he breaks the screen that Catherine is on, so he's truly alone and is left in the dark. And then, post-credits, you wake up as Simon on the Ark, and you get to kind of see that a little bit.

• 42:35Speaker 00

  Or what I would call the other Simon.

• 42:37Kirk Hamilton?

  Sure, Simon, I guess it's Simon 3 at this point.

• 42:40Speaker 00

  Simon V3.

• 42:41Kirk Hamilton?

  Or wait, 1, 2, no, Simon 4. Original Simon was Human Simon, then Simon 2, Simon 3 was Deep Sea Simon, and then this is Simon 4. So, putting that, just throwing that out there to have context for this, I think the Ark is a nightmare. This time, playing through it, every time I read about the Ark, it gave me so much anxiety, because it's just like a hard drive in space. It's so unstable. She says it'll last thousands of years, but first of all, well, what happens after that? Second of all, what happens if something goes wrong? Or what if we all lose our minds? Or there's some corruption? And, like, we all go crazy, and it becomes hell, and we're just trapped in it? There's this, there's this great questionnaire that you'd find on Pathos, that you then,

• 43:26Kirk Hamilton?

  it kind of comes back when you wake up as Simon on the Ark. And it's this question of, like, you know, on a scale of 1 to 10, how comfortable do you feel? Would you say you feel like yourself? You know, do you feel lost? And you can kind of give these answers, ranging from, I feel like it's a brand-new day, and I'm a new me, to, I feel alienated and frightened, I don't know what's going on, I'm crawling out of my skin. And then at the very end, it says, would you like to die instead of carrying on like this? And you can answer yes or no. And then it says, cool, your answers have been logged, you know, enjoy your time on the Ark, or something. And playing it now, I was like, this is a terrible outcome. I think there's a really interesting, like, sort of thematic thing going on here, where

• 44:09Kirk Hamilton?

  the Ark is heaven and Pathos is hell, because the WoW has created this sort of self-perpetuating hell, where it's keeping everyone alive forever, even though they're suffering. And then Simon 3, I guess, winds up trapped in purgatory, where he's basically just, like, alone in darkness, which is neither, you know, neither up nor down. None of the outcome seems very good to me. And I was, like, completely, this time, I was like, no, keep me away from the Ark. I would never want to go on there.

• 44:36Jason Schreier?

  It all seems awful. It's true.

• 44:39Speaker 00

  It does. I mean, on the Ark also, there's so much implication in this game, where I'm like, are they gonna explore this in the future version of the game? Like, where is that set? Is it on the Ark? Because I want to know the answers to these questions I'm about to say. Like, Catherine describes her coworkers disliking her, she's very socially awkward and struggles with them, and is like this engineer, and she's very devoted to her projects.

• 45:02Jason Schreier?

  Can find some comments about her and people's emails.

• 45:05Speaker 00

  Yes, and they're very rude about her.

• 45:07Kirk Hamilton?

  They kill her eventually.

• 45:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, they kill her, and she is horrified by that, one of Catherine's rare moments of being like, oh, I actually am really upset by this.

• 45:16Kirk Hamilton?

  Like, I thought they were my friends.

• 45:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, but she's stuck with those people. Those are the people that she uploaded. And I'm like, so she's gonna be hanging out with the people who don't like her and killed her? And also, maybe there's another Catherine up there? So, like, she's stuck for thousands of years with possibly another version of herself and a dozen people that hate her. And now she knows that, because she's now had this opportunity to learn all of this information about them. So, like, that's already terrible. Also, like, no one can eat, sleep, or die on the Ark unless they unplug themselves. So, really boring. Just, like, what are the joys of life? They've all been taken away from you. You can't breathe, like, you can't experience any of the things that make us people, right?

• 45:59Speaker 00

  I mean, this was a game that had me, like, thinking about the biological definition of the word "life," and being like, oh, yeah, it includes, like, taking in matter and expelling matter. You know, you remember, like, 7th grade biology class and all that? And I'm like, these, these people, quote-unquote, on the Ark, aren't doing any of that stuff. Are they alive in the joyful sense of it? I would say no.

• 46:23Kirk Hamilton?

  I thought about this, too. This is something I've articulated before when talking about The Matrix. This is a very stoned dorm room thought.

• 46:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, the whole game has that vibe, but in a complimentary way. It's fun.

• 46:34Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, and I think this has some basis in some schools of philosophy that I am not that familiar with. But to me, The Matrix has always been real enough because we're interacting with other people. And it's compromised because we're in a controlled environment and we don't know how the machines are controlling us. But as long as you're having a real interaction with another conscious mind, to me, that is a very meaningful thing. Like, I think that gives a life meaning. I thought a lot about how Emily and I just are kind of spending our lives now, just gradually talking things through and getting to know each other better for the next many decades, hopefully, as we just live and get to know each other. And that that is actually a really rewarding and cool thing to do. And you do that with everyone. It's what the three of us do on this show every week.

• 47:18Kirk Hamilton?

  Every week, I get to know the two of you better. We have some new conversation. That could be true on the Ark as well. You're right, Matty, to point out that these are people who didn't really like Catherine.

• 47:27Speaker 00

  I know.

• 47:27Kirk Hamilton?

  But still, you know, over thousands of years, anything could happen, and those interactions are real. And it is something that even purgatory Simon would have had with Catherine. She was still there in his little PDA. They could have just hung out and talked about movies and stuff, and I don't know. Like, there is, there's room for a future, even at the bottom of the ocean of this destroyed earth. But now that he's alone, the fact that he broke her and is truly alone is, that is the thing that makes that ending so pitch black for me and really distressing, to just think about then suddenly being alone.

• 47:59Jason Schreier?

  Well, I assume he'll just kill himself pretty quickly after that.

• 48:01Kirk Hamilton?

  I don't know. I wonder. So let's talk about that WoW choice, because that kind of relates to the Earth as it stands. I'm curious, Jason, what did you do? You have this choice to destroy the WoW or leave it be. What did you do?

• 48:14Jason Schreier?

  I guess I didn't realize it was a choice. I figured I would have to destroy it to keep making progress, so I destroyed it.

• 48:20Speaker 00

  A video game response to a video game problem.

• 48:23Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, you can walk away.

• 48:25Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I didn't realize you could just walk away. I just thought it was like...

• 48:27Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. There's this guy, Johann Ross, who is like, very set on you doing it.

• 48:32Jason Schreier?

  Well, he created, he is the creator of the WoW.

• 48:34Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. He created it. Which is essentially, he like, it's like a bioengineered intelligence that exploded out of Alpha Station and took over everything. And is the reason, like, combined with Structure Gel, which is this kind of all-purpose material. There was a similar thing to that, actually, in the other fictional game, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs. They really like gel.

• 48:53Jason Schreier?

  Not to be confused with Omni Gel.

• 48:56Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. And so it's the thing you pour into, at one point, really awesomely into a corpse, and it just like, bonds everything together and like, grows it into this living chimera that you can walk around inside of. So anyways, he's very insistent that you destroy it. And I think I, I may have done the same thing the first time, Jason, where I just destroyed it because I didn't know, and then learned later it was a choice. But something in my head reminded me. And I started to leave, and then I had to really think about it. Because it's an interesting question. Like, there's no life left on the planet, and the WoW is pretty monstrous. It seems pretty messed up. It's like, kind of taken this directive of save humanity to an extreme, and it's keeping everybody alive, you know? So but then that means that there are these people that you come across, who are like,

• 49:40Kirk Hamilton?

  trapped inside the sort of, those machines that he makes. What are they called? It's not dragonflies, mockingbirds. They're like, half-human, but they think they're human. And there are living people who have like, merged with the machines who are alive. There's even an actual woman you find who's being kept alive by the WoW, and she's like, "Kill me, please. Like, just unplug me and let me die."

• 49:59Jason Schreier?

  Sarah, yeah. I totally, totally murked her.

• 50:02Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, yeah. I think that's a neat, I feel like most people probably are willing to do that. But with the WoW, I got to thinking, the WoW also made Simon. And the WoW is improving at what it's doing. It's trying to make new life. It is this like, very powerful being that is still alive on Earth, and otherwise, we're assuming that the surface is totally wiped out. Or at least I was for this, you know, exercise. Maybe it's not, but who knows? And then I started thinking, well, maybe I leave it alive, because this is life. And it did a pretty good job with Simon. Like, Simon is actually pretty balanced. It's an interesting mix of like, this dead woman's body and his memory, and it's like, stable, he's not totally freaking out. So maybe the WoW could get better, and it could start

• 50:46Kirk Hamilton?

  making new life or something. And I wasn't totally sure. And then I killed it. Anyways, I decided to kill it anyways.

• 50:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, I killed it. I don't think, according to what we learn about the WoW, I'm not very confident in its ability to do that effectively. And also, it appears to be actively mutating sea life. And I was kind of like, okay, I don't really want the WoW to continue to actively mutate other life on Earth that is still alive. And I actually thought that was kind of a cool side tangent in the game, was this concept that, okay, all of human life is destroyed, but there are sea creatures that survived this comet's impact. And I was like, okay, yeah, life goes on. I'm no human supremacist. Like, there's fishies down here. Protect the fish from the WoW. So I was like, we gotta, we gotta kill this guy.

• 51:32Jason Schreier?

  I don't know. Those angler fish, I don't know if they need protective.

• 51:35Speaker 00

  No, those ones have been infected. Those are...

• 51:37Kirk Hamilton?

  Right, that was an already modified fish.

• 51:39Speaker 00

  Those are infected by the WoW. Regular angler fish, I'm fine with. I'm cool with those guys.

• 51:43Kirk Hamilton?

  Regular angler fish, they're cute.

• 51:46Speaker 00

  They're downright adorable.

• 51:47Jason Schreier?

  Just like in Outer Wilds. They're just so cute.

• 51:49Speaker 00

  I did think of Outer Wilds. I did think of Outer Wilds.

• 51:51Kirk Hamilton?

  Angler fish is really a recurring villain in a lot of different games.

• 51:53Speaker 00

  They really are. They, I think, just, we find deep sea to be very troubling, because it's very hard to survive down there.

• 52:01Jason Schreier?

  I mean, you guys ever Google, you guys should Google the angler fish. I mean, look at those chompers.

• 52:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:07Kirk Hamilton?

  The angler fish in particular looks like something out of, like, H.R. Giger. Like, it looks like something out of a horror movie. And so I think that's why people use them in games.

• 52:15Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 52:15Kirk Hamilton?

  Because it's a real thing in the real world that feels like it should be fictional. It feels out of science fiction.

• 52:19Speaker 00

  And I think that's why that's the setting of this game, is because it's a deep sea, and you get to include the angler fish, which are already so upsetting to look upon. And so you get the creepiness of the setting.

• 52:29Jason Schreier?

  Did you know that one, like, genus of angler fish is known as the Black Sea Devil?

• 52:37Speaker 00

  That's the one in this game. That's the one that the WoW decided to revive and make into its minions. Yeah, I did destroy the WoW. I think I deleted everything while we're going over the choices. I deleted extra Simon. I was like, I'm upset about him being here. I, maybe that's...

• 52:54Kirk Hamilton?

  I left him. I, I kind of like...

• 52:56Jason Schreier?

  Me, too. Killed him.

• 52:56Kirk Hamilton?

  I think that what I did was I hemmed and I hawed. Because, like I was just describing, I kind of talked myself into this, well, but we should leave something behind. Like, going through as the cleanup crew, which is something Simon can do. It just felt so sad to me. I wanted to leave something behind and believe that, well, maybe Simon number two could find his way to the surface or do something, or maybe there's life up there. Like, I don't want to deprive him of that chance. Just like deleting those saved memories. It's like, well, maybe those could be put in something. But then I blinked at the last minute and destroyed the WoW. So then I just left everybody screwed, because I didn't make up my mind. So I kind of should have committed one way or the other.

• 53:33Speaker 00

  I guess I should have saved the other Simon, Simon V2, so that Simon V3 would have somebody to hang out with after he kills Catherine at the end. Because then the two Simons could hang out and be like, weird twins. I don't...

• 53:46Kirk Hamilton?

  We could have a Mickey 17 sort of multiplicity situation.

• 53:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, I suppose so. So something else about the WoW that the game doesn't really get into, but that I did find fascinating is this concept of Simon, Simon's brain architecture being the genesis of the creation of AI in general. And I really wanted that to come back. And it doesn't, in a concrete way. Like, I was expecting the WoW to be like, I'm also Simon. Like, I was like, waiting for like, everything to be revealed to be Simon. And I was like, oh, this is gonna be so weird and cool. Like, I'm gonna find out that like, all this stuff I've been destroying was like, also inhabited by Simons. But that's not the case, as far as I know, except, in perhaps some sort of distant spooky way, that like, maybe Simon is in there, in some way that we can't quite fathom. And I like

• 54:35Speaker 00

  that, too. But I did have some other predictions, and I personally, this game that did not pan out, and that was one of them.

• 54:41Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, that's true. That's a cool idea. And like, you know, the kind of thing that I think is, could be true. So you might as well entertain the thought, even if the game doesn't fully go the, yeah, 700 Simons appear, and I'll say the same thing in synchronicity.

• 54:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:54Jason Schreier?

  There's always a Simon.

• 54:56Speaker 00

  There kind of is always a Simon. I feel like, that's part of why I'm glad they're making another one of these, because I'm like, there actually are some weird directions that they could go with what they already have.

• 55:05Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I think, I'm really, I really had not clocked that follow-up, and I think the timing is actually really cool. I think that game will be interesting to talk about. I'm hopeful that they can improve some things. We kind of put a pin in all the gameplay stuff. But I do want to say, like, this story, the stuff that we talked about, that to me is so, that's what I love about it, and that's the most interesting thing about it. I think as a game, it has some pretty serious problems, actually. Like, as, both as a puzzle game and as a stealth horror game. The stealth, as we've mentioned, almost feels like it's getting in the way of the story and can feel pretty frustrating. I think this type of, you know, totally powerless, you're just hiding, you know, not alien isolation, where you have some tools at your disposal, but like, where you're really just kind of stuck in a sequence where this thing is going to follow you until you turn the right levers

• 55:50Kirk Hamilton?

  and leave. I just am not that into that anymore. It feels like it's wasting my time. It's friction that I don't need. But also, the puzzles themselves, I think just, I hope that Frictional has been chewing on puzzle design, because I found very often, the solution to the puzzle was just, oh, that's a lever I didn't even realize was there. And so I would get stuck. I would just be walking around a couple of hallways, being like, how do I open this stupid door? And then I'd finally just go look it up, and it'd be like, oh, there's like, a button that you walked past in the last room. Like, it wasn't like, there's some puzzle that I have to figure out. It was just, did you notice that there's like, a light shining on this lever? Or there's a little hole in the wall that you have to crawl through. And that happens so often that it just kind of kills the momentum. And

• 56:32Kirk Hamilton?

  it's not, there's like, a missing layer of friction, actually, with the puzzles, because you're not having to do any thinking most of the time. I mean, occasionally, there's a little like, can you connect, you know, the, like, do the pipe maze connection of the power conduits or whatever. But mostly, it's just, did you notice the thing that, you know, changes the pressure in the room so you can move forward? And I hope that this next game that they're making has kind of better puzzles, like, is a little bit more, makes you think a little bit more to proceed.

• 56:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, totally agree. There were definitely times when I had to look things up. And this is after I had played it before.

• 57:05Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 57:06Speaker 00

  At least that was with somebody who had already played it and remembered all of those moments that can be frustrating where it's like, oh, this button is just in kind of a dumb spot and it's over here. But in this time around, I just, I hit several points where I was like, not lost, but just kind of like wandering around a couple of rooms being like, I actually don't know how to proceed here.

• 57:23Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. What do I do? And you move so slowly. It's just like, what? I just want to keep moving. Like, why? Yeah. So hopefully it's something they can improve in the future. Definitely a game that is like, it's so strong in this one area of the narrative and the questions it raises and the way it puts you face to face with these concepts that it just totally, for me, makes up for the fact that it's like, not a great adventure game. It's not, I don't think, like, it's got great atmosphere and vibes, but the actual gameplay horror stuff isn't that great. It, it just totally, you know, it has this one really great strength.

• 57:55Speaker 00

  I will say, just one other thought. I kept thinking throughout, like, does this have to be a game? Would this have been better as a TV show or a book? Because it is, the story is such a strong piece of it. And I think there are some arguments that it could be a good, good adapted into those other formats or having been created in those other formats.

• 58:14Jason Schreier?

  The characters aren't quite there.

• 58:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, but I think what makes it helpful that it's a game is that you can't see yourself. And so it preserves some of the weirdness of who Simon really is in a way that only a game can do. And you are inhabiting Simon, who is inhabiting this other body. I like that rhyming nature of the story. And so that was enough for me to be like, okay, yeah, this is a cool idea to have be a specific video game as the format that they chose to tell this story in.

• 58:47Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I think also the, I mean, this kind of thing has been explored in fiction and you can explore a first person narrative where it's not clear what kind of a body the protagonist is inhabiting. And I mean, sci-fi, you know, has been exploring these ideas of consciousness and being trapped in these kind of, hell, you know, I have no mouth and I must scream is like, seriously, clearly a formative text for this, clearly a formative text for this game. But I also think the game part, like, there are interactive sequences in this game that work very well because they're interactive. When you have to keep loading the one guy up into the, into the like simulation and he keeps freaking out every time you wake him up and then you delete him and then you have to try again and like get him comfortable so he can tell you some password. That stuff is really gross

• 59:31Kirk Hamilton?

  and like, you feel very complicit in some kind of torture. And I think that is like very effectively done through gameplay, that you're trying to figure out, okay, how can we make this guy comfortable? What is it? He keeps asking, he's in the wrong rooms. We changed the setting of the room. And then you just keep doing it.

• 59:46Speaker 00

  Catherine is like Milgram experimenting you and being like, Simon, you have to do this. And you're like, do I though? I guess I do. It's, it's great. That was a great sequence.

• 59:55Kirk Hamilton?

  And I like that about it. And a thing I like about this game is that there is no huge shocking twist. I think it's very easy to go into this game, especially because of Bioshock, because it looks kind of like Bioshock. And then especially as you're kind of talking to Catherine, you have this voice in your ear the whole game telling you where to go. It feels kind of like Bioshock. And you're even kind of revealing yourself to be a big daddy or something like in Bioshock 2. There's this feeling that there's going to be a rug pull, that, you know, Catherine's actually behind it all and she's evil, or she's actually the wow and was never a person. Or like you were saying, Jason, maybe this is all in my head and it's all a dream and actually the reality is something else. And I kept expecting that through the first time and even misremembered the second time, like

• 1:00:38Kirk Hamilton?

  how, that, how little of that there really was. And I very much appreciate that this game reveals pretty early on that the world ended. It reveals very early on, if you're paying attention, that it's way in the future. When Simon turns on his flashlight, it's clear that something is up because he's like, wait, why do I have a flashlight? And so it, it doesn't try to shock you with any of these developments. It just slowly unfolds and explains itself to you and then allows you to just really take your time and think about what's happening and then have all these thoughts like we've been articulating. And I think that's really cool. I think that's something very mature about the storytelling in this game, is that it doesn't feel the need to do a big rug pull, to do a big fake out or a shocking reveal. Even the ending, which is so shocking and nightmarish and really

• 1:01:19Kirk Hamilton?

  sticks with me, was actually set up, as we said, by everything that happened before. And Catherine's like, why are you surprised that this happened? This is exactly what I said would happen. You should have seen it coming. So I think that's a real, another real point in this game's favor narratively.

• 1:01:33Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. I mean, to elaborate on one thing I said before, I think that when you're telling a story in a video game, you don't need the same kind of character development and character arcs and good acting, frankly, that you do in a TV show or a movie where a lot of the story is character driven. And this, since the story is so idea driven and because the story doesn't need to be driven by characters doing things, but instead it's driven by the player doing things, it can kind of leave you with these big, interesting questions and never really give answers to how the game makers feel about them. And it winds up feeling like a compelling story by the end of it, even though you haven't watched any sort of character growth or change or interesting development on that front.

• 1:02:17Jason Schreier?

  And so in that sense, I think this could only really work as a game. And I think it works and is a strong kind of narrative because it isn't heavy handed and its delivery of this stuff, it leaves you with just a lot of interesting ideas without really kind of moralizing about any of them or proselytizing about any of them, which just leaves you thinking a lot about the story, which I think is, is the most effective part of this game's methods of storytelling.

• 1:02:48Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it says something maybe about how I think of video games related to that, Jason, that when I picture a novel version of this, I basically picture a version with better characters.

• 1:02:59Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:59Kirk Hamilton?

  You know what I mean? Like, it just would have to have stronger characters and like more fleshed out, you know, better dialogue and stuff. That would almost have to happen. Otherwise it would be, you know, it wouldn't really work.

• 1:03:09Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. But I also, I think to this game's credit, I think a lot of games would be a little bit more just kind of ham-fisted with the ideas that they're trying to get across. I mean, Bioshock is, is a good idea or a good example of that, especially Bioshock Infinite, where it's very clear what message the kind of storytellers are trying to get across by the end of it. And it's a lot of it is just kind of shoved down your throat. I think this game does a good job of not really doing that moralizing at all about this question. You're just kind of left with like, holy, like that holy crap moment at the end and just thinking about what it means and who's in the right and who's in the wrong. And I don't think there are really satisfying answers there, which I like.

• 1:03:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:03:51Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, there's a confidence there that I, that I appreciate in the storytelling.

• 1:03:55Jason Schreier?

  And I mean, to your point, Kirk, by the way, you, you don't, I mean, because of the way that games operate and because of the player's role in it all, games don't need to have stronger characters.

• 1:04:05Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, no, I, yeah, of course. That's, I completely agree. It's, it's, that's why I would think you would have to add a whole bunch of other stuff because, you know, you would need it if, if the player wasn't there experiencing it all and having the experience that we had playing the game, which is a great experience.

• 1:04:21Jason Schreier?

  And having the choices and that kind of, the fact that, I mean, I think it's also to this game's credit that so much of the story is told through peripheral means, through reading emails and discovering logs. And you can miss huge parts of the story if you're not out there poking around in terminals and stuff, which I think is a cool way of telling a story. I always appreciate environmental storytelling in games.

• 1:04:46Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, the environmental storytelling works in both the rooms and then just the fact that you are constantly going deeper and deeper and darker and deeper and darker as you're, you know, entering these deeper and darker philosophical questions. I think that is also a very effective feeling.

• 1:04:59Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. Yeah, that's true. It's metaphorical, a good metaphor. You're descending into hell, literally and figuratively.

• 1:05:05Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it is a dark descent until you get to the darkest point at the very bottom. And then you just are left there forever.

• 1:05:12Speaker 00

  Or you're really, really high up in the sky, depending on how you interpret it. You might actually be in outer space.

• 1:05:18Kirk Hamilton?

  You know, in Sweden, winter is, it's night all day. It's kind of just a fun fact that I'll throw out there.

• 1:05:25Jason Schreier?

  For Swedish people, this is actually paradise going down to the bottom.

• 1:05:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, this is actually an uplifting story.

• 1:05:30Kirk Hamilton?

  Pretty much just December for me. Well, this game is a lot of fun. I'm really glad that we played through it and got to finally talk about it. And it'll, I think it'll lead to a more nuanced conversation about frictional's next game too, which is always a fun bonus. Thanks to both of you for playing through it with me. Let's take a break and come back for one more thing.

• 1:06:19Speaker 03

  The greatest moments of my life.

• 1:06:22Speaker 03

  This is one of mine, too. I love it.

• 1:06:24Speaker 04

  That's go fact yourself.

• 1:06:25Speaker 05

  Twice a month, every month.

• 1:06:27Speaker 04

  Here on Maximum Fun.

• 1:06:31Speaker 06

  International Waters is back, baby. Do you like fun, silly conversations? Do you like fun, silly games? We got them both. And it's on International Waters. I am the host, Dave Holmes. This is a panel show that pits American and British comics against each other in a lively and hilarious competition. What is gentlemen's relish? Who is bag puss? Why is the Oscar Mayer Wiener Mobile so emotionally resonant? And why doesn't American cheese have its own anthem? Get the answers and be left with numerous questions about that and so much more nonsense and/or codswallow twice a month here on International Waters. You can catch International Waters on MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:07:15Kirk Hamilton?

  And we are back for one more thing. Jason, how about you kick us off?

• 1:07:20Jason Schreier?

  So my one more thing is a book called Heather by Caitlin Mullin. This is kind of a dramatic literary thriller sort of book, sort of reminiscent of God of the Woods. And you both will get a kick out of this because it is set in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, a location that is well known to both of you. And in fact, in the book, towards the beginning of the book, is the mention of The Sopranos episode set in the same location. It's about a woman named Callie Hauser, who is a, who is kind of newly installed as the police chief of the Barrens. And it's about how she kind of, the story starts off with her having to arrest this

• 1:08:05Jason Schreier?

  woman who turns out to be her mother, who is drinking while driving, or seems to be drinking while driving. And upon this arrest, she learns about this kind of deep, dark secret from years and years earlier that winds up just kind of clashing with the present and getting resurfaced in all sorts of ways. And she tries to find out what happened and how it happened and how it's linked to the present and what, who got away with their crimes many years later and so on and so forth. And it's a really cool book with a really riveting mystery, I would say, and asks a lot of really interesting questions and is, is very much about like the awful things

• 1:08:50Jason Schreier?

  that men can do to women and how they manifest in this, in this story. It's, it made me very angry reading through the book, but I also really enjoyed it because it's a really good story and it's propulsive and written very well. And, and yeah, I really enjoyed it in the same way that I enjoy a lot of these just kind of literary thrillers like God of the Woods, which I mentioned and several others. And I recommend it. Really cool book, I would say, that is sad, tragic, but, but very good.

• 1:09:28Kirk Hamilton?

  Have you watched any True Detective? That sounds a little True Detective-y.

• 1:09:32Jason Schreier?

  Nah.

• 1:09:33Speaker 00

  What?

• 1:09:33Jason Schreier?

  I have not.

• 1:09:33Kirk Hamilton?

  That new season of True Detective, do you watch Night Country, Maddie?

• 1:09:36Speaker 00

  Yes, I've seen all of True Detective.

• 1:09:38Kirk Hamilton?

  For some reason, this makes me think of Night Country. I think we talked about it on the show.

• 1:09:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, we did. We must have. We must have.

• 1:09:42Kirk Hamilton?

  It makes me think of Night Country, which is a great show, Jason, and kind of a similar, like the True Detective shows have a lot of that where there's usually an older crime that goes with the newer crime. And then as you uncover it, you wind up uncovering so much more. And Night Country was really great and had that kind of feeling of uncovering this kind of old wrong that happened that then led to a new crime. And it was a really great story.

• 1:10:04Speaker 00

  Really cool.

• 1:10:04Jason Schreier?

  Well, there's always something very fascinating, something fascinating in our culture, I think, about cold cases and the idea that like, because we as humans just hate nothing more than the loose ends and like unresolved plots and mysteries and things that just will never be like concluded or satisfyingly resolved in our heads. And this idea, it's so just kind of tasty for us as humans to just see something that is 30 years old, that has been haunting people's minds forever, just somehow some intrepid person, an intrepid young woman figures out how to resolve it. That's always just, just red meat for human storytelling.

• 1:10:41Kirk Hamilton?

  It's like, it's that and that, you know, cold case is kind of a misnomer that, you know, if somebody killed someone 30 years ago and got away with it, there's a good chance that they're still around. And moreover, that the, whatever the circumstances and the systems that, you know, they exploited or the things that caused that crime to happen are also probably still around and maybe have even gotten worse. So in solving the crime, you can learn something and reveal something about the world we live in now, which is certainly also at the root of a lot of these stories. Anyway, that book sounds great.

• 1:11:10Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it's cool.

• 1:11:10Kirk Hamilton?

  I will, I'll put it on my list.

• 1:11:12Jason Schreier?

  Such a good fantasy to be like, I can, can solve this mystery. I feel like a lot of podcasts try to do that. I can solve this mystery that nobody else has been able to.

• 1:11:20Kirk Hamilton?

  For sure.

• 1:11:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, but a fiction version of it, it can actually happen and that's great.

• 1:11:25Jason Schreier?

  Yes, that's what's nice about fiction.

• 1:11:27Kirk Hamilton?

  Maddie, how about you? What is your one more thing?

• 1:11:30Speaker 00

  My one more thing is a podcast I've been listening to called Savant Guard, like savant.

• 1:11:35Kirk Hamilton?

  Excellent name.

• 1:11:37Speaker 00

  And the premise of it is that an ex-wife and an ex-husband host it together. And that in and of itself is very charming because somehow.

• 1:11:48Kirk Hamilton?

  Exes to one another?

• 1:11:49Speaker 00

  To one another. Somehow they are now best friends, seemingly. They have an incredible, powerful, compassionate relationship towards one another. And what the premise of the show is, so Lucy Valentine, the ex-wife in question, has autism and Jesse Black, the ex-husband, has OCD. And they were both undiagnosed when they were married. And I think they've never revealed what led to their breakup, but now that they have diagnoses, that's like a big part of the show. And so every episode, they watch one episode of Monk, the TV show about the OCD character, Monk, and one episode of The Good Doctor, which is about the autistic doctor, Sean Murphy. And they often criticize both shows in ways that are extremely humorous and also really

• 1:12:34Speaker 00

  illuminating. I have many autistic people in my life, friends, peers, et cetera. And so I wouldn't say that's been super revelatory to me to hear Lucy Valentine's experience there, but I don't actually know a lot about OCD. And Jesse Black has the cleaning focused version of it specifically, which is also something that Monk exhibits. And him talking about his experiences has been really fascinating to me because I'm learning a lot about just something I don't know about. And also he's extremely funny and does voices, incredible impressions of all the voices of all the characters on these TV shows, which for an audio format is truly a wonderful gift for any podcast host to have and definitely recommends the show and makes it, makes it

• 1:13:19Speaker 00

  funnier to listen to.

• 1:13:20Jason Schreier?

  You're saying we should do more voices.

• 1:13:22Speaker 00

  I don't, I can't do voices like Jesse Black can do, quite frankly, but he's, he's, he's phenomenal at it. So yeah, the result has been that I've learned a lot about OCD, actually. And that's been really cool. And also learned about these two television shows. And every now and then they have a good episode and that's really cool to hear about, too, is like what, what these shows do right and wrong. So yeah, it's called Savant Guard and it's really fun and funny and I'm enjoying it a lot.

• 1:13:49Kirk Hamilton?

  Cool. That sounds great. What, so what's the general take on Monk? Because I remember that show pretty well. Like what are, what's, what's his take on the depiction there of Monk's OCD?

• 1:13:58Speaker 00

  So the interesting thing about Monk, I would say, is that although he is described in the show as having OCD, he is often also depicted with autistic traits, which the two of them find really fascinating because the characters in the show, which came out in the early 2000s, don't describe him that way. And I think some of that is like a lack of understanding of what those traits signified at the time. You could perhaps hypothesize that maybe the writers of the show are basing this on people who had these traits but were undiagnosed. And sometimes Monk also just has traits that are exaggerated and make absolutely no sense or have nothing to do with OCD. And it's funny to hear them describe that as well and like kind of break down moments

• 1:14:40Speaker 00

  when either Sean Murphy on The Good Doctor is relatable to Lucy or Monk is very relatable to Jesse. And sometimes they'll surprise each other and be like, oh, this part was so stereotypical. And the other one will be like, actually, that's happened to me. And like, here's the specific example of that. And that's been really cool to hear about, too.

• 1:14:59Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice. That sounds like a lot of fun. That sounds very interesting.

• 1:15:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's great.

• 1:15:03Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, I'll go last. My one more thing is a 2015 video game, so we're just it's just the episode for 2015 video games. If in 2015 you felt freaked out by Soma, you could then get some friends together and play Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime, which is a game that I've been playing kind of a lot of over the last couple of months and just been having so much fun that I just kind of wanted to shout it out really quick. I don't have any groundbreaking thoughts on it or anything, but it's so much fun. Are either of you familiar with this game or have you ever played it?

• 1:15:34Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:15:35Speaker 00

  I heard of it at the time. I never played it, though.

• 1:15:38Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I think I knew of it, but hadn't played it either. Jason, you've played it. Cool. So this is a same-screen co-op game, a couch co-op game for up to four players. Came out in 2015, made by a small Toronto studio. Toronto, 2015. What is it with this episode? A small Toronto-based studio called Asteroid Base. And it is sort of, I'll describe how it works. It's, you're on a little spaceship. This is in a kind of fictional, very colorful kind of Powerpuff Girls future, where there's, you know, you're these little guys and you pick your little guy, kind of like an Among Us character, just a little sort of alien creature, or maybe it looks like a rabbit. There's all kinds of different figures. Each

• 1:16:17Kirk Hamilton?

  character just, or each player picks their little guy. And then there's a spherical ship, or I guess it's a circular ship that flies around the screen. And then on the ship, like the ship is presented in cross-section, so there are kind of ladders and little plat, like, different levels within the circle of the ship. And so then there are stations that you run around within the ship from station to station. So maybe you play with two people, maybe you play with four, but like, all of the characters are running around inside of the ship. And like, one person gets at the station to drive the ship. So then you're, you like, control which direction the ship is moving. And so that's, your whole job is just driving. But there are four gun turrets at the four points of the circle, and there are little chairs that you can sit in to fire each of those. But crucially,

• 1:17:01Kirk Hamilton?

  you can only do one thing at a time. So if there's only two people, one person can fly while the other person is running around the ship, you know, from turret to turret, to shoot enemies that are maybe coming at you from different sides of the ship. But then there are other things. There's a shield that you can also control that only shields part of the ship. So if you have three people, maybe one person's on the shield, and they're kind of controlling the shield as it goes in a circle around the outside of the ship, blocking attacks that get through, while another person is on the turret shooting and another person is flying. I've played a lot with four people, which is really fun. You can get almost all the way covered, but there's always a little more, like, there's always a little more that you need to be doing. It's very much designed so that you're always a little bit having to improvise and react. So then the game is basically just

• 1:17:43Kirk Hamilton?

  making your way through these levels, where you have to rescue a certain number of little critters while fighting off various threats. And then once you've rescued enough critters, you unlock the gate to go to the next level. It's very straightforward. This game is just so delightful. It's really approachable. It's very easy to play with all kinds of different people. I played this a bunch with Emily and my nieces when they were up, they're 15 and 12, and they were having a great time. But then I was having game night with my D and D group, and one guy couldn't make it at the last minute. So we just kind of were down a D and D player. And we kind of decided, ah, let's just wait for him to keep the campaign going. And we're at my house. I was like, hey, you guys want to just go play this game? And so then we went upstairs and played together. And, you

• 1:18:28Kirk Hamilton?

  know, two of my friends had never played it before and just picked it right up. And we were just having so much fun. It's, it's a great level of co-op chaos mixed with actual teamwork. I've played a lot of Overcooked. That's kind of a go-to for couch co-op.

• 1:18:42Speaker 00

  That's what it's sounding like to me, yeah.

• 1:18:45Kirk Hamilton?

  And it's a little bit like that, because there's some kind of friction between players. Like, you can knock someone out of their chair if you press the X on it. There is a lot of kind of frantic communication. Wait, wait, wait, upgrade this one. No, no, go over there. Ah, sorry, I'm crashing. Ah, no, you need to get on the shield. Like, there's some of that, but it's not as much of a pressure cooker as Overcooked. It's not designed to like, really make you just fall apart and have to be like, you know, failing and re-systemat, like, reworking out how you're gonna do things, which Overcooked kind of requires, at least for the groups I play with, like, a lot of trial and error.

• 1:19:17Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, it's hard.

• 1:19:18Kirk Hamilton?

  You get to a new challenge, and it's hard, and you're like, okay, so we have to figure out, here's our game plan. You have to talk for a while and then do it. This is much more, you're able to just kind of improvise, and it's not that hard. You can kind of just make your way through it. And it's just delightful. And, you know, it's out on all major systems. I was actually looking at the developer's website. Their most recent update is that they released this on Amazon Luna. And this was in 2025. They're like, ah, it's so cool. Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime is out on Amazon Luna, which, my understanding is that Amazon Luna is not doing great. Is that right? Am I correct in that?

• 1:19:54Speaker 00

  I almost never hear people talk about it.

• 1:19:56Jason Schreier?

  I have no idea.

• 1:19:58Speaker 00

  I don't know.

• 1:19:59Jason Schreier?

  I just, I have no clue.

• 1:20:00Kirk Hamilton?

  I don't either. I never hear about it either. But my sense is that they're kind of cutting services. Anyhow, I was just looking, I was hoping that this, this studio, Asteroid Base, a very small studio, was still around and making stuff, because this game is so confident and so great. It looks like it's kind of just been this game for them. But I hope they're working on something new, because they are still around, and they made this game, which is wonderful. And I hope they're making, yeah, a new one or something like it. But in the meantime, I just wanted to throw it out there. For anyone who is thinking of, you know, has a group of people that you like to play co-op games with, like, together, couch co-op, this is a really great option. And I'm very glad I played it. So it may be 10 years old, but it's getting a lot of playtime in my house, and I'll probably keep playing it, because it's really fun.

• 1:20:41Speaker 00

  Right on. It sounds good.

• 1:20:44Jason Schreier?

  We got a different co-op game to play, you guys.

• 1:20:46Speaker 00

  We do.

• 1:20:46Kirk Hamilton?

  We do. We do. We have some laser pointers to accidentally drop off mountains. We'll be, we'll be talking about Big Walk next week, which is very exciting, because we've been playing it together, and it's a lot of fun.

• 1:20:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, we have.

• 1:20:59Jason Schreier?

  First, we gotta play some more Big Walk.

• 1:21:00Speaker 00

  We are.

• 1:21:01Kirk Hamilton?

  First, we gotta play some more Big Walk, which I'm excited for. Well, let's, uh, let's go do that, and we can sign off of this podcast, and we'll be back to talk about it next week. Until then, uh, yeah, I will see the two of you on Big Walk Island.

• 1:21:13Jason Schreier?

  See you guys next time.

• 1:21:14Speaker 00

  Bye.

• 1:21:17Kirk Hamilton?

  Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddy Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network, and if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join. Email us at [email protected] and find links to our merch store and our Discord server in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

• 1:22:15Kirk Hamilton?

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