Why Are There So Many Remakes Right Now? [Mailbag]

Jason, Kirk, and Maddy open up the mailbag to answer some more listener questions. Why do we love replaying games? Why don't indie games cost more? And why are there so many remakes??

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

• 0:03Kirk Hamilton?

  They say there's a new nostalgia cycle every 20 years, which means that in 2046, thousands of you will be nostalgic for this episode. Welcome to TripleClick, where we bring the games to you. This week, we are answering more listener questions on topics ranging from the Steam Machine, to Ocarina of Time and Remake Fever, to why we love to replay games so much. Let's get into it.

• 0:30Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm Kirk Hamilton.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  I'm Maddy Myers.

• 0:33Jason Schreier?

  And I'm Jason Schreier. Hello.

• 0:35Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 0:36Jason Schreier?

  How's it going, guys?

• 0:39Speaker 01

  Pretty good.

• 0:39Kirk Hamilton?

  It's going pretty well. I had some sort of small animal, like a rodent or something, die in the wall of my house.

• 0:48Jason Schreier?

  Nightmare scenario.

• 0:50Speaker 01

  This is when things are going well.

• 0:52Kirk Hamilton?

  It happens, you know?

• 0:53Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. So you could just smell it through the walls?

• 0:56Kirk Hamilton?

  Mm-hmm. You start to smell like the smell of a dead animal, which is pretty gross. And we got an ozone generator, a little ozone machine, and the advice of the internet, which everybody agrees that this is the way to go when you have a smell. I actually bought a used guitar amp a little while ago that smelled really bad, like perfume. And that was the advice I saw for that, too, though I didn't try it. So it turns out, an ozone generator, it's like a little machine that you get, dude, it really works. Like, it doesn't make the smell go away forever. The dead rat, or whatever it is, is still wherever it is, generating the smell. But it completely removed the smell. It was like magic.

• 1:36Kirk Hamilton?

  So that was something that I learned, is that ozone incredibly good at getting weird, like, kind of gross smells out of a room, or you could use it in a car. I bet people use it in, like, Airbnbs all the time and stuff. Kind of amazing, like, the power of science.

• 1:52Jason Schreier?

  And are you helping the ozone layer by generating more?

• 1:56Speaker 01

  Good question.

• 1:56Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, I'm sure. Also, you can feel really good about it. No, I'm sure it's like destroying the ozone layer. It's like sucking ozone out of the ozone layer.

• 2:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's actually taking away from the ozone layer. That's the one downside, actually, is that you're using it up by doing this. So do you have to just keep running it forever? Because this rodent is decaying.

• 2:15Kirk Hamilton?

  No, you just run it for like 30 minutes. It's not safe for people to breathe. There are a lot of safety instructions. Like, you're supposed to close off the room, or, you know, the car, whatever you're running it in, and then vent it thoroughly afterward, just so you don't breathe it. Like, it won't kill you if you smell it, but it's not a safe thing for people to breathe. There's a timer built into the one that we have, so you just set the timer, 30 minutes, 60 minutes, it runs down, then you clear out the room, and then the smell is gone. Because of how ozone works, it's like molecular stuff that I don't totally understand. And then the smell will slowly come back, but it's really good for desmellifying things. And yeah, so that is my thing that I learned over the weekend, here in hot and apparently stinky Portland.

• 2:56Jason Schreier?

  You know what else is really good for desmellifying things?

• 2:59Kirk Hamilton?

  What?

• 3:00Jason Schreier?

  The TripleClick Podcast.

• 3:01Kirk Hamilton?

  It is, it is.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  I don't know that it is. It might distract you.

• 3:05Kirk Hamilton?

  The reason that Emily and I can afford to get an emergency ozone generator, though actually they're not very expensive, which is nice, is because of the support of all of our wonderful listeners, our Maximum Fun members, who support the creation of this show. And if you would like to join their ranks, you can do so by going to maximumfun.org/join, or just clicking the link in the show notes to become a member and support TripleClick. And if you do that, you will get bonus episodes of our show. Not only will you get to know that the show is being made in non-stinky rooms, all of us will be able to afford ozone generators to destinkify our recording spaces, but also you will get bonus episodes, like the one that we just recorded about Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. I actually put a teaser for that in the main feed, so you heard a

• 3:49Kirk Hamilton?

  little bit of it, but you didn't hear the best parts. You didn't hear the wild part of the ending, where it's revealed what we were saying about the movie all along, and it makes you want to go re-listen to the podcast, because it's just so mind-blowing. But of course, you get that and a lot of other bonus episodes, and you get our gratitude for supporting our show. That is the only way that we make any income off of TripleClick. We don't sell ads, we don't have sponsors. We're just on Maximum Fun, a network that we love being a part of, and we're supported by so many of all of you. Thanks to all of our members, and to anyone considering. Again, it is maximumfun.org/join. Also, one other thing before we start, just a reminder that we are playing through SOMA,

• 4:33Kirk Hamilton?

  because I won our predictions bet, and we are going to be talking about that game next week on our episode on August 13th. So if you're playing through SOMA, either in safe mode or unsafe mode, and you want to get to the end before you listen to our conversation, which will include conversation about the entire story, next week is when you want to finish by. And yeah, we're really looking forward to that episode.

• 4:54Jason Schreier?

  SOMA deez nuts.

• 4:58Kirk Hamilton?

  All right. Jason, you threatened this last week, and now here we are. There are so many questions that were back.

• 5:05Jason Schreier?

  I live up to my threats. My threats are executed upon.

• 5:10Kirk Hamilton?

  Wasn't a threat, it was a promise.

• 5:11Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, last week, we did a mailbag episode, and as I mentioned last week, we had so many good questions that I thought we might have to do another one, and here we are. It's August. It's time for some more listener questions. We got some more, another batch of great ones. As always, you can reach us at [email protected] with your own questions. So let's get to it. Maddie, why don't you start us off?

• 5:41Speaker 01

  Okay, so this one's from Annie, who writes, "Hello, it's me, the exact demographic most attracted to the Steam Machine. I am a millennial, I am a gamer, I am a mom. I have an aging gaming laptop that I hardly touch, because I prefer to play on the PS5 or the Switch 2. My husband is a frugal man, but the one thing he's willing to really splash out on is gaming hardware. When the time comes to replace my PC, the Steam Machine would make for a perfect replacement and an extravagant gift. I think I would play my existing Steam library a heck of a lot more if I could do so with a console-like experience, and I would probably play more co-op stuff with my husband and our friends to boot, which would make my husband very happy. Do I think the price is reasonable

• 6:23Speaker 01

  for most people? No. Does it make sense to buy a Steam Machine when you already have a good gaming PC? No. But for someone like me, who has Steam games but prefers a console experience and is looking for a new gaming PC anyway, it's a splurge for sure, but it checks a lot of boxes." I feel like Annie sent us this, and we should have asked her for her husband's email address directly, so that we could just go ahead and forward this to him, so that he knows what he needs to buy her.

• 6:49Kirk Hamilton?

  This is kind of a roundabout way of giving a nudge on a gift.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  Does he listen? This is kind of just a really specific question for Annie's husband, a really specific request, I think.

• 7:00Jason Schreier?

  It's really interesting, because like, I think if you have to kind of look at this as two vectors, we talked a little bit about this last time, when we were talking about the Steam Machine, but I really think it's like two vectors to look at, which is like, one is a question of what the Steam Machine offers and what it brings to the table, and the other is the question of the value of it, and if it is worth the price. And I think for some people out there, some very fortunate people out there, the price is not really a factor. If you can afford it, if to you, it doesn't make a difference if it's $750, or $1,000, or $1,500, because to you, you have enough disposable income that it doesn't really matter, then the big question is, does it justify itself as a gaming device? And to that, I think the answer is absolutely, yeah.

• 7:41Jason Schreier?

  Like, it's such a slick, sleek machine that serves its functions well and does a good job. It's just for most people, it's hard to divorce price from that equation. But for people like Annie, it seems like a perfect fit if price is not as big a factor for you.

• 7:58Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I think a lot of it still comes down to the user experience that you want as well. The Steam Machine actually inspired me to finally get my actual gaming PC, which, as I've mentioned, is near enough to our TV that I can run an HDMI cable from the PC into the TV. And I finally got it set up right, so it is essentially just fully functional on the TV. And that's a pretty great experience, too, and it does make you, it makes me kind of realize the one downside of the Steam Machine that I mentioned last time we talked about it, is that you can't upgrade it. You can't make it more powerful. And I think this is something really cool that Valve is doing, actually, is they're making it easy for lots of people to build Steam Machines. And I wonder if we'll start to see more devices that are like a Steam Machine running

• 8:43Kirk Hamilton?

  that operating system, so you get that console-like experience, but they're also upgradable. They're maybe a little less elegant, since the Steam Machine is this very elegant little cube, you know, maybe they're slightly bigger than that, but I could imagine a version of this thing where you get that experience that Annie is talking about, the console-like experience, which I do think is really appealing to a lot of people, but you can also upgrade it and make it more powerful, so you're not kind of hitting the ceilings that the Steam Machine is already hitting when it comes to playing newer games.

• 9:10Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it's so funny. So I spoke to Valve about this, because I interviewed a couple of their engineers a few weeks ago, and they were telling me that like, the whole idea of Steam Machines, from the very beginning, from when they set out on this project in like 2011, 2012, has been to just help people play PC games in the living room. And they're not a hardware company. They don't really care that much about making hardware, in part because they make so much money off of Steam, that as long as people are playing on the Steam PC ecosystem, they're still doing extremely well. That, to them, the mentality is like, we just want to support this in whatever way we can, and they tried that with the initial Steam Machines experiment in 2015, where they had other companies make them. They realized, for a variety of reasons, that didn't work,

• 9:54Jason Schreier?

  mostly compatibility, which is a solved problem now thanks to Proton, but also because they didn't kind of set their own version as like a demonstration of what it could be, their own baseline version. Now they have that, the Steam Machine is their own demonstrable baseline version, and they are expecting and even hoping that other companies will do just what you said, Kirk, and build their own versions, and market their own versions, and sell their own versions, which benefits Valve, because it's still Steam, and benefits everybody, because you could potentially get something that is more powerful, or more fitting of whatever you need. So it does feel like we will get to a good place, unless this chip crisis just absolutely destroys gaming PCs for years to come, which, who knows?

• 10:39Jason Schreier?

  Nobody accounted for that.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think the other key piece of Annie's email that stuck out to me is that she says she is coming off of an aging gaming laptop, and a laptop, if it's a really nice gaming laptop, $1,000 is, it's exorbitant, but it's not out of the question for the price of a really nice gaming laptop. And a laptop is also famously a PC that you cannot upgrade yourself. It's going to have proprietary-sized parts that fit into a small container. So given that's her hyper-specific thing she's upgrading from, I actually feel like the Steam Machine would make perfect sense for someone like her, and I don't know that that person is that rare. I feel like the gaming laptop population might be larger than we think it is.

• 11:26Jason Schreier?

  All right, let's do the next question. Kirk?

• 11:30Kirk Hamilton?

  This comes from Florian, who writes, "Dear TripleClick, thank you for the weekly dose of presenting but also placing what's interesting in the gaming world." I like that, presenting but also placing. You could change our podcast description. All right, back to Florian. I have a question for you. "Recently, I started playing Cairn. As a climber myself, I was curious how this activity that I am intricately familiar with could be abstracted in game mechanics. About a half hour in, I put the game down because I was furious. It was so frustrating wrestling with the mechanics to make the protagonist do moves that at least resemble something like reasonable climbing technique. Who in their right mind would choose to move their hand in this position rather than their foot?

• 12:13Kirk Hamilton?

  Why wouldn't you turn your hand when grabbing that hold, et cetera? And more often than I would have liked, proper technique would apparently be interpreted as suboptimal by the game. Do you have any experiences that were different from that of your peers due to your real-world knowledge of the thing that you're playing the game about?" Well, first, I want to, I want to say, just related to Cairn. So I actually just finished this game a week ago. I had mentioned this, I think, on a previous episode, that I had come back to it. I made it my one more thing earlier in the year, and then had wanted to go back, and then finally did. Holy crap. This is like, to me, this is one of the, this is my favorite game of the year, easily. Like, it is unbelievably awesome. I am totally in love with it. I wish the two of you would play it.

• 12:57Kirk Hamilton?

  Like, it's one of, it's so amazing. I do not share Florian's frustration with it, though of course, I am not intimately familiar with rock climbing. And I do know this feeling. I do want to make a recommendation, though, so, and a kind of a counterpart, or a counterpoint, because Florian played a half an hour, which is nothing. And I, I don't want to, like, discount Florian's experience. Maybe he played enough, and I totally get why he would have felt the way that he felt. But I will say, this is like, a 12 to 15 hour game. There is a ton in it. The first half hour is like, very little. And like, once you get into the rhythm of the game and into the groove of it, I, I would kind of be surprised if, I mean, I almost kind of want to encourage Florian to try it again.

• 13:42Kirk Hamilton?

  There's a really great playthrough of this game on YouTube, from a YouTuber called Scrapman, who is a rock climber and knows a lot about rock climbing, similar to Florian, very intimately familiar with rock climbing. And he plays through the whole game, and it's really fun. After I finished the game, I went and kind of clicked around to find the really crazy parts of the climb, since it's all very memorable. And just to see how he navigated it and how he talked about it. And it's super fun, actually, watching someone who really knows rock climbing playing the game, because the game's depiction of rock climbing, and in particular, a kind of rock climbing mentality, kind of taken to an extreme, and also just the mechanics and really the logistics and all of it, it's pretty cool. So I found that actually really interesting.

• 14:24Kirk Hamilton?

  Florian might find it frustrating, but also it might be a way in on this particular game. And I do just want to say, what a game. Holy shit.

• 14:33Jason Schreier?

  Cairn, Cairn-specific gripes aside, any thoughts on the question?

• 14:37Kirk Hamilton?

  I have some thoughts, but I'll throw it to the two of you.

• 14:39Jason Schreier?

  Game experience versus real, real-world knowledge?

• 14:42Speaker 01

  I mean, it's not always depicted in a game, but I think any time journalists or reporters are depicted in fiction, including games, I am nearly always let down, because they're almost always written and created by people who've never done it, but kind of have an idea of what it would be like, and then the inaccuracies really bother me. Again, it's not a game example, but I was pleasantly surprised by The Devil Wears Prodigy 2 recently, which is a really dumb movie that I don't know if I recommend, but had some surprisingly accurate journalism sections, that I was like, wow, this is really different from almost everything I experience. I guess Mary Jane making a podcast in Spider-Man 2 is our go-to example, right? Like, why, what, what was her job in that game?

• 15:25Jason Schreier?

  Well, she's pivoting to be, to do a Substack. What, what about that game, News Tower, where you like, run that newspaper in the 30s? That was pretty accurate. I mean, I pay mafia bosses all the time.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, that was an example of like, okay, that's a historical thing that was true of newspapers during that time period, but I really hope people don't think it's still true of newspapers now, that we're all paying off mob bosses in order to fund our, our news.

• 15:53Jason Schreier?

  Actually, I think maybe they paid, paid you. I don't remember exactly how.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  Depended on how you went about it, yeah.

• 15:59Kirk Hamilton?

  Did we get mad at you, though, if you covered crime too much, like the mafia?

• 16:01Jason Schreier?

  Right, right.

• 16:03Kirk Hamilton?

  So it kind of dictated your coverage.

• 16:04Jason Schreier?

  This also happens in the video game industry. They get mad at you if you cover crunch too much.

• 16:09Kirk Hamilton?

  I mean, that is true.

• 16:12Speaker 01

  But they aren't paying you off. This is the key piece of this, is that like, they aren't paying you to exist.

• 16:18Jason Schreier?

  Not yet, although I've told everybody, my price is $10 million, and, I mean, it doesn't seem unrealistic, just, you get a sponsorship for 10 million.

• 16:27Kirk Hamilton?

  These rates of inflation, pretty soon, that's not even going to be that much money. You're going to have to adjust it for inflation.

• 16:32Jason Schreier?

  In a few years, I won't even be able to buy a steam machine.

• 16:34Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I think News Tower was, was pretty fun. I think any, like, deeply simulated game like that tends to have a higher batting average when it comes to simulating the actual intricacies of an industry or a job.

• 16:49Kirk Hamilton?

  Something I really liked in Rock Band 2, actually. We were joking about this last week, about the ways that Rock Band does not depict performing music accurately, but I really liked, I think it was in Rock Band 2, the narrative, where you form a band, and you gradually play bigger venues, and it's this kind of rags-to-riches story. There are little cutscenes, and it's, it may be in Rock Band 3, but I think it's in 2, just where your band is like, arguing over your logo and your name, and you just get little interstitial scenes, and they're really cute, and they feel very true to life. Like, that game was definitely developed by people who have been in a lot of bands. And I liked that about it.

• 17:23Jason Schreier?

  All right, let's do another question. This is from Basil. Basil, he writes, "Hey, y'all, hope you're doing well. Today, I'm thinking a lot about video game replays. I'm a chronic video game replayer. I guess the big question is, why do we want to replay games so badly, sometimes more than we want to play new ones? I could probably recite Persona 4's dialogue at this point, and I hardly ever make new choices, so why am I starting another run of Persona 4? And the remake is coming out next year." I have a lot of thoughts on this, but Persona is a good example, because it feels to me like, a lot of times, when you want to replay something or revisit something, is because you enjoyed hanging out with the characters, and when it ends, you have to say goodbye

• 18:07Jason Schreier?

  to those characters, and replaying it is another opportunity to hang out with those characters again. Same reason that you might, I don't know, re-watch The Sopranos 4,000 times, just to keep seeing those characters.

• 18:19Kirk Hamilton?

  You just like hanging out with Paulies so much.

• 18:21Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, and Ralph Siffaretto, I just want to just be around him.

• 18:25Kirk Hamilton?

  Who could think of a nicer guy to hang out with? Oh, caught some shrapnel.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  Well, but you do notice different things, I imagine, the next time around you watch The Sopranos, and probably the next time around you play Persona or anything else that offers something. I mean, I agree with you, for Persona, at least, it has that ensemble cast to the games, where like, yeah, you miss your friends when you finish that story. And one of the games I was thinking about when I read this was Mass Effect, which I have replayed multiple times, and I really, I don't know why, other than that it's comforting. I, I know everything that's going to happen, and much like, like Basil, I've never made a different choice, I don't think. I'm like, you know, sacrificing the same people, just, I don't know, when am I not dating Garrus? You know, it's like, it's, it's all just playing out the same way.

• 19:12Speaker 01

  But it's comforting, and they're my friends. They're my virtual friends, and I want to see them again.

• 19:17Kirk Hamilton?

  I think that's really interesting, that, so, that you've said the same thing that Basil said, I think it's true for me as well, that when you do replay these games with lots of choices and possible branches, you just make the same choices again.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, why is that?

• 19:30Kirk Hamilton?

  I've always found that to be true. Mass Effect is a great example, but there are so many other games like that, where I'm not actually curious what's going to happen if I take the evil route, or let the one character die, or whatever. Like, I, I bet I'll replay Baldur's Gate 3 at some point.

• 19:44Speaker 01

  That's just what I was going to ask.

• 19:46Kirk Hamilton?

  And I know that The Dark Urge is really, really cool. After listening to Danny do it on Cameron and Danny, on Mages and Murder Dads, on their discussion, one of the co-hosts of that podcast did a Dark Urge playthrough, and it was super interesting listening to him talk about it. Like, it is, it's really cool, and yet, I think I would replay it, and I would just do the exact same thing that I did the first time, which I feel like everyone does, and then it does, it's not that the choices don't matter, because some people really like them, and they do make the game feel more interesting, but I do think most people kind of just make the same decision again when replaying.

• 20:19Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, that, that's interesting, that you're just kind of on autopilot. It's funny, I was thinking about this question, and how video game reviews used to have a, a section, a rubric for replayability. That used to be something that the game reviewers would care deeply about, and that was kind of the op, very different from what we're talking about. Replayability was always considered, if, like, to be the, the rubric of, if you were to play this again, do you have incentive to play this again, because you'll get to see new things the next time you play it? And there are a lot of games out there, we're talking about story-focused games, but there are a lot of games out there that are more designed in a way that'll give you a new experience every playthrough, like a Civilization-type of game, where you do just keep playing

• 21:03Jason Schreier?

  through it over and over again, or a Rogue-like type game. So that's a different kind of world of replayability. Bellatro, you're replaying that over and over again, because it's different every time. The story games are a little bit different. The story games, I think, are more about just hanging out, and I think maybe people are more inclined to make the decision, the same decisions in story games, it's just because it feels like, that's the decision that just feels right to them. It's like, like, you wouldn't want to watch a show where, like, suddenly different things happen to your favorite characters, that would just feel off.

• 21:35Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I think it kind of relates to mastery, and it's something that video games lend themselves to more than other media, though it's true across all media. Repetition breeds mastery, right? You're kind of, you've played through the game a bunch of times, and you've gotten really good at it, and so when you start again from the beginning, you have this pleasure of sort of, both having the reflexes and the skills, and also the mastery of the systems. You know how things are going to go, you know which abilities you want to invest in. And so you can kind of build it your own way, and it's very pleasurable, I think, to do that. A narrative is the same way, where when you know what's going to happen, you have a kind of mastery over the story, and you're in a very different place, and so then you experience it differently.

• 22:18Kirk Hamilton?

  You notice new things, you notice foreshadowing and interesting character beats, because you know what's going to happen to this character or that character, what this twist or turn will bring, so you're kind of reading it kind of differently. And then- I at least find I really like replaying things in part because it shows me how I've changed. I like rereading books. I like rewatching movies. I certainly like listening to albums over and over and over. And I like doing that over time because I'll return to a movie that I first saw in 2003 and haven't watched since then. And I'll be like, wow, like first off, I noticed so much more about the artistry of this movie, but also I found different parts of it moving. I, I loved this, this aspect of the story just because I've changed so much in the 23 years since I watched this.

• 23:03Kirk Hamilton?

  And I think people are really drawn to that. Like there's something, it's not just comforting. It's, it also helps us get to know ourselves better. And that's something that I think that's a really strong part of a human's relationship with a given piece of art.

• 23:17Jason Schreier?

  Well put.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think it's also just kind of interesting from a critical lens too. Like replaying Ocarina of Time with you two really made me see how important it was as a game culturally and also just mechanically and everything that it did that was groundbreaking at the time. It's not like people didn't know that at the time. But looking back on it, it feels so much more powerful because we can look at all the games it influenced. And so there is an actual merit to replaying something now that you played as a child from, you know, our job perspective, but also anyone, anyone can enjoy playing something that's an older game that they remember that's was formative or important. And just be like, why did this matter so much?

• 23:59Speaker 01

  And have like a cool, critical time evaluating something that really mattered.

• 24:04Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. It's like the kind of broad cultural version of the same thing. Like the culture has changed, the art form has changed. And so now we can see this one piece of art in a different context.

• 24:14Jason Schreier?

  One more quick thought is that starting something new always requires some modicum of, of thought. And there's always some sort of barrier stopping you from getting into it. When you start a new show, you have to pay attention, learn all the characters.

• 24:25Speaker 01

  Terrible.

• 24:27Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. I mean, it's like, it can be easier to just browse through Tik Tok and then like watch an old show. With games, that's even more pronounced because you don't have to just learn the story. You also have to learn the mechanics and the gameplay and the way it feels to play and the button schemes. And it takes a lot of effort to learn a new game. Most games are not good. It's just starting off strong. Most games require a lot of, a lot of time. And, and you have to kind of get past those early hiccups to get to the good part. So I think to kind of answer the heart of Basil Basil's question is, uh, why do we love replaying games so much? Right? And we have all of huge theme backlogs of new games. It's because jumping into a familiar game is just so much easier and more comforting after a long day of work

• 25:09Jason Schreier?

  than just kind of sitting there and trying to learn the mechanics and controls for a new game is. So I think as, as a leisure, as a leisure habit or hobby, I think, uh, playing an old game that you already know, uh, can, can just be more relaxing.

• 25:24Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 25:24Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. And I, I think that's true for people who watch movies, people who listen to albums, like watching an old movie that you love is more comforting to people, you know, listening to an old favorite album instead of putting on a new release that's maybe going to challenge you, that's going to require some time to figure it out.

• 25:38Speaker 01

  And you don't know if you like it, like you might not even like it, like you're taking an inherent risk on something new. It's like, this might be a bad time.

• 25:45Jason Schreier?

  It might be, yeah, but not worth the time. It might be, I, I put in all this time to learn the controls and then it sucked. Yeah. I, I think that's a large part of why like the internet scrolling, feed scrolling has just taken over people's leisure time. It's just because it's so much easier and lower, lower effort than learning something new, even something new where you're just watching it or, or playing it. We had baby, a babysitter over, uh, over the weekend, uh, who's like, uh, I don't know, young, early twenties. And, uh, my wife and I went for, went out for dinner and, um, I gave her the TV remote. I was like, if you want to just watch TV after the kids are in bed, but no, it was just Tik Tok on the phone.

• 26:23Kirk Hamilton?

  These things even intersect. I lately, my YouTube algorithm and YouTube, man, YouTube is a problem. I need to take YouTube off my phone, I think, but my YouTube algorithm has been just clips from TV shows and movies. So it'll just be, here's that clip from a scene from Independence Day or whatever. And I'm like, oh yeah, I remember that scene. A couple of minutes. And then it's just the next thing is all right, all right, here's a clip from Men in Black. And I'm like, oh yeah, I like that too. And you can just, it's like, you're not even watching movies. You're just watching like scenes, you know?

• 26:52Speaker 01

  Will Smith was a cool guy in a bunch of movies. Yeah.

• 26:55Jason Schreier?

  God, that's so funny. It's kind of like when you would, when people watched live TV way back in the day and you would just browse through and it'd be like, oh, Shawshank Redemption is on, but are better, better watch through an hour of that. Except now it's just two minute.

• 27:08Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. And you've seen the Shawshank Redemption six times, but you've never seen the first 20 minutes.

• 27:12Jason Schreier?

  Exactly. But now it's just two minute clips instead. So.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  I know there are people who are like, I've never seen, you know, Die Hard or whatever, but I've seen this two minute clip from it 600 times. That's wild. Wild thing about.

• 27:25Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. I know the three algorithmically decreed best scenes from Die Hard.

• 27:30Jason Schreier?

  All right. Let's keep going before we get too depressed. Matty, read the next one.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  The next one's from Isaac who writes, hello triple click. I have loved your podcast since a friend took me to your live show here in Portland, Oregon, which was a life altering miracle of an event. Thank you all for that. You're welcome, Isaac. On the subject of gaming affordability in the era of the $80 release, if I'm being honest, I don't really feel it. I am very much a middle earner, being a public librarian and making an upper five figure annual salary, which just barely covers the usual expenses when you have a family and a house and lots of pets. But the games I love and that I look forward to spending a couple of hours with in the evening are mostly indies, which rarely cost more than $25, which leads me to wonder, why haven't indie games gone up in price appreciably?

• 28:16Speaker 01

  And why spend $80 on any game when you can get Mina the Hollower for $20? Are indie developers making enough money? Or are they mostly pursuing passion projects and hoping they'll create the next Stardew or Hollow Knight? I want to know more about what's going on financially with the indies. Thanks for everything. Isaac.

• 28:34Jason Schreier?

  Man, I asked Sean Velasco, who's the head, who is the studio head of Yacht Club Games, which made Mina the Hollower. I asked him, when Mina came out, I asked him, why is it only $20? And he said, we're selling it for $20 because we think we will make more money selling it at $20 than we would if we sold it for more than that, for $30 or $40 or whatever the case may be. So I think that's part of the calculus here is that a lot of these indie companies think that they can just get away with it and, and will make more money in the long run because they'll wind up reaching more people who can see it as a potential impulse buy. I think that's part of the Silk Song strategy as well.

• 29:13Jason Schreier?

  It's not for everybody. I believe Mugenix was $30. Um, that also sold quite well. So yeah, I mean, I don't know.

• 29:20Speaker 01

  Still not $80. So I think it's still fair to compare it.

• 29:23Jason Schreier?

  So I think the calculus, and this actually gets into another question that's not on our list here, but some, someone asked, which is like, why aren't big game companies like focusing less on graphics if they want to get their expenses down and timelines down and stuff? And I think the, the kind of, the answer to that question is that like, the higher your game is priced, the greater the expectations are in general. And one of the reasons that big companies are throwing so much into graphics and making their games look as vivid and as detailed and as high fidelity as possible is so they can justify selling them for 70 or $80. Because if you have a game and it is supposedly big budget, but it's only, it looks like a pixelated, like Mina the Hollower style game.

• 30:06Jason Schreier?

  And it's very difficult to expect people to spend $80 on it because they could get a Mina the Hollower for $20. So that's kind of this bridge, this big divide there. But to answer the question of why indie devs do it, I think it's because a lot of them think that that's the price that makes the most sense for their game. And that they'll make the most money by selling at the optimal price. I don't think any of them are doing it because they're like, you know, this is a bad business decision, but we want, we want gamers to, to be happy. I think they think that it is a smart move. It's a win-win. Like customers feel good about getting the game at a low price. And also they will sell more copies and make more money in the long run as a result.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, that makes sense.

• 30:46Kirk Hamilton?

  The expectations thing that you're saying is interesting, like that there's a pressure that goes with having a high price. I can kind of imagine it even from just making, you know, little indie things and selling them on the internet. Like having a Patreon or whatever, you know, for one of my podcasts or putting Triple Click on maximum fun. There is a feeling that the more you're asking and the more money you're like bringing in, the more you kind of have to meet it. And it is something you can run into with like a show like ours or a show like a Patreon show where you're creating more and more bonus stuff and trying to justify, wow, these people are paying me and like, I really need to justify it. And it, it falls apart with like something like Strong Songs, because a lot of people support Strong Songs

• 31:29Kirk Hamilton?

  because they just want the show to exist and they don't actually care about the, all the extras. But you can kind of fall into that mindset, even if you're in a very different field, making a very different kind of product. So I can't imagine how you just start to feel like, well, this game is going to cost $80. Like we have to justify it, meaning it just has to be stuffed to the gills with a million things. I hadn't really thought about that as being yet another kind of vicious cycle in video games. But it does, it makes a sort of sense to me just here and getting thinking about it just off the cuff right now.

• 31:58Jason Schreier?

  Man, so there's a little company that you guys might've heard of and it's called Bungie. It was sold to Sony for $3.6 billion.

• 32:09Kirk Hamilton?

  Still a wild number. Still a wild number.

• 32:12Jason Schreier?

  And then had to, and then had to kind of think about how to justify that price. And man.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  And it went really well, right?

• 32:21Jason Schreier?

  It went extraordinarily well and things are great at Bungie and Destiny is, is thriving.

• 32:26Speaker 01

  Thriving.

• 32:27Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. Kirk, I think that's a really good point. I think when you, if we asked, if we were like to support Triple Click, you have to pay a hundred dollars a month. That's the baseline. That's the threshold. Then that would feel weird because we would be like, are we delivering enough value to subscribers who are paying that kind of money? Personally, I think we're, we probably are delivering that much value to them, but hey.

• 32:48Kirk Hamilton?

  That Odyssey bonus episode was pretty good.

• 32:51Jason Schreier?

  I think if you're trying to sell something to people, you want them to feel like they paid a fair price for them. And a fair price is generally like a few dollars lower than what you think you could charge for them. Because then people feel like, wow, I got a great deal for this. I want to tell all my friends about it and it's only $20. Go check it out. You can go play it right now. Um, I, I just, I think that's just, it really is a win, win. And I think it worked out nicely for Mina the Hollower. I don't know if they said, hit the, the, the sales goals that they were after. Cause Sean Velasco was telling me he wants to hit a million in sales, but they hit half a million pretty quickly. So they're doing pretty well.

• 33:25Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. I mean, even to, since we're talking about podcasting, like even going beyond that, I mean, Triple Click and Strong Songs, like the two shows that I make are just free. Like people can just listen to them.

• 33:34Jason Schreier?

  Which is why we make them so shitty for you.

• 33:37Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, it's great, though, like, in honesty, like, it's really nice. It's very liberating, just being like, "Well, here it is." Like, listen to it, or don't, like, you don't, I don't feel beholden to people to make any one thing, because I just make whatever I want, and if they want to listen, cool. And like, that relationship with the audience, I just make what I want, and if you want to listen, cool. It's a really pure way of just making something. And it is a very good way to be, as opposed to, "Oh, man, like, I have a client here. Like, these are my customers, like, they're paying a lot for this thing. I really better make it good." And it can lead you to actually get in, like, some self-defeating cycles where you're not actually making it better. You're kind of overdoing it and burning yourself out and making too much of the wrong thing.

• 34:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, Isaac's question, are indie developers making enough money? Is perhaps not an easy one to answer, but I think it's fair to say that some of them are, based on this format of pricing their games appropriately and being successful. But I think that that question is less about pricing. I just wanted to try to address it, since it is also part of what Isaac is asking here. It's not just about pricing, but about visibility, which is this other massive issue that every creator faces across art forms and platforms, which is just, it's so easy to post things, including really bad things. And so there's a lot of really bad stuff out there on the internet, and finding the good stuff.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  And, you know, having the ability to pay for it is like, the really hard part, right? But I do think there are indie developers who are making enough money by charging $20. I think that there are plenty of examples of that.

• 35:14Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, and also, I mean, the, the, the, kind of, the group of the, the label indie developers could apply to, like, like, Yacht Club Games is a company of about 15 people who all get salaries and are just working jobs. And like, obviously, they need the game to sell to keep the company going. But the people who work for the company are not living or dying based on, like, a single game's sales, how much revenue a single gamer coming, is coming in, is bringing in. They are making salaries. Whereas if you are just kind of a solo who doesn't have a job, and you just released a game on Steam, you, your, your finances are entirely tied to the revenue that you're bringing in every single week. So, very, that's a whole spectrum, and there's anything in between those, those kind of extremes in the indie game sphere.

• 35:58Jason Schreier?

  So that question is impossible to answer. But the question of pricing, I think, is really interesting.

• 36:02Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I mean, what is enough money, right? Enough money to pay your staff, or enough money to, you know, cover whatever your expenses are? But then what are your expenses? Like, it's, it's impossible to know. It's different for everyone.

• 36:13Jason Schreier?

  Let's do another question, Kirk.

• 36:15Kirk Hamilton?

  Uh, this comes from Corey. "Hi, triple-click. The recent Ocarina of Time remake announcement has had me thinking about remakes in general. We're in a golden era of remakes right now, with many classics being remastered, remade, or totally overhauled for modern platforms. In the case of Ocarina of Time, this is the second ground-up remake in a fairly short period. So it got me thinking, are we in an era of remakes that will repeat every 15 to 20 years, as developers repackage and resell their games? Or are most current remakes being made as the definitive final version? For example, will we get Persona 3 re-reloaded and Persona 4 re-revival in 2045? And again in 2065? Also, do you enjoy this era of remakes?

• 36:58Kirk Hamilton?

  Or do you see it as a sign that the industry is struggling, both creatively and financially? So they have remade shoreshots like Resident Evil to guarantee revenue? Also, I have been listening since the early split-screen days. You three are one of the podcasts I look forward to every single week. Keep up the amazing work." Well, first of all, thank you, Corey. And yeah, I don't know, what do the two of you think of this, of the era of remakes?

• 37:19Jason Schreier?

  I really enjoy the era of remakes, because I think that it is good. Because games have grown, kind of like, into obsolescence so quickly. So many old games feel so awful to play, that having new and remade versions of them, I think, is, is a pretty good thing. And I also think they can help a studio in all sorts of ways, help train people how to use tech, keep, keep a studio afloat while it figures out its next big ambitious project. Like, I think there's a lot that is good about remakes, and if you don't want one, you just don't have to buy it. Like, it's not taking away from anything to be, to have these companies making remakes.

• 38:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, the Resident Evil example is pretty comical here, because Capcom's been doing this for like, as long as I can remember. Like, they were doing this before, I think, we entered the golden remakes era. They had the, like, Umbrella Chronicles versions of all the games, where you kind of had, like, Time Crisis versions of Resident Evil 1. And I don't know if you guys even know what I'm talking about. They've remade the Resident Evils multiple times. I think you two are at least sort of aware of that.

• 38:23Jason Schreier?

  Well, that's, I mean, I think that's also what he's saying, is that, like, every 50, like, Ocarina of Time also. So it's like, every 15, 20 years, there's a cycle of this.

• 38:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, like, how many Resident Evil 4 versions are there? A bunch. All good, all wonderful.

• 38:37Jason Schreier?

  In Capcom's case, I mean, so many of those remakes are essentially new games, that it's like, hard to even call them. Like, Resident Evil 2 bears not a ton of resemblance to the original.

• 38:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that's, that's like, the golden era remake version, is the Resident Evil 2 remake. That's like, a ground-up, total reimagining. And that's part of why I think Corey's question about the personas is also interesting, because you two know better than I do, but from what I understand from just reading news articles about them, the new personas have changed some plot things. Like, they've kind of, like, sanded off some of the homophobic stuff in some of the games, and like, sort of updated just minor things for political reasons. And like, it's kind of funny to me to imagine in 2045, like, Persona just, like, slowly changing its plot more and more over time, to like, try to have the kids be more and more culturally sensitive and relevant.

• 39:27Kirk Hamilton?

  It'll be that every game where it turns out the bad guy is an AI, it'll be rewritten, so the AI is actually cool, and we don't want to be saying things, bad things about AI.

• 39:36Speaker 01

  But I do think that there is something a little, maybe not sad, but fascinating, at least, about that, in the sense that the original versions of these games sometimes did include not just parts that were difficult to play, or like, onerous to play, as you were saying, Jason, but things that just don't hold up to our modern sensibilities. But they can also be interesting historical artifacts for that reason. So the idea of people only having versions of the games that remake them to seem modern, I don't know. I, I'm not sure how I feel about that, and I, I think I'll have to revisit this question in 2045 and 2065, based on what the percentage of remakes look like at that point.

• 40:16Kirk Hamilton?

  I think is worth bearing in mind, you know, this, this goes beyond games, right? There is like, a 20-year nostalgia cycle, and things just get remade. I mean, I just saw the trailer for the new Thomas Crown Affair with Michael B. Jordan. It actually looks pretty good, which is, I never would have thought that game is, or that movie is necessary, because I love the 1998 one, is it 98, 99? The 1999 one with Pierce Brosnan, um, an awesome movie. But that, of course, is a remake of a 1968 movie. So not exactly 20 years, 20 years, 20 years, it's like, 30 even, 20? But it's still like, you know, we get A Star is Born every so often, we get The Thomas Crown Affair, apparently, every so often, we get Ocarina of Time, every so often. Like, all of these things are kind of on a cycle. And I do think, like, I don't know if Corey is fully articulating this,

• 41:01Kirk Hamilton?

  but there is a kind of exhaustion and a feeling of emptiness, or of just, it's a little depressing looking at how many remakes there are everywhere. This is particularly true, I think, for all the Disney live-action remakes, like, that recent super dire Moana one.

• 41:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, those are pretty grim.

• 41:18Kirk Hamilton?

  I don't think I've seen any of those, but, you know, they're like, so cynical. They're so obviously a way to just take the movie, make it again, and get more money off of it. To the point where they're like, remaking Moana, which just came out. Like, I remember when that movie came out, and now it has a live-action remake. So I think in the broader culture, when you see game companies being like, "Hey, Assassin's Creed 4, we remade it." You know, "Yeah, it's 13 years old, that doesn't seem like that long ago, but actually it is." Like, you can kind of feel like, "Man, everything is just a remake, there's nothing new anymore." Even though, in video games, for the reasons you both have laid out, it's actually pretty cool a lot of the time. Like, that Black Flag remake is pretty neat, and it does actually update the game in a lot of ways, and make it more fun to play.

• 42:02Kirk Hamilton?

  And I'm very curious about the Ocarina one, since, as we mentioned when we were talking about replaying games, Ocarina still super holds up, and is actually really beautiful and fascinating to play in the modern context. And it would be a shame to lose that. Like, I don't think Nintendo is going to go delete that tomorrow.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  No, they are. They're going to get rid of every old copy of it.

• 42:19Kirk Hamilton?

  Shit, I missed that part of the direct.

• 42:22Jason Schreier?

  You better lock up, lock up your 3DS cartridge, or else, they're coming for you.

• 42:27Kirk Hamilton?

  It's something that Corey said here, is like, are these the definitive final versions of these games? I don't think they are, only because, like, they just can't be, because the original version exists, and in some capacity, will continue to exist. And also because, yeah, I do think it's likely that we'll continue to get remakes of these games further down the road, as technology improves, and there's a new way to repackage it and reimagine it, and bring it to a new audience.

• 42:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know, people talk a lot about game preservation in this light, and like, the idea that, "Okay, what if, you know, 20 years from now, the remade, the resynced AC Black Flag is the only version that exists? And like, is that a bad thing for the preservation of games?" Like, that question, like, if, if somehow all the files, the original files were lost, and you couldn't even play an emulated version of it, in this, in this hypothetical that I'm describing, just, that happened, and that wasn't possible. And I, I understand that anxiety, and I'm sympathetic to it, but I guess I'm also just thinking about it in the context of, like, The Odyssey, which, I know this sounds crazy, but I'm like, there's so many things that humanity's created that we've lost.

• 43:37Speaker 01

  And like, we only have The Odyssey and the Iliad, and there's all these other poems that were written about other parts of history in that time, and we just don't have them anymore. Like, the Library of Alexandria was destroyed. These are things that really make me sad. But I also think that that is the fundamental nature of creating a physical object. And software is also ultimately physical, because it's on something. It's on a device of some kind, even if it's just a disk, or a flash drive, whatever, it's a file. It can deteriorate. And, I don't know, all this is unto dust, I guess, is what I'm saying? I, I don't know. I think there, I don't think we can keep everything forever, and that is a mournful thing about all of this.

• 44:18Kirk Hamilton?

  But it's also like, what makes art beautiful? Art is in some way ephemeral, and it is not, even if you carve it in stone, the stone can eventually fall apart. And so, yeah.

• 44:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you can't, you can't keep it, as sad as that is. But you should try. It's important to try, but with that knowledge.

• 44:33Jason Schreier?

  To your point about The Odyssey, there's also no definitive version of the poem, because so many people have translated it over the years. And I feel like remaking a game is kind of like, doing a different... Offering a different vision of the game, offering a different interpretation of the original vision, and maybe in some cases, executing on that original vision better than the than the first version of the game didn't. So.

• 44:59Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. And even the Odyssey we have, it's not the only story of Odysseus that existed. Like, there's other versions that were just lost to time. He was just a character in stories that we don't have. So, yeah, he's basically Link, is what I'm saying, and it's the same.

• 45:11Jason Schreier?

  Hmm, the hero of time. Let's do one more question. This is from Yulin. Yulin writes, "Hi, I'm a social worker in Ireland and have worked closely with Ukrainian young people, and I've noticed their gaming preferences can differ quite a bit from Irish teenagers. For example, many of them are into racing games, Mortal Kombat, Dota 2, not popular among Irish teenagers. Have you noticed differences like that among friends and communities from different countries and regions? Also, you, I know you're listening to this. Thank you for recommending TripleClick on our second date. Happy two-year anniversary. You're the best boyfriend ever. I remain the better gamer, though."

• 45:51Speaker 01

  Amazing ending to this letter.

• 45:52Kirk Hamilton?

  That was addressed to Hugh, for those who may not have understood how Jason pronounced that.

• 45:56Speaker 01

  Congrats to Yulin and Hugh.

• 45:57Jason Schreier?

  Any different differences among friends and communities from different countries and regions? It's a good question.

• 46:05Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I mean, it's hard to say, even from Yulin's original email, it's a little bit anecdotal, right? Like, I've met Ukrainian teens who are into these games. That doesn't really tell us that much. Like, that's not a really huge dataset or anything. So, but it does stand to reason that just different people in different parts of the world play different games, and, you know, different styles of games become popular in different places. And that is just like an interesting thing to keep in mind. And it's certainly something that I'd love to see more solid research and scholarship on, only because I think it would just be interesting to know if that's really the case, you know? Do they really play more racing games in certain parts of the world? Are some people, you know, really into this kind of shooter, but not that kind, you know, depending on where

• 46:46Kirk Hamilton?

  they grew up? It's a fun thing to think about, at least, and it makes me want to know more.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, same.

• 46:51Jason Schreier?

  I mean, there's one thing we can say for sure, which is that Madden NFL is really only big in the United States. I can guarantee you guys to that one.

• 47:00Speaker 01

  There's gotta be some sicko somewhere else in the world who's like really into Madden, though.

• 47:04Jason Schreier?

  No, no, no. There are people who are obsessed with it elsewhere, but in terms of audience size, audience share, and the number of people in totality.

• 47:12Speaker 01

  And it is made for us in a very specific way. It's about us and made for us.

• 47:18Jason Schreier?

  All right, let's take a break. Thank you again to everybody who sent in questions. Keep them coming. TripleClick at MaximumFun.org. Let's take a break, and we'll be back with one more thing.

• 47:33Speaker 03

  What is manners?

• 47:35Speaker 04

  It's kind of a social dance that we've all agreed to.

• 47:37Speaker 03

  Who is manners?

• 47:38Speaker 04

  Well, we reference Emily Post a lot.

• 47:40Speaker 03

  Why is manners?

• 47:42Speaker 04

  Let's go back to royal etiquette.

• 47:44Speaker 03

  Schmanners answers all these questions.

• 47:46Speaker 04

  Through examining history, culture, literature, and more, we'll give you the ultimate insight on why we did it, how we do it, and why we still might do it today.

• 47:55Speaker 03

  So, check us out every Friday on MaximumFun.org or wherever podcasts are found.

• 48:00Speaker 04

  Manners, schmanners. Get it?

• 48:05Speaker 04

  Good evening. Thanks for tuning in to 101.1 Max Fun. It's midnight here on Host to Coast, and we've got Sarah from Michigan on line one.

• 48:14Speaker 05

  Hi, I'm calling in for some help. I used to love reading, but between grad school, having kids, and the general state of the world, I can't seem to pick up a book and stick with it anymore.

• 48:24Speaker 04

  Sarah, this is an easy one. Just listen to Reading Glasses, a podcast designed to help you read better. Bria and Mallory will get all the pressure, shame, and guilt out of your reading life. You'll be finishing books you love in no time.

• 48:36Speaker 05

  Great. That sounds amazing. Also, do you think my husband is cheating on me with Mothman? Can you help me with that one?

• 48:41Speaker 04

  Ooh, I don't think they cover that. Reading Glasses, every Thursday on Maximum Fun.

• 48:48Jason Schreier?

  And we are back. Kirk, Maddie, it is time for One More Thing. Maddie and I have the same One More Thing, which we will talk about in a little bit. So Kirk, why don't you go first?

• 48:59Kirk Hamilton?

  Sure, I will go first. My One More Thing is a video game that I have been playing with my wife Emily called The Message from Deep Space.

• 49:08Jason Schreier?

  Game seems really neat.

• 49:09Kirk Hamilton?

  Which is a very neat game. I think a game that a lot of our listeners will really like. Actually, a game that I'm not sure I'm going to be able to finish. And it's so it's a rare game where it's a one more thing for me. It's a game that I really like and think a lot of. It's not entirely my jam at the point that I've reached, but in a way that is totally just because of like my own skill and the things that I'm good at and the types of puzzles that I like solving. And it really doesn't detract from my appreciation of or admiration for this game. So, let me tell you all a little bit about it. So, The Message from Deep Space is on PC. It is developed by a developer called Apples in My Pants. I don't know if that's a small team or one person.

• 49:51Jason Schreier?

  Real name, I assume.

• 49:53Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, right. I'm assuming either a small team or a single dev. A very, you know, kind of limited scope indie game that is a kind of console, you know, you're sitting at a computer typing puzzle game, and you're solving a number of puzzles that are that kind of run the gamut in terms of the subject matter undergirding the puzzle, but they're built out of a certain kind of programming logic that I would say lines up quite a bit with computer programming and the kind of mentality required to be a good coder, a good computer programmer. So, the setup is basically, it's the 1970s, and you are part of a team that is brought in. It's like five people, I think a mathematician, and a linguist,

• 50:36Kirk Hamilton?

  and an astronaut, and you're, I think, a translator, maybe. And your job as a team is to decode a signal that's coming out of a meteor that just crashed to Earth. So, there's a message from deep space. There's some kind of alien message, and you need to decode it. So then it starts to feel very familiar if you've read Contact or Project Hail Mary in particular. There's quite an extended sequence in the book version of Project Hail Mary that feels very, very close to what you're kind of doing in the early parts of this game. And it's really neat because you just sit at a pair of computer screens, and you can move the mouse, and then you go back and forth between the two screens. And in the one screen, there's just a series of sort of, you know, numbers

• 51:17Kirk Hamilton?

  or symbols kind of coming through from the meteor. And then the other screen, you have a kind of a database and a growing collection of tools that your computer programmer on your team is like building for you as you go. So then you'll just have a series of, you know, a number, and then another number, and then some kind of variable. And you won't know why they're in that order, so you just have to kind of look at them and then figure out, oh, okay, so it's going one, variable two, variable three. That probably means the variable means add one. So then you kind of define that variable as add one, and then in the next screen, you know, it gives you a different series of numbers, and now you know that variable means add one, so you can arrive at the correct answer. So

• 51:59Kirk Hamilton?

  basically, each screen that comes up, you have to figure out what the next input is and respond with like, what's the next number? Or it gets more complicated. Soon it's like there's a variable, and you have to define the variable rather than the next number in the sequence. And it's all math at first, which makes sense and kind of lines up with a lot of sci-fi, where math is a kind of language we could use to communicate with an alien species. And it's really cool to watch as it, you know, kind of develops because, you know, it essentially is introducing mathematical concepts in escalating complexity. I was very glad to be playing through this with Emily. We actually put it on the TV and had a little wireless keyboard, and we just like talked through everyone together.

• 52:40Kirk Hamilton?

  It was super fun, partly because it's so logical and it's so programmatic. It, I'm not a computer programmer, so like I'm, this is not like my area of expertise, but there is something in the way that computer programming uses one, like you create a set of variables that represent a different set of data, and then you work with the variables, and the variables essentially become your dataset, even though they're reflecting a different dataset. And that's true from the very beginning in a way that I think if you do a lot of coding, you're probably very familiar with this kind of thing of like substituting and then working with a new dataset. It's not really something that I do very much outside of like transposing in music, but like, I don't really do that kind of thing that much.

• 53:23Kirk Hamilton?

  So it's uncomfortable for me and for Emily, too, for that matter. But it was really fun because we think differently. We kind of reason through things differently, and we each kind of had our strengths and weaknesses when it came to solving these challenges.

• 53:36Jason Schreier?

  Can I interject real quick? This is the first time in my life that I've ever thought of computer programming as the equivalent of transposing key changes. Like, you put a-

• 53:44Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, man, I mean, music is math.

• 53:46Jason Schreier?

  You put a capo on your guitar, and that G is a pointer, too.

• 53:51Kirk Hamilton?

  Exactly, yeah. Essentially, yes.

• 53:53Jason Schreier?

  That's very funny.

• 53:54Kirk Hamilton?

  The character Batista in this game is essentially putting a capo on, you know, they, for example, these, these aliens think in base eight, and that's something that you learn very early. So, base eight, meaning that one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and then for them, 10 is actually eight. So you have to begin transposing, okay, whenever I see a 10, that actually means eight. So like 16 is actually 14. And so you have to start doing this kind of quick transposition, which is just what you're doing if you're reading a C chart on a B-flat tenor saxophone. And you have to just be like, it's not a G, it's an A. It's not a C sharp, it's a T sharp. And then your brain actually does learn to like superimpose one thing on another, which is what you're doing here as well. And then eventually, your programmer actually builds a program that can then, or a script or whatever you want to call it, that can like take the base eight incoming and then

• 54:38Kirk Hamilton?

  turn it into base 10. So then you stop having to think of base eight.

• 54:41Jason Schreier?

  This game sounds awesome. I want to play this.

• 54:42Speaker 01

  It sounds hard, though.

• 54:44Jason Schreier?

  I think, yeah, I'll-

• 54:45Kirk Hamilton?

  I'll be curious, especially Jason, I know you love puzzle games and I'll be curious what you make of it. We really, really liked it for a long while. I played like four hours or so, like through the first couple of acts. And there's, I know that this game leaves math behind and it eventually keeps going. And I want to keep going just because, I should mention, there's a little story playing out. Like the characters that you're with are always chiming in in chat. And it started a little silly, like the dialogue was sort of, I don't know, it was a little, it wasn't quite working for me. It felt a little ham handed, but actually over time I've found it really charming and now I'm really into it and I enjoy it. Each character's a little caricature. You get to write a little journal at the end of every week and they all write their own journals. You're kind of getting to know your government handler and it's the seventies.

• 55:27Kirk Hamilton?

  So like it feels just very different than this would feel if it were happening today. And I just found the story really charming and I actually want to see what these aliens are trying to communicate. Cause right now I'm, I'm four hours in. I think this is a very long game. I think it's like, I believe I saw people saying it's like 30 hours of content. There are a ton of puzzles. And I think it's like, it gets into science and chemistry, but then language and words. And the way that it's worked in math is like, it's establishing not just, you know, basic principles of, of arithmetic and multiplication. It's also starting to establish like a logical framework. And so as it does that, it's going to be, I think eventually establishing a logical framework for language.

• 56:09Kirk Hamilton?

  So that you can be actually figuring out what it's trying to say according to like syntax and grammar rules. That it has like methodically laid out for you puzzle by puzzle, which I can, it seems like an amazing undertaking for the developer of this game. To present this in a coherent way, but also so far it's really done a good job of it. The reason I say that I might not finish is just that there came a point where Emily and I were really like, it's these big, long equations. And we've been doing so much math. I mean, just hours of math. And there just came a point where we're like, oh my gosh, okay. So this is like a variable for that, but this actually refers back to that. And this is like a parenthetical to that. And we just kind of were like, man, I don't know.

• 56:49Kirk Hamilton?

  Like there just came a point where we kind of just couldn't keep it up just because it's like not totally our speed. But like I said, I also really want to see where this is going. So I might almost like get a little help from time to time to just kind of breeze through this stuff. Cause I'm very curious where it ends up. And I think it's like a triumph. It is a very, very cool creation. And I think a lot of people will really love it. I know a lot of people already do. And I think there are people out there listening to this probably, if this sounds appealing to you, you should check it out. There is a demo that you can play of this game and it is very, very cool and not like anything I've played recently.

• 57:23Jason Schreier?

  Very cool.

• 57:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, it sounds neat.

• 57:24Jason Schreier?

  Have you tried it on Steam Deck? You need a keyboard, so it won't work on Steam Deck?

• 57:29Kirk Hamilton?

  You would need a keyboard. Yeah. You could maybe do it with like an on-screen keyboard, but it's, it's meant to be played with a mouse and a keyboard. You could plug a keyboard, a mouse and keyboard into your Steam Deck and play it and it'd be fine.

• 57:40Jason Schreier?

  Defeats the purpose of portability of Steam Deck.

• 57:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. You need to be fully supine when playing the Steam Deck. Everyone knows that.

• 57:47Jason Schreier?

  The message from Deep Space, Deep Space. Sounds cool.

• 57:50Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 57:50Jason Schreier?

  All right. So Maddie and I both went to see Spider-Man: Brand New Day. And we are not going to talk about any spoilers. We will talk about this movie in, in broad vague terms. But we thought we would put it last in case anyone out there doesn't want to hear a thing about it. And for what it's worth.

• 58:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, Kirk actually doesn't want to hear about it.

• 58:11Jason Schreier?

  Did you actually, are you actually taking your?

• 58:13Speaker 01

  Do you? We were not going to spoil Kirk. We both.

• 58:16Kirk Hamilton?

  No, I'm just kidding. I, I don't care.

• 58:20Jason Schreier?

  I went into this movie not knowing a thing about it and I thought that was pretty cool. So I'll, I'll talk about it in a big picture terms and Maddie, I'm curious to hear your thoughts as well. I really enjoyed it. I thought it was pretty good. All the Spider-Man movies with Tom Holland have been pretty good. I think for the most part, I haven't seen all the Garfield ones, but Spider-Man movies are good in general, I feel like. I really enjoyed this one. It really gets into just kind of like depression and loneliness and friendship in a way that I found pretty moving. And the performances are really good. Tom Holland, uh, I think does a better job at Spider-Man than he did as Telemachus, for what it's worth.

• 59:03Kirk Hamilton?

  Telemachus.

• 59:04Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, Telemachus, yeah.

• 59:05Speaker 01

  Disagree.

• 59:07Jason Schreier?

  Better, better in this role.

• 59:08Speaker 01

  Not that, not that I actually think he's bad in the Odyssey. I do think he's good. I just think he's so good as Spider-Man, but.

• 59:14Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, he's great in this and he's great at capturing the kind of the range of emotions. And he has a lot to play with in, in this film. And also just like his cast of, like his, his friends, Ned and MJ, his love interest and his best friend. Who, for people who, I mean, if you saw No Way Home a few years ago, that came out in 2021. So I think kind of spoiler statute of limitations has passed on this. So here, here's your warning. End spoilers for Spider-Man No Way Home from 2021 coming up. But like the premise of, or the, the ending of that movie sets up the whole premise of this, which is that Spider-Man at the end of that movie

• 59:53Jason Schreier?

  had to wipe everybody's memory of Peter Parker. So everybody knows that Spider-Man exists, but nobody knows who Peter Parker is anymore. And so he is living this existence at the beginning of this movie where he is completely isolated by himself. And he can only watch as like Ned and MJ live their lives, his two closest relationships. They live their lives with no knowledge of his existence, which is just so sad and heartbreaking to watch. But really just kind of plays into the character's strengths and you just get these great performances out of all of them. And then there's a whole bunch of other characters who pop into the, the movie whose performances are really enjoyed. And yeah, I think one of the strengths of these Spider-Man movies is that they do a good job of standing by themselves.

• 1:00:38Jason Schreier?

  Even though they all wind up having like these kind of big cameo appearances from other MCU characters. They do a good job of just kind of telling these localized stories about Spider-Man and his pals. Sometimes not localized in terms of scale and spectacle, but localized in terms of the characters, the cast of characters. It is not, this is not a movie that is just like setting up more MCU stuff. It is just a great story in its own right and just had a lot of themes that spoke to me. And I just really enjoyed the, the flick all around. Two good movies in Odyssey and Spider-Man. Two great Holland and Zendaya projects to round up our summer.

• 1:01:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, I also really enjoyed it. There were parts that I would even say I, I loved. And then there were a couple of parts that kind of fell flat for me. So it's kind of like, it, it ended up being that I liked the movie. But that's like a weird way to describe a movie that had parts that I adored, but you guys get how this is.

• 1:01:35Jason Schreier?

  Ups and downs.

• 1:01:36Speaker 01

  Two hours, two and a half hours long. So like, I don't know. That's, that's my other thing about MCU movies these days. They're really freaking long. But the other thing that I wanted to kind of add on to what you were saying, Jason, that I thought was a really interesting theme for the movie was, um, to me, this is not part of the movie. This is my interpretation of the movie was that it, it kind of felt almost like a COVID movie. And also like a living online kind of a movie in part because such a big piece of it is Peter watching his friends' lives from a screen. Because they don't know him anymore. And so he's watching Ned and watching MJ from afar in this way that is really sad and disconnected.

• 1:02:19Speaker 01

  And that is just this huge part of years of his life as they grow up. Because there's kind of like time is going by and you get to watch these other two characters grow up without him. And that I thought was really interesting, especially given like the time period during which the movie was made. I mean, I know we're kind of past COVID and I just feel like it's something that as a society, we still haven't reckoned with and maybe we never will. But it comes out in the art that we're making. And this movie felt like another example of that, even if completely unintentionally, just this concept of Peter Parker existing in a world where he can't interact with anyone, or if he did, they wouldn't understand him. And so he doesn't.

• 1:03:02Speaker 01

  And I thought that was pretty fascinating and that Tom Holland did a really good job playing something that is very difficult to do and very sad. Cause he's alone a lot in this movie. He has to do a lot of acting completely alone. And I know it's MCU style. So he's also got to do all this green screen acting, I'm sure that is like, kind of like doing black box theater acting in some ways. In terms of the difficulty level involved. Uh, and I found that impressive. But I also thought that, uh, I, I don't know the name of Ned's actor, but I thought he and Zendaya's MJ were also really excellent in this movie. And um, yeah, really no complaints about any performances. I thought everybody was wonderful. So yeah. Good emotional Spider-Man movie. I feel like Spider-Man movies are often really emotional and I like that about them.

• 1:03:46Jason Schreier?

  So first of all, Jacob Badelon is Ned's actor.

• 1:03:50Speaker 01

  He's great.

• 1:03:51Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I think that's a good point about this feeling like a COVID movie. It also, it feels like a movie about people who are online influencers too, like who are online.

• 1:03:59Speaker 01

  Spider-Man is an influencer, kind of.

• 1:04:02Jason Schreier?

  Well, because he's like, Spider-Man is still known throughout the city of New York. And like during this period where he is, where Peter Parker is living totally isolated and off the grid and just watching his friends through their Instagram accounts. Spider-Man is still going out and saving, saving, saving people, saving the city and fighting crime and becoming this beloved figure in New York City. We don't even get any of the kind of like counterculture people just trashing Spider-Man. Like, that's not a part of this movie. We're just seeing the kind of the global adoration or local, the New York adoration of Spider-Man. And then he comes back to his just kind of like shitty little apartment and just is like eating takeout by himself and getting sad, looking at things on the internet.

• 1:04:47Jason Schreier?

  So it's very much about that kind of, the, the life of somebody who has one kind of performance, one mask on, literally and figuratively, when they're performing on the public stage. And then when they get home, they're just really sad and lonely because they have no real connections, only kind of parasocial connections with people who are just watching them perform and rooting for them in that way. It's, it's an interesting, interesting parallels there.

• 1:05:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I like that interpretation as well. And I think that's very much part of it and is part of what a lot of stories that we're telling now are about as well. And it's, it's very effective here.

• 1:05:22Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, of course, there's much, much more.

• 1:05:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, that we're not, we're not describing.

• 1:05:26Jason Schreier?

  Maybe down the road when we do some more, maybe like we'll do an MCU spoiler cast catch-up after the new Avengers movie.

• 1:05:34Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Doomsday, whatever.

• 1:05:35Kirk Hamilton?

  That's a good idea.

• 1:05:36Jason Schreier?

  It'll be a good time to do that. Yeah, because that's when we can really break some of this stuff down. And there's a lot to, a lot more to talk about that obviously we're not going to get into in Brand New Day and the stuff that, that, all the stuff that happens in it beyond just kind of this early part where we're seeing, seeing that isolation. But of course, the movie isn't just about isolation. It's about just kind of like how we connect with people and, and relationships and, and loss and what all that means. Because the other important thing that happens in Brand New Day, and one of the reasons we're seeing Spider-Man living like this is that he loses Aunt May. Marissa Tomei's great depiction of Aunt May. She dies in, in No Way Home. Sorry, that's what I meant to say, in No Way Home. And a lot of Peter's decision to go down this route and wipe everyone's memory and

• 1:06:21Jason Schreier?

  live by himself rather than having relationships is to prevent that from happening again, which of course is a classic superhero trope of like, you don't want to, anyone to, you don't want to develop any relationships because those people might get hurt. But I haven't seen any other superhero movies at least that explore the kind of, the net effects of that isolation in a way that this movie does. And I think that's pretty cool, the way that it's handled here.

• 1:06:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree.

• 1:06:49Kirk Hamilton?

  Man, can I just say Spider-Man, Far From Home, No Way Home, Homecoming. I think these movies have the most easy to mix up and forget subtitles. I just can never keep them straight.

• 1:07:03Jason Schreier?

  Well, that was the theme, right? And then I guess they got rid of home for this one, but it was kind of a fun trend that they were doing for that new trilogy.

• 1:07:10Kirk Hamilton?

  But I just mean like, I cannot keep them straight. I don't think anyone can. Like, which one is which? It's so hard to talk about this series.

• 1:07:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like kind of easy to remember Homecoming because it's all one word, but then.

• 1:07:19Kirk Hamilton?

  That, that one, yes.

• 1:07:20Speaker 01

  Once we get to Far From Home and No Way Home, I'm like, I don't know which of those is which anymore.

• 1:07:24Kirk Hamilton?

  Every time I mix them up.

• 1:07:25Jason Schreier?

  Well, okay, think about it this way. Homecoming is when they have homecoming dance. So it's like the first one, they're still in high school. Far From Home, they go to Europe, so they're traveling abroad.

• 1:07:35Kirk Hamilton?

  No, I can get there.

• 1:07:35Jason Schreier?

  No Way Home is when it all comes to crashing down.

• 1:07:38Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, once I sit down and like go through that in my head, I remember, but at the same time, it's, I don't know, leave something to be desired in my opinion.

• 1:07:44Speaker 01

  Like, okay, Kevin Feige, thanks for the explanation. It's so confusing.

• 1:07:49Jason Schreier?

  You're very welcome.

• 1:07:50Kirk Hamilton?

  I think there may be Spider-Man 1, Spider-Man 2, Spider-Man 3 was still a better way to go.

• 1:07:54Speaker 01

  It wasn't bad. It wasn't too bad.

• 1:07:57Jason Schreier?

  One more thing we're noting is that the first three were directed by John Watts. And this new one is directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, who also directed the Shang-Chi movie, Shang-Chi and the Legend of Ten Rings, and also directed Wonder Man, which is a great series that just got canceled unfortunately.

• 1:08:16Speaker 01

  I know, I'm really sad about that. Wonder Man was really good. We loved it. I never made it like a follow-up because I think Jason made it a one more thing and I never said on here that we watched it, but we loved Wonder Man. And so I just wanted to second that recommendation. It was amazing.

• 1:08:30Jason Schreier?

  So this feels, it feels almost like maybe it's the beginning of a brand, of a new Spider-Man trilogy.

• 1:08:35Speaker 01

  A brand new day, if you will.

• 1:08:37Kirk Hamilton?

  Almost had a brand new day.

• 1:08:37Jason Schreier?

  A brand new day. Sure. Anyway, cool movie. I enjoyed it. We'll be curious to talk more about it down the road. Again, maybe when Avengers comes out, we can do some, some Beans cast-in where we catch up on.

• 1:08:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, we'll be due for a Marvel check-in then.

• 1:08:54Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, we'll be due for a Marvel check-in. All right, that is that for this week's episode. Thank you again to everybody who submitted questions and thank you to Kirk and Maddie for being here and showing up to record a podcast and looking forward to talking about Soma next week.

• 1:09:14Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, that's going to be a lot of fun and.

• 1:09:16Jason Schreier?

  So much fun.

• 1:09:18Kirk Hamilton?

  You can't, I really can't wait. And yeah, I'll, I'll see the two of you then for that.

• 1:09:23Speaker 01

  Bye.

• 1:09:27Kirk 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.

• 1:10:25Speaker 06

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