Triple Click - Activision, NFTs, and Other Gaming News

Episode Date: November 25, 2021

Happy Thanksgiving! If you're celebrating, grab yourself a turkey drumstick and listen to Kirk, Maddy, and Jason talk gaming news. From the ongoing Activision Blizzard crisis to the inexplicable rise of NFTs, it sure has been a weird fall in the video game world. This week, the gang talks about those and other big headlines, like the new consoles and the supply chain mess.One More Thing: Kirk:  Metal Gear Solid VMaddy: ChicoryJason: Baba Is YouLinks:Kirk talking Death Stranding on the podcast How Did This Get Played?: https://www.earwolf.com/episode/death-stranding-directors-cut-with-kirk-hamilton/Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinJoin the Triple Click Discord: http://discord.gg/tripleclickpodTriple Click Ethics Policy: https://maximumfun.org/triple-click-ethics-policy/ Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointripleclick 🚀  SUPPORT TRIPLE CLICK:Join Maximum Fun | Buy TC Merch💬 JOIN THE TRIPLE CLICK DISCORD🎮 Triple Click Ethics Policy📱 SOCIALS | @tripleclickpodInstagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitch

The supply chain is a useful scapegoat these days for just about anything. Late to a meeting, forget to take out the trash. Just say, look, it wasn't my fault. It was the supply chain. Welcome to Triple Click where we bring the game news to you. This week, we're rounding up some big gaming news from the last couple of months from Activision's boards. The switches sales success to steam deck delays and something called NFTs. Not sure what those are.

Let's get into it. I'm Kirk Hamilton. I'm Maddie Myers. And I'm Jason Shryor. Hello. Hello. Hello, friends. Hello, triple-click friends.

It is currently Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving to all of our U.S. listeners. Yeah, to everybody who celebrates Thanksgiving. Hopefully it's not super stressful for you. As this episode goes live, I will be cooking up a storm. Well, actually, this episode goes live at midnight, but in a few hours. Well, maybe we'll be putting the turkey in. I mean, it depends on how long.

Jason takes prep very seriously. I do a 16-hour slow cook of my turkey. Wow. Wow. Okay. It comes out black as a crisp. Terrible. Just right.

I like to make a terrible turkey and just eat it to my guess and force it down their throats. I get that. I get that. Yeah, I'm hosting Thanksgiving this year, which will be very excited. You're fully an adult. Well, speaking of terrible turkeys, these three terrible turkeys are totally listeners supported. And by all of you, you make our turkidom possible. We really appreciate your support.

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But we've done a ton of bonus episodes. Our most recent one, it's going to be in a week or so. It's going to come out a little bit into December. We're running a little behind because Thanksgiving. It's going to be all about Battles Royale and Squid Game and the film Battle Royale and probably The Hunger Games and Dangan Rompah and PubG and Fortnite and I don't know. We're going to talk about the concept of Battle Real in media in general and we're going to spoil some things. Why people like it so much?

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Get bonus stuff. All right. Do it. We're talking about the news today, Maddie. What are we talking about? Take us away. The news. News.

He heard of it? We have a lot of news we can talk about here today. And not all of it is breaking. But this very first one on our list. Oh boy. Activision Blizzard. We got to dive back into the Activision Blizzard swamp. I'm going to call it a swamp.

Breaking my spirit more like. I know. But hey, that's why it's first. So when we recorded last week, I know we repeatedly timestamping. it because I think at least in my heart of hearts, I was like, Bobby Coddick is totally going to resign like tomorrow and like Kirk's going to have to bing in something about that guy leaving. Nope. Hasn't happened, folks.

We would have loved to do that thing. Unfortunately, I didn't get to. Hasn't happen. Yeah, we should, well, so we should, we should zoom out. Right. Jason, you want to do a little recap of what. Zoom us on out. Let's say this is your very first episode and also your first time thinking about video games.

Yeah, your first time reading, reading the news. with Activision Blizzard exactly. Although I think this is one story that's really penetrated the kind of culture, mainstream culture. But in case you haven't been following, short version is there's a big California lawsuit over the summer, accused Activision Blizzard as a whole of sexual discrimination and misconduct cut to last week. Wall Street Journal reported that Bobby Codick is the CEO of the company was well aware of a lot of this stuff that has been floating around, didn't tell the board of directors about it, and he himself was a perpetrator of some awful stuff. So we recorded.

just as that broke. A couple of things have happened since then, just to update people. One big one is that Bloomberg got a hold of a couple of emails. One sent by PlayStation boss Jim Ryan and one sent by Xbox boss, Phil Spencer. They were both internal to their respective staves.

And they both said, hey, this fucking sucks. Like, what's the deal, Activision? Phil Spencer even said they're reevaluating their relationship with Activision Blizzard. They both said that Activision had not done enough, essentially implying, like reading between the lines there, it's like, this guy's got to go. And then this morning, we were recording this on Monday before Thanksgiving, Bobby Kodick supposedly said, Wall Street Journal reported that Bobby Kodick said he will resign if he can't

quickly fix the culture, whatever that means, which I think is the kind of story you see when the guy at the top is like, I'm not going anywhere. Yeah, but imagine, imagine quickly fixing the culture of Activision Blizzard. Like, leaving aside everything we've learned about Bobby Cotic in the last week or, like, anyone at the company individually, could any one person, quote, quickly fix the culture of Activision Blizzard? Is that, is that something that any CEO could do? I don't, I don't know that that's possible. So the thing, so the thing that's worth knowing here, I've been thinking about this a lot and obviously talking to a lot of people about this. And there are a couple of issues at play.

But a lot of the stories that have come out, both in the California lawsuit and then in subsequent reporting, by the Wall Street Journal are older stories. They're not recent stuff that has happened. Some of the culture issues are a little bit broader and a little bit like, I mean, a lot of the cultural issues that are at Activision Blizzard are at every single company in the video game industry. So to some extent, it's kind of like this is like, I don't know, taking one. It's like Activision Blizzard has become the scapegoat for a lot of the industry's ills.

And in fact, we saw a story about Ubisoft. Stories about Ubisoft last year. We saw stories about riot three years ago. I'm sure next year will be something else. EA is, it's their turn in the spotlight. So like in some way fixing the culture, I mean, that's impossible because it's like fixing the video game industry's culture, which is just never going to happen until they're more women in leadership roles.

And it's not like 20% women at these companies, which I think was the number at Activision Blizzard, like 20% women working there. So that alone is just like ridiculous. Like obviously, Bobby, you're not going and fixing the culture. But, I mean, if you were to say, like, hey, all these stories happened a few years ago, that would be making a fair point. On the flip side, some of the stories involved him. And when you as a leader are the guy who did a lot of this shit or turned a blind eye to it, then it's like, how can you possibly, like, remain in charge? And it's clear that he's lost the trust of a lot of his employees.

I believe the latest number I saw was over 1,600 people have signed their names to a petition calling for him to resign. sign their names. That is like pretty intense and unprecedented. It is. And it is also pretty unprecedented for Phil Spencer and Jim Ryan to condemn Activision this way. I can't think of a comparable example to that. No, it's never happened in the games industry before as far as I know. So that's something, I guess.

That seems surprising to me. I hate to invoke succession because I think that it is like often not helpful. It's 100% succession. Everyone's been doing it all. I know everyone's probably been doing it. I haven't been on Twitter. But you know what I mean? It's like it's kind of tacky to compare like fictional things to real things that actually affected real people. But I think that show does have a lot of insight in particular into the like hermetically sealed world of corporate leaders and these kinds of people. And the way that they just don't view the world as mattering in the same way as the rest of us do. And that's been on my mind at least a lot as I think about this. And I sort of try to imagine this. decision-making process behind this, like his decision-making process, Lord knows, I can't put myself into that guy's head, but also just anybody who might support him at the corporate level or board members. And I kind of can't at all. And it's at least helpful for me to think about

that show's portrayal of just how far removed people like that are from the rest of the world and how they almost, it's possible, I think, when you have that much money, that much power, and you live in that kind of rarefied, sealed world to just not even think of what's happening outside in terms of like it being real or mattering in this certain way. And that to me, it just makes me think that I will never fully understand what is going on at the higher levels of that company, of a company that big, and that whatever happens there is going to happen on terms that I can't fully understand. Right. I don't think it's tacky. I actually think succession feels very true and good fiction has that truth to it. Yeah, you know what I mean,

It's like when people are like, oh, Trump is like Voldemort. You know, it can fall into that. Well, Voldemort doesn't feel true. Voldemort is... I know, but I'm just... I'm treading carefully, is my point. Yeah, okay, that's fine. But I think there's actually one moment in succession that I think captures this perfectly. It's in the most recent season.

I won't spoil anything, but there's a moment where, like, essentially the Roy's being asked to give up their private jet access. And Roman Roy is one of the characters, one of the... Sions of this family is like, no fucking way. We're not giving up our jets. and it's basically like, oh, this is bullshit. Like they want us to act like normal people. And essentially it's just like talking about their world of being ultra rich

as if it's just a completely different world from the people where the rest of the people live. And I think one of the biggest issues culturally at Activision Blizzard is pay and salary. There are a lot of, I mean, obviously we saw a lot of stories about women getting paid less than men. There's this kind of concept called the Blizzard tax where like if you work at Blizzard, you're expected to be paid less and like you're expected to take a pay cut for the the prestige of working at blizzard um activision itself despite making call of duty like people who work on call of duty despite working on the biggest franchise in the planet um are are not making a lot of money at the lowest levels if you're if you're high up you might you might get a six figure salary and then a six figure

bonus on top of that but if you're in qa or if you're like on a coordinator level or on a contract you might be lucky to make $25 an hour right so it's like we're talking about about such a big gap. And I keep thinking about that private jet line when it comes to Bobby Codic's salary. And that alone, the fact that he has taken so much money, and this has been very widely reported, he was making upwards of $40, $50 million a year. The fact that he is just happy to just take that amount of money, like with no problems and just thinks that's an okay thing for any person to do while people below him, like way below him on the chain, have to live with roommates because they can't afford to live by themselves

or have to, can't afford to have kids because they're not being paid enough by his company. That, to me, alone, shows that, like, you don't understand your culture and you could never be the person to fix this thing. Like, if you as a CEO, it's one thing if you're like, you know what, I'm the CEO, I'm going to take a million dollars a year. Okay, fine.

If you're willing to take $50 million a year while, like, your employees at the bottom level are not, like, making enough to live, then that says a lot about you as a person, I think. Yeah, it does. And there's also such a difference that is literally unfathomable between taking a million dollars and 50 million that the three of us can't. Right. No, right. Like to me, a million dollars is like, okay, you're at the top of this massive company. That's fair. That's more than enough than you need to live off of. But like when you get to 50 million or even more, like he's a billionaire, legit straight up a billionaire. So it's not like he needs any of this money. It's really just ridiculous. Yeah. And then to read about the working conditions of people who are doing QA for call of duty and just. can't afford to do anything in their hometowns and they're working incredibly long hours. It's, it's night and day. But hey, I guess, I guess Kodick is going to keep his job. That seems normal and

fine. It seems normal anyways. It does seem normal. So the one important part of this is that his job is in the fate of the board of directors, right? Like they are the people who can vote him off. Their fate is in the hands of the shareholders and there's a shareholder vote every so often. I think it's once a year to determine who the board it is and if they all get to keep their job. So we'll see what happens next year when they do that. I think it's in June probably the next one. But Bobby Codick is essentially like it's the board can put it up to a vote and say, hey, we're going to remove him or we're going to keep him around, whatever it is. The board of directors is made up of his like pals, like people who have been there. If you look through the list, a lot of those people have been

there for at least 18 years. And that really says it all. Those people have made a shitload of money by sticking with him. They're all buddies. They're like it's literally a boys club. They're two women on the board, but both of them joined relatively recently. And don't have like aren't games people. They're not people who came from the video game industry. But like the bulk of people on that board, most of them, I believe it's six out of the 10, are like well entrenched in Activision. One guy like was an Activision marketing director in 1995. Other people like have been on the board since 2003 or 1997. And then two of them are Bobby. and his like long time business partner Brian Kelly. So the chances of those people like getting together and voting him off seem very slim. That's that's ultimately what it comes down to. Oof. All right. Let's go to another topic simply because I feel as though I've been mired in the swamp and I want to step out of it.

To something else that I guess is also a swamp if you are one of our poor listeners who's looking for holiday gifts this season and you really want a new console and you maybe don't have one. yet. But let's talk, let's talk about the consoles, shall we? The Switch, still the goat, still the greatest, still meet Normies every single day telling me they got a Switch for the first time and they're so excited about it. Love that. I'd love to hear from you too, what you've seen in your respective friends groups and also whatever business reporting you're reading about the consoles. I just see the Switch everywhere in my Normie circles and that's always nice to see.

But Jason, how about you? What kinds of buzz are you seeing about the consoles at this stage in their life cycle? Yeah, my non-gaming friends, my normie circles as you call them, I haven't actually seen a lot of interest in the PS5 or Xbox. Like, they're all just sticking with what they have, which makes sense because there's not, unless you're like really into technical specs or demon souls. There's no reason you need a PS5 right now, right? Like the interest is coming from people who are more hardcore gamers, which is a huge, huge number of people.

But your, my average, like, kind of casual gaming friend probably doesn't care that much that they can't find one this holiday. That said, I think a lot of, like, parents out there are pretty bum that they can't find a PS5 or an Xbox Series X to get for Black Friday or they have to, like, jump through hoops to find one. That kind of sucks. Yeah, it is kind of cool that I can't believe I'm saying something nice about Microsoft again, but here I go. They added a bunch of games to the Xbox One and not just the Xbox Series X recently, like as backwards compatible titles. And I just, I will say I get a free copy of Xbox Game Pass. Everybody at Polygon does so we all get to use it all the time. But even if it weren't free, I'm like, damn, I just not a game's not a game song.

Xbox GamePass and a lot of them are playable on a PC. That's something that's pretty cool. However, I don't really hear my Normie friends talking about it very much. They pretty much all just talk about how they have the switch. I'm not sure when Microsoft is going to clear the Normie audience, but I haven't seen it yet. So Maddie, here's a funny story. I went to the Brooklyn Nets game on Friday night, which was fun, weird, because it was my first sporting event since pre-COVID. But as I was walking out of the stadium, I overheard like a group of people behind me talking about Xbox Game Pass and what a good deal it was. I don't know if they were normie people or like triple click listeners. Maybe they were hardcore gamers who are like, oh, that was me.

But overheard Xbox Game Pass. Interesting. Kirk, what about you? Yeah, same with my friends who aren't big gamers or, you know, who play video games but aren't so cutting edge that they would be trying to track down, particularly a PS5 because those are so hard to get. I don't actually know how hard the Xbox series X is to get these things. It's just as hard. It is just as hard, okay. But I mostly hear about the PS5, but that's just from, you know,

folks in the triple-click Discord, like people who are pretty into video games and are trying to get one. Where among my friends, yeah, totally a lot of people have gotten switches in the last year. There's a lot of, I get a lot, have a lot of fun conversations with people who are just now playing Breath of the Wild and are like, this game's pretty good. I'm like, yeah, it is, right? And it's just fun. It makes me kind of envy.

them. So yeah, same in that regard. It's been interesting looking at the consoles a year on. Like we would back at Kotaku kind of do this one year later thing that we started doing, which was always kind of an interesting project of looking at a console and just doing the state of the console at the end of the year. I just always thought that was kind of an interesting thing because each console can give you a bit of a vertical slice of the whole games industry and how things are doing. You can deduce a lot just by looking at how a given console is doing. Game Pass is an interesting one, right? Because I feel like most recently a lot of people are talking about Forts of Horizon 5, which I've been playing in is really, really fun. And it's fun in a way that it's really fun to get that game for free,

like, or, you know, as part of a subscription. Because you can just, it's so playable, you jump into it, and it's like this beautiful, super smooth game that you're just immediately driving cars and having fun. That's a great experience to have for anyone, really. And if you're not into cars, you wouldn't probably go buy that. that game, but you can download it on GamePass and just play it. And I think a lot, I mean, they've said, right, the numbers for that game are huge because so many people are playing.

10 million players. Yeah, something super wild, which definitely wouldn't be the case if it weren't there. Back for Blood, I'm not totally sure the numbers on that game. I feel like it's not that big, but it definitely was another case of a game that really benefited from having this large group of people, just able to play it immediately. So it does feel like GamePass continues to be this really good idea. And yeah, I mean, Microsoft in general, I don't know. Like, I get Stephen and Megan's newsletter and Stephen talked with Phil Spencer and he's talking about, he's like just seems kind of like a good dude. Yeah, he's like out here with the popular takes. Like, like emulating games is fine with me. Right. NFTs seem slightly overrated, like whatever he said about them. Those are not direct quotes.

Those are extreme paraphrases of Phil Spencer's quotes. Also, also has a copy of Press reset on his bookshelf, if you ever zoom in. Oh, boy, he's really, he knows what to do. I'm sure there's some calculation to each of those things that he's saying, but at the same time, there is this sense that Microsoft, even though I see Microsoft as the less essential console, that again, this is something we've said many times, is because they're actually making very friendly decisions to players

and they're making it so you don't have to have an Xbox to play their games, you can play them on PC. Right, it's good for consoles to not be essential. Yeah. I wonder if the switch will feel less essential, when the Steam deck comes out. It will to me, for sure. I've been thinking about that a lot.

Yeah, I was thinking about that too because there are so many games that I would just take on the Steam deck instead of the Switch because you can just play them portably. Yeah, they'll probably play better. Emulators up in there? One, your save progress. I mean, being able to play a game on a portable console

and then have my save progress carry over to my PC. It's just incredible. The Switch can do that with a couple of games, and it's really cool when it can, but it has to be specially implemented like they did with Hades or Divinity Original Sin too. Yeah, I think it will matter a lot, at least to me, how good it feels in my hands, because the switch after a while can be somewhat uncomfortable. I don't have an OLED, I should clarify.

I don't know if there's any difference with the width or whatever. I assume not where it still kind of cramps your hands after a while, but I am curious about with the stu-deck. Definitely still cramps your hands. I do always, I think I've talked about those things before, the big old hoary clip-on dudes. they're pretty comfortable. They remove the rumble, which is kind of a bummer. I was actually, I'd been playing Ace Attorney Chronicles with those things on.

And then I played for a little while with the regular JoyCon and I didn't realize that there are these fun little jolts whenever certain things happen. I was like, oh, that's too bad. I kind of like this. Even though it is much more comfortable with those bigger, bigger mitts. Something worth saying about the PlayStation is that we're actually about to enter. So next year, it seems like the supply chain issues are like seem prime to go on for at least another year.

So it might be still hard to find. Yeah, it might still be hard to find a PS5, like this time next year even, which would be really sad. So wait, are we going to make a bunch of predictions for next year? Oh, God. It's going to go on forever. Yeah, it'll be the same prediction. So next year, next year is when it seems like really

going to be a bigger issue because that's when, like, we'll finally see Horizon and God of War, Ragnarok and like some other huge exclusives. Yeah. Well, that's not exclusive. Well, no. But, people would want to play it on like a good console hypothetical.

Sure. Is it a Horizon also PS4 and God of War? Horizon and God of War? No, they're not, they're not exclusives, but it'll be very clear that like they'll probably feel a little like hampered when you put curious about that. We'll see. And then there might be actually exclusive. Final Fantasy

15 was announced as an exclusive and then there are a couple others that I think are supposed to be exclusive. Who knows if that'll still be the case? But yeah, I'm very interested to see what happens with Sony next year. Yeah, me too. I feel like the sort of fanish comment that I always see online is like, oh, you know, Sony didn't have any good games. It's first year.

Why do people even care about the PS5? And I am not here to argue with that at all. Returnal is pretty good. Returnal is pretty good. But I feel like that isn't the thing that I got out of my PS5. Like I remember feeling like Assassin's Creed played so much better on it and really feeling the age of the PS4 after I retired it and being like, oh, right, this is just a new computer. that makes everything work significantly better. And obviously, it's really irritating if you're listening to me say that

and you still don't have a PS5. I'm sorry. At least you don't have to worry about a ton of exclusive games. Like maybe you're really sad about Returnal and Ratchett and Clank. I'm not personally. I still feel like the big benefit is just, it's a computer that works better. Yeah, no. I mean, I've played two big PS5 games this year,

and they were both reissued or director's cuts of PS4 games. Ghost of Sushima and Death Stranding, which are both fantastic on PS5. I mean, they are much better. Having that console has been cool. It's a great experience. It's my gaming console if I'm going to play stuff because it mostly plays PS4 games better,

you know, with 60 frames per second with the cool control stuff. But yeah, it doesn't feel essential yet. And I think you're right, Jason, that midway through next year, it'll finally start to feel like, okay, it's getting to where you really want one. And hopefully by then,

even if it isn't easy in the moment to get one if you really want one. By then you'll have been able to do it because it is possible if you kind of stay at it. It's just an unfortunately frustrating process. Yeah. One thing I will say is if you don't have one, but you play games on PC,

it might be worth getting a dual sense just to play on PC because some games like support the cool adoptive stuff and it's a good controller. Yeah. Not that it's easy to get a dual sense either though. Right. I figured it would be easier.

It's easier, but it's still not that easy. Also, weirdly hard to get that PS5 remote. I have one of those. Oh, really? That's a big hit in my ass. That's the real collector's item. It kind of is. Like, I got it because Dina was a little nervous about moving into a gamer's apartment,

cohabitating with a gamer where I was like, we just watch all the Cheetos using a controller. Yeah, well, that's, that'll never be resolved. But, but I just like navigate all of my television shows using a controller. And she was like, is this really how you live your life? Like, why don't you have a remote? Like, what's going on here? And so I got the PS4. remote and we use that for watching TV and it's it's a great compromise folks it's that's

that's the real reason we're getting married it's because we worked it out of these PS5 remote thanks a lot Sony you did it appreciate Emily and I have had similar conversations whenever we're watching things on the PS4 where the controller she's like I don't know man I don't want to touch that thing because like you know you sneeze on it and it starts fast forwarding because the triggers do stuff and they're like no it's not good it's almost like a controller wasn't made to be a TV remote and PlayStation is the console that has actually accepted this I think there's the only ones that have put out an actual remote and been like, you're using this to watch Netflix. Like, here's the remote. There was a good remote for the Xbox one that I used a lot.

But I don't know if there was one for series. I like, I made fun of the remote a little bit. And then I was like, this is actually great. It's a good, it's a good little device. So one year later, love the remote. Isn't it crazy to think that like 10 years ago, we didn't have streaming setups and now our entire lives are built around them? I know. Remember like plugging in your laptop with like a bunch of unwieldy cords, like bringing it to a friend's house and being like, I downloaded Matrix. Everybody check, gather around. I've got subtitles. Anyway. Or putting a Blu-ray on my Xbox 360. Yeah. Well, some of us could afford Blu-rays apparently, not I. So let's talk about the supply chain. I feel like that's a better thing to talk about next because we already touched on it a little bit.

So we mentioned the steam deck and how pumped we are about it, except it's been to late a couple months. It is not going to be out in time for the holidays, which I feel like as soon as we were talking about this in the G-chat, Kirk, you were like, I'm never going to get one. Like, you just went full negative and you were like, I'm not going to get it until 2020. Yes. I'm shocking, shocking pessimism from Kirk. Well, I got burned by the purchasing process because did I talk about this on the show? It was a whole mess. Of course it was. I remember thinking going into pre-ordering a steam deck. I was like, I'm so psyched about this thing. I really want one. And I was like, maybe Valve is going to get this right. And I said that to myself. Like I had that thought, which is just incredible in retrospect. But it was a huge mess. And I did the

thing where like I had it and I had bought it. Like I, you like paid $5 to reserve a pre-order. But then it didn't really go through. So an hour later, it was like, psych, actually, you didn't get a pre-order. So then I had to order again. So mine isn't coming until God knows when. Oh, boy. I have also, as I already said, been seeing all my friends across the Normie Gamer spectrum talking about their switch OLED's not showing up in time, trying to place orders for family members, not being able to get things. And speaking of the switch OLED, I don't think we talked about this on the show, the switch 4K rumors and just the general issues with supply lines around video cards and technology in general. And this is Bloomberg reporting, apparently. Jason,

not your own, but do you want to summarize what your, what your coworkers got, the scoops your co-workers got about the 4K switch? Yeah, it's been awkward for me to talk about because I have no involvement in the switch 4K reporting. I haven't been part of any of those stories. But for some reason, like at least at least a few dozen gamers with a capital G out there believe that it came from me because they just see Bloomberg and they, I guess they just associated that with me. But no, I mean, so yeah, my colleague, Takashi Mochizziuki in Japan, who has been like leading reporting on the switch 4K stuff, he reported that it didn't happen because of the supply shortage, essentially, like they couldn't get the chips. And yeah, it's not, it's not 100% clear exactly what

the sequence of events was. And if there's plans to release a switch 4K at some point in the near future, or they're just going to move on to something else. I've heard kind of mixed things myself. and with my own actual sources, I've heard kind of mixed things. But yeah, the short of it was, and if you look back at Mochizuku's reporting, you'll see some stuff about an OLED screen, which was then announced. It's just that his reporting was that the OLED screen version would also be 4K capable when you dock it. And then people tore down the dock and found that there might be some 4K connections and the new dock that actually shipped with the switch LED. So to me, I mean, just as an outside observer, obviously I want to believe my colleagues reporting.

And certainly, like, we have a pretty thorough process for vetting stuff at Bloomberg. And, like, editors have to know who, like, we don't report anything anonymously without the reporter telling the editor who their sources are. So it can never just be, like, made up by the reporter. There's a lot of, like, vetting, vetting processes that happen here. So I think signs point to this actually being the case that there was at some point. a Switch 4K or Switch Pro or whatever you want to call it, plan for launch this year, and then the supply shortage kind of screwed it. Yeah.

It's believable to me. I mean, as someone who knows literally nothing and has no sources and hasn't talked to anyone, it just makes sense to me. Like even just playing Metroid Dredd, that game doesn't look very good in docked mode. Like it doesn't run at a very high resolution. it doesn't run at a solid 60 frames per second. It just seems like that was meant to be a launch title for a slightly more powerful switch. It would totally make sense.

And the OLED is also a bit of a head scratcher. Like that model of the switch was just a little weird. It's like, oh, really? They're just going to launch the same exact switch with a better screen. That just seems like, why would you do that this many years after the switch came out? Also, weird name. True. Yeah.

A L-A-D model. Oh, and also to your point, Kirk, it's weird that they went from the switch to the switch light to the switch OLED because that's two like iterations that were both meant for handheld only. It's weird that they didn't do like switch light and then one that's like designed for improvements on the dock. So yeah, I think you're- Or improvements across the board with both the OLED screen and the 4K when in dogged mode, which feels like a better all around upgrade. It makes more sense. It's interesting to think about it if it is to think about it being the case that this was a delay,

because even if they announce a 4K more powerful switch for next year, presumably the Steam Deck will be out by them and maybe we'll even be available. And I would think that could really change a lot of people's calculus. Maybe not because Nintendo has its own thing. I wonder. Do you mean calculus of consumers and what to buy? Or do you mean like Nintendo's calculus of what to do? Oh, no.

It could change it for some people at least. They would probably change it for me if I weren't making a video game podcast and probably getting both, just considering like, well, which am I going to get if I don't want to get two handheld gaming systems? But that is true. But one of them comes with Breath of the Wild too. Yeah, one is a Nintendo console, so maybe not. I feel like the Steam deck, this is based in absolutely nothing. This is purely anecdotal.

That's what we do here. I feel like the Steam deck is for gamers of the capital G. And I feel like the Switch has a very different brand. That's offensive, Maddie. You're right. When I think of gamers of the capital G, I think of terrible people. Well, do you know, okay, I don't know how I know exactly what you're saying. Hardcore, hardcore players, hardcore enthusiasts.

Yeah, people who are tapped in. Like, if I'm going to compliment them, people who read Polygon.com every single day, as opposed to the people who accidentally trip into Polygon and they're like, oh. No, the people who just find your Stardue Valley guides. Right, or because they're Googling stuff and they're not paying attention to the URL, and so they're reading plenty of Polygon, but they're not a polygon fan, quote, unquote. Like, there's a difference between those.

kinds of readers, and that's totally fine with me and reasonable. But I think people in the former category, the more hardcore gamers with a capital G or not, are people who care about the Steam deck, who know about Valve, who have opinions about Gabe Newell and Half-Life 3 and, like, read a lot of Reddit threads with conspiracy theories in them. And then there are people who buy the Switch. And I'm just curious how that's going to play out next year when both of those consoles are available. And in our mind would be competitors, but I don't think they would be in other people's mind. But those same people are the people who care about 4K. Like, you don't have a different demographic here, unless the switch like 4K is presented

in a way that is like, oh, the more powerful switch that your kid has to have this Black Friday or whatever. So now that we're laying this out, I'm actually convinced that this is a horizontal thing and that there's room for both because, like, if there's just a new switch that's the best switch, that's the switch you get. And the switch has such an appeal for, like, people who want to play with their kids or get Animal Crossing and people who want to play. Breath of the Wild at the highest resolution,

where, yeah, I mean, the Steam Deck is definitely a more niche thing. I mean, the cool thing about the Steam Deck is you can, like, install windows on it. You can do all this cool, like, weird operating system stuff. Oh, my God, I'm so excited. Get at the root level, which I think is cool. NES games on this thing. It is a much more niche product. Okay, but like that is not, the very fact that you're excited about the operating system

you can install on it means it's a more niche product. Yes, that's my point. I don't think any of us disagree on this, Maddie. I don't think the Steam Deck is going to be selling. 80 million units the way the Switch has. No, right. Talking this through has convinced me that... No, but the people who buy it will buy every single game on it

and then not play any of them because that's the classic Steam user experience. So they're going to make a lot of money. That's what Steam is really for. The people who buy it will already have thousands of games they haven't played. Right, and they'll be buying more and more at every Steam sale. But I think the Steam deck is going to be a great backlog killer. Or like, it'll actually be a useful tool for chipping away your backlog.

Maybe you're right, Maddie. No one's ever chipped away at their Steam backlog. and no one ever will. It's impossible and it's never happened. Maybe it will instead be a backlog, just lead to more backlog accumulation, but I could see it being useful for some of those indies and games that I have

that I'm like, I want to play more loop hero, but I'm kind of like, no, I don't want to play it on my PC right now because I could be playing this or that where on a Steam deck, maybe I'd be a little more likely, but you could be right. Yeah, play it while watching TV.

Maddie, before we go, we're running out of time here, but we have to talk about blockchain because I really want to talk about one thing. We do. That was what I was going to hit last. We got a perfect transition from the supply chain and lack of video cards over to blockchain and NFT. NFTs, I'm not saying that every single video card is in the house of a crypto bro.

I'm not saying that. Only a few of them are. However, that is happening. That is also happening. They're being used to generate monkeys that you see everywhere on the internet and can't get away from it. They're being used to generate strings of characters that are correspondent with a PNG. of a monkey, which is very different, Jason. So it's important to. Just keep those things separate.

Every single executive is talking about blockchain and NFTs. And I don't even think that's worth talking about because none of them know what they're talking about. They're all just like, yeah, blockchain is the future, but we don't know what this means yet. It's all nonsense meant to like appease investors. Because when you're talking to investors and shareholders and financial analysts, it's just kind of like, I have to be talking about the hot new buzzword or else they'll still think we're dinosaurs. But what I do want to talk about is the one most popular application of blockchain in gaming right now, which is a game called Axy Infinity. Are you guys familiar with this with AXI Infinity? Not really. Only because of this

story that I've read so much about NFTs, but go on for the listener who isn't familiar. Yeah, tell me about it. So AXI Infinity is a game that runs on blockchain and it's called a play to earn game. It was founded a couple of years ago, but really became, or started a couple years ago, but really became popular this year, especially in the Philippines, where it has a lot of players who don't have great career prospects, and so are playing it to actually make money. And the way it works is it's basically like a Pokemon clone. You have these creatures called Axis, and you fight them,

and you level them up, and you get them more powerful, and then the idea is to sell them and make money off of them. To start playing the game, you have to have Axis, and that means you have to buy axes. So essentially to get into this game, you have to pay in. And tell me if this is starting to sound familiar at this point. At this point, you have to buy like three axes, I believe, to get started. I think it's around like $1,500 to get started, but it fluctuates every day.

So you're paying a significant amount of money to get into this game with the hope that you will be able to sell those axes down the road and earn more later. So once again, you are buying into this game with the hope that you will earn that you will earn money by selling things to new players. Now, right now, people are making money off of it. That is because there are a lot of new players coming in, seeing the hype and jumping in. Does this sound familiar?

Does this sound sort of like Cut Co Knives maybe or Bernie made-off? Yeah, it sounds like a multi-level marketing scheme. Or a Ponzi scheme. Well, it's not, Kirk. That's where you're wrong. It's not those things. No, it's an exciting new technology that is going to change the way we think about video games and the economy. So tell me. Well, hold on. There's one

important wrinkle, Kirk, and then I'll throw it to you for a question. But one important wrinkle here is that like some giant percentage of players, something like 60% are what's called scholars. And what being a scholar means that you can't afford to or you don't want to buy the axes. So instead, someone else buys them for you, loans them out to you. You play them, level them up. And then you're kind of Sherpa, the person who your manager, your capital boss gets most of the profits and can give you a cut. And it's like up to them what kind of cut you're going to get. Some people rip people off.

You're essentially getting a job. And that person is your boss who has stake the capital for you to make them more money. And they do nothing and profit off of your labor. Yeah. And all of this is like totally different from gold farming and wow. And it's super different from TFT hats and Counterstrike skins for reasons I can't get into now. But it's really different from all that stuff. Well, it is because it's even.

more manipulative. And so a lot of people are like really like, like their stories, they're like these big puff pieces about how people are like quitting their jobs to make lots of money. But I think there's also a lot of people who are being really like taken advantage of and like working crazy hours and not seeing a lot from it. And there's a lot of fertile ground here that I am certainly going to be reporting more on because this is really, really crazy stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So Kirk, what was your question? Well, I want to pull this out a little bit because, right, what you're describing does sound like gold farming in World of Warcraft, and it does sound like an MLM, a multi-level marketing scheme like we've been hearing a lot about lately. It has a lot of the same

structural elements, but we're talking about this in terms of NFTs and blockchain. And I think that I understand how that applies here and why that makes this more than just a self-contained video game built around this financing scheme, which any game could do or could have done or has done over the past 20 years. So could you explain to listeners and possibly to to me what um how blockchain and nfts figure into this and then what the implications of that would be that would then get people telling their boards and their investors that they're interested in those technologies so it's sort of like gold farming except it also destroys the environment because every single nfts is just generating incredible amounts of energy and that is both a joke

and a serious answer so nothing in xe infinity is like impot was impossible 20 years ago like muds muds were letting you buy and sell things. Wow was letting you, Diablo 3 had a real money auction at. Like anything in games, like you could, this technology has always been possible. What's different now is that each Axi has its own like unique signature because it's essentially an NFT. It's like a block on the blockchain. It's its own thing.

Which means so it's like verified in an external piece of technology. It exists in a real way outside of the game because it is part of the blockchain. Which theoretically seems better to fans of the blockchain because it means that like EA, for example, isn't in control of the blockchain. It's merely participating with it. This is what the devil's advocate who's a fan of these things would say is it's good if they would have to use blockchain technology to keep track of items. But that's also not true. Well, so that's not also true. Also not true because, yes, let's say I buy an Axi, a Pikachu, right?

And I own the blockchain behind my Pikachu. So when my Pikachu gets the level 99, it's super rare and super valuable, then the people who are, make Axi Infinity have no control over my ownership because I own that string of letters and numbers tied to the Pikachu. But if Axi Infinity shut down tomorrow, my string of letters and numbers would be worthless. Like the Axi Infinity people or EA or whoever still controls the assets and the code and everything that interprets my little blockchain thing. So it's completely irrelevant that I just own this thing. I might feel a little bit better about being invested in this economy because I technically own the string of numbers and letters that really shows ownership

over my Axy, but it's irrelevant. Like, this entire game could exist without NFT and blockchain. Right. I mean, that's part of why I drew the comparison to TFT hats because that was what was so fascinating to me and learning about this in the past couple weeks is that there was an entire economy, still is, frankly, an entire economy around Counterstrike skins

and in-game items and in various games that people use as currency to trade other items. And that is like a wild economy that's super fun to read about. And reading some of the really deep blockchain stuff reminds me of reading about those subcultures because there are MLM-like structures and scams and things that have developed around those video game items. And so, too, are there scammy things that have developed around NFTs and blockchain? I'm leaving the environmental aspect on the table for now because it's like a whole other part of it. If we're just talking about blockchain,

if we're just talking about blockchain in a vacuum like the pros and cons of it, it is interesting. But it's not super clear to me reading about it, why Valve or EA or whoever, would want to use blockchain as opposed to their own proprietary technology for keeping track of video game items and demarcating those items as belonging to each of their games. They have no real motivation to do that other than like the social pressure of blockchain being kind of hip right now and people being like, oh, it's cool and feel safer to me and more secure to me to own something that is on this other platform or at least demarcated there. And I feel like it's scammy in a different way where like people are scamming their investors by like talking about blockchain and that

a way and like hiring people who are affiliated with crypto, but then those people are actually going to develop like TF2 hats and like proprietary technology. Do you know what I mean? Like it's like a circle where it becomes TF2 hats again. The more popular it gets, the more valuable it is for everyone. So it's like in everybody who is into crypto, it's in their best interest to keep talking about it. But if it's TF2 hats, it's not destroying the environment. So what I'm saying is we need to get back to the TF2 hats again because that was actually good. The one thing that actually is tangible and different about Axi Infinity is that when you pay and when you cash out, you are using a blockchain wallet and all of the actual economy is done through cryptocurrency.

I think it's some like offshoot of Ethereum or something like that. So that has kind of economic benefits in that I could be trading with someone in the Philippines and we wouldn't have to worry as much about tax because it's so unregulated. It's a lot easier for the makers of Axi Infinity to run this economy without having to worry about like different governments and exchange rates and currencies because this is a global cryptocurrency. But once that's regulated, it's all going to fall apart. So one thing that I would at least throw out, Maddie, when you're talking about the incentives to use NFTs versus your own proprietary software, is there are legal considerations

here as far as I understand that are probably, you know, they probably do provide some incentive one way or the other. I know that Valve got into some issues with Counterstrike, gun skins that were being traded. Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I could see there being an incentive to use an outside, you know, a like legally recognized asset class that's outside of your company rather than having full control of everything within your company because you could be liable for some things if you control everything that you're not liable for if it's outside. This is way out of my area of expertise. But that does just come to mind when you mention that and I want to do at least mention it.

No, that's what's fascinating about it to me. And I'm sure I'm like wildly wrong in my TF2 hat comparison, but I just couldn't stop thinking about those hats whenever I read about. crypto these past couple weeks and just I don't know I feel like they're going to make a huge comeback in a big way along with pogs those are my two predictions for 2020 right uh for me it's rock band drums are going to be back in everyone's living I think it'll be the auction house super up to up to the moment current predictions from the triple four coasts Diablo three auction house is going to come back in diablo four as an FD oh my gosh you're hurting here first okay great and on that note let's

Let's take a break. We'll be back just a second with one more thing. Do you sometimes wonder whatever happened to the kids at your school who really loved Star Trek? You might remember a kid like me, the one who read the Star Trek novels and built Starship models. I also took music classes to avoid taking gym classes that required showering after, but I don't see what that really has to do with... Or a kid like me. I introduced myself to kids at my summer camp one year as Wesley. But when the school year started and some of those kids were in my new class, I don't know. I actually had to explain to my friends that I had tried to take on the identity of my favorite Star Trek character. The shame haunts me to this day.

I'm sure some of those Star Trek fans from your childhood grew up to have interesting and productive lives, but we ended up being podcasters. On The Greatest Discovery, you'll hear what happens to two lifelong Star Trek fans who didn't grow up to be great people. They just grew up to be people who loved jokes as much as they love Trek. Season 4 of Star Trek Discovery is here, so listen to our new episodes, every week on maximum fun.org or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, it's Jesse Thorne, the founder of Maximum Fun. It's the Thanksgiving season, and I want to take this opportunity to thank you, the members of Maximum Fun. This Max Fund

Drive, your generosity and your love of pins helped us raise over $90,000 to help bridge the digital divide. Families without internet access struggle to do things that the rest of us might take for granted especially during COVID, going to school, applying for jobs, fighting medical care. Your donations help the nonprofit Everyone On. They provide equipment, services, and training to get people online so they can access opportunity. You can find out more about the great work Everyone On does at everyoneon.org. Thanks for supporting maximum fun. Thanks for supporting everyone on.

And thanks for being awesome people who want to do good in the world. world. And we are back with one more thing. Jason, why don't you go first? Sure. I've been playing a few games, one of which I'll talk about again next week. But one game I want to talk about is Baba is you, which is one of my favorite games ever. It's a brilliant puzzle game that is difficult to describe in just a couple sentences, but I'll try. Essentially, you play as an object on a 2D surface. It's like a big 2D map and you can push other objects around and there are words and letters and you have to use those words and letters to form sentences and they determine the rules of the game. So Bava is you is like the core rule and it means you play as Bava. And then there's flag is win, which means to

win you step on a flag. And then there's door is shut, which means the door can't be open until you find something that has the property open. And then you have to push that into the door to open it. and then it gets incredibly like convoluted and mind-boggling and it's one of the most brilliant games I've ever played. It's, it's one of my favorites of all time. It's like there's no other game that's given me that like same sort of like, oh my God, I'm so stupid. Oh my God, I'm brilliant like endorphin rush of like solving a puzzle. It's brilliant. If you like puzzle games, you have to check it out. Anyway, this past week, the creator, uh, released a totally free update that includes a map editor and a metric ton of new levels. It's like 150,

new level. So I've been playing through them and they're brilliant. They're amazing. It's like so, so much good stuff. There's like a 3D mode that turns everything into like a doom style, like retro like 3D math. Really? There's, um, there's so much crazy stuff in here. You have to download it and check it out. There's like a bunch of new words. There's like you two. Um, you and then the number of two. So if you have two, a you and you two, then you're controlling two things at once. Um, there's like, uh, new, new words like mimic and like broken and, and, and like all sorts of crazy stuff that you just have to dive in and jump in. Like, I have been having so much fun, like going through these new puzzles.

And it is really just a play. Just a brilliant game. Everyone needs to check it out. Baba is you. One of my favorite games ever. Everyone should go play it. Yeah, it's a great game. Kirk, how about you?

I'm playing a game that I really like too, actually, an older game that I really like called Metal Gear Solid Five. Why dare I ask? Well, so I went on the. podcast. How did this get played last week? I guess it's this week. The episode is up to talk about death-stranding directors. It was super fun. Shout out to them. We'll link it in show notes. If you want to listen to me, talk about that game, which is cool because I never really got a chance to talk about that game. But they do this thing every year on that show called Hideo Cajember, which is, I think, a great name for the month. And they talk about Phajima games every

November. And so just in talking to them about it, they were talking about Metal Gear. I listened to them the week the week before talking about Metal Gear 3. And it just got me thinking about Metal Gear Solid 5, the Phantom Pain, and how I never really finished it and I really liked it, but it was also so weird. And I just was like, I'm going to reinstall this on Steam and pick it back up. And I did, and I just wanted to tell a couple of quick stories about it. For starters, what a weird game. Kind of a haunted game. Jason, I was talking with you over the weekend about it, and that was my, the word I came away with eventually is it's just, it's a little bit haunted by all the, just everything about it. It's so weirdly unfinished. It's so flushed out and amazing in some ways and so

incomplete and strange in other ways. And it's just an unusual experience. I picked it up. The way that the game peters out toward the end, I won't get into specifics, but like it starts really, really strong, becomes this amazing kind of open world stealth game. And then the story just kind of runs out of steam. And then soon you just start repeating missions. And it's like giving you cutscenes in between repeated missions, and it just really just goes out of focus until it's just little weird pieces everywhere. And I didn't realize this, but I had never finished it. And there is kind of an ending in the game. So I picked it back up, and I was right at the end, which is also weird, because I don't remember stopping at this point, but I was in the middle of this mission where you go to,

like, get quiet back, quiet's the sniper, the very controversial sniper, who winds up being this important character. And I was like in the middle of the mission at a checkpoint. No member. of playing the mission because it was years ago that I played it and it's I just find quiet there's this huge extremely problematic cutscene and then like suddenly I'm being attacked by tanks and I was like I do not a huge problematic cutscene in a goziva game can you imagine it's like the most problematic one in the whole game and I was just like wow like this is already a ton just like thrown into not the deep end but just the ocean immediately yes precisely remember this remember how to swim and I'm like I don't remember how to swim I don't remember how to swim I don't

remember what any of the buttons do. So I'm kind of getting killed, even though the game is very easy. And I was like on my computer being like how to get more ammo in the whole gear five. And like just looking up how to play the game. And then you stumbled upon Polygon and became a polygon really. There were, it was kind of before. There aren't a lot of Polygon tips posts for that game. I don't think. Maybe there are. But I found there were on other more random sites. Anyways, I beat that mission. And then at the end of that mission, you replay the first mission. I won't, again, I won't spoil the twist. But it like shows you the truth of what's going on. And I just hadn't done that. And it was really only about an hour and a half of game

that was left. Were you ashamed of your words and deeds once you completed it? Or no? What were your thoughts on that? I was not. But I was really like, huh? And so a couple of remarkable things. Yeah. So you didn't know the big twist of that game, which is so funny. A couple remarkable things. One is that I didn't know there is a twist and I didn't know it. I'd never been spoiled. I'd never seen so maybe I'd even seen it and it just went in one year and out the other because who knows what this game, it's also kind of weird. Well, yeah, with Kojima's stories, it's like, it's hard to really be spoiled. When it's like, well, because the boss and the big boss, and then there's other big boss

and punished snake and he's just like, okay, I don't know. So, but there is a twist. It is funny. I went and, like, read a explainer afterwards, and I was like, huh, okay, whatever. And then, Jason, you sent me that thing, the thing that people on Earth, which is like the real true ending of the game. No, it wasn't on earth. This is included in the special edition of the game.

Oh, right. It's on the, right. It's on the Blu-ray or whatever that you can watch. So it's basically like the final act of the game. So the game really is incomplete. And I've been watching this 20-minute thing that, like, shows all this other stuff that would have happened that would make the story make sense. And it's so strange. Well, a little bit more.

No, you're right. You're right. You're right. Let me walk that back. It would make the game feel weirdly more complete despite not making any sense still. It would add more to the story. I think we could say that. That's fair, right?

There would have been more of it. The game would be longer. So that's something. So that is something. So anyways, I kind of finished that and was like, I kind of want to start this game over. So I started it over. There's a bunch of mods for this game.

You will not surprise you that half of them were horny as hell. But there are actual also like gameplay mods for this. And one of them is a new game plus mod because there's no new game plus. You have to delete your save from the menu to start a new game. It's just the weird-ass game. So there's a new game plus mod that gives you all the stuff that you had at the end because I had unlocked a ton of stuff, unless you just start from the beginning with all your buddies and everything, I started a game like that and was like playing it.

I was like, yeah, this game is cool, but it was so easy and so kind of missing something. So I was like, I don't think I like this new game plus month. So I uninstalled it, went back, started, well, didn't start to skip the prolog, but like started from the beginning without the mod. And as it turns out for me, the game really needs the bigger structure of like leveling up mother base and tracking down dudes to make it fun. That was the thing that was fun. And I had fun.

I'm not going to replay this game. Way too long. But I played a little bit and was like reminded of how that flow works. And it's such a great little system that I haven't seen in a lot of other games where you're out there, you're scanning guys and you're always looking to be recruiting guys. And you recruit guys just by knocking them out. And then you attach them to that amazing Fulton device, the like parachute device that pulls them up into space. And then they just become brainwashed or whatever and join your team.

So you're actually always out when you're playing this game without the new game plus and you're trying to unlock new gear, you're always out looking for like, oh, that guy, okay, that guy's a good engineer, all right. And then you need to not kill him, so you have to play non-leafly. It really encourages that. And the whole system, like the broader leveling system

mixes so well with the moment-to-moment gameplay by forcing you to play non-leafly and, like, get in there and like, you know, you have to get them kind of clear so no one sees the parachute when it goes up or the reverse parachute. And it's really fun. Like that rhythm, those interlocking systems are fantastic,

in addition to the fact that it has really good stealth and as a well-designed game. And it just reminded me that that was what I found appealing about the game. I know some people don't like that stuff and wish that the mother-based stuff wasn't in there. But for me, that system, like that flow was really what I liked. Two things. First of all, we have to do a beans cast out of Metal Gear Solid because that would be... That would be fun.

It would be fun to do. Yeah, what's the deal with Hideo Kijima? Second of all, Kirk, if you want, if you like Konami games where you go around recruiting people, then next year is going to be an enjoyable experience. That's a good point. That's a good point. It is a little bit street coden-esque. I don't want to talk about that.

We don't have to yet. Predictions is one of those. I don't know. So it's my turn. I've been cleaning up my backlog of just this year's games because it's game of the year season, folks, and we got to debate some games of the year over at polygon.com. And so I finally went back and I beat Chickory,

which is a game that I think we mentioned in like one of our games Roundup episodes. And I really liked it back then. I played a little bit. I think Kirk and I both plays it. Yeah. Or all three of us. I don't know if you two went back and beat it.

I ended up of really, really liking it. I really wanted to play. So I just wanted to shout it out again and be like, just say I'm really glad I went back and beat it. I liked it before, but now I really love it. It's very cutesy and it's almost moralizing.

It's a game about depression. I guess it on the Depression mode podcast somewhat recently. We talked about chicken a lot. And that was a cool. It's a great game example for that where it's like, oh, this is a game about creative burnout and depression and you play as a cute little dog with a paintbrush and she's painting all these environments in the world and she's the apprentice for a famous artist whose job it was to do that and the famous artist, Chickory, is her name, gets burned out and gives you the brush and then you have to basically clean up after her failures. And that's the tension of the game. And it gets pretty heavy. But it's also very cute at the same time.

And at first I was like, I don't know if this is working for me. Like sometimes really cutesy moralizing stuff. I'm like, ah, like how heavy hand it can you get? Like, yeah, sure. People get burned out creatively. But the writing really grew on me. There are some fun characters and the writing is good. I don't know.

It's hit in the spot for me. And also, the further you go, the more you unlock different abilities that are super fun and like Zelda-esque. And there's like a bunch of dungeons and puzzles that I just, genuinely enjoyed. The boss battles are freaking awesome. Like not as hard as Undertale but Undertale-esque in terms of incorporating like really intense visuals with a great soundtrack who by I think her I think her Twitter name's Corain but I don't know her actual name but she did the music for Celeste. Oh, Lena Rain. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And her music's fantastic and so like just the confluence of like story, really great soundtrack and visuals

especially in the boss battles all coming together and fitting the themes. I was like, damn, this game's like firing on all cylinders in a really, really cool way. And I dig it. I dig it a lot. So if anybody else is like me and they- So we should finish it. Yeah, well, you know, if you want, I don't know. I really like to.

It's definitely on my list of 2021 games that I want to go back to. I really dug it. So yeah, if anybody else played the first couple hours and we're like, that seems fine. I would recommend circling back to it and checking up this. I wish I had a steam deck. I would totally finish it if I could play it on a steam deck. Oh, yeah. It would actually be really, really good for that.

Because it's not on Switch, unfortunately. It's not. It's not. I don't mind it with mouse and keyboard. Like, considering that's a game where you're painting stuff, it's actually not too bad with a mouse. But it does make me think, like, oh, I've only had a stylus or something. Anyway, it's a great game, great soundtrack. Chickery is what it's called. Like the food. All the animals in this game are named after food.

It's really cute. So that is that. That's another week. Yeah, it is. We did it. That is. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody. Enjoy.

If you are celebrating. Enjoy your turkey and stuffing and cranberry sauce and your family members. Your loved ones. Or not, you know, enjoy being alone and like having a cheeseburger or whatever you're doing. That also sounds good. Play some video games. That sounds way easier than the 20 hours of cooking I'm going to be doing. Yeah.

All right. It never works. All right. We will see you next week. See you guys next week. Yep. See you next week. Bye.

Triple Click is produced by J. Jason Schreier, Maddie 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 Maximumfund.org slash join. Find us on Twitter at Triple ClickPod. Send email the triple click at Maximumfund.org and find a link to our Discord in the show. minutes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximumfund.org. Comedy and culture. Artists owned. Audience supported.