Triple Click - Cyberpunk 2077 And Other Video Game Redemption Stories

Episode Date: January 14, 2021

In the wake of Cyberpunk 2077, a game with a rocky launch that will now try to find redemption, Jason, Maddy, and Kirk take a look at some other video game redemption stories. They talk about No Man's Sky, Destiny, Final Fantasy XIV, and other games that got better over time. What does a successful turnaround look like? And what are the ethical questions involved? All that and lots more.One More Thing:Kirk: LupinMaddy: Dark SoulsJason: FargoLinks:Kirk reviews No Man's Sky: https://kotaku.com/no-mans-sky-the-kotaku-review-1785383774...and Destiny: https://kotaku.com/destiny-the-kotaku-review-1637735501Support 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

We've decided that from now on, every episode of Triple Click will be in early access. And if you don't like it, we'll fix it later. Welcome to Triple Click where we bring the games to you. Today we are talking about video game redemption stories. What's it like when a game launches in bad shape and then kind of gets fixed over time? I'm Jason Shire. I'm Kirk Hamilton. And I'm Maddie Myers.

And we are back for another episode. We sure are back. Hello, my friend. It's nice to see both of you. It is great to be here. And if you like Triple Click, if you like supporting the three of us and helping Kerkie Burritos, helping me get my burritos. Please become a member, a MaxFun member.

If you subscribe to the show, you will help us stay independent and keep making this show. To do that, you go to Maximumfund.org. If you do so, you get monthly bonus episodes from us, from the three of us, including other all sorts of things. We do beans cast where we spoil things. Soon we're going to be introducing some new types of segments as well, so it won't just be beans cast every month. So yeah, subscribe and you'll get some access to that. That's sweet stuff. That's sweet, sweet shit. You sure will. And I think that's about it for up top stuff. So let's get to the episode, shall we'll see it. I hear there's a topic that we're going to be talking about.

There is a topic. And it's not just any topic. It's of a certain temperature, right? It is a hot topic. A hot topic. It is a hot topic. Since, by the way, we should say that since we're fanning ourselves. No one can see this, but we're fanning ourselves. Okay, so this week, our hot topic on this week's episode of Triple Click is video game redemption stories. And so last month, as many of you know, the video game's cyberpunk 2077 came out.

Never heard of it. What is that? We've never talked about it on the show before. This game had a. really rocky launch. By the way, it's hilarious that we think of this game as like one of the flops of the year. When it came out, it had like a 90 on Metacritic. And it sold absurd numbers and 13 million copies. I do see people talk about, oh, it was such a failure. And it's like, I mean, it's a little more complicated than that. Well, what's interesting is that if you

look at like CD Project Red's shares tanked, like they wiped out. I know this because I work for Bloomberg and we ran a bunch of stories about it. Like, they had all these gains throughout. 2020 where like the stock shot up like 30 40 percent it all got wiped out the week after like cyberpunk launch has that recovered at all or how does that that stuff always like how does that work when a company's stock price drops i always see those headlines and i never know how much um stock to put in them um well it literally means that people are selling like buying and selling and that's what makes the price move is like what they're being traded at um and it's all ridiculous capitalism alchemy.

But investors got spooked because of the reception. And I think a large part of this with CD project is that because they release games so rarely, this game really needed to be like a mega hit and needed to be. That's why even when it got a 90 on Metacritic, investors were scared and shares were going down because like this was supposed to be a 95. It was supposed to be the game of forever. Because right, they released The Witcher 3, 5 years ago. Gwent came out between now and then.

but like that was a nothing, that was like another flop, I guess, so you can kind of count that as a flop. So, yeah, stakes were really high for this one. But we're not talking about cyberpunk. What we're talking about is what comes next because the big question is that at this point is, can cyberpunk be a redemption story? Can this be a game that is fixed and improved through patches and updates and expansions and whatever else the developers have in store for cyberpunk? And we thought it would be interesting and fun to look back at modern video game history

and kind of talk about some of the other video game redemption stories over the past few years. And I say modern because I don't really think this happened in the pre-internet era of video games. I don't know if there were any NES games getting patches reissued. There were what happened with computer games. And Kirk, you must have seen this back in the 90s was that they would release like new versions of the disc or the CD-ROM. And, like, you can not wind up with, like, different versions of the game, and, like, people would do collectors' editions or, like, collectors would look for early, like, unpatched, quote-unquote versions of certain games. Yeah, you would see that, like, Monkey Island would have had a bunch of different versions and later was on CD-ROM and had voice acting. But that's pretty different than what we're talking about, so not really germane to the topic.

Well, but sometimes it would be to fix bugs or, like, fix, like, game-breaking problems. Sure. But yeah, but very different than like what's happened recently, which is past, let's say, six, seven years where we've seen games come out and then launch with a lot of problems and then kind of be fixed in some way or another. So first let's let's kind of broadly look at the precedent of this. And I think the kind of ore example in recent years is no man sky. Maddie, you want to talk a little bit about like the no man sky story and what happened there? Sure. So I think the No Man Sky story is mostly about promises made in trailers, or at least that's how people describe it, and marketing materials and the lead up to the game. I remember seeing a Stephen Colbert episode about No Man Sky. I don't know if you guys remember that. Where it was infamous. Yeah, where a special level had been created like a planet just for Stephen Colbert with like certain sound effects that were themed around his show. And the promise being made by that was this idea that every planet would be unique and different and you could do anything.

And it was also all procedurally generated. It wasn't actually like this special Colbert level that was being presented. Like if anything, that should have been a warning sign, I think, that like this wasn't exactly going to work the way that it sounded as though it would. And at launch, I feel like Kirk is probably the better person to talk about what this game was like at launch. I did not buy it because I heard. Well, the game, we should talk about the announcement. The announcement trailer was what really blew people away. So that was at the VGA's at the Game Awards in 2013.

And Jeff Keely was like, I got somebody special to show you. And it was like this, this mind-boggling, like, space trailer that was, like, showing all these planets and dinosaurs and big worms and a lot of things that didn't actually make it into the game, like a lot of creatures and vistas that look nothing like the final game when it came out three years. later. Yep. I think there was one thing. So I reviewed this game for Kataku. My review

is interesting to read now because I reviewed it twice in the same review. I was kind of in an experimental phase. This was a little bit before I wrote that narrative Destiny 2 review. I was feeling bored, I think, with writing game reviews. So I was like, I'm going to review this twice. And it wound up, I think, being, especially because

I remember Stephen Totillo, our editor, like, mercilessly edited it and made me remove all this stuff. Like, I kind of kept coming back and wanting to review it more. And it wound up being, I think kind of a cool look at the game because I first reviewed the game that I wanted it to be where like I followed the story and moved through the galaxy and was just like what the hell this sucks. Like it was so shallow. There was like every planet looked the same.

I just stopped caring about everything. I just needed enough materials to make the fuels so that I could keep going. And then I got to the middle. There's a lot of grinding. And you get to the middle and the game just resets. So then the second time I was like, I'm going to meet this game on its own terms. I'm not going to travel. I'm going to stay put.

And I wound up finding this kind of nice, chill experience because the aesthetics of the game are very pleasing. And if you don't travel too much, you didn't see that the planets all repeated themselves. And it's funny. I look at the trajectory of this game where now it has in so many ways become and surpassed the game that it promised that it would be. Specifically, even though I found this game that I liked in the midst of this very limited experience compared to what they promised. And I think about that trailer you mentioned, Jason, the one. One thing that that trailer had, that the game had, was you would be walking on the surface of a planet and you would climb into your starship and then you would fly up and break orbit and be in space. And like there would be no pause.

It would be seamless. And that wasn't the game. And I feel like that's still kind of a magical thing in No Man Sky. And for all the things that they've added, like they did have that core and that kind of helped. It gave them something to build around maybe. Can you talk a little bit about what they've added? Like, do you have any sense of, like, what the biggest things that have been added over the past four or five years have been? I think the biggest thing is easily multiplayer that they've added real multiplayer.

Right. That was, I forgot to mention earlier. That was the biggest promise that never came to fruition. And in fact, when the game launched... Well, did eventually come to fruition, but was not at the launch. But at launch, even at lunch, Sean Murray, the director of this game and the kind of the face, the controversial face of it, had said before launch, there was going to be multiplayer. and even up to the day at launch, even after at launch, he never quite reckoned with that promise,

and he never even said like, hey, actually, it's not in the game. And so what he had said was that people could encounter each other, but the chances were infinitesimal. And basically you would have to be in someone else's galaxy and find someone else's planet, but the chances were so small, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then what happened was on launch day,

two Twitch streamers or two people who were playing and started streaming on Twitch, found out that they were right next to each other and tried to find each other. And they couldn't. And it was captivating because it was like watching this play out and watching them both standing in this world that they couldn't actually see each other in.

It was like this unfolding of this lie in reality. It was pretty wild. So I think just in terms of the redemption arc, like to look at this game in terms of a game that has clearly redeemed itself, I would say in the eyes of almost everybody. Like there are still people who get salty about some of those initial promises.

Understandably, I get it if you feel that. way. But it is hard to look at that. They didn't specifically address some of the promises they made, but in practice and in the work they did, they absolutely addressed it and then some. And so there's this great goodwill toward Hello Games now because rather than just being like, look, we sold a bunch of copies, whatever we got ours, we're going to move on and do something else. They didn't. They just totally worked and worked and worked for so long and clearly loved this game that they made. And I think that that, at least in terms of this example, That that thing I was saying, like, there is a core there to this game, even at launch that was there.

It's a whole dream of, like, flying around a solar system. And that was there at the beginning. It was just in this game that was kind of weird and unfinished or just kind of empty. And then they've just filled in around that core. And that, I think, allowed the game to become something that is truly great now. Yeah. And also, players have made it great as well. Very true.

built so many structures and fan communities and created role-playing rings within No Man Sky. I mean, obviously all of those processes needed to be there for them to use. That part was on Hello games to create. But players have now made No Man Sky into a completely different type of world than it ever could have been at launch. And that's a huge part of the success of the game now. And what I associate with the game now is like absurd factions and players just role-playing with one another and those kinds of crazy stories about like raves and stuff that people throw in the game especially in the pandemic and that part of the game to me it's it's hard to even think about it in terms of the way that the game launched like it doesn't even feel like I mean we're literally

not talking about the same game like people don't even talk about it the same no it's a different game well because the stuff you're talking about wasn't in there right at launch the game was essentially like walk around planets like trade with aliens and grind for materials and then after launch there was an update called foundation which added base building then there was a survival mode added there were more updates more updates and then the big one was in 2018 july 2018 so two years after launch um called no man sky next and that was one that had a multiplayer and like a whole bunch of stuff um and then they just kept doing it and like they the most recent update i think was last september or something of recent stuff yeah yeah so they've been sticking with this game for over four years which is something we We've seen a lot these days, even with games that are big successes, like Stardew Valley, which just got a recent patch despite coming out in February of 2016. But with this game, because of the initial story, it really feels like a comeback. And just like the stuff that has come out since then has just been universally loved by players.

There is, there's kind of a connection, I think, between this topic, between the idea of a game slowly becoming better and the framework of games as a service. They're different things, but they function kind of similarly. And it's wild how Stardue Valley feels like a game as a service, even though all the services were free. So it's like just being updated. And the same with No Man Sky, where that felt like it could have almost been an MMO or a game as a service, but it wasn't. It was just sold as a $60 game and then just got years and years of free updates, which is very cool. And it's like a cousin or something of the game as a service.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think something that I've found. just talking to developers of games like this is it's almost like a counterintuitive notion that you can keep updating a game and releasing things for free and it's like well if i'm a developer and i'm not getting paid for this stuff like why am i continually doing it but you wind up selling so many copies with a long tail that like it winds up paying for itself so one of the games that i have talked to the developers a lot about is enter the gungeon the roguelike game where you're you're you're shooting little bullets of people and get a lot of guns

And what those guys told me, I actually wrote about this in my new book, what those guys told me was that they made more money and they sold more copies of the game two years after launch with like one of their post-launch free updates than they did on release. So like that's the type of we're talking about a totally different business model now than we are even 10 years ago when it was like we make all our sales day one, launch week, games in the front of Target. And then after that it just completely tapers off. Now we're talking about a totally different world. So maybe the best case scenario is we made a whole bunch of money on a game that made people really mad because it wasn't what they wanted. And then we made it really good and then everyone's happy and we're still selling lots of copies two years later. You joke, but like that is a viable approach. I mean, I don't think anyone would take it consciously, but I am only half kidding.

It's going to be so weird if in four years everyone's playing cyberpunk 2077. It's like a completely different game with like whatever the equivalent. one of a cyber base building would be? I don't know. That would be really strange. Maddie, what's funny is that I bet you that is exactly what's going to happen. Yeah, and I think the real, the problem is

that these developers are just not really being honest, right? I should really say the managers, the publishers are not really being honest about these games. Cyberpunk should have been an early access game. Like if they were going to release it in this state, if they're going to release it clearly earlier than before it was actually finished. If they called it early access, like this

would not really be a problem because people would be buying into it and just deal with the bugs and wait until it was finished and contribute their own thoughts. And really, that's a good pivot to another game that we wanted to talk about, which is Balders Gate 3. Another giant RPG that came out last year, sort of came out last year, came out in early access. Yeah, well, just the first act of it came out. But those guys, I mean, Larian, it's kind of an interesting parallel. Larian, the developer of the game, also the developer of Divinity Original Sin 2. It's kind of an interesting parallel to CD Project in that they're both these RPG developers have gained a lot of goodwill with fans by making these critically acclaimed

masterpieces. And I think Larian's approach is super smart. And they're just like, hey, we're going to put out part of this game. We know these games are massive and they're going to be full of bugs. So we're going to let you guys play it and check it out early. And we'll send us your feedback and let us know what you think. And it's just very much like a like a crowdsourced form of game development in a lot of ways. I'm curious. Do you guys, Maddie, I'm curious to hear your thoughts. Do you think that there's like, I don't know, what do you think the pros and cons of like the early access approach are? Do you think that it's kind of like ruins authorial intent to be like, hey, players, tell us what you think. I mean, possibly.

I would also say I think it introduces some pretty big problems with labor and the way that we talk about it and the idea of whether or not QA should be paid labor, which I think it should be. And by, I think it's cool that Larian, by putting out Balders Gate 3, they didn't do a side. cyberpunk situation. They were really transparent about exactly what it was. It launched an early access. It's just the first act of the game. And they repeatedly said in every marketing thing, it's not done. The game is not complete. There are going to be a lot of problems with the game. So if you want to make fun of how the faces look or whatever, that's fine. Game is not finished. All of that was super clear. However, they're basically asking their player base to, I guess, pay them to do work for them and kind of covering that up with the auspices of like you're part of the larian family

you're like a fan and you're part of this this cool movement we're doing where we all fix balder's gate three together and i don't know like that it leads it goes down a dark path you know what i mean like it's it goes to a place that i i don't like i wouldn't say it's there already but it's on the path to a place that i don't like that much i don't know i think if people are having fun and okay playing an early access game, that it can be a fun way of getting a new perspective on a game. And I think if people were like not having fun and being exploited, I just don't get that sense, especially given that I think that Laram does have QA and most studios do and, you know, that that is paid work. But when you look at the QA required to ship, say, Red Dead Redemption

2 at the absurd levels of polish with a game that complex, I mean, it turns into this totally the unbelievable amount of work that a huge group of people just have to be put through the meat grinder on. I don't know, releasing a game a couple of years in Early Access and saying, hey, if you want to play this now, go for it. We're going to be slowly fixing it. You can help us out if you want, or you can just screw around with the Early Access version and not. That seems like maybe in some ways a more humane approach than just having a massive army of QA people that just throw their bodies out at every day for years to make it perfect at launch.

Also, it's worth noting that, like, the players, I mean, first of all, the important distinction between a QA tester and a player of this game is like, a player of this game has no obligations. Like, they can just play as long as they want and stick with it or not sick with it. But I think that, like, even with games that don't do this, plenty of QA testers are like going on YouTube and looking for glitch videos after a game launches and being like, hey, wow, look at this. Because there's no possible way that even an army of hundreds of QA testers could find every possible

bug or every possible permutation that could cause a problem in a game. an allerian game those games are like yeah especially in like an RPG systemic RPG where you can do anything but it does raise interesting questions i will say about like like if should players if players are giving this feedback that leads to a change in a game and if someone comes up with this idea that like leads to something cool in a game should that person be getting paid for it right that to me asks it definitely raises some interesting questions that i don't really think we have the answers to but then the flip side of that is like we look at a game. A lot of the appeal of video games is just like the personal, the author, the kind of, the stories you can create yourself or tell yourself in a game and like, um, look at Minecraft, for example. Like, Minecraft's appeal. One of the biggest reasons Minecraft became so successful is because every day on the internet for like two years, all you would see was like, look at what this guy built in Minecraft. Look at what this person did in Minecraft. And that is also like those people creating value for notch for the creators of Minecraft without getting paid for. it. So really there's a lot of murky territory and video games as a whole when it comes to that.

Well, unless they're running a YouTube channel, making Minecraft stuff, and getting rich off of it, which plenty of people also did. So, you know. Also true. Yep. Also true. There's one thing that, there are a couple of games that we have to talk about when we have this conversation. The one that is most relevant to the three of us is, of course, Destiny, which is another one of those ore examples of a game that launched in a Rocky State and was gradually improved over time. Often what happens with these games is like they'll get incremental patches and fixes and tweaks and changes, but like there will be one big kind of expansion or DLC or whatever it is that really like takes things to a new level. And we've almost, it's become lingo. The Destiny's first big expansion, the Taken King has become lingo for like an improvement.

And I remember at Kitaku for years we would talk about like, oh, is this game going to get its taken king? Like its version of the Taken King where it's improved in some way. Is Anthem going to get its Taken King or whatever else it was? And yeah, Kirk, you want to talk a little bit about like you also reviewed Destiny 1? So what was it like watching that game improve and just become turned from like an infuriating game to a good game? It was weird. It's like looking back on a drug addiction or something. It's kind of all hazy.

Yeah, I reviewed Destiny and then I reviewed The Taken King and then I reviewed Destiny 2 and that's an interesting arc too, though maybe not quite as related to this topic. Just the whole idea of sort of going backwards in some ways for Destiny 2. But yeah, so when Destiny launched, it was, you know, it actually kind of underlines the thing I was saying with No Man Sky. It was another game where the core thing was really there, but there wasn't a whole lot else. And so it was kind of the same thing where like it was fun as hell to run around shooting aliens. in this game. And the world and the lore were cool. Like they were, you know, they drew people in. Like the art style was really beautiful. It had something to it. Like it had a sort of a majesty. But then you played, you know, for 20 hours or something. It was like, oh my God, like we're all just standing in front of a cave shooting these aliens because that's the best way to get loot.

And while there's a lot of problems with this loot system. And actually this game's really repetitive and there's only a few things to do. And so by the fall, that game had really entered this funk. win the what's it called the the underlord, the Crota, what was the name of that that expansion? Crota's End. Crohn's End. I forgot the name of a destiny expansion on Triple Click. Well, so that

was in December. That was December of 2014. Yes, so that was the December after it launched very shortly afterward. By the way, I should say, I just want to backtrack on what I said before Taken King has become shornand. Actually, Diablo 3's Reaper of Souls was better shorthand for that before Taking King. And then Dickin King actually took a lot of inspiration

from Reaper of Souls. And at Kotaku, a lot of us We played Destiny We played a lot more Destiny. But anyway, yeah, so you were saying yeah, so Cro-de-Zan came out of December of 2014. Yeah, Crotazend was sort of the first expansion

and that there was this sense there that it was like, oh, well, maybe this first expansion is going to be the thing that'll fix X, Y, and Z, and it didn't. It was just sort of a really little thing that they threw on and there was a new raid but it wasn't as good as the first one and it was kind of like, oh, maybe this game's in trouble.

It's also developed in like eight weeks. Yeah, yeah, it showed. And throughout the winter, it was just very like, I don't want to play this anymore. Then they started improving things with House of Wolves, which was sort of like the beginning of the crescendo. And then Taken King was like Fortissimo. And so it was this big build into fall.

And like that expansion was just totally killer. Now, Taking King introduced, kind of introduced destiny as it is now. Like it kind of, it just like made it into more of a Marvel movie where there's like, you know, the Vanguard or all these outsized personalities. There's banter happening on your radio. Nathan Philean took on a really big role in that one. And that was also where they recast Peter Dinklage as ghosts. And they recast Nolan North and decast Peter Dinklage as ghosts.

So they got kind of like a peppier voice actor in there. The whole thing became a lot pepier. It was like a much more exciting game. And they just, they found a lot of things that they've, I'd say now become overly reliant on, just like a lot of the good ideas that they've explored in a lot of different ways to the point where I would say now the game feels very locked in a comfort zone. And there may not ever be another thing in destiny that really shakes things up the way the Taken King, which is fine because Destiny is fun and it has a lot of stuff in it.

But the Taking King kind of established what Destiny would be. And then just really briefly, like I said, Destiny 2 was kind of a weird step backward. And then I would say they got it back up and a little beyond where it was at Taking King. So that was kind of that narrative. Beyond light, you're saying. They took it Beyond Light, is what I'm saying. And all paid expansions in this case. So a little bit of a different story there.

Right. Expensive. Very expensive hobby. Well, that was very much. I mean, yeah, you can't. It's when you're part of Activision, when you're game published by Activision, can't release anything for free. No, no.

Bobby would not approve. I mean, they're not anymore and you still have to pay for Beyond Life. Like, they're still making money. Yeah. Well, now it's a different model because you have to do like the season pass and you're basically subscribing for that game. Yeah, but that's a different world because. Because unlike No Man's Sky, unlike

cyberpunk, I mean, Destiny is entirely online. And so they have to pay for servers and constantly be maintaining the game and keeping people operating it. And I mean, Bunchy, believe it or not, has more staff than CD Project Red. Bungy has more people than

CD Project Red does. That's believable based on the games. One game that this makes me think of, that isn't really an example of this phenomenon, but is a game that launched kind of inauspiciously and has become a favorite, it is Warframe and has an entirely, it's a lot like Destiny in some ways, but has the opposite free model where you just can play it however you want and then you pay for stuff. And it seems

to me, is that digital extremes is that developer of that game? They seem like they're doing great and like that game seems like it's doing great. Every time I see like a Kataku or Polygon article about Warframe, I'm like, shit, this looks awesome. It's one of our blind spots. Yeah. Yeah, as a show, that's one game we have it. Or you gave it a chance, right? I played a little bit, but it was, it's clearly a big investment that game. Yeah. Well, a lot of these are just like, the games as a service, you have to like really pick one and commit to it. And it really has to, it like replaces your gaming time for other stuff. And people like us who want to be playing or have to be playing constantly different things. It's tough to stick with a game like that.

Unless it's Destiny and then we all just, we find a way. And then you just make your weekly podcast about Destiny every single week for weeks and weeks and weeks. That happens from time to time. It does happen. But you're one more thing. every single league. Yeah. Because, hey, here are my adventures in destiny. Who can say if anyone here has done that? We have to talk about Final Fantasy 14, by the way, which I know neither of you have

really gotten into. Yeah, but still, there's no story like this because Final Fantasy 14, I'm like, so what happened with all these other games is people kept playing even while they were getting fixed. With No Man Sky, it took a few months, even a couple of years for like the patches to really start coming, the updates to start coming. But you could still go and buy the game and you could still play it as much as you wanted. Final Fantasy 14. So when that first launched in 2013, the original version of that game, which is now called like 1.0, was such a disaster that Square Enix, the developer and publisher of the game, said, you know what?

Fuck it. We're pulling out. We're hitting the reception. We're like smashing that. The glass that says break in case of emergency. There is one of those in Square Enix HQ. I think they have a glass. Stop the server.

They took the game down. They took the game down. And then they relaunched it like a year and a half later as a realm reborn, Final Fantasy 14, 2.0, a realm reborn under Naoki Yoshida, who's now considered like one of the the gods at Square Enix, a legendary figure. It's pretty legendary feat. Yeah. He's a nice dude also.

I've met him a few times. And this game blew people away. It was awesome. They totally revamped it. one of the interesting things they do. Normally when we talk about these games, we talk about them getting graphical upgrades or bolishes. But like with Final Fantasy 14, one of the original games problems was that they tried too hard to push the production values. So they actually like, like made it look less good, which I think is pretty important for an MMO, which you need to

run on like as many possible computers as possible as Royal Warcraft has shown us. But like, yeah, that game has just gotten so good over time. And they've done so many cool things with the expansions. I haven't gotten up to the most recent expansion, Shadowbringers, as much as I would like to. I just haven't, haven't been able to yet. Too many hours required. But people say it's like one of the best Final Fantasy stories ever, not just like one of the best MMO stories, but like one of the best Final Fantasy stories. And I've already seen all sorts of good stuff with like the Final Fantasy 14 Heavens Ward and the main story. And it's, it's become a pretty good game. And it's, it's been remarkable to see how it's evolved and how it's transformed.

But that's another one where people are paying a monthly subscription so they can kind of justify like continually updating and adding new expansions and just making new shit all the time. Do you think that'll ever happen again, like a game like that being literally pulled off offline and then totally overhauled? And no more subscriptions presumably when they did that. Cyberpunk was pulled off the PlayStation. That doesn't know.

No, I know. Yeah. No, I don't know. I mean, I kind of expected it to happen with Anthem, but it didn't. And Anthem with Anthem, I mean, the BioRNAEA promised Anthem 2.0 or Anthem Next, as people call it internally, but it just hasn't materialized yet two years later. So still waiting on that one. But yeah, I don't know, Kirk.

That's a good question. Will it happening? Like Anthem just doesn't have the Final Fantasy thing. Like the fact that people are going to come back. for a Final Fantasy game if you take it offline and re-release it. And with Anthem, it's just kind of like, oh, I don't know. The thing with the people in the mecsuits? Like, oh, they made another one of those?

Okay, is it good? Like, it just wouldn't, it wouldn't really have that same, that same juice. Well, so, Kirk, to that point, I think, I think about what you said earlier about, like, the game, these games having some sort of core, some sort of, like, fundamental, like, this works. And I think with Final Fantasy 14, that almost is the brand. Like, people are so. The music. Yeah.

is kind of the brand. I mean, it's a little... The music, yeah, the music. But the brand, I think of it is the brand. And one of the reasons... Yeah, the world. I just think thinking like Final Fantasy is always going to bring people in. Like me.

I'll be there for anything called Final Fantasy. It's like, for example, Jason Shrier. Yeah. Well, so like, and I actually think one of the reasons that Final Fantasy 14, like in its current iteration, is so popular. It's become this theme park of Final Fantasy stuff. Like, you'll be playing and you'll see like some of the boss. in the game are like straight out of pre-old games like meant to tickle your nacelda there's an

entire golden saucer in the game from final fantasy seven there's like you can play triple triad the card game from final fantasy eight it's just like this giant theme park of old final fantasy stuff and i think that's what the core was because it's not like the combat is special or like any of the gameplay or anything like that but it had final fantasy anthem on the other hand does that have anything it's got those suits got those suits i wonder if um marvel's event could have a redemption arc because that at least has the Avengers IP, which I know is already oversaturated in and of itself. But I feel like that's an example of a game that I had some good ideas for combat, but the service game aspect of it was not good and not fulfilling. And when we

streamed it together, the multiplayer did not fully work. So that game, from what I understand, almost no one's playing it anymore. So it would be a really rocky redemption arc for that game. But I have been kind of curious if that one is going to have a second coming. That's a really good point. That's a good question. So I think the problem that Marvel's Avengers has to deal with is apathy. And none of these other games generated apathy. Almost all of them generated like extreme, like, like rage and anger at the beginning.

Avengers didn't. Like nobody really cared that the Avengers was like. It kind of didn't come out. Yeah. It came and watched. It's weird. Yeah. It was really weird. Like you look at like game of the year time or like looking back at 2020 time. Nobody even talked about it. It was really strange. Here's this AAA game based on the biggest movie series in the big movie, biggest movie franchise in the world. And nobody seemed to really care that much. Like we all played it and enjoyed playing through the single player stuff. And then it was just like, okay, like that was fine. It's over now. Cool. Which is yeah, sad. That's like a sadder fate than the same. cyberpunk story, which is like, cyberpunk is always going to get headlines. When it comes back

and when it gets patch, it's going to generate headlines. Marvel's Avengers might generate headlines, but will anybody talk about them? Will anyone notice? Will anybody click on them? I don't. If a headline never gets clicked, does it actually exist? Is the story really there? It does, but editorial teams slowly deprioritized coverage. I can say that much. That is true. Yeah. So that's another interesting one. But yeah, Kirk, to your question earlier, I can't, it's hard to imagine it was so unprecedented and then, and it's so unprecedented now that they actually removed the game and stopped running the servers for a year and a half. They actually made it part of the story like in, in a realm reborn.

They all referenced like the great calamity and that was actually like the first game coming to an end and like they made a whole event out of it coming to an end where the world was destroyed. So like there aren't a lot of other types of games you could do that with. It almost, it has to be an MMO. if you're going to make it be this whole spectacle. But yeah, I don't know. I can't see it really happening again.

So I know we're almost out of time, but I want to talk a little bit about Diablo 3. Can we talk a little about Diablo 3? Sure, of course. You wrote the book about Diablo 3, so we should at least talk about it a little bit. We should at least mention that it existed. Yeah.

Yeah, so Diablo 3, when that came out, well, it kind of had a really rocky launch. So Diablo 3 was 10 years, and the people were waiting for 10 years, waiting for it for 10 years. It came about 10 years after the launch of Diablo 2 in its extension. And it had the game, putting aside the game itself, it had such a rocky, well, man, oh, God, do you guys remember when people, when there were controversies over games being

online only? Yes. That was the big controversy at Diablo 3, that it was online only. And then it came out. And I remember Kirk, you wrote articles about how, yeah, it sucks that this game is online only because it came out and it wasn't working at first and people can actually play it. You got error 37 every time you tried to play it. Oh, yeah, I remember that was like peak Kirk as a kataku, like, hungry kataku staff writer,

because I wrote like a billion articles about that. Though I wrote an article that was like, it sucks that this game is always online. And then later I was like, but here's the argument for it always being online. And then later, like, random shows on Twitter would like show me screencaps of those two headlines and be like, look at you, man. Like, you're arguing it's bad and it's good. And I was like, yeah, because like that's an interesting thing to do. Yeah, because it was contradicting.

Anyways, not to get sidetracked, but yes. Yeah, well, this was very much the time of, like, consumer rights being threatened, and this was, like, the time of, like, I say that facetiously. This is the time of, like, EA season passes and fighting against used games and DRM. And that was the whole big controversy of the early 2010s was, like, the question of, like, do you have the right to play a game and own a game and own the digital licenseeer game and play a game offline. And that doesn't happen anymore because now all games are pretty much online only.

Though there was, I mean, the narrative on Diablo with that Arrow 37 thing, like you couldn't have asked for a more perfect narrative. That people were upset about the online thing. It was a new thing, even though it's become more normal now. And then when the game launched, people straight up couldn't play it for days because of the internet, because the servers weren't working. Like that, like, it was just like ready made. It was like, you couldn't have written it more perfect.

No, it was a perfect story. But now it's so normal for a game to launch and not work. Exactly. That's what we've accepted. It's not like, oh, now all games launch and they immediately work and everyone's perfectly prepared with a ton of servers. It's like, no, we just expect that a big online game of any kind is going to launch and suck ass for the first week because that's just our reality now.

And that's fine, I guess. And there was some, like, there were some people saying that even at the time, oh, I remember when, you know, EverQuest or whatever launched. Sure, yeah. You should all be ready. But there were only a few examples of. that and now it's like normal. Exactly. Diablo like really raised awareness of that thing

and now everyone's like oh yeah, well the first week's going to be a shit show like of course. Yeah and then a few months later SimCity happened and that was kind of another disaster. Oh right. There's an example by the way of a game. I don't even know. It like got patched over time and then some people like stuck with it and liked it but then like

I don't know. But Diablo 3 so it's worth noting that like despite the online controversy once things, once that's settled down and people started playing it first it started getting a lot of critical acclaim. It was almost like cyberpunk. And then players started saying, wait a minute. Like, this kind of sucks in a lot of ways.

There were a lot of difficulty, like, imbalance issues. And there was too much randomness. The end game just sort of sucked, I think, for her. Yeah, the end game really sucked. Like, the difficulty was all skewed. It felt like they were, the entire development period, I think they were kind of torn between, like, do we want to make something new or recreate Diablo 2 and, like,

what worked on Diablo 2? And that's always a really tough question. when you're making a successor to like one of the most popular games ever, one of the most beloved games in PC history. And then a guy named Josh Mascara, who was brought on to do the console versions of Diablo 3, wound up becoming director of Reaper of Souls, the first expansion, and wound up helming this effort to just like change the game

in a lot of ways that wound up being really positive and wound up changing the difficulty system and adding all these new controversial features, rolling in the console mode or like I mean even the fact that there was a console version in the first place. Man, so and the console version of Diablo 3 rules, rolling in the console version of Diablo 3 rules. Playing as a demon hunter with like twin sticks, super fun. Yeah, that game really became a game that I really like. Like I didn't love it when it first came out.

It was just like, okay, I'm just clicking stuff watching my life pass before my eyes. But like somehow watching my life pass before my eyes while I'm like playing with the controller on switch, fine. Totally fine with that. Can I tell you guys a quick, funny story? Yes. So when I went to Blizzard in 2016, and I was working on Blood Soin'Pixels to interview a bunch of people about Diablo 3.

They brought in a guy as part of like our interview gauntlet. It was like back-to-back interviews. And they brought in this one guy. They brought him in in pairs. So they brought in this one guy and then another guy. And the other guy I knew was a veteran who had worked on Diablo 3 for years and years. But the one guy, I looked him up on LinkedIn. I won't say his name in case it's embarrassing.

But I looked him up on LinkedIn and it said that he had just started like a year before. So I was like, oh, this is kind of irrelevant to me. This was years after Diablo 3 came out. Like, why, I don't really need to talk to him. So I spent most of the interview talking to the other guy. And then the first guy, I'll call him Joe. Joe, he talked a little bit, but I mostly ignored him. And then afterwards, I think it was like months later or maybe even a year later,

I was doing some more research. And I found out that Joe, who had kind of an unusual name, not a common name. There was another guy of the same exact name at Blizzard who had started recently. This guy had actually been a veteran. And like I could have been asking him all sorts of interesting things. But I didn't because I thought he was the other guy. So there were two guys of the same name at Blizzard. That's funny.

It's just like how big Blizzard is. Yeah, it's so funny. And it's like, man, too, the lesson here is if when you're going to interview people, do more research than just. looking up their name on LinkedIn. Just in case somebody else of the identical name. I'm like assuming that's the case. Just in case there are two people in the same name of that company. Have you ever emailed him and been like, hey, I'm really sorry? Yes. I saw him afterwards. I met him afterwards. I met him afterwards at a Blizzard Press for that and I was like, hey, I don't know if you remember. I don't

think he even remembered because it's not like I was ignoring him or anything. I just was addressing more of my questions to the other guy, but he was like still in the room and like, but yeah, it was pretty funny. All right. On that note, that's a lot. That's, that's a lot. That's my redemption story. Yeah, I mean, to kind of tie it all up and wrap things up, I think with cyberpunk, I think we will wind up seeing, like, if

I had to make a prediction, I think we wind up seeing. Yeah, like, or in a year, in a few months, by like the summer, I think we'll see headlines that are like, we'll see. Hey, cyberpunk has gotten a lot of better and improved. Because really, that's like what they needed, what I've heard from talking to a lot of people that worked on that game, they

needed more time and now they're going to have more time. The problem is the game already launched. and they made a bad first impression, but, like, still, they have time. I wonder, yeah. It'll be, and it'll kind of be able to if they can engineer in the thing, the core thing, which the game doesn't quite feel like that core thing is locked in, but it couldn't be there if they managed to do it.

It'll be very interesting to see if they can. It will be very interesting. Something worth noting that we haven't really talked about is that, like, oftentimes in game development, the developers of a game don't really know what a game is until very late in the process. And with a game like Cyberpunk, it's very easy to imagine people saying, hey, is this Deus X or is it GTA? Or like, what's the right balance here?

And then actually being able to play it and see it and see the final product can maybe help crystallize things in your mind in a way that you can really see when you were just playing unfinished builds or like your pieces of a game or something like that. So that's why this happens so often. Yeah. All right, why don't we take a break? And then we'll be back with one more thing.

One, two, one, two, three, three. Hi, everybody. My name is Justin McRoy. I'm Sidney McRoy. We're both doctors. Nope, just me. Okay, well, Sidney's a doctor, and I'm a medical enthusiast, and we create sawbones, a marital tour of misguided medicine. Every week I dig through the annals of medical history to bring you the wildest, grossest, sometimes dumbest, tales of ways we've tried to treat people throughout history.

Well, lately we do a lot of modern fake medicine because everything's a disaster, but it's slightly less of a disaster every Friday. Right here on Maximumfund.org as we bring you sawbones, a marital tour of misguided medicine. And remember, don't drill a whole thing. in your head. Hey, I'm Janet Farney, host of the JV Club podcast. Ah, high school. Was it a time of adventure,

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Find it on maximum fun. And we are back, Kirk Maddie. It is time for one more thing. I'm going to go first because mine is really quick. I've been watching with my wife, the TV show Fargo, on Kirk's recommendation. it is awesome. I love it. It's really, really good. We finished the first three seasons. We're up to season four. It is just a tremendous show and I think everybody out there should watch it. It's just, I mean, obviously it's a mystery, dark mystery comedy sort of thing. Not even a mystery. It's more of a dark comedy, like crime show. And every season so far starts with some like inciting event that's like a murder of some sort or cover up of some sort. And the rest of the season is all about that and the repercussions of it on whatever given time period. Every season is a different story, by the way. Totally different story.

So they're all like these short stories and just incredible cast, different cast every season that are just awesome. Carrie Coon from The Leftovers is in season three and she's amazing. And yeah, everybody should go watch it. It's on Hulu. Go watch it if you haven't. It's funny to think back. I've been enjoying your text as you watch this show, which I dearly love. And I'm looking forward to hearing what you think of season four because I haven't seen that yet and have sort of heard mixed things.

But it's funny to think back of when it first came out because, Because the idea of adapting this beloved Cohen Brothers masterpiece into a TV show, like it was Noah Hawley. He's great. He also made Legion and a lot of other things. He's a very talented guy. This is the showrunner. And they got big stars like Billy Bob Thornton is in season one.

He's amazing. He's great. But it was not a sure thing. And going into that show, I remember, I think it was Alan Seppenwall, a TV critic that everyone probably knows and that I like, he was like all about it. He's like, no, this show is great. And so I was like, oh, okay.

Maybe it's really good. And I still remember watching it being like, how are they doing this? Like, this feels like the movie Fargo. It has all the same elements, but it's just remix. And then each season does the same thing. Some civilian who gets in over their head committing crime and things spiral into this violent, you know, catastrophe, a cop who's like doing their best, like this odd, like re-evaluation of what family values are, like what American values are. And then season three, man, oh my God. All right.

Anyways, whatever. It's your one more thing. I won't go off. But I love this show. I love it. Kirk, why don't you just jump in years and then we'll let Maddie have time to give hers because it is very exciting. It's the only thing we all care about. But, Kurt, go ahead.

It's true. Mine is another show. It's a new show that I bet some listeners have maybe heard about but haven't seen. And it's the French Netflix show, Lupin, which is really good. I've watched three episodes or so. And this is a wonderful show. It stars Omar Sy as Not Our Seine. Lu Pan the Third, who is the famous French gentleman thief, sort of early 20th century literary figure,

who's then, of course, been adapted into a very famous anime. A lot of listeners probably know Miyazaki's Castle of Cagliostro. That movie actually, fun fact, was like one of my introductions to anime. I had this one friend, Brian, really cool dude, who was, I feel like you either had the friend who showed you all the cool anime and, like, comics and stuff, or like you didn't. And he was that for me. And he totally showed me like that. And like Vampire Hunter D. Akira.

He was the guy who showed me Akira. Cowby Bebop probably. That friend. You know, I think, I don't know if we watched Cowboy Bebop together. But he was the one who showed me the stuff that made me watch Cowboy Bebub when I saw it. I was like, oh, yes, this, I can jam with this. So Lupin is really, really, really cool. I don't want to say too much about it because it's actually really fun if you go in not knowing what to expect.

Like I knew it was going to be like capers and heists and stuff, which it is. and it does not, if you like watching people pull off heists, this is a great show. I recommend watching in French. There's a dub, but just whatever. It's like dark. Just watch it in the original language. It's fun to watch people speak French anyways, French rules. And it's just cool to hear them with their actual voices.

Omar Sy's is great, the star of the show. And it's just, it's a really, really great show that takes the idea of an adaptation and does something really cool with it. Like, he's not Lupin. Like, it's telling the story. Lupin exists in the world of the show. So you'll learn all about Lupin as well and about French culture and history and stuff. And it's just great fun.

And I really, really like it. I do like Heise. Oh, yeah. You both like it. It's so good. And so it's one season. It's on Netflix. It's one season, right?

First season is out. It's like a different kind of season structure because it's not, like, I think because it's like they do things differently in other countries. So it's like book one or chapter one, something like, and it's like five episodes. It's not that long. We're three in, and I can definitely recommend it. It's super good. Bing, Kirk here from the future.

We finished watching Lupin the night after I recorded this. I just wanted to update my impressions to say that the last two episodes do get a little bit goofy. It kind of requires a little bit more suspension of disbelief than the first three, though I still really like the show overall. But I would have mentioned that on the episode if I had a chance, and I have a chance because I'm editing it. Okay, back to one more thing. Bing. Awesome. All right, Maddie.

Give it to us. What's your one more thing? What you got? My One More Thing is a video game called Dark Souls. that came out in 2011. No one's ever played it before. I'm the first one. And I think it's a cool game.

It's an undiscovered gem that I've been checking out on Steam, got it on sale. Yeah. So a long time listeners from the split screen era will remember that I tried to play Bloodborn on this show. And that I had never played a FromSoft game before. I did not beat Bloodbourne. I did not care for BloodBorn. Bloodbourne is a game that involves a lot of rolling around on the ground. And I don't like that in a game as it happens.

You haven't seen me play Dark Souls. I do a lot of rolling around in Dark Souls. Not the way I play it. So I'm playing Dark Souls as a night character. So I'm blocking and I'm thinking. Yes, yes. And that's it, baby. I am not rolling at all.

And I am loving it. I'm loving it. And I, this is the first time I have played. I, okay, so I played a little bit of Dark Souls and I played a little bit of Dark Souls two years ago. I can barely remember it. I remember not liking them. I don't think I played them correctly because these are games that you can actually play wrong, which I'll get into in a second because there's so many different ways you can play

Dark Souls and you can play it wrong, but you can also just not like it. So I played this, this go-round with two friends. I streamed it to them on Discord. And these friends had already played Dark Souls before. And they walked me through it. And that was so much more fun than any other way I've ever played a FromSoft game, first of all. It ruled.

But I also think that I just like the way that Dark Souls is designed better because it's more, the way I'm playing it is more based on reacting to things. and it's a little more fighting gamey. Like having something based entirely around blocking and just thinking about your opponent in that type of way makes so much more sense to me than whatever Bloodborn is that I... Can you tell people how far you got just for context? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I have gotten past the tourist demon, which is the second boss of the game. There is a tutorial boss, the asylum demon, who kind of counts. Most people describe the tourist demon as like the first big choke point. because you have to fight the same skeletons over and over and over again in order to get to him. And then you have to beat him. And you get him to glitch and fall off of the wall. I didn't do that.

I had to actually beat him in the real way. And then I got past him and got to... Well, it's an accident. It's not like... I know. And I got to the bridge with the dragon on it. And then I went down and kicked the ladder so that I'm back at my bonfire again. And that's where I am now.

So I can... I've opened up more of the world. I've met that sun guy. I don't remember what his name is, but he's fine and cool and everyone likes him. That guy's cool. So I've been thinking a lot about the way that people talk about Dark Souls and how much it has irritated me up to this point, even though I understand that it is very well-intentioned. And the way that people talk about Dark Souls is often by saying things like, it's not actually difficult. The game tells you everything you need to know, and it's just that it plays very differently from other games.

and that's all true. Like it isn't a game, it's not a hack and slash, even though it looks like a hack and slash game. It's not a Skyrim. It's a very slow, deliberate form of combat. The stamina bar means you have to be really patient. You have to constantly be thinking about how many attacks you can do in a given second

and whether you even have enough stamina to move out of the way. And pausing and going slowly is so much more a part of combat in Dark Souls than any other game that isn't a FromSoft game, that it feels really weird and often bad to most people. And that is something that can seem difficult but isn't necessarily. It's more just changing the way that you think. But I also think that the game is just hard for certain people. Like I also just think it's hard. And I mainly think that because I remember how hard I thought Bloodbourne was

and how I played it for much longer than I've played Dark Souls in total, and I never got past the first boss in Bloodbourne, whereas with Dark Souls, I felt like after a couple hours, I kind of got it in a certain way. Like, I wasn't good yet, but I got what I was supposed to be doing, and then it was just a matter of training myself

how to do the thing over and over. And I don't know if that's difficulty or if it's just a brain thing. Like, I'm like, this game makes sense to me. So I have a thought about this, and I will say that we may in the future have an episode, in which we're going to get. There's a little teaser for people

and get a little more in depth on this. But I think one thing that I have seen is among people, especially, who prefer the Dark Souls branch of the From Soft Tree to the Bloodbourne branch, of which I would say Sekiro is then a branch off, is that Sekiro and Dark Souls both, or sorry, Sekiro and Bloodborn both kind of shunt you

into a certain way of playing. There's some variety in builds and weapon types, but they're both very aggressive games and they push you to play this way. Like Bloodbourne has the whole health-regent thing. And like you don't block with shields in that game at all. Where in Solis, you can have real builds like you're finding because you can play a Souls game, dual-wielding up like total decks build

with like lots of stamina where if you get hit, you take a ton of damage, but you don't get hit and you're dodging and you're not blocking at all. Like there are people, you'll see people who do those naked runs and stuff where they have no shield and they just don't get hit. it's just it allows you to do so many different things that you can find your own fun with the game your own way of playing and I think that does make the game more welcoming in a way just because there's so many different ways to play it yeah for sure Maddie I want to ask you did you have a moment when you kicked down the ladder and you realized and you got to the bonfire and you realized that you were at the same bonfire you had been at before like did you have a moment that was like holy crap like this is all interlocking because I remember that moment being awesome and like being the moment that's like holy shit this level design is on like a whole new And Dark Souls still is like beyond all the other from games. I mean, I love that. I feel like I also had a lot of moments,

classic Dark Souls moments of finding the game very funny. Like there is this moment where I was like, can I break boxes? And then I was like, oh, cool, I can break boxes. And then like the next room that I ended up in is the one where the skeleton leaps out of the box and scares you. And it's very like the skeletons can also break boxes. Like you can break boxes? So can the skeletons.

And like, I think I think in that moment you also have to break the boxes to like get to a chest or something. Like it forces you to do each thing as you learn each piece of information. And that stuff is a good level design. But I don't know. I'm just also very sympathetic to people who don't like this kind of game at all because I feel like I was that person. And now that I found one that I kind of like, I'm still, there's a shadow part of me that still hates it at the same time and is like, this is kind of dumb though. Like there were some moments where I would be like fighting the same skeletons over and over and then I would die for a stupid reason. And I'd be like, I know this is the point of the game.

Like, the point of the game is that I just died for a stupid reason. Like, I just didn't quite back up far enough at the right time. And I thought I did. And, like, now I have to fight 16 skeletons again. And, like, death is meaningless. And that's dark souls. It can be grueling. Yeah.

But it's also, like, stupid. You know what I mean? Like, it's, like, stupid that I spent hours in my life fighting the same skeletons over and over. Like, why did I? Why? Yeah. I've had those moments where I quit games for that very reason.

And that's why I bounced off blood borne in the first place. because I was like, why am I wasting my time with it? Yeah. But like with every game, and I think you might have hit that moment, but with every one of these from games, there's that one point that you just hit and you're like, oh man, I'm in the groove. I love this game.

With Bloodborn, it actually happens for most people after like the third boss or so. Maybe you had a quite gotten there. That's so far away. Oh, yeah. No, with Sekiro, it's like you don't get there until the Janitiro fight, which is like a third of the way through the game. With a lot of these games, it like takes a while before. So it's really a kind of.

commitment to get into these games. But yeah, we'll talk more about the broader soul stuff. It's hard to resist that conversation. But down the road, in a few weeks, we have an episode. There's a million things I want to say, but I'll save it. Well, I'm going to keep playing it. I'm going to see if I beat it. I would like to.

I'm really enjoying it more than I thought I would now that I've gotten past a point where I feel like I get it. So I'll probably talk about it more in the coming weeks. And we'll see if I still like it. Nice. Cool. Very exciting. Awesome.

All right. I think that is it for this week's episode. Hopefully we had enough patches and updates over the course of the episode to redeem ourselves from our rocky launch at the beginning. Kirk, Maddie, see you both next week. All right. See you both next week. Bye. Triple Click is produced by 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 maximum fun.org and find a link to our discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening.

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