Triple Click - Did The Activision Purchase Ruin Xbox? (Mailbag)

Episode Date: October 9, 2025

Did the $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard ruin Xbox? How do you build a new studio while simultaneously making a video game? And what's up with the lack of gender representation in esports? Jason, Maddy, and Kirk open up the mailbag and take some of YOUR questions on all sorts of things.One More Thing:Kirk: The Lowdown (Hulu)Maddy: Beauty and the Bester (Netflix)Jason: The Twisted Tale Of Amanda Knox (Hulu)LINKS:“No Girls Allowed” by Tracey Lien for Polygon: https://www.polygon.com/features/2013/12/2/5143856/no-girls-allowed/Katy Perrry sings “Last Friday Night” in Simlish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxyW6AJ-yIkTwenty Thousand Hertz on Simlish: https://www.20k.org/episodes/sulsulSupport Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinAll-New Triple Click Merch!! https://maxfunstore.com/search?q=triple+click&options%5Bprefix%5D=lastJoin 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

This podcast isn't going to save your life, but we'd sure like to think it'll make the next hour or so worth living. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we answer listener questions about the nature of art itself, and also Xbox, podcast production, the best non-human voice lines in games, and more. I'm Maddie Myers. I'm Jason Shire, and I'm Kirk Hamilton, and hello. Hello.

We're back again for another. episode of the show. We sure are. Here we are. Another episode. Here we are. We're still doing it. Let's do it. We're still doing it. Let's do it. Pumps up. Let's make triple click. I think I told you guys this offline maybe, but my daughter has discovered K-pop demon hunter. She's six and we will be having a family watch, the watch party movie night this weekend, which I'm very excited for. Did you see the sing-along version of that?

No, I did not. Yeah, but I'm worried she's going to be a little scared, but I think she'll be Well, you can always just turn it off and put the soundtrack on, and it's kind of the same experience. It's fine. For a six-year-old anyway. She already is just running around the house, singing, Golden all the time. Yeah, Golden is so catchy. I was browsing Netflix, and I don't know how much stock to put into Netflix's self-reported top-ten and numbers. Like, I kind of don't believe those anymore. They're just kind of, it's not top 10 most viewed. It's top 10 things we want you to watch. But if we do believe them, both K-pop Demon Hunters and the K-pop Demon Hunters Sing-Along, which are separate films, are both in the top ten films. I would believe that. I think that's believable. I don't know about the rest of the top ten. But I think there's plenty of data to support that.

And by the way, if you want to hear us talking more about movies we like and just sort of generally shooting the shit, as it were, you could be getting access to monthly bonus episodes, one a month, every month since we began this show, though those many years ago, and how would you get access to them? Well, you would go to maximum fun.org slash join. And you'd become a member, a monthly member,

and then you'd get those bonus episodes, but we don't just talk about movies or whatever. We talk about video games and the bonus episodes. And for example, in this upcoming one, we're going to talk about Hollow Night Silk Song, which we've all played, and we're going to spill the beans on it or the beads, the rosaries, as it were.

We're going to spoil everything. We're going to talk about, hornet. That should already be in your feed if you're a member already, but if you're not, then, hey, it could be in your feed if you go to Maximumfund.org slash join. And that would be how you'd listen to that. Before we get to what we're really going to talk about today, Kirk, you wanted to talk about Ghost of Yotai just a little bit more. So go for it. Yeah, I did. I just wanted to mention that I played a whole bunch of this game in the time between when we recorded last week's episode and now, which is actually funny because we're recording this episode a little bit early.

So it's only been a few days since we talked about Gustavio. It's like two days. But I played a lot of it. I just sort of let myself be a gamer for a few days. This game really lends itself to that because it's just this nice big open world game. And I just wanted to say that, I mean, we were pretty positive on it last week, but I wanted to say, like, I really like this game, actually. I've played a bunch more now.

I've upgraded my character. A whole bunch. I've gotten every weapon in the game. I've like upgraded all of the skill trees. I've uncovered a bunch of stuff that I had not found when we talked about the game. I've completed two of the sort of main storylines, the Onee and the Kasune. Or I guess I haven't quite completed the Kassune. It's quite long and involved.

But they're both really good, especially the Kitsune story. This is the sort of in the frozen north, the ninja story, is really cool. And there's another story that involves like the indigenous people of northern Japan that you kind of tell on the way to that area. And I would actually suggest anybody playing this game, do that storyline first, partly because there's some abilities that you unlock doing it that are really helpful in the rest of the game, but also because that's like, it's just really strong storytelling. So mostly I just wanted to say like, yeah, I'm really into the game. Like, I'm liking it a lot. I'm like still playing it. I'm going to keep playing it. It's such a relaxing thing. It's such a

well-designed open world. And I just really like the particular frequency that it's hitting. And I'm finding it to be even more different from Assassin's Creed Shadows now that I've played even more. This was something, Maddie, that you mentioned in our episode talking about it, and I wanted to really underline, there's this, like, mythic quality to everything in this game, and I think this game sits in a really cool place somewhere between grounded realism and total fantasy. Yeah, I love that. So Sekiro and Neo are two examples of games that are like samurai, ninja action that are fully set in a world where there's just like yokai everywhere, demons,

or just in the world, there's ghosts and monsters, and you're fighting totally outlandish things. And then Assassin's Creed Shadows is much more grounded, where it's like this is pretty much just the real world, even though you're in the animus and whatever. And I think that Ghost of Yote, it's similar actually to goats of sushi mode, actually maybe even a little more pronounced in this game.

It really is cool how it manages to be in this heightened world where, like, ghosts are kind of real and myths, you know, you learn that you hear these stories and you find these mythic characters and like they're real and you know there is this this wolf that follows you sort of mysteriously and like there are magical powers kind of but not really and it actually kind of explains how the whole game like every tree's leaves are falling at all times like every fight that you have is framed like this perfect samurai fight well to be fair the leaves are falling because the wind is constantly blowing every time you want to get somewhere new but even that is kind of mystical right but the trees never run

out of leaves. They just, they keep generating more and more leaves. There are no leafless trees in this game. So anyways, I really like that about it. But mostly, it's just super fun, man. Like the more I've played, kicked it up to heart difficulty, unlocked a ton of abilities. I'm going. I'm really, really enjoying it. So I wanted to just throw that out there now that I've played a bunch more of the game. Good to know. Okay, cool. So this week, in addition to some bonus yote talk, we are doing some burning questions. We are answering some questions from all of our fine listeners out there. As always, you can reach us at triple click

at maximum fun.org, and I'll say what I'll always say, which is that keep them short and you're more likely to be read. Keep them short, keep them weird. And we're going to start with a nice, short, weird one. Perfect, perfect length here. I'll read this one. This is from Fay.

Fay writes, Dear Jason, Maddie, and Kirk, this question comes straight out of the studio. Is art just as important as fighting cancer? Amazing question. I love this question. Mostly I loved this conversation on the studio. So should we recap this?

Maybe, Jason, can you, like, explain the context for this question? Yeah, so the studio, which is a show that we've talked about a lot and all love, is a show about this kind of Hollywood studio executive played by Seth Rogen and his misadventures throughout Hollywood. And in this one episode, he winds up at this gala with this girl that he's dating, who is a doctor and he winds up talking to these doctors and just kind of like gets involved in all these conversations where his importance is diminished by these doctors talking about how they save lives and operate on people and try to battle cancer and whatnot and he's like well yeah i just greenlit the cool aid movie um and although it's it's it's very absurd and hilarious it also gets to some

interesting questions about like the importance of art and seth rogan's character who is pretty, I would say, inapt in general. He brings up some interesting points about the importance of art. So I do think this is actually a kind of a poignant question, I would say. I think it's great. And my main memory from that episode that I'm going to highlight again here is Seth Rogen angrily, when retorting when being asked about a hospital room. They all have to leave because there's an emergency of some kind. He goes, and what'll be in that room? A screen. And I just keep thinking. about that as my takeaway for the episode and kind of my takeaway for what it's like to be sick in any context and kind of getting through chronic pain or any other problem you might have, even if you've only had a minor version of it. How are you getting through it? A screen, people. Yeah, I loved this episode. It's a funny episode because everyone in it is behaving badly and not making their argument very well.

Like the doctors are jerks, and they're clearly so self-important and think they're so great. And Seth Rogen is a bumbling fool as he is through the whole show and fails to kind of rebut them as effectively as someone who isn't Seth Rogen's character would.

But the fundamental question is great, and I think he says something so true, which is, I can't find the exact quote I was looking for it, but essentially one of the doctors is like, yeah, we save lives. Like, how can you be more important than that? And Seth Rogen essentially, says, well, you save lives, but art is what makes life worth living.

But they are not as important as medicine. Why does one have to be more important than the other? That's all I'm saying. Why can't they be equally as important as each other? Because they're not. I'm sorry, but if a parent has a child with cancer, they bring them to Cedars. They don't take them to the Cinerama Dome. Okay, okay, okay.

But once they get to Cedars, what is on the wall of every single room? Heart mine in earth. A screen. a television screen to watch movies on. People need entertainment art, whatever you want to call it. Look, you guys save lives. And I applaud you for that. Thank you.

But we, the artist, we make life worth living. No, no, no. People like movies. They don't need movies. They need doctors. And if you don't see that, then you're fucking delusional. You're fucking dumb fuck.

You don't call me a dumb fuck, because you are perhaps the most boring man. I've ever met in my entire life. You are! And I think that that's so true. It's such a beautiful statement. And as much as the studio is taking the piss and being silly and presenting these ridiculous characters, I think that they very much mean that.

I think that Seth Rogen believes that, at least, given what I've, you know, what I know of him and have heard him say about art. He is someone who, like, deeply loves movies and loves art. And I certainly feel that way. And I think that that's actually something that's, like, a beautiful and important thing for all people to keep in mind, especially right now. You know, amid the Trump administration's escalating carnival of horrors, it's so hard to just keep your head. And it's very easy to, like, lose your core and start to feel like you don't know what you're supposed to be doing.

And as someone who makes things, who makes art, who makes podcast, who makes music, I can lose track of the fact that that's what I'm supposed to be doing. And, you know, the Trump administration and all the horrible things that are happening, that's a fairly extreme situation. we have to hope that that will not always be the case. But I think that the conversation they're having in the studio just reflects a sort of broader and actually like less urgent version of the same conversation. You can make things. You can do things that don't literally save lives but still are important and still can make life worth living. And that's, I think, a really beautiful sentiment and something that it's just so easy to lose track of.

Yeah, I agree with both of you. And also to take it even one step further, I feel like the three of us are in a lucky position and that we create things that people read and hear and see. But creating art is just as important when you do it for yourself and nobody else actually gets to see it. Absolutely true. Totally true. I mean, I say this to people all the time who are learning music and like just learning a new instrument and they're like middle age and like, I don't know, I just finally wanted to learn piano, but I'm worried that there's no point because I'm not going to perform or I'm not going to be like a, you know, I'm never going to be great. And it's like, no, that is the point. Like the joy that you feel when you

edifying in and of itself. Yeah, just play a piece of music by yourself. Like, that is, like, an important part of your life. Like, just doing that is a good thing and makes the world better, even if you're the only one who ever hears it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. As someone with two small children who are constantly in, like, coming home from school, drawing, like, their drawings that they're doing.

But it's important to remember that art is, like, a part of, like, what's taught in school as a way to just, like, learn how to live in the world. So, yeah, definitely is important as fighting. And how to express yourself and learn how you really feel. And that's what's more human than that? So to answer phase question, yes. Art is just as important as fighting cancer. Maybe not more important or less, but just as.

The fundamental flaw of everyone, especially the doctors in that studio episode, is that they were trying to say my thing is more important. Right. Next question, Maddie. Yeah. So this question's from Chad, who writes, over the last few years, Xbox has changed from the company that offered a phenomenal deal with GamePass and seemed to give stability and a lot of creative freedom

to its second-party studios, like Obsidian and Double Fine, to a company that has repeatedly laid off thousands of employees, canceled games and shuttered studios, and tripled the price of Game Pass. You all have said that with the acquisition of Activision, Microsoft started expecting more profit from its Xbox division to justify its purchase. The acquisition seemed like unbelievable good fortune for Xbox at the time.

time, but in hindsight, did it actually ruin a great thing? What do we think? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I don't know if Activision just kind of like accelerated what might have happened anyway, or if Activision was the big like catalyst for Xbox current, mostly negative changes. I don't know the answer to that. We'll never know. We'll never know the answer to that question.

But no, I don't think the Activision would ruin a great thing. I think Xbox just kind of the dominoes just started with the Xbox one selling for $100 more than the PlayStation 4 and then like including a connect. And just like since then, yeah, well, long, long before. Yeah, way, pre pre, pre. And since then, just like you can trace that to then Xbox deciding to put all of its games both on console and PC at the same time, making it really point. list to own an Xbox console if you also had a PC. And then from there, going to like all this other stuff that they've been doing since then, including multi-platform and GamePass. And, yeah, I think it's, it was just part of this kind of like baffling sequence of

events for Xbox. But I don't know if that was the main reason that Xbox was a problem. But yeah, I mean, I guess that like Xbox offering this phenomenal deal for players and also giving creative freedom to obsidian and double-fine. That has all happened in the years since that kind of fateful Xbox-1 release. So they have done good things since then. I don't mean to paint the picture of it just being like a comedy of errors since 2013. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know the answer to this question. It's interesting that this question is framed from the perspective of how did this affect Xbox rather than how did this affect, say, Activision Blizzard or the small studios that Xbox bought. And those are, I mean, I guess there's,

those are a variety of different questions because it's going to be different answer for each studio. But it is kind of harder to consider what this means for Xbox only because Xbox is a part of such a massive corporation. And it's just very hard to tell, like, which decisions or which, you know, directions that Xbox was going are the results of Xbox decisions and which are the results of Microsoft decisions. And, like, especially given that Microsoft is so big that it operates in this kind of impasseh. imperative way almost, reacting to the market. It's just very hard to know, like, what would have happened to Xbox one way or another based on, like, different decisions that someone may have made at some point in time. Yeah. Well, so one thing I can draw parallel to is actually Activision itself and Blizzard as part of Activision, because I wrote a book about this. And so

when Blizzard was part of Vivendi, which was, which was quite a few years, they were part of Vendie games from, I believe it was 1998 up until the merger between Viveny and Activision, which was like the end of 2007. So about nine years. When Blizzard was part of Vendie, they had corporate pressure, sure, but they were also a very small part of a much larger corporation and they could get away with a lot more because if Blizzard, say, delayed a game, it would not affect Vavendi's stock price. And so it wasn't something that they then had to jump through hoops to justify.

But then when they became part of Activision Blizzard, suddenly Mike Morheim, the CEO, was going on quarterly earnings calls. And suddenly when he wanted to delay a game, they had to justify it to their investors. And they had to go through a lot more. And they were clearly, like when they did something and had an impact on Activision Blizzard stock. And so they played a much bigger role.

And so they had a lot more scrutiny on them from their corporate overlords, specifically Bobby Kodick. In the case of Xbox, I think they certainly weren't small before buying Activision Blizzard. But after buying Activision Blizzard for that much money, $69 billion, suddenly they were a much bigger part of Microsoft than they were before. And that always is going to bring in more scrutiny, which means less being able to get away with the sort of freedoms and kind of being able to spend years and years just noodling away on a creative idea.

Those freedoms, by the way, can be a double-sided sort. Like, that's not something that is necessarily good for developers having the kind of years of development that some of the Xbox projects had. But that said, I mean, I think that having that scrutiny can also. would be really tough. You know, here's a question. Do you think that Black Ops or Call of Duty in particular is like a notable part of this acquisition? Because it's, I'm thinking back to your Blizzard book. And the fact that when Blizzard released World of Warcraft, it suddenly had this massive hit on its hands.

And that changed things because, not only because they had to develop the game differently and run the game differently, but because they suddenly had this thing that made so much money that their decision making was affected. because it's like, well, we need to prioritize that thing that's making us crazy amounts of money. And in this case, I know Xbox got a ton of games when they bought Activision Blizzard, but they got Call of Duty. And it seems to me just looking at some of the reporting about, you know, the Game Pass price increase, that Call of Duty is like clearly become a major consideration for them.

Just because it's so popular, it's such a regular moneymaker, that they're having to almost shift their whole strategy to, to game pass and to consoles because now there's this opportunity. Like, well, we have this, like, game that everyone is going to play that's going to be so popular. So as a result, you know, we could jack up the price. Like, we could think differently because we have Black Ops. Do you think that, like, Black Ops plays an outsized role in that way? That's a great question.

Yeah. I mean, certainly could. I certainly wouldn't be shocked if this decision to boost the price was related to them thinking, well, like, we could probably get away with it because a lot of Call-A-Duty fans, they're like going to become subscribers or our subscribers already and we'll keep paying to play Call of Duty. Then again, the math no longer makes that much sense. Like when you rather just buy Calla Duty for 70 bucks.

Yeah. The number is getting really high and at a certain point it's like some of these games literally are $20 or $30 that are on Game Pass, like Soxong for example. I don't think we established us by the way, but the new price is in case people haven't seen the news, it's the new price. They just hiked it from $20 a month for the highest. tier of game pass to $30 a month. And that's now the only tier that gets you like day one game pass games like Call

a Duty. So yeah, to your point, Maddie, yeah, you're now paying $30 a month for these games and how many of them are you actually playing a month? Right. Is it really worth it? Yeah. And like thinking of that as $240 a year versus $360 a year is like helpful for me at least, $260 a year.

Now you're paying a lot. Like that is like that is several full priced, you know, $70 full priced games. Yeah. It's a good question. Yeah, could you maybe just buy Call of Duty? And maybe that's the only thing you need to buy. And even though it feels like that $30 is cheaper the first month, it maybe doesn't make any sense if that's the only game you're playing. It's funny because as soon as I saw that price increase, I thought the opposite from you, Kirk, I wasn't like, oh, they feel like they can get away with it. I was like, oh, the value proposition on their end must not be working out, like Netflix style where it's like, this is not paying for itself. And there's a price increase that's a tendon. with that. I have no evidence for that. That was just the assumption that I made when I saw it was this must not make sense math-wise on the other end for the developers. I don't know, though. We've all wondered that. Yeah. So I don't think, I think that this is more about the overall

business than it is about Game Pass. And I think a lot of the numbers are kind of squishy here, because when you're accounting for like what Game Pass is making versus how much you're spending on it, you have to think about lost sales as part of that. And that's where you get into, just imaginary number territory. Like how many people would buy X game if it wasn't on Game Pass? Like it's all just complete nonsense made up numbers. Right. So that's kind of like a strange thing. I think this is more about just like boosting profit margins across the entire business, which is what they've been trying to do for the last two years really since that Activision deal. They've had something like is it for mass layoffs since the Activision deal, which is that's

one way to boost profit margins is cutting costs. And then this is the other way, which is like trying to boost revenue by charging. anymore. So yeah, it's the other thing, by the way, we didn't mention this. And I don't think this was on the email, but this is coming after Xbox announced that they were going to hike some of their games to $80

this fall and then backtracked on that. So this could also just be trying to make up for not being able to do that. They're kind of thinking out loud right. We're really getting to see their work. Just some brainstorming. Yeah, and it's also after the handheld got announced and then they took a really

long time to announce the price of that new handheld. Like it does really feel like, yeah, pretty high. I can't remember it anymore. It's $1,000 for the highest end. It's like $600 and $1,000. I wouldn't personally be that interested in paying, but I've got a steam deck at home, you know?

I'm maybe not their target audience. So highest end steam deck is $6.50. Maddie, to be fair, though, that hardware is tariffs, which is a whole other world. Totally, but that's an issue. And, I mean, it just feels like just yet another example of Xbox kind of figuring it out as they go a little. Just improvising.

Well, if you think of Xbox, so Microsoft's whole big initiative now is AI. Everybody is talking about AI within Microsoft, right? If you think of like the way chat GPT functions and how it just makes things up as it goes, you can see what this all is happening, right? Xbox is hallucinating and they're working on getting rid of that, you guys. Well, Phil Spencer is actually just co-pilot in a suit right now. Co-pilot in a Psycho-Dot's shirt. We don't know that he's not.

Next question, Kirk, read this one. This comes from Christopher. Christopher writes, hi, long-time listeners since split screen. I have an answer, a question and a request. His answer is to the question that I asked about my archived interview with Arienne William, the creators of Hollow Night, where I mentioned that my voice sounded very different all those years ago. And he says, yes, that he agrees there's a noticeable change in my voice, which, yes, I think that that is true. Then his question is, what do you do production-wise for the podcast? We know Kirk edits the episodes probably every time, but is there anyone in charge of a topic schedule, keeping the pacing, doing joke revisions, et cetera? Let's answer this question. Yeah, we're normally doing multiple takes of a re-joke. We do workshop jokes. You know, Maddie I'll make a joke and I'll be like, that was pretty good, but let's try. Kevin Smith for punchup.

Give it to me with like a slightly reversed order there on the punchline. Well, I do edit them. I think I'll say that first. I edit every episode quite a bit. Just a lot of like pulling out overlap and removing some cross talk, making it just so that the ideas, like a lot of times when we're transitioning from one person to another, you know, one of us will be wrapping up a thought and the other will begin a thought, and then maybe both other hosts will say something.

And like one will just be a little, like Maddie, you'll say a little observation, and then Jason will begin a longer thought. And when Jason begins his longer thought, he says, well, you know, it's, you know it's actually interesting that this, this. And so that first well you know it was his kind of entry ramp. And then he restated it after we stopped talking and it was time for him to talk. So what I do is I'll cut out the entry ramp and slide over his actual beginning so that Maddie's little interjection, whatever it was, has, you know, space to breathe. So you'll kind of just hear me and my sentence. Maddie will say her interjection and then Jason will just cleanly begin talking. That's an example of like the

kinds of edits that I do on the show. Perfect example, because that's how we talk. So I just did one right there. You didn't hear it, but I actually just did one right there. And no one knows. I like it fair when people think that we're just naturally perfect podcasters. No one thinks that. There's no way. I'm sure they can tell the beauty of editing that is involved, surely. Bing! Editor Kirk here in the future. And you know what? I'm going to actually show you what just happened because you probably didn't hear it. There would be no way for you to know all the editing that just went into that tiny little back and forth. And this is actually a fun opportunity for me to show you a little bit of what goes into the editing of this show. So I'm going to play that

back and forth again, starting with me sort of wrapping up a thought. And then Jason and Maddie both begin talking. And here is the unedited version. So you can hear what it sounds like before I take the editing scissors and get it and start moving things around and getting every idea to kind of flow in a that will make sense when you listen to it. Here's what it sounded like with no edits. So you'll kind of just hear me and my sentence. Maddie will say her interjection and then Jason will just cleanly begin talking. That's an example of like the kinds of edits that I do on the show.

Kirk, I like it better when... That's how we talk. I like it. So I just did one right there. You didn't hear it, but I actually just did one right there. And no one knows. I like it better when people think that we're just naturally perfect podcasters. That there's no way. I'm sure they can tell the beauty of editing that is involved shortly.

Bing! Okay, back to Editor Kirk talking now, and that was the unedited version. So you could hear there was some cross-talk. Maddie and Jason both started talking at the same time. Jason tried to pick up what he was saying, but I was already saying something, so he stopped again. Then there was some sort of cross-talk because Maddie was still talking underneath what I was saying, and then Jason said something, then Maddie said something, and I was saying something along with her, so there was a little crosstalk there. So some little clean-ups and also some tweaks and adjustments to make the ideas flow. and make it clear who's talking. So you're kind of only focusing on one person at a time. Okay, so now we'll get back to the show, and I'm going to play that same back and forth one more time, but the edited version, and you can hear how it's different, and then we will continue the conversation. I hope you thought this was interesting.

It's always fun for me to kind of show what I do. Okay, back to the episode. Bing. In my sentence, Maddie will say her interjection, and then Jason will just cleanly begin talking. That's an example of, like, the kinds of edits that I do on the show. Perfect example, because that's how we talk. So I just did one right there.

You didn't hear it, but I actually just did one right there. And no one knows. I like it fair when people think that we're just naturally perfect podcasts. No one thinks that. There's no way. I'm sure they can tell the beauty of editing that is involved, surely. You know, I'm not sure. I think so, but also, like, I think you shouldn't notice ideally.

Ideally. I recently had the hosts of Know Your Enemy, Matt Sitman, and Sam Adler Bell came on. songs to talk about Bob Dylan. And I love those guys. I love their show. It was really fun to have them on the show. And it was fun editing them because it actually gave me a perspective on how edited their actual show is. It's not a huge thing. But like they just, you know, there are a little, there's a little more. There's a little more. A few more ums, a little more pausing, beginning a sentence and stopping and starting it over and like cutting all that stuff out and cleaning it up. I'm sure I didn't do the exact same job that their regular editor does. But it did

give me a perspective of, oh, right, like, everybody does this. You know, especially when you listen to, like, the daily or the Ezra Klein show or something. Like, those shows have got to be very edited. And so you're getting this very clean articulation of everyone's ideas. And certainly that is, that is something that we do as well. As for planning, I don't know, I've talked about editing, but maybe one of you talk about how we plan things. Well, we all contribute to that. We just talk about what we want to do. Yeah, we talk about what games are upcoming. Periodically, we'll check in with each other and do a little planning. meeting, usually to talk about upcoming releases, but then we intersperse burning questions

episodes like these ones and what's the deal withs and hot topic episodes along with that and try to keep a healthy mix of all of the above, depending on what's timely or interesting to each of us. Do you want to read his, Christopher's suggestion before we... Yes. Christopher's suggestion is, just a request slash suggestion. I've really liked the interviews that you've been running recently. I distinctly remember. the one explaining Rumble when we had a developer come on briefly to explain Rumble, the one with Casey Newton, where you talked about AI, the one with the creator of Date Everything,

and the and our episode of Tom Bissell, please use your vast contact network and give us more. Sure. Yeah, sure. Those were really fun. I think we'll be more interviews. I mean, I think maybe a couple a year ago. It's just that like having four people on a podcast can get a little unwieldy. It changes it. It's more work for me and it just really changes the vibe.

but I agree. Like I think especially, you know, Ray Chase and Tom Bissell, the Andor and Date Everything episodes. Those were just really fun. Like they were great and interesting. So I liked those as well, Christopher.

And yeah, we'll do more guests. I think a cadence of two or three a year is probably a good, a good cadence, maybe a couple more. Yeah, special guests. Special occasions.

All right. Make it special. Kirk, can you read this next one also because I think you should, you will be best primed to do these sound effects. This comes from chat. Maybe the same Chad, maybe a different Chad from earlier.

Maybe just our listeners are all chats. It's a two-chat up. It's just sometimes you've got to do a two-chat up. Chad writes, high, lowercase G gamers. During the Silk Song preview episode, Kirk mentioned that one of the best lines in a video game is a Zelda's voice line, ha, bapanada.

And later mentioned Hornet's phrase that sounds like, get good before you fight the radiance. This got me thinking about other classic non-human voice lines from games, some that immediately come to mind for me are lines from the elites in halote combat evolved, wart, wart, war, or pozzoli, and the Twylex in Knights of the Old Republic. Obviously, it's hard for a video game to have non-repeating lines or dialogue or phrases,

but what makes a good alien-slash-man-language voice line? What are some of your favorite voice lines of that nature? So good. Okay, so I have a thought on this. I'm no expert on this by any means. I'm curious to hear the two professional musicians give. some, give some thoughts. But my thought immediately is that like, um, it's important for there to be consistency across the whole game and for it to feel like it makes, it just kind of like,

has, I don't know, oral themes and makes kind of tonal sense. And Holonite and Soxong are really good at like creating this language that just like feels like it makes sense, even though it's all gibberish. It feels like these bugs are speaking to each other and speaking the same language even when it's nonsense to us. Another one that comes to mind is like Simlish in The Sims, which is the classic example of this. And that, again, sounds just very consistent across, even when it's gibberish.

But yeah, what do you guys think makes good non-human voice? I really just want to mention the time that Katie Perry sang last Friday night in Simlish. And I want to play a clip of it for everyone. Her finest hour. It was so funny. This was like when Katie Perry was on top of the world. And just a reminder of,

I actually honestly have to say that I appreciate that she was up for this. I do too, legitimately. She's like sung the Simlish version of the song in concert and stuff. It was great that she did this. And I just think it was very funny. And it was a good example of how strong Simlish is that, you know, you hear it in the context of the game and it's one thing. But it is very funny to hear someone, I guess, translating the lyrics of her song. know what the lyrics of last Friday night are, and now we can hear her singing in Simlish.

I wonder she sat down with someone. We did a story about this at Polygon that I can find for you, where we talked to the developers who helped create the Simlish version. And there are people whose job that is not their only job, but to come up with Simlish versions of words we know, or at least to approximate the feeling of phrases we know, so that you kind of get a sense that the Sim is saying something familiar. or that kind of sounds like English. Bing. Editor Kirk here, again, just really quick.

Maddie let me know that she went to find this article, and as it turns out, the Polygon article was based on an episode of the podcast, 20,000 Hertz, which we've actually referenced recently on this show. And that 20,000 Hertz episode was the one that was all about Simlish. And I've listened to it. It's actually really great. So we will link to that in the show notes if you want to know more about Simlush. Bing.

I mean, the Silksong team is much smaller, but I feel very similarly to what Jason says. where some of that as a voice actor is emoting very well in even the brief moments that we hear them, but also just the words they say, even though we don't understand them, feel like they match with the sentiment of what they're saying. Because we do get the subtitles. And in the Sims, we don't. We just pick it up. Yeah. And occasionally those words even sound like real words.

You know, I joked about the bug that goes, Jesus, when you run past him. But there are these moments. Kirk, hearing the audio clip on the episode that you played was so good. It really sounds like it. It really sounds like it. And there are, I can't remember them now specifically, but there are like four or five times where someone would say something where it sounded like they were like, fuck off or something. And you're like, I think that bug just told me to fuck off. And you have to imagine them sitting there being like, hey, as they put it into the game, knowing that it sort of actually sounds like a word in English.

Just imagine them in the voice recording. like Chris Larkin, like with this headset on, be like, no, I need you to say get good. No way. I need it to sound like this, but not quite. All right. Let's try to get through a few more. Maddie, you want to read this next one? Sure.

This one's from Ben who says, hi, y'all, Jason, I came across this quote in an article you wrote, which is, quote, over the next few years, cloud chamber tried to simultaneously build a studio and a game, which was a lofty challenge, end quote. that game being the new Bioshock for context here. Good context. Ben continues. I'm wondering, are there other ways that a new studio starting from scratch could get off the ground?

Are major publishers willing to give a new studio the time to form before having them start development? Is that a position that developers and artists would feel comfortable in, waiting to start work? I'd love to hear more insights on how studios get started from scratch if you've got time. Thanks. Yeah, that's an interesting question because, like, building a studio is probably the toughest part of game development. And I've heard all sorts of stories over the years about

like how important team chemistry is and how this industry is just kind of short-sighted layoff cycles just rip teams apart and potentially cost their companies a lot of money in the long run just trying to build new teams as a result. So starting a studio and finding the right people, hiring them, training them, that's a very lengthy process. Nobody's found like a real solution to this problem of like trying to start a studio and build a game at the same time. Trying to start a studio and build a game as high pressure as Bioshock 4 is like certainly a lofty task. Sometimes what companies will do is they'll be like, all right, we're going to start a studio and have them do this smaller stake project. Maybe it's a smaller type of game. Maybe it's a remake.

So they can just kind of like get their development pipelines going and figure out how to talk to other and work with each other. But yeah, super tough. And then also, I mean, I think that like, um, even the concept of waiting to start work is kind of a funny one because a lot of times in game development, the work that people are doing is just kind of like, um, made up. Maybe it's doing stuff that they know will never see the light of the day, but it's just like a useful way to, um, maybe it's prototyping an idea and seeing if it works. Or maybe it's a way to test out the pipelines. It's just by like making stuff that will never actually work or you're just kind of like, uh, treading water while you figure out what the game is going to be.

Who knows? There are a lot of different kind of ways to do that. Are major publishers willing to give a new studio the time? I mean, who knows? No. I think it's kind of, it's baked into a timeline is that time of just like building the team and trying to figure out what that looks like. But it's definitely one of the biggest challenges in game development,

especially if they're working with like new tech and not like an engine that is already established. Yeah, it's a tricky question just for any collaborative, creative group, because you kind of find out who you are by making something. I mean, this is true of bands, right? A lot of times you'll put together a band because you have a specific show that you have to play, and then you work on that, and you find the musicians that you need, and you hire everybody, and you start to play it. And then if it's like a regular show, you do it a bunch of times, and eventually you kind of become a band, and you figure out who you are as musicians. But it's a totally different. different proposition to get together and like spend some time just figuring out who you are. I

watched the Mars Volta documentary fairly recently. I made an episode about them last season of Strong Songs. And their documentary, it's really great. It's called Omar and Cedric, if this ever gets weird. And those guys had been in a band already. And then they decided we want to make something new. We want to make a band called the Mars Volta. Their last band at the drive-in, like fell apart. And then they actually had this period of time where they were like in this crazy room with all this recording gear and instruments and they like got all the players they wanted and they were just like let's figure out what this thing is like what this band is and it actually sounds amazing like it was this amazing time of like creative exploration they knew how to be in a band

they knew what they wanted to do they just had the time to figure it out and then they made delas in the comatorium which is like you know the one of the greatest albums ever made so it's hard to imagine a game studio doing that even though with a smaller studio it would be possible if you like figure out, you plan to have that time, like you were saying, Jason, like let's just get, you know, whatever, our kind of small team together, and we're just going to spend a year, like, talking and trying stuff and making things and, like, figuring out what we want to be and what we want to make. It seems luxurious, but it is technically possible. Yeah, although sometimes that can result in disaster, because if you don't feel any sort of sense of urgency,

sometimes you just, like, take forever to ship something, and then when you ship something, It's kind of like, well, this is our little baby that we spent seven years on. Better be a hit or else we're fucked. It would need to, you'd need to be like, we have until this hard cut off. And then we like have to shift. Like you'd need to be very disciplined. Yeah, man. The band comparison is really an interesting one because of the sizes of the teams involved.

And how games these days, like the big budget games need to be in the hundreds. and the thought of a band jamming as 400 people is just a hilarious one. Yeah, it's funny. I mean, I'm really thinking of it's just such a quintessential story, but the story of Fulbright, when they first got together to make Gone Home, it was four people, they were in a house. It was very much like a band, like the story was, it was kind of romanticized even and told like a band narrative.

But if you had a smaller indie studio of that size, you could actually do this that would make this kind of approach possible. Yeah, if you're trying to make a, double or AAA game. Like it's just, there's just way too many people. It's too expensive. It just doesn't seem possible. I will read this next question from Ryan. Ryan writes, why is there such a noticeable lack of gender representation in e-sports? It feels like I only see men playing and competing with a small spend of women limited to casting in commentary roles, even in a variety of game types, mobas, MMOs, FBS, RTS, Fending games. The biggest exception I've seen is the games

done quick charity events where there seems to be a large set of women, trans, and genderqueer folk. I recognize this is a complex topic that likely involves how games have been are marketed, gender roles, power dynamics, and more. What insights and thoughts do you all have? This is a pet topic of mine. I've been Googling studies about this since I was a teenager because I was a teenager who played competitive fighting games and first person shooters and was often in environments and tournaments that were entirely men. And I was like, why is this? What is up with this?

And I feel like I have an encyclopedic knowledge of so many studies that have been done over the years on why this is the case. And it's part of what kind of radicalized me, as it were, to believing that gendered socialization is a real thing and it impacts our behavior a lot more than you would think. and that like a lot of innate quote-unquote differences between people aren't as innate as we might think they are, especially between the two genders. I think there are more than two, but for the sake of scientific studies, usually they just stick with the two. And some that I think are really

interesting are a lot of times women will underestimate their abilities. There's tons of studies about that, especially when it comes to tech, STEM, computer literacy, period. And that's like shown to be influenced by media that they consume and stereotypes. To refer to the marketing question, there's a really good story at Polygon by Tracy Lean called No Girls Aloud that we can link in the show notes. It's a really long encyclopedic explanation of how games marketing in the 90s got super fixated on the young boy demographic. This is like peak Game Boy has boy in the name console marketing era.

That was really effective. A lot of people were like, oh, video games are for broken. boys after the 90s. And I think many of our listeners remember that time period. And also, basically, no matter what kind of sport you're playing, if you believe you can't do something, you will be worse at it. And that can, like, give you the yips, as it were. And so, like, that piece of gender socialization is really interesting. But also, you'll put yourself in roles that you're told you should inhabit. And there's a lot of women who play as healers in games. And there's a lot of social pressure for women to play as healers.

And there's some really interesting studies on that as well, especially if they're like, they have a boyfriend and they're playing the pocket healer for their boyfriend who's playing as the DPS. That's a really common, like, relationship dynamic. That and women are pretty strongly discouraged against being competitive, period. It's considered unattractive in society. Now, I think that's wrong. But, you know, that's just a fact.

And like, it's just the way that our society's set up. I think that's very slowly changing. I've seen it change in my lifetime, which has been really, really cool. I do think that because games done quick, it is a competitive environment, but it's very community-oriented as just a subculture. And I think that that changes the dynamic of the assumptions that people outside of it make about how welcoming it would be in a good way. Whereas competitive games, a lot of women and girls are looking at that and they're being

told over and over by society, like, that's not supposed to be for you. It's going to be unattractive if you do that list goes on. And like, that's kind of sad to me. But I think that plays a huge role in it. And it really ends up contributing to just the overall makeup of those events. But again, I've seen it change. Like, yeah, there's only a few notable women we can name that, like, compete in StarCraft or fighting games or whatever.

But there used to be none. And so there are some changes. And that's cool. Can I, I have been thinking about something with gender dynamics for a long time that I think is interesting or noticed something or had an observation, which is that I think this is obviously a stereotype, so obviously does not apply to everybody. But kind of broadly, the stereotype is that men, when they socialize, like to be doing something together, while women tend to be better at socializing just talking to each other, just sitting and talking to each other. And I think as a result of that,

like a lot of the men I know, we get together and play a game together or watch TV, watch a football game together or whatever it is, whereas the women will just sit and chat at the coffee table. And so maybe that is at least one reason why a lot of men might have kind of had a controller in their hand more often playing against their friends, playing competitive games while socializing where women might have, or even young girls might have just been doing other stuff. Because it's also just, it's socially normalized. Yeah, totally agree. I mean, I think that gender dynamics play a huge role in that for sure, just from the socialization perspective. Like, it's more socialized in women and girls growing up to talk to each other with no barriers to entry.

And that's like a sad thing that for boys that's not as normalized. Do you think that's a culture thing as opposed to an innate gender? I think it's a culture thing, yeah. And in part because I was never good at it as a kid. And so I'm like, I don't know. I feel like different people are different. But I also like remember being told I was weird for doing things the way that I did them. and like kind of learning feminine traits.

Like I really remember feeling that way a lot growing up and being like, oh, it's like weird that I'm not girly enough. I mean, I also like, I have the queer experience on top of that. So like I'm not a perfect example of any of these things. But yeah, I think some people can probably relate to that to being like, I don't really like fit into my gender role as much as I'm supposed to. That's weird, right? It's not that weird.

A lot of people feel that way. And I think that's fine. Yeah, I think those are all great thoughts. I don't have a ton to add, or I mean, I could go on forever and we could talk about this for a long time because it's a big topic. But the main thing I'll add is, yeah, I think that I want to underline what you were just saying there about how that reverse dynamic, like the fact that a lot of men don't feel comfortable just sitting and talking to one another is a big problem. You could argue that the entire state of the world and all of the disasters we're currently facing or because men are not good at sitting and just talking with one another or at least at talking about their feelings. And so it's like this is kind of like it's the other blade of the double-edged sword or whatever, the other way that it cuts. And just something funny that I'll share from my own life is that I have certainly found that in making friends with other men in Portland, like having a kind of group of guy friends that I hang out with, we definitely arrange our social gatherings around something for a long, you know, I have a tabletop gaming group that is also just a group of my friends.

And for a long time we were playing Gloomhaven, Frost Haven. We played all these board games together. And we still have a weekly gaming night. It's every Wednesday. More often than that, we just go meet up at someone's house or at a bar, and then we just sit around talking for like an hour or two. Like, we just sort of talk. Yeah, because, like, as it turns out,

if you really want to get together to talk and you're using the, like, activity as an excuse, sometimes you're like, okay, hang on. I don't, let's not play. Like, let's just talk about whatever, this thing or that thing. And it winds up being really nice. So we've kind of morphed from the one type of socialization into the other. They're both great.

I mean, it's fun to play games with your friends. I'm not saying all of us should just be talking all the time. I mean,

you know. No. God knows how the weekly gamer night. And we're gaming. We're not just talking. We're freaking gaming. Yeah.

I mean, there's some good, there's some things where you have an excuse that it's kind of like you're doing something, but you also are mostly just talking. Like I have a poker

pretty regularly. And that's like, you're mostly talking while you play. And it's mostly an excuse to get together and just hang out with people. We do this thing. every week called triple click that you say is like a podcast but it's really

just an excuse to hang out with each other and talk for an hour or so every week for sure yeah I don't mean to whatever of course I'm not saying anything absolute here that all kinds of different activities are good and actually when you don't know people that well if you're getting to know people having an activity

is great and like with this group of friends we got to know each other by playing Imperial Assault and Gloomhaven and we used to play the games a lot more and over time we've just become friends and now like very good friends and so it's a lot easier for us to just sit around and talk because we're really comfortable with one another yeah that's nice that's good

once again big thanks everybody sent in questions and you can reach us a triple click at maximum fun.org if you too have a question that is burning in your back pocket and you just got to pull it out and throw it at us let's take a break and we'll be back with one more thing

now everybody knows that the greatest generation has always been Max Fun go-to podcast for old Star Trek recaps. But what my theory presupposes is, what if it isn't? In a shocking turn of events, Greatest Trek, the comedy podcast covering New Trek, has gone through a temporal wormhole back to the very beginning. Because we are now reviewing Star Trek the original series.

That means when you subscribe now, you'll get episode-by-episode recaps of all the 1960s style action and intrigue, along with all the jokes and fun that make Greatest Gen and Greatest Trek the number one Star Trek podcast is out there. Subscribe now to Greatest Trek on maximum fun.org. Hey, gang, it's Jesse Thorne, host of Bullseye with Jesse Thorne. We are ringing in 25 years of Bullseye this fall. That's right, listener, 25 years.

I started the show in my dorm room at UC Santa Cruz. What does that mean for you? Well, we'll have a whole month of special shows new and old, for one thing. We are putting on live shows in Los Angeles, New York, Santa Cruz, got guests like Adam Scott, Royward Jr., and Rebecca Sugar, just to name a few. And on October 9th, I will interview 25 people in a row. You can watch that live and streaming on our YouTube channel. I hope you'll plan on celebrating with us. That's maximum fun.org slash events. Thanks. And we are back. Guys, we got an email this week from someone

who I won't say their name, but they were talking about, remember last week we were talking about skipping advertisements on a podcast while driving. This person said, I'm just going to read this real quick. Love the pod. Absolutely fundamental part of my week. I listened driving to work on the subject while skipping advertisements of driving. I live in London and was caught by the police doing so last week. I was pulled over, given a 200 pound fine and six points on my license.

Stay safe, kids. So, no, once again. I just saw them on their phone and they got pulled over for that. Yeah, just like, I guess, skipping podcast ads. So once again, shout out to us for not having ads that you have to skip. And if you are driving, I hope you didn't just skip past those promos. I hope you didn't do. Unless you have, I guess it's much easier to do if you have like the dashboard on your car and you can just press the button while you're driving.

Like car play or whatever. Yeah, still a little unsafe. You just like have a little zen meditative moment while they're playing, you know? Just be alone with your thoughts. Maddie, what you just said could be an ad. Have a Zen moment by downloading our new app. Meditation X. Well, it wasn't.

No one paid me to say that. I don't know anything about any meditation apps. You know how it's actually, it is technically against driving laws to use your phone when you're driving. Like in some states. But I don't know that I've ever heard of that being enforced, especially lately. It just seems like no one enforces that. I am curious if you are listening to this. If you like recently have.

had an experience like this in America. Like a cop has actually seen you skipping ads or like interacting with your phone and they've pulled you over. I would love to know about it or if you know somebody. Because I'm very curious if this has happened, if this happens to anybody. Yeah. I've never heard of this in my locality. So my dad got pulled over recently for using the phone while driving, but it was because

it was too his ear. It was on the phone. I do think that it's very hard for someone to actually see you like looking, like using your phone and like get away with that. That's very difficult to like catch in the act. But I don't know. Yeah, that's a good question. Yeah, I mean, how many ads were you skipping?

We, we, I didn't tell us listeners. Man, some of these podcasts I listen to though, I have to just skip and skipping. There, yeah. I know what you're talking about. I have had times. Yeah, like you're talking about Lassie. You know, since we talked about it also, I want to, I want to just mention like, most of the ads that I'm complaining about are the ones where in the first seven minutes of the podcast, you have like a giant three minute chunk of ads. Yeah.

Because a lot of hour long ads, they like begin and they're like, welcome to the show. Okay. We'll be back. after these ads and then there's just ads and I get that that's where the most money is because the advertisers pay the most for like the pre-roll and the like first mineral spots but woof I really think that it like it really does degrade your listening experience so anyways just to add a little bit of specific criticism there thank God for listener support and we love all the listeners who are able to make this show possible all right let's do some one more things matty kick us off okay so

Dina and I have been watching a bad show called Prison Break, and while we've been watching it together, she said, I saw a documentary about a real-life prison break that is really good. And she engages with a lot of very dark true crime that is kind of beyond my capacity. And I would describe this as like on the edge, not for kids. And I will explain why.

This is not, in the show Prison Break, all the characters are innocent. You're really kind of rooting for them. And it's very silly and don't. Prison Break is one where the guy has like the tattoo of the prison on his back. Yeah, he like tattoos the prison on his, look, I don't watch. Just making sure I remember that. No, no, we don't even talk about it.

Yeah. It's silly. Well, quote unquote, watching prison break. Anyway, so the name of this documentary miniseries, it's on Netflix. It's called Beauty and the Bester. And that's because Bester is the last name of this guy who is known as the Facebook rapist. He was in prison for very good reason. He pleaded guilty to two rapes and a murder.

His full name's Thabo Bester. And he is also like one of those terrifying charismatic people who just seems to have the ability to just mastermind anyone, including multiple prison guards, were in on his escape. It's wild. And the other character, the sort of like Bonnie and Clyde character in this is this gorgeous female doctor who falls in love with him and helps him as well. And it's just wild. It's a wild story. Wow. All takes place in South Africa.

So I wasn't familiar with any of the particulars. But the fun part that you two will also like is that the people who broke this story, all journalists. The cops could not figure this out. And that is just a really cool part of the documentary is that you've got kind of multiple journalists talking heads who you get to hear about how they tracked down these kind of main characters, what happened. And they did have help from one guy in law enforcement who leaked the story to them because he was like, no one's going to find these people. I'm going to leak this to the press. And then they took it from there.

And that part of the story was really wonderful to me. Everything else about it is just absolutely harrowing and concerning. But I recommend it. It was a wild ride. It's called Beauty and the Bester. And again, it's on Netflix. So if you like that kind of thing, whof, that's a good one. Kirk, what's your own more thing?

Thanks. Well, speaking of journalists, I have a recommendation for a new TV show that's about a journalist. And here I am again recommending a Hulu show after watching three episodes. And I'm going to tell everyone that I think it's awesome. And then you'll check back in with a two more things in a few weeks. And I'll be like, it's pretty good, but you know, a little flawed. No, that was what I did for Alien Earth. Actually, I think this is on even more solid ground. This is a show called The Lowdown, which is the new show from Sterland Harge.

show, the creator of reservation dogs, beloved by me and Maddie, I know. Amazing show. And this is the new one from him. And apparently every character actor who watched Reservation Dogs and liked it and wrote him an email saying, hey, can I be in whatever you work on next? Because this is just a character actor, extravaganza. And it is a really, really good show so far. We're three episodes in.

I just watched this week's episode, which was killer. And I absolutely love it. So The Lowdown stars Ethan Hawk as a Tulsa freelance investigative journalist. He calls himself a truth-storian. And he's a real piece of work. His name is Lee Raybon. And this is Ethan Hawk at his best. He is playing this kind of shambolic, slightly manic man whose life is constantly falling apart

and who is always on the heels of some new story. Real quick, is this based on something or this is totally just a fictional story? This is totally fiction. It's essentially a Tulsa Noir is how I would describe it. Tulsa, of course, in Oklahoma, similar to the setting of reservation dogs. And like reservation dogs, the load on features many native actors and like a lot of just sort of Native American storylines and characters and stuff, which is just a cool and interesting thing about it. So Ethan Hawke is like, he's a crusader for justice, Lee Raybon. He is always trying to expose, you know, whatever is going on behind the scenes.

He's a bit of a conspiracy theorist. He has a big conspiracy board in the apartment he stays in above his independent bookstore. But he's not wrong about things exactly. And while he's a total disaster, like he's not a guy that you would really, he would be so exhausting to be friends with because Ethan Hawk is such a great actor and the character is so well written, he is like really, really fun to watch. And like just a great time to be around. And then, of course, the supporting cast is wonderful.

Kyle McLaughlin plays the head of the Washberg family who are this very powerful political family. Kyle McLaughlin, of course, Agent Cooper from Twin Peaks. He's running for, I think, Governor of Oklahoma. And he's kind of, you know, Lee Raybon is obsessed with him and has been, like, reporting on him. Keith David is in it. Of course, the wonderful Keith David with his beautiful voice playing a private investigator.

Gene Triplehorn turns up. And then Tim Blake Nelson, who Cohen Brothers fans will recognize from, I don't know, everything, he's one of the main characters of a brother where are thou. he plays the sort of black sheep of the Washberg family who at the beginning commits suicide. And it turns out he was like a closeted gay man whose family didn't accept him. The Washberg family are very successful. He shoots himself or at least appears to and has left all these notes behind that are sort of explaining what happened. And Lee Raybon gets onto this story and becomes obsessed with it.

And then each time he finds a note, Tim Blake Nelson sort of appears and he reads the note in, you know, like he's right there with them and it's almost like the characters look at him and can see him. Family can be a peculiar thing. I love my brother Donald, but he's in a league with agents of evil. Wait, wait, wait, read that again. I said he is in league with agents of evil. Donald is attempting to feather his nest. Hell bent on satisfying his ambitions.

And he will use this family as so much fuel for the fires of his greed. which if you've watched Reservation Dogs is something that I think Sterling Harjo really likes to do, is he thinks of the dead and the living as sort of existing in the same world. And so there's this kind of, it's not a magical realist show at all, but it just presents the words of the dead and the stories of the dead as happening now, like as happening just simultaneously with reality. Anyways, this show is so funny. It's so good.

It's so chaotic. It feels quite a bit like the Big Lobowski, a show that I actually. recently watched. It has a kind of Cohen Brothers chaos energy where there's a lot of stuff happening at once. The protagonist is nowhere near as passive as the dude from Lubowski. Like Lee Rayvon is actively going out and doing things. He is very reckless, constantly just like mixing it up with really unsavory characters and a really relentless guy. But it's, I don't know, it still has a sort of Cohen-y energy. I just, it's so beautifully shot. It's so well written. If you've watched Reservation Dogs, which I would say is easily one of my favorite TV shows,

of the last 10 years. It's an amazing, amazing show. It was this shape-shifting show. It could be anything it wanted to be from episode to episode. You never knew what you were going to get. And just Sterling Harjo is clearly an incredibly creative and thoughtful writer and showrunner. And so this show has all of that going for it, plus a bunch of, like, great character actors in addition to all of that. So I really just am in love with it so far. I have no idea what's going to happen. It's not really, like, I don't know if the mystery is going to be satisfying in the end, but it's not really the point. Like this is a show where it's just about the characters

and about the themes and about these surprising insights into life that you get every episode and just the wonderful performances, especially Ethan Hawke, who is just such a great actor and is having so much fun and it's just a joy to watch him.

So yeah, I really highly recommend this. This is the lowdown. It is on Hulu. Give it a watch. Sounds awesome. Sounds fun. I also watch this show. I'm not sure I recommend it.

Are you guys familiar with the story of Amanda, Yes, of course. I am because you texted me about this and I looked at the show up and I was like, what was that again? And then I remembered so a little, but you can probably refresh listeners. I didn't know anything about her other than maybe like hearing her name. Like her name sounded vaguely familiar, but I didn't really know anything about her. So the show I watched is called The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox and it is from her perspective.

Amanda Knox is a woman who in 2007 was in college and studied abroad in Italy and her roommate was murdered and she was accused of the murder by Italian police, and it became a media sensation, both in Italy, and in the U.S., Italian press dubbed her as foxy noxie because she is a beautiful woman, and there was all sorts of kind of sexual elements to the case and to the prosecution's case against her. There was also, there's a whole lot to impact here, including the way that the Italian legal system works, which I think would come off as draconian if you live here.

And kind of ridiculous if you live here in the United States. Just as an example, here in the United States, juries are sequestered and not allowed to be exposed to media coverage about a case, especially a high-profile case, that would have media coverage. Whereas in Italy, it's totally fine. And anything leaked by prosecutors and, like, lawyers can just be heard by juries. And it's, like, considered part of the legal system. is just the media's impact on it.

Anyway, this documentary, it is told from Amanda Knox's perspective, and Amanda Knox herself actually played a big role in creating the documentary. She was involved. And it's interesting. It's eight episodes. It really should have been six because two of them are just kind of like post everything happening and are just a real waste of time, just a lot of kind of clunky monologuing.

The writing overall is really uneven. I would say. There's a lot of just purple prose and narration from Amanda Knox that is a little off. The woman who plays Amanda Knox, Grace Van Patten, does a pretty good job of capturing her, and she's a captivating figure. And the story itself is really, at least the way that it's told here, is really infuriating, just watching what she has to go through, the kind of the unfairness of it all, the police interrogations, the tricks that they use. At a certain point, a big part of this whole case was that she signed this document that blamed someone else, the bartender, where she worked,

like her boss at the bar, who was a black man. She blamed him for the murder. And he was brought in and his life was kind of ruined as a result. This fictionalized version, The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox, makes the case that, like,

she only did that under coercion from the police and prosecutors. And she was, like, in a haze after, like, not being able to use the bathroom and not sleeping. and just it was all in a foreign language to her. She wasn't allowed to have lawyers or interpreters there, and it just sounded like a total disaster.

The caveat here, and I think that, like, as I was watching this, I just kind of had that feeling in the back of my head is that this is all just Amanda Knox's one perspective, and it's, like, very much about her side of the story, and we don't really know what wasn't told or what's left out of this version of the story, but it was still interesting. I don't know.

I definitely don't love it as a show, but just even getting to go, like now going down the rabbit hole of learning the Amanda Knox story, it is an interesting one in that a lot of people believe it's a miscarriage of justice and certainly reading about the way that the Italian legal system works. I mean, that's certainly the most compelling argument against, like that, that it is kind of a fucked up thing that happened to her. A lot of people online also have raised questions about like holes in Amanda Knox's story and questions about evidence and different elements. I don't know.

I went down a rubble. I won't get into all of this stuff that I was reading about. I get it. It's like the kind of thing you watch and you Google everything after it and you're like, I got to know more. Soon you're reading court documents. Exactly. Well, it's the type of thing with this story in particular,

because this is a fictionalized miniseries that is told very much from Amanda Knox's perspective, if this story in particular, it's like you really want to know the other side. Like what's missing? What's left out of here? Because this is not journalists trying to tell the entire story to the best of their ability. This is like one woman's version of the story. But like I'm glad I watched it because it's an interesting story and it's interesting to hear her perspective. The show itself, like I said, it's uneven.

A lot of it is just messy and kind of bad. But like her performance is good and just hearing the story is interesting. I very deliberately like didn't read anything about it until the show was over because I just wanted to see it unfold in the show. And then, yeah, it's just, it's like, it's one of those stories where you just kind of leave it with an icky feeling. The other thing I'll mention is that the family of the victim, Meredith Kirshner, have come out and just kind of criticized Amanda, criticized this show, been like, she's made it all about her when our daughter was the woman who was killed. And they're still grieving as a result of that. So that also just adds a layer of nuance to this whole thing. There's also that the show tells the story.

The other kind of main character is the guy that she was dating at the time, who she had only been dating for a week. And he also was accused and convicted of murder and went to prison with her. And he's become a pariah as a result. His life has been ruined. He can't find a job and so on and so forth. So it's really just a tragic story. And I came away from it, like still not.

being clear on exactly what all the facts are, but just feeling like, man, this is just a fucked up story all around. And man, the Italian legal system really seems to have some issues. Yeah. Yeah. The other thing I'll say is that like it seemed like it was really a media battle and there's a lot in there about the media. It seems like American media like was more on Amanda Knox's side and maybe still is more on Amanda Knox's side, whereas Italian media was very much and still very much believes that she was guilty. There's also this third part. who, I guess this is kind of a spoiler for real life, but there's a third party who was also convicted of the murder and there's a lot more compelling evidence that this person did it.

And the prosecution's argument in Italy was that Amanda Knox also played a role. But yeah, it's pretty rough stuff all around. Again, I don't know if I would recommend watching this, but the story reading about it is pretty wild. It's tricky with these fictionalized adaptations of real stories. your description makes me think of the Anna Delvey series that I watched on Netflix. That's the best

comparison. Which had that same feeling where I was like I don't feel like I'm getting the whole story here. So I don't know like any takeaway I take from this just feels like useless because like this just doesn't feel like the whole story where compared to something like the dropout which was based on a work of journalism. It was based on

bad blood which was like a very well reported book and like you know was based on Wall Street Journal reporting before that like it had a whole lot of reporting behind it. It was still fictionalized, but it just felt more substantive because you felt like you were getting a more complete story. So there's like different versions of this type of adaptation. Yeah. And I think in both of those cases, we have a better idea of the facts of what happened, whereas here, nobody will ever know, like, what really went down in that house on that night and how it all unfolded. But yeah, you're right that it's like, it's never quite as satisfying from a like wanting to know the real truth. point of view to get the fictionalized version. It's interesting. The fictionalized version allows you maybe to explore the things that can't be established as easily in the factual record. Like, for example, in the dropout, it's, the real

question is, like, what was going on in Elizabeth Holmes's mind? Like, who is she? And that question also drives the Anna Delvey's story. But, like, with the Elizabeth Holmes performance, partly it's that, like, Amanda Seafreid's performance was more nuanced and it was just a little mysterious because we can't know where the Anna Delvey story was just so much more vague in general and she's such a vague and strange person that it just never felt like there was anything there that I could hold on to. But it is kind of cool how the fictionalized approach does allow you to try to answer those unanswerable questions because no amount of reporting is going to be able to tell you exactly what Elizabeth Holmes, for example, was thinking when she started there.

Well, ironically, despite the twisted tale of Amanda Knox having Amanda Knox as one of the kind of creative people. This doesn't actually do that good a job of like telling her, like, helping us understand who she is. Like there's a lot of weirdness to her and quirks to her that are never really delved into. In fact, the last episode, which is kind of a mess of an episode, it winds up showing her meeting her, who would turn out to be, who would wind up becoming her husband and getting married. And they show like this 10 second clip of her wedding and everyone is like dressed up as a space man. And it's never explained. and it's just so strange.

And it's just like, what is going on here? And I was Googling about it. And like it turned out she had like a time traveler themed wedding. And she tried to crowd fund it on the internet. And there's like some like a whole like books worth of stories it seems like behind her that she doesn't really like get into in this in in in the one fictionalized version that is supposed to be like a sensibly telling her story. Yeah. Helping the world to understand her. So there's a lot of weirdness there.

But yeah. I mean, if you believe her story, which a lot of people certainly do, this is a story of someone who was accused of murder and wound up in prison for four years because she happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, which is just truly tragic. And you do wonder watching it, at the very least, what would have happened if this was an American legal system, not to say that our legal system is all that great or all that perfect by any means. But there is some tainting going on in the Italian,

One. The other thing is just like their treatment of the DNA evidence is just, oh my God, the way that that comes off. If you guys ever watch it or read up on it, it is the way they just like fumble around and like totally taint all of the evidence and just completely mishandle it is is infuriating to watch. But yeah, anyway, interesting story. Amanda Knox. All right. That is that for this week's episode. Make sure everyone check out our Sikung Beans cast. If you cannot check it out, then you can't check it out, you should probably become a member. Otherwise, see you both next week. Yep, 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.

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