Triple Click - Do Games Live Or Die On Day One?

Episode Date: July 13, 2023

Do indie studios live or die based on day-one game sales? How do you make games for girls? And is it OK to cheat in JRPGs? Maddy, Kirk, and Jason open up the mailbag for some of YOUR questions on all sorts of things. Plus: meet Ghost Maddy!One More Thing:Kirk: Jury DutyMaddy: The Werewolf Experiment (Escape Room In A Box)Jason: New PC buildLINKS:Triple Click on Twitch: https://twitch.tv/tripleclickpod (Starcraft 2 Stream July 21 at 8PM Eastern)Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinBuy 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

So when you skip the animation when Link eats food in Zelda, does that mean the food just warps directly into his stomach? And is that weird for him? Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the quietly horrifying video game observations to you. We've got a mailbag this week, and we're answering your questions about indie games sales and long tales, how long games take to make, and what to do when games start to bleed into the real world. I'm Kirk Campbellson. I'm Maddie Myers. And I'm Jason Shrier. Hello.

Hello. Hey, hello there. Hello, my friends. Again. Welcome for another week of triple click. We are back. All three of us. It is Maddie's birthday.

It is. Yeah, we're recording this. Yes. Yes. You already missed it if you're listening. You're too late. You know what? I'll still take a happy birthday.

I'll still take an HD. I'll accept it. I forgive you. We are, as I'm sure many of you know, a listener-supported podcast. And that means that you are the only ones who pay for this show. have any, nobody owns this show but us, just the three of us. There's no corporate sponsors. There's no like venture capitalist vultures in here trying to bundle us to be sold as part of some brand package. Nothing like that. It's just me, Jason and Danny. I've always wanted to be part

of a brand package. Yeah, I want to be bought-up. I have too. I really. And like, uh, uh, honeynut chirios. You know, you start a small business in America with the dream of having that business be bought by venture capital and totally ruined. so that somebody else can make a little bit of money. But we dream different. We dream different here at Triple Click. We dream of just making a show that we like and being able to make enough money, making it that we can keep making it.

And hey, that's exactly what we're doing. And it's thanks to all of you. And also, thanks to Maximum Fun, our employee-owned network. Yeah, our Worker Co-Off network, Maximum Fun. And if you want to become a member of Maximum Fun, you can support the network. You can support all the shows on it. And you can support TripleClick. go to maximum fun.org

slash join and become a member. And thanks so much to all of our members, where we really appreciate you. And to show that, we make bonus episodes every month for all of you. And there are a ton of those. If you go become a member, you can listen to like 37, 36 or something like that. Bonus episodes.

Yeah. So there's a lot of extra stuff that you get as a little thank you. We have a couple of things coming up that I should let you know about. First of all, thanks to Jason tying our predictions bed last year with Maddie, we are playing through Starcraft II, Legacy of the Void. And we're going to be talking about that next week on the July 20th episode. If you want to play some of that game, fire it back up. You probably already got it installed on your PC, right?

So just fire it up, play a little bit, see if you remember any of the names and characters as they come at you fast and strong. I'll tell you that much. Who could forget care again? We're going to be talking about that. not like the whole game. We'll be playing, like not the whole story,

but just sort of some of the story. Some of us don't understand the story, so you don't have to worry about us spoiling it. I'm really more interested in talking about the game. We're just going to talk about StarCrafts. If you want to play some StarCraft to just kind of get it back in your brain for next week, that's going to be for our July 20th episode.

And we are actually also going to be streaming some StarCrafts to the day after that on July 21st. That's next Friday at 8 p.m. Eastern on our Twitch channel. There will be a link for that in the show notes. And, yeah, come and hang out. We're going to be mostly, I think, watching Jason demonstrate his mastery, but we're going to be doing some fun stuff. We're figuring out what we're going to do, and it's going to be really cool. So that is Friday, July 21st at 8 p.m. on the triple click Twitch channel, there's a link for that,

down in the show notes. All right, we're answering some questions this week. We got some listener, burning listener questions to get through. So Jason, why don't you dig into the mailbag? Sure, yeah. So this is a burning questions episode. We are going to take some of your questions. And And as always, you can reach us with your own questions at triple clock at maximum fun.org. That is triple click at maximum fun. Dot org. Send in your questions today. And remember, we like, just as a reminder for people, we like A, short ones, short emails, short, short questions.

And B, really weird questions, really unique questions. Oh, we're not going to say interesting questions? You should just say interesting questions. Interesting, yeah. I mean, interesting is a given. It really leaves a lot open to interpretation. Yeah, things are they're going to be weird. Let's get to some emails.

Let's actually read one from a friend of the show. Kirk, you want to start off by reading this one? Yeah. Sure, this comes from a name that will be familiar to some of you. Ben Hanson of MinMax fame, lovely guy Ben Hanson, friend of the show, writes in, and Ben writes, Hello, Triple Click. I am so excited that Kirk is starting to watch Psychodicy. I, like Jason, have watched it fully twice, and it's one of my favorite things I've ever

seen. Both the events being documented in the documentary itself are unbelievable achievements bursting with messy human creativity. And just to interject here, if anyone doesn't know what psychotasy is, this is the two-player productions documentary, the 32-part documentary of the creation of Psychonauts 2, that you can watch for free on YouTube. That is fantastic. That I have actually just come to the very end of. I've watched the whole thing now. And Jason has watched multiple times. I love how when you say 32-part, it sounds like you're making like a comic exaggeration. But no, that's actually what it is. No, it's 32 parts. And there's a movie. There's a movie in the middle of it, too. It's lengthy, but very interesting. Back to Ben. Ben writes, I am heartbroken that so many episodes

still have fewer than 30,000 views. I hope you'll continue to draw attention to it. I would love to see a beans cast episode on the bonus feed after Maddie watches it. There's so much to talk about. So that's kind of a nudge, nudge to Maddie. Maddie, it's time to watch it. I know. I love Ben's assumption that I will watch it and the social pressure happening as we speak, I do actually want to watch it. I read this email from Ben and I felt sad. I was like, we got to do this. We got to do a beans cast so that I get this done. Yeah, yeah. We have talked about that many times. To conclude Ben's message, he writes, my dream would be to have Tim Schaefer come on the show to talk about it and everything that's happened since. Again, there's just so much to unpack. He also made some pretty pointy comments in response to Jason's observations on the mid-Mack.

roundtable. It would be great to hear a candid conversation and move that dialogue forward. Yeah, we'd love to have Tim on. We've interviewed him in the past. Yes, he's a very fun guy to talk to and very open about all of that. Yeah, I actually, I did like a 101 interview with him shortly after that where he and I continue that conversation. But yes, and I wrote about it in Bloomberg. But yeah, that'd be fun. It'd be fun to have him. Fun thing to share with listeners.

Ben concludes, grateful for the work that each of you do. Best wishes. Thanks so much, Ben. Thanks for writing in. and being a cool dude in listening to our show. Yeah. Yeah. So we should do a beans cast maybe at the end of this year. Maddie is really all on you finishing it.

I know. I just finish it. I'll do it. I'll do it. Excellent. Okay. Now let's get into some questions from our listeners. Maddie. Take the first one.

Okay. This is from Matthew who writes. Hey, Maddie, Jason, and Kirk. I just read about the recent layoffs from the studio that made season, a major indie release from earlier this year. evidently the game's poor sales in its first few months were catastrophic for the studio, such that they had to make massive cuts. Here's the thing.

I decided to play season the second I heard about it, not even a question. But I haven't bought it yet because I'm busy, emphasis Matthews. I'm sure lots of others feel the same about this in basically every other game. It was honestly kind of surprising to me to learn that studios depend so desperately on the hope that people will play their game within weeks or months of its release. So my first question is, is this normal? Do indie studios routinely live and die based on tiny sales windows like this? And secondly, can a studio actually derive any financial benefit from the possibility of their game having a, quote, long tail, end quote, where people will continue to buy and play it in somewhat smaller numbers for several years after release?

To your credit, I wouldn't have been remotely curious about business nonsense such as this without triple click. You're welcome, Matthew, for infecting your brain with knowledge. So let me give you a little, let me give you guys a little bit of context about this before we get into the question, which is that the studio is Scavenger Studio is the name of this company that made Season. Their first game was a game called Darwin Project, which was like a free to play battle royale game. So that was, that was popular. There were about 45 people at the studio and they said that they've sold 60,000 copies of season. and season is kind of like a narrative, a slow contemplative narrative game

that has gotten kind of mixed reviews. And yes, according to this Kutaku article, which interviewed the CEO, Amelie La Marche, I'm butchering this French pronunciation, she said that they laid off all but 16 members of the studio. So they went from 45 to 16. Wow. So there's the context.

Significant cuts. To answer, I think I can answer Matthew's question. I'm sure we all have enough people we've spoken to as reporters who make indie games. That I know the answer is that it is very important for indie games to still sell during the first week of release. And I also just wanted to mention that I know a lot of indie game devs structure everything around sales as well, especially Steam sales and being part of those bundles. that happen on the Humble Bundle Store and sometimes Epic Games does deals and those are major ways

that indie games get discovered is by being on those little scroll wheels like the marketing scroll wheel when you open up a store like getting featured on Steam or in any type of sale on a storefront I know is a huge deal for indie games in much the same way that the release day is a huge deal for them

more so than any AAA game. I mean I know we talk a lot about how AAA games also run at a loss here but in these studios, it's like really, really make or break and going viral matters a lot. But I mean, I want to hear from you too. I know you two know a lot about this too. Yeah. I mean, Jason, you have this.

There's the story of the flame and the flood developers. I feel like that's a really interesting, maybe outlier or is that an outlier? Well, so the thing that really strikes me about this story is that the studio is 45 people. That to me is crazy. That is humongous for an indie game studio that just put out like a, a kind of narrative niche game. So when I hear that number, I was like 60,000 copies. That actually seems pretty good for a game like this.

It was on PC. It was on PlayStation. That seems like a decent number. And then so if you do a little bit of number crunching here, and we're going to do some math that isn't quite accurate, but just for estimating sake, it looks like they sold this game at $30 on PlayStation. And so let's say 30 times 60. And not even forgetting all the cuts that the PlayStation sort takes or whatever, that's a gross

revenue of $1.8 million, right? But when you have 45 people, a general burn rate calculation that people use, it's probably higher now, but at least a few years ago, the burn rate people used was $10,000 per person per month. That's like kind of an average burn rate people use. 45 people, that means you're spending $450,000 per month, right? And so $1.8 million, that might sound like a lot, but it's really just four months of that of that burn rate and this is with fudge numbers right the actual revenue they're making is a lot less because got to take 30% out of that for the PlayStation store and discounts and whatever else yeah because like I said the sales are usually how you make the $10,000 the real burn rate is a lot higher because the $10,000 a month isn't even that accurate

anymore because that was a few years ago calculus so we're talking about kind of a burn rate that is really crazy and it seems bonkers to me that a studio that just made this big successful free-to-play game is then went on to make this kind of niche narrative thing and was expecting it to sell more than 60,000 copies. I would assume that if a studio that size is moving on to something a little more niche, then they have enough cushion with their previous game that that could keep them running and make sure they are able to make payroll even if their niche game doesn't go gangbusters and sell a million copies.

So something seems weird to me with the kind of the great. grand decisions here. Because, yes, Kirk, to answer your question, a long tail can be super successful, like the flame in the flood, which I read about in press reset. That game was, was like, uh, that studio almost collapsed several times, the molasses flood, but they were able to keep going in part because of like long tail and a switch release and stuff like that, which you kind of look forward to. But that was like five people, max, right? So it's a totally different world. So yes, I think a long tail can support your studio, but like having to pay, having to feed 45 mouths, that alone is just such a monumental task that it seems impossible

with a niche game and very difficult, even with long tail stuff. Yeah, that's the part that I would say isn't normal about Matthew's question, is that the studio was weirdly big for the size of game that it's perceived to be. But I do think it still matters to buy indie games on release. That's the main thing. I hope people do take away, because I think that if you're interested, interested in something and it's a smaller game, it makes a much bigger difference to buy that than it does for you to pre-order something that will sell the bajillion copies. Like that,

you can maybe wait a week, you know? Yeah, that's true. I think I see a lot of people say, I'll wait for a sale, and it's usually even a safer bet that you can wait for a sale or a humble bundle or something. And then a lot of these games, if they do kind of make that, make it through that initial launch period. They've been, like, it's a more common thing now to see these games get updated for free for a really long time. And then each update acts as a kind of new opportunity to market the game and they sell a bunch more and they can kind of keep going.

Obviously, No Man Sky is the most famous example of this. But there are plenty of games doing that now. And I really like that just because it, I don't know, it keeps games around for longer and there isn't this feeling of like, how they're moving on to the next thing or they're releasing DLC that you have to buy that sort of changes the game and splits the player base. It's just like, nope, this game is just becoming itself more and more and more and more and more over the years and more and more people have time to play it. Because I think one thing that Matthew mentioned in his message here is he's like,

I didn't buy it yet because I'm busy. Like, I just don't have time. And that's kind of, it'd be nice if there could be a world where you didn't need people to all jump on it right now because that's not the way people play video games, really. Like a lot of people will be like, oh yeah, Outer Wilds. They talked about that all the time on Triple Click. And now in 2023 decide, okay, I'm going to play Outer Wilds, you know, however many years later. Like that's totally normal and it'd be cool if the industry itself could support that a little bit better.

But yeah, I do think that's a really good point, Maddie, that when an indie game comes out, if you think you're going to play it and you want to support the developers, buy it when it comes out. Like just use your money that way because it does actually, you know, it's a helpful thing you can do with your money that is actually helpful. Yeah. And you might be supporting like two people or five people as opposed to a whole lot of people. To your point, Kirk, I think that it's something I've also learned selling books is that like there are a bunch of different kind of bubbles of people. And one bubble is like the people who will pre-order your thing. They will buy it day one because they're really excited about it.

And you have them. They're sold already, whatever it is. And then the next group of people, which I think is a much bigger kind of slice of the pie, is people who like, are interested, but like might need some reminding to check it out. And I think, I think, and that's why like you always see authors just constantly talking about their books. And especially in the months and the weeks following lunch, launch is also lunch. Is that, is that like the kind of the putting it in your brain over and over makes people think like, oh yeah, I did want to get that. And that happens to me with books all the time where I'm like reminded of a book and I'm like, oh, yeah, I wanted to read that.

Yeah. Yeah, everything with games too, except for the games like, you know in your head. like there's some games coming out this year. You're going to get on day one no matter what. But there are a few others where like maybe you're like, oh, that seemed interesting. Maybe if I hear enough people talk about it, I'll be like, oh, yeah, I should check that out. And I think to your point, Kirk, I think that the updating thing and the continued patches and keeping your game relevant for longer. Steam sales, switch ports.

That was a big thing. Enter the Gungeon is another game that I profiled in Press Reset that had that same kind of crazy ripple effect where they sold more copies of their game. like on some patch two years after launch, then they did at release on day one. So, yes, it's a weird phenomenon, but it's very interesting. Yeah, strikes me as a good one, too, that they don't have to like obsessively chase just the launch sales, because after that, no one's ever going to talk about this game again

because, you know, they probably will. Like, there is a chance that you could have a much longer tale now. Yep, that's the appeal of quote-unquote service games. All right, next question. Here is Evan. Evan says, Hi, after laughing my ass off during May 10th's mailback episode, specifically Kirk's dishonored Bing, I had to ask, Maddie and Jason, do you ever feel envious of Kirk's omnipotent ability to invoke the Bing? Do you ever wish you could satisfy the Bing? It's kind of a podcasting cheat code if you really think about it. Kirk, keep Binging. As producer, you've earned the ability to circumvent the constraints of space and time and podcasting. Bonus question, if Jason or Maddie could Bing, what would they call? it. I would call it zooming out. I would come in and be like, zooming out for a second.

So it would just be you saying, zoom out really fast. Yeah, zooming out. I'm going to zoom out. Jason here, after the fact. Oh, boy. I don't know. I guess mine would end with by, maybe like a backwards version of me saying bye. Eib. Eib. Hi. What if it was, what if it was high and buy? Hi, it's Maddie here. I have something to add. No, if I say hi, that's too normal. And I want people to know that something weird as how. which is that I'm binging in, which is what it's called. I see. So we're reversed by. You could say bye from the future.

Yeah. Bye from the future. Okay. And then at the end, I say bye from the past. Um, to answer the question, Evan, I'm not jealous of it. I'm extremely grateful to Kirk for editing our show. This is not a bit. This is serious compassion here. I'm very grateful to him and I think that he deserves the bing as a reward. He gets to always look slightly cooler than we do.

by having the owner's task of editing the show. Even though half the time I'm binging to like correct a mistake that I made. But it is nice to be able to correct my own mistakes. That is last. But that's the thing. You can do that. And Mattie and I have to live with our mistakes. Or sometimes Jason or I will desperately remember something we said like the next day,

like in the sort of grace period before the show is out and we'll like send a frantic DM and be like, can you edit that out or like Bing in and be. be like, it was actually another person periodically do that. I try not to do that to you very often because it's annoying. And I try to instead be right the first time. That's true. Yeah. And I think for a little behind the scenes, I think with that kind of thing, it's more often.

Just we edit something out. Yes. Like one of you will say, you know, actually, I realized like I said this thing and that's actually, I credited the wrong person and I'll just trim it out. Where when I'm editing, it is, I'm here. So I'm like, it's easier for me to be like, well, I can just record something right now that actually explains this a little bit more or like ads of the right name.

So I'm more likely to bing in about my own stuff. Which, yeah, is kind of an advantage. But I guess that's the privilege of editing. Kirk secretly edits out of the fighting and screaming. Yeah, of course. Well, that's what I'm saying. People got to see that at the live show. We got to see raw, on the filter.

The live show makes see the real dirt, a real juice of it all. All right. Kirk, what's your night? What's the next question? All right. This comes from Matt. Matt writes, hi, gang. I'm a big fan of all things BioWare. And one day a few years ago, while impatiently awaiting more Dragon Age and Mass Effect, I wondered what Drew Carpation was up to. I was curious what one of the lead writers of some of my favorite games and some great Star Wars novels was up to,

and according to his Wikipedia page, it seems that he's been attached to archetype entertainment, an internal studio of Wizards of the Coast, started by Ex-BioWare folks. This got me very excited. A few years on, there hasn't been a peep out of this studio, except for, some hiring ads on social media. Is it normal for a studio founded four years ago, not to have announced a project yet? Is this a bad sign for the studio? Or is this a case of no news actually really is no news? It depends.

I think the answer is both. It can be bad news and it can also just be like par for the course. It really depends on a lot of different factors. EA just announced like this week or last week they just announced a new Black Panther game in development at like one of their studios, new studio in Seattle. That game we will probably go another four years without hearing anything about it, but they just

announced it for hiring purposes. And, uh, and, like, it's, it's just easier these days to be like, come work on a Black Panther game than it is to be like, come work on a, on an unannounced superhero game.

And also you can save off leaks by just announcing it yourselves. So with this archetype situation, I don't know. I mean, um, nothing. I can share as far as, like, reported stuff on what's going on over there, but I don't think you can really jump to a conclusion either way. Like, sometimes the studio is just quiet because things are proceeding normally and development takes a while. And sometimes it could be because they had to reboot their vision three times and they're almost out of money and who knows what's going on.

I will say that there's so mad at acquiring them and it's just nothing but inviting. You never know. I will say that there's one studio called Bonfire Studios that was started by some Ex-Blizzard folks that was announced in 2016 and still has not said anything about the game of working on seven years later. So there are longer cases than four years, I will say. That seems kind of weird. Seven years is a long time. But I don't know anything. I have no information. To me, four years, I'm like, yeah, it's nothing. That's just like two years, just to freak out about the fact that you have a new studio and you don't work at Byerware anymore.

And then another two to be like, what are we doing here? Well, I wonder how many of those people came from Anthem and we're like, let's just chill for the next couple of years. I just need a minute. You know, it's so funny. Trying to remember why you like working on games ever. Maddie, I swear to God, I hear about this all the time and it still just blows my mind. But like any game developers, unless any of this, will just be furiously nodding their head.

there is literally because you work so hard to get a game out of door and like you're oftentimes you're crunching you're working extra hours you're not seeing your family you there will literally be times when the entirety of a game development studio is just like fucking off at the office all day like coming in four hours a day like playing games at work like literally doing nothing for months if not like a couple of years at a time. And then it creates this vicious cycle where it's like, oh, now we have to ship a game. Now we have to crunch like crazy again. And that was a huge thing at BioWorse. I wouldn't be shocked if that was the age thing is at X-BioWor Studios too. I have no inside information, but stop playing Tears of the Kingdom, Drew. Cut out. True. Speaking of Tears of the Kingdom,

maybe next question. Sure. This is from Joe who writes, Hello, Triple Click. Lately, while playing Tears of the Kingdom. I think. found myself wanting to use my ultra-hand ability on rocks, trees, and logs as I drive by them. This has happened in the past with a game like The Witness, where I was finding patterns of a circle and line path leading off of it in my everyday life. I'm curious. What games have you played that you've found have seeped into your real-world experiences? I can go ahead and say, Tears of the Kingdom has already done that for me as well. I took out the trash the other night and saw a weed that looked exactly like a Hyrule Herb, which is

one of the many cooking ingredients that I prize. And I seriously was like, oh, I got to stop and pick the, and like, I didn't actually stop, but I was like, I've lost my mind. I lost my mind. Yeah, you start seeing the patterns of that game, like the coroc seed patterns. You'll see like, oh, there's a rock in front of that tree, and that tree is in the middle of two other trees. It's very symmetrical.

It's very symmetrical. It's very suspicious. These rocks are in a circle, and this other one's over here. What's, hmm, is that anything? Oh, it's just a... Statue park? I see. Interesting. Right. I'm going to put apples in front of all of these statues and then maybe something will happen. The thing that always happens to me, Zelda style, is the paraglider.

When I'm standing up on top of a hill, I invariably will think, oh, man. Yeah, if I could just paraglider down from here to right up to all the way over there. Like if I'm hiking or when we were up in the rainforest in Australia in Queensland, there were some really amazing views. And it feels already like you're in this really heightened. location and just looking down and thinking, oh man, I really, I really want to paraglide all the way back down to where we started. Have you ever tried it? No, well, I don't have a paraglider. Too bad. I should probably get a paraglider, but then I think it would totally just work. I can get just jump high enough. And you'll definitely be strong enough to hang onto it the whole time. Your stamina

won't run out. Don't worry about that. I feel like I've never seen anyone use a paraglider in real life. I feel like I've only seen that in games. Oh, I sure have. But usually people are strapped in like on belay. Like usually they're not like Link just whipping it out, fly ground. They're usually like tied to it. Yeah or they're like hang gliding. Right. Hang gliding, yeah, I've seen. That's how big it actually needs to

be to like allow a person to do what Link does with a paraglider. Got it. That's what I was picture. That's it. Yeah. My answer to this question is in 2013 when I was playing Grand Theft Auto 5 for a while, I would walk out to the streets of New York City and be like,

hmm, I should take that car. Seeing the lights, I definitely get that Tetris effect, whatever that sort of cross synthesis, like some anesthesia thing that you get from playing a lot of games. It happens with Tetris because that's like when you really have just played so much Tetris, you start to see it in your brain. But in terms of seeing it in the world, the way that cars move when driving, it does kind of, like, I, Grand The Auto sort of overlays onto that, not in a like, I want to kill everybody and steal cars. But just in a like the cars are moving in a way that makes me feel like I'm in a video game.

And yeah, that definitely happens to me sometimes. All right. Next question. I will read this next one, right? It's my turn. Yes. That sounds right. Hello, this is from Mass.

Mass. Hello, triple click. My name is Mass. And I have a burning question for you. What makes a game or any piece of media, for that matter, more appealing to the feminine side of people? Or more reductively, I could ask how to make games for girls. I have this great friend and we play a bunch of video games together. His girlfriend also plays a bunch of video games

and we got to talking a while ago about what makes games and media appealing to either the masculine or the feminine side of people. My friend's girlfriend had this instinctual sense for which games she thought were made from girls. I don't remember the fullest, but I remember the Sims being one of those that she thought were leaning more towards the feminine. We couldn't pin it down, but maybe you can.

He's easier said than done masks. definitely yeah can we pin this one down guys what is I appreciate the general framing of this question right that it's more like the feminine or masculine side sort of looking at these broad side of people I like this

because we all like all these types of things now yeah right yeah well so I think yeah I think that the broad disclaimer here needs to be that if you're talking in like these kind of broad sweeping statements you have to be like okay I mean they're games every game is going to appeal to people of all stripes.

But it is true. I mean, the Sims definitely has a larger percentage of female players than like, I don't know, call a duty. One thing that I think is interesting is that I think a lot of games that are more social tend to appeal to more, I guess are more, are feminine sides a little bit more,

or at least female players, more games where you're talking to people. Yeah. I mean, I remember people back in the day used to be very surprised by how many women played World of Warcraft. I mean, these days, I feel like we're all like, well, of course they do. But, you know, 20 years ago, that was very shocking to people like, what?

They do? And it's like, well, yeah, because it's a very social game. And you get to hang out with your friends group. And it's very feminine coded pursuits, talking to your friends on the phone all day, shooting the shit. And oh, yes, we're also collaborating on a group project together, which is killing this boss. And, like, that is actually kind of a feminine pursuit. And there's nothing, nothing shameful or wrong about that. It's just society will tell you there is.

But it's not, which is part of why I like this framework as like, oh, we all have feminine and masculine sides. And World of Warcraft lets you embrace some of the feminine sides of yourself. And those are the collaborative teamworky sides. And yeah, that's also kind of a funny question for us to answer because I feel like oftentimes I end up playing the masculine lone wolf video games. And then like Jason will be in here being like, here's why I like, Final Fantasy Six. It's because Tara is in it.

And I don't know. That's why I like our show. It's true. Yeah, I think the art style of World of Warcraft is also a big reason that back game was appealing to, like, many demographics. I think the kind of stylized cartoon. Well, that and Diablo, you could play as either gender. And, I mean, we talked about this a lot on the Diablo episode.

Like, that was a huge deal to me. It was just the fact that you could play as a female character and it was equally balanced. But in general, I think, I don't know, thinking about my wife is kind of my go-to example, test subject for games. And I know that she prefers games that tend to have like cuter art style. She was really into Star Doe Valley, which another game that I think is super

appealing to women. She's really into Tears of the Kingdom. And I think one of the reasons is because the art style is very welcoming. Even the harsher stuff is very stylized and very visually pleasing to look at. Yeah. It's interesting to think about this just sort of removed from any gender binary

or any like any association of any sort of gender traits with any game traits, just because, I don't know, the more I play games, the more I appreciate all these different things about them. And you can see why, for various reasons, different types of games might appeal to different groups. But I don't know, play them enough and you just start to see. There are games where you kind of build things up and maintain them.

We've talked about tend and befriend as a kind of style of game. And I think a style of game that's seen as popular with women or more popular. But any game where you're sort of maintaining something, you know, Animal Crossing is kind of the ultimate example. It was just when that game, when Animal Crossing, what was it, New Horizons, was that the one that came out during the pandemic, the most recent one? So when that was out, what was so calming about that was just this ability to like grow and build and elaborate on something and watch it kind of grow. And then you're literally, you are tending a garden and befriending people. So it is actual tending and befriending. But there are elements of that in so many

games that we play where you're kind of, you know, you're building up your character in certain ways or you have a homestead. You know, we love a homestead mission. And it's fun to, it's fun to feel like you're going out into the world and you're doing adventures or quests and you're bringing stuff back for your homestead. Actually just, my tabletop group just started playing Frosthaven, which is the sequel to Gloomhaven, this extremely elaborate tabletop game that we've played a bunch. Frosthaven seems really cool. It's a lot like Gloomhaven. But it adds some stuff. And one of the big changes is that in Frost Haven, you're not just building up your character.

You're building up this town. So there's like a whole new town building mechanic on top of it. So in the first Gloomhaven, you were always kind of out having adventures. You're working together. It's like a team building thing. But you're kind of just leveling up your character. And it never really goes anywhere beyond that. But in Frost Haven, it's like you get loot.

You can use that to build up the town. And so suddenly you're kind of doing this. I don't know, more collaborative town building thing. That feels a little bit more animal crossing-ish, I guess, or a little more of a tendon befriends. So anyways, I don't know, there are elements of that in a lot of different games. Yeah, so it's an interesting discussion point that obviously is well beyond the scope of this particular mailbag. So let's get on to the next question.

Kirk, you're up. All right, I will ask the next question, but we have had a bit of of development while recording Maddie Myers has lost power and internet. So she just dropped out of the call while we were in the middle of recording. RIP, Maddie. RIP, Maddie. We're close up to the end that I think we're just going to carry out. So this is going to be a throwback, Jason, to the origins of the show, to the split screen days.

Fun times. Okay. Let's see if you and I can carry a podcast, just the two of us. We can't. We just can't do it anywhere. No, we need Maddie. We totally lost our touch without matter. The third part of the Triforce.

Right, we keep awkwardly pausing and just waiting for her to chime in. We just totally forget English. Like, we just can't talk anymore. Yeah, it all falls apart. Okay, we have one more question. It comes from Colton. Colton asks, I am playing Final Fantasy 9 for the first time with some of my friends,

and they're very into classic JRP's and have been loving it so far. It's not my normal cup of tea, but I'm trying to just have something that we share. If you don't know the game, the port has cheek coats. that you can enable at any time, that you can enable at any time. My question is, what are your thoughts on cheats playing through the game for the first time? I turned one on and instantly started enjoying the game more, but my buddies think that I'm only cheating myself. Do you all agree?

I just want your thoughts. No, I think that your buddies are nonsense. Your buddies are full of it. And cheating is super fun. When I was a kid, I used to like, I remember all the Blizzard games just had cheat codes built in and I would play with them all the time. That's how I beat like all these games that I wouldn't have been able to beat otherwise. And especially when you're playing older games that aren't that like were designed for a different era, like have totally different. Final Fantasy

9, the random encounter rate is so crazy that like you're, you're almost, you're ruining, you're making it a worst experience for yourself unless you turn off random encounters or make yourself a god or whatever it is. That's it. I mean, you definitely, if you're using specific kinds of cheats, you definitely will like make the experience worse for yourself if you're playing a game that is like designed to be most enjoyed with a specific like by challenging you and tasking your skills like if you play i don't know if you play um the witness and you just have like a guy that autosols the codes yeah like you ought to solve all the puzzles and like it's kind of kind of pointless but um i think people should play games however that heck they want to play

yeah i mean it's even moving away from i think making it worse for yourself You're just like, you can really alter the experience that you're having, and that can be good or bad or just different. You can have like a very different experience for playing the game. I mean, we used all kinds of modifications when we played through Final Fantasy 6, and that was fine. But really, I mean, I think, Colton, you answer your own question, both when you say that you are having a lot of fun playing it the way that you're playing it. Well, that's great. I mean, you should be having fun. But then also, if your friends literally said to you that you're only cheating yourself, they should know that that is like,

a meme that was making fun of people who say that. Like that was, that's how sort of, um, how wrongheaded that method of thinking is. I mean, if you're having fun, you're having fun.

So I think like, yeah, do whatever. I think here we should distinguish between cheats and kind of like, I don't know, accelerators or modifiers, like mods even. Um,

there's a big difference between like sending yourself to invulnerable so you never have to think during combat and using fast forward or using, or turning, off random encounters or doing something that just makes a game that was released 30 years ago feel more palatable today. I think there's a big difference between those two. Yeah, that's true. And I mean, yeah, it all kind of relates to accessibility and difficulty settings and all of these

different things. And sort of the more options that are built into games, the better really just seems like there's really nothing wrong with any of that. So doing that retroactively on much older games that had usually terrible accessibility options and none of that stuff built in, like that seems. great. So for older JRP's, that's like a really cool way to play it. And I think it's really cool that you're playing through an old JRP just to have something to share with your friends. Because having done that a lot and shared that with my friends on this show, it is a fun thing to do.

Even when the game is annoying, it's fun to have something to sort of share. And I'm sure we'll be doing it again in the near future with certain remasters and remakes, maybe even Final Fantasy 9, which is going to get a remake in the near future. That's a pretty cool game. I like FF9. It is a fun game. played that one because of you. Did you finish it? No, I played I played like a chunk. No, I definitely didn't finish it. Those games are all too long. That's going to be a first act, maybe. A fun remake to play through. Um, and also Final Fantasy Tactics, the remaster. That'll be fun, fun to play through. Um, yeah, I mean, it's funny. I was laughing because, uh, it's hard to imagine an ethos more like

diametrically opposed to triple click than like, no, you must play the game. The way. You're doing it wrong. Yeah. You cannot use any. sort of modifiers. Yeah, man. I was just thinking I was looking up Baldersgate 2 because I'm kind of prepping my mind for Valtersgate 3 and I was looking up some old articles I wrote and I wrote this whole

article about like all these mods you should use if you're playing Valdersgate 2 man. mods are awesome. All right. Why don't we take a break and then we'll be back with one more thing. Hey Max 1 listeners. This is Cameron Esposito. I'm a stand-of comic actor, writer, bestselling author and popcaster.

I got a great show called Query where I interview LGBTQ plus luminaries across, oh, a bunch of fields. People in entertainment, astronauts, musicians, rock stars. I am bringing the show to Maximum Fun. You can listen right now, and I am so happy to be on this network. We have new episodes out every Monday. You can listen at MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcast. It's official.

Max Fun has become a co-op. We're now a worker-owned network of artist-owned shows. shows supported directly by you. Thanks to supporters and listeners like you, Max Fun will always be a place where employees have a say. Thanks to you, shows can continue to partner with an independent, values-driven network. Thanks to you, we're able to carry on our commitment to our shows and the community we've grown together.

Learn more about what becoming a co-op means for us and you at maximumfund.org slash co-op. That's maximum fun.org slash C-O-O-P. And we are back. Kirk, ghost Maddie, it is time for one more thing. You and I will do it in person, Kirk, and maybe Maddie will somehow appear. Maybe she will apparate to give her own one. We'll hear from Ghost Maddie at some point here. Who knows when? Kirk, do you want to go first? Yeah, I'll go first. My one more thing is a show that Emily and I just finished watching last night called Jury Duty that's on Amazon Prime that I think you can also watch on Amazon like free V. the thing that has ads. But if you have Prime, you can just watch it without ads. And I'm guessing a lot of listeners have heard about it at this point because it's been fairly buzzy. I've seen people talking about it. I certainly heard about it from, you know, buzz from different people and decided to start it. And I'm really glad I watched it because it's super good. So this is a,

I'm trying to think, I think Wikipedia describes it as the genre is reality television hoax. It's a rehearsal like. It's a Nathan Fielder's rehearsal like. It's nowhere near as uncanny and sort of. It's not as provocative as that. It's more of a feel-good show. But it is really, really good. And I really liked it.

So the two creators of the show are Gene Stupnitzky and Lee Eisenberg, who are both veterans of the office. So the American office, that is. So it kind of has some of that DNA. It's a documentary. though, as you learn, it's a mockumentary, but it is shot like a documentary. It's a really feel-good show in the end, which is the thing I really liked about it. And it kind of just has some similar DNA with the office, probably more that than something, you know, like Nathan for you or the rehearsal, that Nathan Fielder stuff is a little weirder, a little more interested in making you the viewer uncomfortable.

So the premise of this show is they're making a documentary about being a juror or having jury duty. actually just had jury duty in Portland. So it was timely for me. I had to go down and just sit in a chair for two days. So in this case, though, everybody goes down. They all have to sit there. It's in California, I think like near Sacramento maybe or somewhere near Los Angeles. And the twist is that nobody there is actually a real person. They're all actors. The judge is an actor. There's going to be a whole civil trial. There's a defendant and a plaintiff. They're all actors. Everything is fake. except for one guy, a guy named Ronald Gladden, who's a normal person and thinks that he's just going to jury duty and that they're making a documentary about like normal people's lives in jury duty. So it's a bunch of actors and this one guy. And then the show, which is pretty short, it's like maybe eight half hour episodes or so,

is just them trying to carry on this whole like trial and all of these shenanigans that happened behind the scenes. They went up getting sequestered. all of this stuff happens, and they're kind of just messing with this guy over the course of eight episodes. The thing is, that sounds kind of mean when I describe it, and there is, I guess, kind of a meanness to it, because they really are like pranking this guy for two weeks or something, and that would mess with you. You know, they tell him at the end, and they kind of reveal how they made the whole thing. It would really mess with your sense of reality. But Ron Gladden is a wonderful guy, and the kind of twist of the show is that it turns to

out that whatever they throw at him, like whatever kind of uncomfortable characters or weird circumstances are like awkward people who are coming up and kind of trying to get him to do different things, he always reacts just like in a really nice and supportive way. So as the show goes on, you just keep seeing this guy's like kind of wonderful humanity shine through over and over again, which is really fun. And the other really fun thing about this show is James Marston is in it, the actor from like Sonic and Cyclops and I don't know, from West. world and he's playing himself. So kind of the joke is that James Marzen is on this jury or he's an alternate on the jury and he's playing a like terrible version of himself. So he's this really self-involved

asshole. He's always talking about how cool and famous he is and like, you know, he'll be like reading, like talking into his phone and then he'll get off and look at everyone and be like, that was my agent, you know, for like a big role. I can't tell you about it. But it's like, it's really big. It's really exciting. Like he's like that guy and everyone's totally over him and doesn't think he's cool. So it's really funny to watch him who I get the sense he's like a really wonderful dude in real life playing this huge asshole. And then also funny to watch Ron sort of interacting with James Marston and like this alternate version of James Marston. That's a really fun part of it. Does he know who James Marston is? He does and it's fun because he kind of does

but he also like he's because James Marston is like that level of famous where you know if you're like us or something you watch everything. You like know who James Marston. You'd be like oh shit that's James Marston. And he's way too good looking to just be a normal guy, but also he's not Tom Cruise or whatever. He's not like a list celebrity. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, that's funny. Right. Oh, I want to watch this. Oh, man. I'm excited. It's really good. Just to see a normal guy, just be like, oh yeah, oh yeah, you're like Cyclops or whatever. Sure. Like I kind of know who you are. Like Marston sort of wants him to get more excited. So anyways, it's really, really good. And yeah, I don't know. I recommend it. It winds up. I could have watched like four more episodes after

they reveal it to him, where they're all sitting around and just talking with him and being themselves, because you get to see all these people, like, they were playing characters, and now they're just being normal people and, like, get to see him sort of hanging out with all of them. That's kind of the best part of the show. Like, it's, I would have watched even more of that, but it's definitely worth watching the whole thing. So, yeah, that's Jerry Duty. It's on Amazon and Amazon FreeVee. And, yeah, I think I think you'll really dig it. Awesome. All right. Ghost Maddie, you are up. Hi. Or buy from the future. I did not think I would have to use that so soon. It's Maddie with a one more thing from a spooky dark apartment where the power went out. How am I recording this? You may very well ask. Well, some outlets are still working for now. But Eversource has helpfully texted us about an hour after this happened saying that the outage is going to continue for the next.

next two hours. So I might be interrupted partway through recording this wave file for Kirk. I don't know. But the spookiness is appropriate because my one more thing this week is called the Werewolf Experiment. It is a escape room in a box. It's a tabletop escape room that has become yet another one of me and Dina's date night adventures. We're still playing tabletop escape rooms. And this one is very, very fun. It is an escape room in a box that is clearly intended for something more like a six-player party, but you can still play it with two players, which we obviously did do. It is set up such that you have to do a series of discrete puzzles, and then once you've solved each of the discrete puzzles, you kind of get to the final solution of the game. So, for example, if you had three

couples. You'd give one couple, one puzzle, like there's sort of a crossword puzzle, and then you'd give another couple the word search, and then another one would get a third puzzle. I can't remember all the puzzles off the top of my head, but crossword puzzles and word searches are in there. And then you get to the end, and the ending solution is, of course, the antidote to being a werewolf, because this is a werewolf-themed tabletop game. I don't know that I'd call it an escape room. As soon as you open the box, you are, quote, unquote, infected by this werewolf virus created by a mad scientist. And then you have to escape the prison of being a werewolf, which is actually a pretty cool prison, if you ask me. But we escaped it anyway.

We got the antidote slowly but surely. The main thing that I really liked about the werewolf experiment, the puzzles are fine. They're cute. They're not super difficult. that's not what I'm going to compliment. The writing of this game is very good. It's very funny. There's a female mad scientist who turns into a werewolf.

She experiments on herself and you're going through her notes. And there are these very comedic interplays between her somewhat sane mad scientist self who writes in sort of like normal courier typed script. And then her werewolf self who crosses things out and is kind of scratching things over with werewolfy, hand-werewolfy, handwriting and the interplay between those characters is really fun. There's a lot of jokes in this. Most of the puzzles that you're solving are actually just to complete the set of notes, which give you more jokes. Like, it's not as though you're winning anything in this game, really, other than just a little more story, which is mostly more comedy, which I thought was a really interesting way to frame a puzzle game, a tabletop puzzle game. I really recommend it if you like

this kind of thing. It's pretty different from the other escape rooms we've done, which have been kind of hit or miss for me in terms of like plot pacing, especially comedy writing, the clue board game I mentioned a few weeks back. It was definitely trying to be funny, but I didn't really think it landed. This game actually really cute, really fun. Definitely would be a fun party game for multiple people if you like that kind of thing. So it's called the Werewolf Experiment, Escape Room in a Box. It's a game. All right. That's my one more thing. I'm so frazzled as I record this because I've been running up and down the stairs to the fuse boxes. Find where my fuse boxes are tonight.

That happened. Now I know where they are. That's not what the problem was. But now I know where they are. Back to you, Jason and Kirk. Bye. Okay. Thank you, Ghost Maddie.

That was so interesting, whatever it was. Whatever she said. All right. I will go last. My one more thing is I have. built a new PC. Oh, you've made. You sure have. Technically, I upgraded my PC, but since I upgraded just about everything, it is essentially

a new PC. So it's the PC of Theseus is what you called it. Exactly, exactly. The PC case of Theseus is really, yeah. Yeah, so I last built a PC in January of 2018, so about five and a half years ago. So it was due. My PC was getting a little, a little You were using a 1080. Yes, I was using a really old motherboard because I kind of, I inherited that from like Gizmodo. It was like a used that they had lying around and a CPU. I think it was used or something like that. So yeah, it was a pretty, it was an old machine at this point.

I was like, you know, this feels like a good time. Baldur's Gate 3 is about to come out. I'm going to play the shit out of that. Diablo 4 keeps crashing on my machine. You know what, screw it. I'm just going to upgrade everything. And so I was talking to you and you gave me some recommendations. so I got a 4070 TI, which was like an egregious $800 to buy.

But I figure it's... Ridicously expensive for how good it is. I mean, it's fast, but it should not cost as much as $4. I figure it'll last me another five years. So it's worth the investment at this point, especially because like why save $200 if I'm just going to have to upgrade again in a couple of years anyway? And bought all this stuff. I was really excited.

I haven't like really tooled around other than replacing the power supply. I haven't tooled around in my PC in years. I was like, oh, it'll be like riding a bike again, and I'll get to get in that zone again. And so here are a couple of observations and kind of anecdotes from my PC upgrading adventure, which was really just my second time making, building a PC. So, first of all, I forgot how exhilarating the process is

when you're sitting there. It's like time, a few things that make time fly by for me, the way that, like, getting in there and messing around what the PC did. Like, it was, that's true. It was really a time warp. And it was the type of thing where, like, I have to do it. My first one I built before I had kids, now that I have kids, I have to do it when they are in bed. So I started working on it at like eight.

And suddenly I look up and it's like 10 p.m. I'm like, what the heck is going on here? And it's literally just for the lot. I had an unfortunate experience because, like I mentioned before, my motherboard previously was very old. And it didn't have quite the same GPU latch that this new one did. And so I put in my GPU pretty late in the process because the GPU is one of the last things you do on your brand new PC. And then I realized I put it in the slot where it was blocking some ports and I wanted to move it to a different slot. And I guess I didn't realize that the GPU latch needs to be unlatched before you take out your GPU because it kind of automatically unlatcher.

There was no equivalent GPU latch in my previous one. So I'm lifting out my GPU and suddenly I hear this like, sickening crunch. And I pull it out. And the friggin, the port, like, from the motherboard went with it, right? Like the casing that guards all the pins. So the GPU, fortunately, was fine because it just ripped out the kind of the attachment part. And suddenly I see all these pins that are bent on the motherboard.

I'm like, well, guess I am waiting another three days for an Amazon to send me a new motherboard replacement before I can get back to this. And I was so frustrated because I was like, oh man, I feel like I knew what I'm doing. I got all these things right. At first, it lit up because like I had some issue because like the motherboard lit up that my RAM wasn't working and I realized I hadn't pushed down the RAM hard enough. And I was like, oh yeah, you have to push down the RAM. You have to put it. You always have to push it a little bit harder than you think. But I remember all the like little annoying things, like having to get those screws in the corner of the motherboard, even though

they're being like basically blocked by your heat sink or or the tiny little, pins that you have to like maneuver the reset button and the power button into and you have to remember the exact order because it's never quite labeled right you always have to consult the manual all the little like weird fun little things about building a PC um so okay so then my living room was or my dining room was taken over by all these PC parts for the entire weekend much to my daughter's dismay she was like can I paint I was like sorry sweetie you can't paint it um just gotta wait daddy needs a new And then on Monday, was like staring at the Amazon tracking all day, waiting for it to arrive.

It arrived, got out there, assembled a new PC, and I was really excited. I was like, man, this is going to work this time. Doing everything right, I already knew how it all fit in because I had done it previously. So it took me less than an hour to get it all back together. Got the RAM in, got the CPU in, got that frightening CPU latch down, got the thermal paste on there, got the cooler on there, got those stupid fan clips, which are a real pain. those annoying, like, pointy fan clips that you have to attach to your heat sink. And then I have had a speaker on my motherboard for a long time because anyone who's built a

PC knows you want to hear that little beep when your computer posts, when your computer turns on. And so I finally got it all assembled and I pushed the button and there was no beep. And I was like, oh, God, this is going to be a saga. What am I going to have to do? Sometimes it's just the power button and it's not quite connected to the. motherboard. And then I looked over the monitor and it was turned on and it was like, Windows needs to reset. And I was like, wait a minute, what? Turns out the speaker just doesn't work anymore for some reason. Or maybe the speaker is plugged in wrong, but whatever. Now the computer posted and I got

Windows restarted and reset windows and started installing things and it all worked fine. All the drivers got on there and it works perfectly. Except the speaker and the speaker and the monitor doesn't beep up anymore. It doesn't beep anymore when I posted. Which yeah, I can totally live with that. So that was a fun Cota to the saga and now I got my computer running. I started downloading some games, downloaded cyberpunk and Diablo. Hell yeah. I'm running. Some ray tracing. You will be pleased to hear that I'm running StarCraft 2 on ultra setting. Yeah, yeah, I'm definitely running that game pretty flawlessly. StarCraft 2. And I am just like so pumped for Balders K3 like ready to play the shit out of that

at like 100 frames or second at like ultra high end settings. So I'm very excited about that. And yeah, it's It's an exhilarating process. I forgot how simultaneously, like, frustrating and fun the process of building a PC is. I was thinking in my head, like, if this, if I have to go through the whole process of, like, assembling this thing a second time and it still doesn't work, I'm just going to friggin ship it out to, like, PC warehouse or something and get someone to do it for me. You do this.

Because, yeah, I mean, when I first built it, I didn't have kids. Like I mentioned, when you have kids, your time becomes a much different experience. You can't, like, spend an entire Saturday. like I'm just going to dedicate this day to like tinkering away at my PC anymore, at least until the kids are older. My kids are too young for that. I have to be monitoring them constantly. So, yeah, it changes a little bit when you have kids, but still super just a rewarding experience and I'm very excited to play high-end games on this new machine. Yeah, we basically have the same PC now. So it'll be nice to to know basically that anything that I can play, you can play. And yeah, man, PC games look pretty good. I'm psyched for

when you see what cyberpunk looks like now that it's running pretty well on a good card it really does look pretty amazing yeah i'm stoked well i'm gonna wait to play it until the new uh patch and dc come out in a couple of months i started it a little bit and then realized it's gonna be like super different in just yeah it's gonna feel much different i downloaded red did too and was messing around with that a little bit looks phenomenal yeah man ridiculous looking game on ultra settings and yeah it's exciting i should say by the way i know people out there might have heard like $800 and they're just like still on sticker shock at that. For me and my job, it's a little bit of a different prospect than you're a normal person. I can write this off of my taxes and like

I just, I like you, both of us get a lot of free games, which makes it easier to justify dropping $800 on a graphics card. And also just like needing to play games for work and stuff. It is a different expense. If I were a normal person, I might not be dropping $800 on a graphics card. Like, NVIDIA's price, like, I just feel like they're price gaging. Like, the price of these graphics card is just totally ridiculous. It just should not cost this much. It's gone up so much just ever since the crypto boom. It really sucks.

Like, it's a bad feeling giving a company that much money when they just, I don't know, man. Yeah, that really bums me. But then again, if you have Vindia stock, it's like doubled from $200 to $400 this year. It's pretty. So, NVIDIA shareholders, enjoy. Yeah, I will say, though, a couple other things were cheaper than I expected. Like, SSDs now are much cheaper than they were when I last built a computer. Like, when I last built a computer, it was like, I don't know, 100, 150 bucks or something for a 500-gibite solid-state drive.

And now it's $200 for 4-terabyte solid-state drive, which is cool. Yeah, those M-2 drives are fast as hell, too. Like, that's the only storage I have in the PC that I built. And yeah, it's great. Yeah, I still have my little spinny disk thing. I just left it in the case unplugged because I was like, whatever, I can just, I don't need this lot for anything. I'll just leave it. The world has moved on.

Exactly. Yeah, these M2s. Also, the new motherboard. I don't know if you've messed around with the new motherboard yet or if you're still getting one, but it has a whole new setup for the M2s. There's like a case on top and a new like latch thing. It's pretty cool. Little heat sinks built in for keeping them cool.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. On top of them. Yeah, they are nice. And then, yeah, other things weren't quite as bad. It's just the GPU that is really just. sickeningly expensive these days, but other things, especially if you buy you, you can get at decent prices. All right, that is it for this week's episode. Kirk. Yeah, that's it. Ghost Maddie. I'll see you next week. Yeah, see you 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 clickpods,

send email the triple click at maximum fun.org and find a link to our Discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximum Fun. A work-owned network of artist-owned shows. Supported directly by you. Oh, I'm going to keep recording, actually, because it wouldn't be a triple click if there wasn't a sign-off of Maddie Myers saying, Bye.

Bye. Bye. Now you have more than one you can use. Use whichever one you want. What a crazy night.