Triple Click - Dragon's Dogma 2 Makes Friction Fun

Starting point is 00:00:04 How well do you remember seventh grade science class? As in the definition of friction? Don't worry. We got you covered. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week we talk about the ways that video games resist the player. In seventh grade science terms, writing the Oxgarten, Dragon's Dogma 2, that's a simple machine, and friction is when a griffin attacks.

Starting point is 00:00:30 I'm Maddie Myers. I'm Jason Schreier, and I'm Kirk Hamilton, and hello. Hello. Hello, it's us again. friend. We made it back. We made it back to this crazy thing we call show. And that show is triple click. And we're here again. And how do we make the magic happen? Everyone wants to know. And the answer is available to you at maximum fun.org slash join. The mystery is revealed there for all to see. And that is our podcast network, our wonderful worker-owned podcast network. And if you become a member,

Starting point is 00:01:08 maximum fun, which you can do by going to that very URL that I just said. You get a bonus episode from us every month. You can listen to our most recent one, which is about Final Fantasy 7 rebirth, our reactions to the ending, our theories about all the Final Fantasy 7 games, plural. There are plural ones, Crisis Core, all of them. We get into it. It was a fun app. But hey, you wouldn't just get that. You get our entire backlog of monthly bonus episodes? No. Monthly bonus episodes. That's what you would get. Maximumfund.com. Fun Dorrit slash join.

Starting point is 00:01:41 Check it out. But I'm not done talking. I have one more thing to say. And that is, we are about to do a live show on the West Coast. This is our first time ever doing a live show on the West Coast. New York City, been there, done that. We're going to go to L.A. Baby, Saturday, June 8th.

Starting point is 00:02:01 Doors open at 6.30 p.m. at the Teragram Ballroom. Mark your calendars for that Saturday night. get a ticket. There is a link in the show notes to go ahead and get your tickets now. I'm so excited that we're going to have another live show, y'all. I'm really, really pumped. It's been a while. It's going to be great. It's going to be awesome. And should we just talk about Zelda the whole time, I guess? I mean, we might. That is what we did last time because it was almost right after Zelda came out and we brought our switches on stage and we booted up the game. We told everyone where we were. The crowd loved it. I remember bringing my switch to that show and my wife being like,

Starting point is 00:02:38 why are you bringing your switch to this live show? And I was like, you'll see, you'll see, you're going to see. It's going to be great. We got a bit. We got a bit. Yeah, well, what's cool about this one is where it comes during summer games fest, which is the kind of the new E3, the equivalent, I can't believe it's not E3. The Keeleys, as they call it.

Starting point is 00:02:58 So we're going to all actually go to the campus where like we can play some of the games and then we're going to talk about them. We'll talk about whatever new stuff is floating around, whatever new and Or we'll just talk about Zellon. Yeah, I was going to say, we might talk about Zelda again. It's possible. Well, here's the thing. It's like two weeks before Eldon Ring DLC.

Starting point is 00:03:16 Oh, you're right. I don't think we'll have that yet. No. But we'll be thinking about it. Maybe it'll be at Summer Games Fest. We'll be regretfully traveling and not playing it. I guess it will work on Steam decks. So maybe we're playing it and not able to talk about it.

Starting point is 00:03:30 That would be torturous. It would be. But what are we able to talk about today, Kirk? Today we are going to talk about a little word that's been getting a lot of play lately, and that word is friction. And specifically, we're going to be talking about Dragon's Dogma 2, but we're also going to talk about this concept of friction. So Dragon's Dogma 2 is a new-ish action RPG that Jason and I have both made are one's more thing on recent episodes. I've been playing a ton of it. I played so much of it

Starting point is 00:03:57 this past week. I'm really into it. And it's raised a lot of interesting questions, I suppose. It's a provocative game in some ways. It introduces a lot of friction at a lot of various points, which has led to a lot of interesting discussion and analysis of it that really is carrying on from analysis of the first game. And it's the word friction is a word that has just come up a lot over the last few years. I think it's just a concept that people are growing more familiar with. And so I thought that we could talk about it a little bit on this episode. I wrote a little intro for us about friction. But I'm going to read.

Starting point is 00:04:34 These days in the world of video games, the word friction gets tossed around a lot in a lot of different ways. For our purposes, friction refers to anything a video game does to get in your way, to introduce resistance to whatever it is you're trying to do. Friction is not the same as difficulty, though difficulty is a type of friction. It's a much broader concept touching each link in the unspooling chain of interactions between your brain, your fingers, and whatever game it is you're playing. friction there is, the less the game requires a view in order to play it. Until, if you lower the friction slider all the way to zero, you're left with something that asks nothing of you at all.

Starting point is 00:05:12 Push the slider all the way in the other direction, and you're left with something cumbersome and impenetrable and eventually, quote, literally unplayable, unquote, in the actual literal way. Sometimes friction is great, sometimes it can be frustrating and even ruinous. Well-placed frictions can keep you coming back to a game for hundreds of hours. Accidental or incidental frictions can cause you to quit after just a few minutes. But video games have to get in your way. That's kind of their whole thing. So friction is integral to the function of a video game and is directly tied to how games generate meaning as art or less loftily why they're fun to play. So that is my working explanation of what friction is. And now we're going to talk about it some.

Starting point is 00:05:55 So I guess, I don't know, what does that spark in the two of you? Let's just start there. We can talk about Dragon's Dogma in a little bit, but I am just curious, as the two of you have been thinking about friction this week, what has come up for you? Yeah, I think immediately of the Souls games, because they're kind of the most infamous example of games that resist you and try to try very hard to push you away. Very frictional games, yes. Yeah, very frictional games. I mean, narrative friction, I think, is one of the more interesting ones, and we all joke about how to understand the story of something like Eldon Ring, you have to go watch a 30-minute body video on YouTube. But I've also, I don't know if I want to say enjoyed.

Starting point is 00:06:40 I mean, I think sometimes I enjoy and sometimes I don't enjoy that feeling of being plopped somewhere and not told where to go and having to just figure it out or being not told what to do and just having to figure out. I think the sign of a really masterful game designer is being able to kind of kind of conjure the feeling of enjoyment even while you are not enjoying the kind of that, that feel, or you're enjoying the lack of enjoyment. You're enjoying the feeling of kind of budding your head against the law and trying to, trying to do it. The lack of satisfaction, right? You're not, you're being stuck. That's part of it too. The game is frustrating you in a way, but you're

Starting point is 00:07:16 enjoying the process. Yeah, or it's not even necessarily being stuck. I mean, sometimes having too many options can also be, I guess it can make you stuck in a different sort of way, that kind of infinite possibility. Analysis paralysis. as they call it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's the part of it too. So as we get into this, let me explain the three types of friction that I came up with. Oh, please, taxonomy time. It's a bit of a taxonomy time. I simplified it as much as I could because I think sometimes these get a little bit complicated. And I think there are three primary types of friction that games can introduce that this process, like coming up with these really helped me understand

Starting point is 00:07:51 how I interact with different games. Yeah, I like these. I liked this taxonomy that you wrote. I think this is pretty good. And it's pretty simple. I think people have a easy time keeping track of it. So there's mechanical friction, logistical friction, and informational friction. I think those are like the three main types of friction, at least as I'm defining them. Mechanical friction is relating to inputs and interactions. So that's like the actual feeling of playing the game like complicated button moves or having to like do a counter on a boss in order to beat them.

Starting point is 00:08:21 It can be like there's no jump button. So you have to figure out how to get up somewhere. but there isn't just like, it isn't easy for you to do it. All of that kind of stuff, like physical interaction with the game. Essentially, every game has this in some form. Yeah. Unless it's like down to like a quick time event or like a visual novel where you're just pressing a button to move forward, which is like the least amount of mechanical friction you could have.

Starting point is 00:08:43 Yeah, but you still have to press a button, but that's it. You do, right. Otherwise, I mean, if there's literally no mechanical friction, you are watching a movie. Yeah. Well, until they make games that you can control with your thoughts. That's true. And here I'll reference Tim Rogers, the wonderful video essayist, writer, game designer, polymath guy, wrote in 2010. Former colleague. This essay in praise of sticky friction for Kotaku. That was, for me, reading that, it was the first time I had seen someone really talking about friction. And his article is very much about mechanical friction. And he, it's a typical Tim Rogers piece where it's like five million words. It has a thousand really smart, interesting ideas. It's a lot to take on. But we'll link it in show notes. It's worth checking out.

Starting point is 00:09:25 And he talks about sticky friction as a version that he really likes. But there's also like crunchy friction and juicy. And then there's something called swish and Velcro friction. And a lot of things that people don't talk about as much anymore. It's a very Tim Rogers taxonomy. It's very complex. It's not how we would have done it, but it's great. So that's mechanical friction.

Starting point is 00:09:42 Logistical friction is a little different. But it still relates to how you play the game. And that's kind of like, it relates to planning or the flexibility or inflexibility of the game, the need to prepare and understand how the whole game, works. So this is, for example, if the map is an in-game object, it doesn't pause the game when you look at it. Or you can't just change, like, upgrade your character wherever you want to. You have to, like, go to a vendor to change classes. These are a lot of things that Dragon's Dogma too does. A lot of people call this quality of life. Yes. And like, and it can be,

Starting point is 00:10:12 which can then, I think, feel a little pejorative when that stuff is taken out for a purpose. Right, because your life is low quality at that point. Right. It's like, well, don't you want my life to be high quality? Like, why would, um, so like in, in Dark Soul, when you die, you lose experience points. And so then you have to plan your travel and plan what you're going to do really carefully. Or like when you get poisoned in Dark Soul, it's a status effect. And Dragonstock has a kind of similar situation where if you die a lot, you have a status effect that is impinging on your health bar.

Starting point is 00:10:43 And that is like a per, not semi-perman. There are ways you can fix it. But I would describe that as logistical because you have to kind of walk around and figure out how to fix it in order to get rid of that. The loss gauge, I think it's called in Dragonstock. Right. There are a lot of different effects that you can have happen to you. You know, so these are things that aren't related to direct input but are related to sort of understanding the game world and how you play through it. And then the third one is informational friction. That relates to what the game does and doesn't tell you.

Starting point is 00:11:11 And that can be everything from what you're supposed to do next. Like you had to just overhear this guy talking about some castle to understand that you're supposed to go there or the story. You know, like you have no idea who this character is unless you went and read a certain. an item description or something. You can have, I don't know, just even like conceptual, like there are mechanics in the game. Oh, actually, Dragon Zogama has an example of this. There's the dragon's blight, which is the thing that can infect your pawn and cause ruinous consequences in your game if you're not paying attention to the many, many times that your

Starting point is 00:11:43 pawns repeat the story of it and how to look for it and what the symptoms are. And why would you ever tune out on your pawns? It's not like they repeat themselves ever. Right. They repeat this one a lot. And once you realize that the game is. trying to communicate that, it's easy to pick it up. But there is no, like, past the first one.

Starting point is 00:11:59 Like, it's not going to regularly tell you about this mechanic. It's a little bit secret. And there are much more deeply hidden mechanics in that game as well that aren't quite as impactful in the game. So informational friction sort of makes sense. You can imagine what it means. Hidden systems, hidden quest objectives, the story is obfuscated.

Starting point is 00:12:16 You have to do some work in your head to figure it out. So those are the three kind of frictions. Sometimes it's worth noting that, like, a game, will use these kinds of frictions just for some aspects, for some stories. The game might have, like, most of its side quests kind of like sign pointed, but then one, you find that actually requires you to think about things and go hunt for it. And that, I think, is kind of, so there's always a spectrum of different types of friction and how they're applied in the game.

Starting point is 00:12:45 Right. It's not necessarily central to the way the game was designed. And that can then make a thing like that feel really special, right? You're mostly the game is telling you the story and it's very clear. Then you realize there's like an, a little environmental story that's just being told in this one room that you could have missed. But because you took the time to slow down and look at it and engage with it and think it through, you actually come away with this more meaningful experience. That's always fun, like when in destiny, when suddenly all the diagetic, like, dialogue disappears

Starting point is 00:13:15 when you go into a raid and it's just like completely different type of thing, like the level of friction. Like, like, really the quest objectives just disappear and you're essentially like, it's the game, is like figure this out on your own and adds a new level of friction that wasn't there before. Yeah, and soon you're like looking at enemy type descriptions and boss names. And then putting together this whole complex lore picture based on, you know, just the name of like the chronovore or whatever boss. Like each time. Yeah, which is a fun way to do it. I always enjoy that when a game kind of subverts your expectations by doing something like that.

Starting point is 00:13:49 I was trying to figure out why I love the friction in Eldon Ring. but really just bounced off of it hard in Dragon's Dogma. And I don't really know. I don't really have a satisfying answer other than just kind of Dragon's Dogma. Just everything about it just turned me off from like the generic like fantasy to the tepid dialogue to just everything about it. Whereas Eldon Ring, I was immediately hooked into the weirdo world by all the weirdo characters. And it just felt like unlike other things I had played before. But I don't know.

Starting point is 00:14:23 I mean, Kirk, I'm curious to hear a little bit more. You talked about it. Last week is your one more thing. I'm curious to hear a little bit more about why the friction in that game specifically works so well for you. I assume it's because you love microtransactions. We don't need to talk about, oh, my goodness. Capcom.

Starting point is 00:14:40 Capcom hooked me up with some of those sweet, sweet dollars. No, it's nothing related to microtransactions. It is, yeah, it's related to all of the frictions of the game and the way that they pull you in. I think something that I've found that I really like in games anyways is when a game has a lot of different frictions, you know, it slows you down, it makes you really meet it on its own terms, it doesn't give you everything. As a result, I feel like I climb inside of it, the more I play it. And I do have to climb and dig and kind of burrow and get in there where I'm like figuring out how the party works and how combat works and how to fight enemies and how to level up my character and what I need to prepare for and what I don't need to worry about. and slowly I learn and I kind of navigate all of the frictions, the logistical friction, the informational friction, the mechanical friction, all of them, until I've kind of mastered it.

Starting point is 00:15:29 And at that point, I'm like, this is my whole. It was made specifically for me. I'm like deep inside the game. And I'm in love with it. And it like, you know, I have become one with the game, which is something that I've definitely found with this game. And I've also found with games like Souls Games, Eldon Ring, Death Stranding is a great example of a game full of frictions. That's very, very engrossing once you get into it. Jason also did not care for famously.

Starting point is 00:15:54 Yeah. So with Dragon's Dogment 2 specifically, I mean, once you learn how to read it, it is a very clear text in a lot of ways. It's like it's just an action role-playing game where you control a party. I mean, you control the party leader, but your party just acts autonomously and you kind of arrange them to go on adventures. And that's the whole game. And it's really simple. I mean, I've seen, I've listened to people talk about this game on podcasts and read articles. about people who liked it and don't like it.

Starting point is 00:16:23 The more I play it, the more I feel like it's actually a pretty easy to understand game once you've kind of decoded everything about it. But it's a very difficult to explain game because you have to explain all those things that you decoded, you know, to kind of make it as legible to someone who hasn't played 20 or 30 hours of it. But once you've played a lot of it, it's just like the general appeal of it for me is that feeling of getting together a group where I've leveled up and I have some cool new abilities, and I've gotten the best gear I can afford.

Starting point is 00:16:53 I've gone and recruited pawns, which we talked about in The One More Thing, but are like player avatars, like players, NPCs that they make that come in from their games and tend to be very funny and charming and helpful and then talk a whole lot, putting together a party of them, and then just going out on an adventure, and because the game has all of this sort of logistical friction, where you can't fast travel super easily, you can do it, but it's something that you only do every once in a while, while and mostly you're just going to walk. There's no like horses. It doesn't make it super fast to

Starting point is 00:17:24 to get around. So you're planning a really long trip. You got to make sure you bring a packing kit because you're going to need to camp at a campfire. And then you just kind of go out on the road. No wonder you love this game. It's like hiking in Portland. It's like when you're on camping. No fast travel. You have to walk everywhere. It's a very manual feeling. A big feeling, I mean a big thing that I enjoy about Descranting as well. And a thing that I enjoy about camping is that like the planning part of it, where you make sure that you have everything. And there's even like, there's, there's like interface friction in this game. You know, you have to manage your weight and like drop off stuff and storage and get it out and combine it into new items and you're

Starting point is 00:18:01 navigating the menu with a controller and it kind of takes forever. But like doing all of that stuff where you finish it all and then you feel totally prepared and then you head out on the road and you're ready for an adventure. That's really fun for me. Like I really like that feeling. And then the mechanical friction of this game is just fantastic, I think. Like, I think that it has really good feeling combat. All of the different classes are really fun to play. The more abilities you unlock, the more fun they are. Like battles just sprawl into really unexpected directions.

Starting point is 00:18:31 Now that I've played it a bunch, it's actually very easy to control the game. It never feels like I'm out of control or I can't get out of where I am. Like, there's tons of campfires everywhere. You can always find somewhere to camp. Like, when it's night, you're not going to get chased by a boss across the whole, map. If you see a dragon, you can just run past it, and it, like, won't follow you very far. So you've mastered the friction. It's no longer frictional for you. Exactly. Like, a lot of the things that seemed like overwhelming or intimidating really are actually, like, pretty easy to

Starting point is 00:18:58 understand once you play more. But the process of mastering that was very fun. But is that, well, is that less appealing for you now, now that you get it? Like, is the game less interesting? I think that it will lose a little bit of the appeal once I get past, like, once I've mastered every type of friction that it has. Once you've gone sicko mode on Dragon's Dogma 2. Right. Once I'm like fully mastered it. And you see the Matrix Code.

Starting point is 00:19:24 So there are still frictions in the game. Like there's still informational friction. There's a lot of that in the game where there are little things where it doesn't tell you how to do something or it doesn't tell you what the branches of the story might be. There's a really cool sphinx puzzle. There's like the sphinx you can find. And I won't say too much in case people are looking for it. But it's really cool.

Starting point is 00:19:42 It's its own little quest where this big, amazing looking. Sphinx gives you riddles. And because this game is always auto-saving and makes it very difficult to, like, save and back up your save, you can do it, but you have to stay at an inn, and it's kind of hard to get to ins because it travels. So it's very easy to wind up in a situation where the Sphinx is asking you a riddle, and you're like, well, I guess I'm just going to try to answer it. And if I get it wrong, then it's going to save right after I got it wrong, and that's

Starting point is 00:20:07 too bad. And I really like that about this game, too, that it forces you to just go with whatever is happening and, you know, damn the consequence. It totally resists save scumming or any kind of manipulation, which then puts me in the moment. So, I don't know, there are still a lot of things like that in the game. You know, there's like a quest with a guy who was part of a like bandit organization and then he got betrayed by them and thrown in prison and I went and found him in prison and I could maybe bribe the prison warden to let him out, but I was talking to him.

Starting point is 00:20:38 And then another prisoner is like, yeah, that guy's parents were actually killed by the by the bandits. And he thinks that the bandits are good, but they never liked him. you can choose whether to tell him or not. And I was, like, not sure what any of this meant or what was going to happen. So I kind of, like, didn't tell him and then got him out, and now he needs a job. And, like, the game still has this stuff that's, like, very opaque to me. And I think I could go look.

Starting point is 00:21:01 Like, I looked at least at what the quest looks like, and it's very complicated. And there are a bunch of different ways that can go. So as long as the game still has things like that for me, I'm still kind of interested in just messing around with it. But there will come a point where I've, like, played every class and kind of fought every boss. and there's not really a lot left. And that's okay, because that'll be dozens of hours into the game. And I can stop. I've seen people in forums or whatever just being like, yeah, I played like 90 hours of this game.

Starting point is 00:21:26 I maxed out every class. And, man, the seams are really starting to show. I'm really running out. This game's really boring now. I'm going to give it a love rating on Steam. Right. You have mastered every friction the game has to offer. You've completely, like, gotten your head around it.

Starting point is 00:21:42 And yeah, all right, maybe now it's time to go play something else. I mean, that's how I feel about Balacho after I did that run, where I went full Sika mode because there's only one way to truly win. And then once you get that, you're just kind of like, well, the magic is kind of gone now. Yeah, Bellatro is a really interesting one. And I was thinking about it a lot while contemplating these types of friction. Because Bellatro is a very frictionless game to play in a lot of ways. It has like very specific frictions, right?

Starting point is 00:22:10 It's like informational friction. You are not totally sure what cards you're going to get, what jokers you're going to get, and what's going to be possible. But even there, it's like, I think Jason you said earlier, that one type of informational friction is like there's so much information. Like there are so many possibilities. In this case, that's definitely true. But they kind of reduce that because at any given store, you're only looking at like a few decisions. So it's actually pretty easy. You're like, well, I don't know, I guess I'll get that card and we'll see what happens.

Starting point is 00:22:40 And then you just keep going. So the experience of playing it is so slick and compelling because it's a very frictionless feeling. Yeah, but so, okay, so this is a little bit different because it's not really figuring out the frictions. The friction still exist whether you know the game cold or not. But once you get to a point where you're like, okay, if I want to get into the billions of points, the only way I can do this is by compounding multipliers. And the only way to do that is with steel cards and red seals and so on and so forth. the Go Truthsico mode, it kind of makes the game less charming because you figure it out

Starting point is 00:23:17 just kind of the secret sauce. And it's just kind of, it's not as interesting to pursue those other broken combinations because you know they're not as broken. Yeah. And I think that is part of that is kind of like when that friction is no longer there for you. In a different way than Dragon's Dogma or kind of more tactile game in a more kind of, I don't know, in a more cerebral way, you're kind of realizing that, okay, none of this is actually broken. This is the true broken build that I can do, and nothing else really matters. Yeah, at that point, I think it's friction-free. Well, so to kind of circle back slightly, Kirk,

Starting point is 00:23:56 why, do you think you like all three kinds of friction? Because it sounds like you do. Like, Jason and I each have our forms of friction that we don't really care for. And there are certainly summon Dragon's Dogma too that I'm like this is very tiresome to me I don't need to delineate what they are there's other things I love about it I don't know if I would say that Maddie I mean these are so high level

Starting point is 00:24:19 that they can be used in so many different ways and are used I mean really every game has some of these except for visual novels whatever most games have some of these frictions applied on different levels it's just kind of like it's it's a sliding scale for a lot of these

Starting point is 00:24:34 different types of I don't know mechanical applications of friction. That's true. I shouldn't challenge Kirk by forcing him to say what are you like to like? No, it's an interesting thing. It's an interesting thing about it. Because, yeah, I think that everybody likes different kinds of frictions in their games. And all games involve some element of friction just because, like I said,

Starting point is 00:24:53 like it's like fundamental to how games derive meaning or how they even function. So there's always going to be some friction. And then everyone has their tastes. So I think everyone out there listening to this can think about what games they like and why they like them and what types of frictions those games are playing with and maybe get a better sense of what they like. Like for me, yeah, I really like a Dragon's Dogma. I really like a Far Cry too.

Starting point is 00:25:15 I like a game that, you know, holds back a lot of information and forces you to really think through and plan out what you're going to do because it's not going to make that easy for you. I like Red Dead Red Dead Redemption too for the same reason. Where games with really intense mechanical friction sometimes aren't my thing. Like I don't really get into super complicated,

Starting point is 00:25:35 like platinum action games. Yeah. Like where there's really dense, you know, I like Bayonetta, but I don't get that deep into the button combos because I can't keep track of that. Yeah, whereas I love those. Right, because you're kind of a fighting game fan. And a lot of fighting games are that way too. They're pretty much pure mechanical friction.

Starting point is 00:25:52 It's just how much can you navigate these complex inputs and also react to other players. And also looking at the other character and what is it doing? Yes, exactly. Yeah. And so like I think a lot of games. introduce, especially now, like a lot of action, souls influenced games, introduce frictions that are really cool and kind of new. I think the counter, like the move toward countering in games is an interesting one.

Starting point is 00:26:19 I've been playing a little bit of Rise of the Ronan and then of course loved Lies of P. And those are both games, Rise of the Ronan made by Team Ninja who make Neo. And like Rise of the Ronan introduces a pretty strong mix of dodging and countering. And Lies of P does as well where there's like a really cool like, Sekiro counter, but also there are times where you need to dodge a little bit more like in Eldon Ring, where Elden Ring is kind of pure dodging, and Sekiro is like a lot of countering. So I don't know, I feel like counters are like a type of friction, a mechanical friction that's a new thing that not everyone loves because it forces you to engage mechanically with a boss

Starting point is 00:26:55 in a different way than just dodging, which everyone kind of got used to for 10 years after, you know, after Dark Souls became huge. So there are definitely mechanical frictions that I'm like, this is a sort of. too much for me or it's too complicated, it's not my thing. And similarly, there are also, I mean, informational, and there are logistical frictions too. Like, there are games where the whole game is just really complex planning and management, where there are a ton of different units, like a lot of RTSs for me. I struggle with the informational friction of, I mean, even a StarCraft, too, where I'm like, there's so much to keep track of and like, I just, this isn't quite my speed.

Starting point is 00:27:30 I haven't studied everything. I don't know what's going on. And the logistical friction of that as well, of like where does everything need to be, what orders should I do things in. There's a lot to learn with that game. And that does, it's not always my thing. Maddie, to kind of offer one possible answer to your question, I think it really depends on what type of player you are, why you play games in the first place. A lot of people get satisfaction out of games for different reasons. Yeah, let's get existential here.

Starting point is 00:27:57 I mean, yeah, it's pretty fundamental stuff. Yeah. I mean, thinking about the counter, the counter has me thinking, okay, why have I grown to love countering in games. A large part of that is because it's kind of a small endorphin rush that you can get when you're like, oh, I did that. I successfully countered and hit this,

Starting point is 00:28:15 did this perfectly, which you don't get quite as much, at least, no, I don't get quite as much satisfaction out of a perfect dodge as they do out of a perfect counter. And so, um,

Starting point is 00:28:25 kind of extrapolating from that, would I get the same sort of satisfaction out of watching numbers go up because I did the right combo in Panetta? probably not. Would I get the same satisfaction out of taking down a boss in Eldon Ring that has beaten me 50 times and now I finally gotten it? Yeah, absolutely. And I think different people just play games for different reasons.

Starting point is 00:28:45 A lot of people are into collecting and watching kind of bars go up and watching their achievement scores, their gamer scores, just rise. Remember when gamer score was the thing? Whereas other people just play games for different reasons. And I think the types of kind of frictions that I once they enjoy, I think the type of friction is that like the levels of them that appeal to you most, the kind of if you're fiddling, if you imagine friction as like a giant like kind of audio interface with a bunch of different meters that go up and down. Everybody has kind of different ideal like measures for each of the sliders. But but but and as the game designer, you have to kind of tune it just right for your ideal player. and hopefully you're appealing to a lot of different players

Starting point is 00:29:32 with a lot of different potential like forms and then maybe even let the player control difficulty settings in some way by adjusting their own sort of sliders. So fundamentally, I think it comes down to like, why do you play video games? Yeah. How does this appeal to you in that way? Wild.

Starting point is 00:29:51 That's interesting that you say that about difficulty sliders and like difficulty adjustment because that is part of this, right? is as we're seeing more and more games introduce more complex difficulty settings, what they're really doing is introducing ways to mitigate different types of friction. That's right. Like if you have just, it used to just be easy, medium, hard. And that really was just, it was a catch-all and it meant basically you take more damage and enemies.

Starting point is 00:30:18 Take less or, yeah. Yeah, or the other way around. And that's pretty much it. But then you can, you start to see like more flexible. Now it's like, oh, collectibles are easy to find. or like you get infinite currency but everything else is the same or enemies are weaker but everything else is the same. I love this, by the way,

Starting point is 00:30:35 that games really allow you to change everything exactly to how you like it. So you can adjust like the peri timing, like the window for pari timing, or you can turn on hints where your NPC will say, hey, I think you should maybe do this, or you can turn that off or like on game tutorial guides. And all of these things, which really when you look down this list of examples,

Starting point is 00:30:55 it's like almost all of these things are adjustable. It's similar to turning on immersive mode in a lot of open world games now where they've designed the world to be navigable without a map. But if you want a map and you want to have a map in the corner of the screen telling you where to go, you can turn that on as well, which is like really significantly changing this sort of level of informational friction that you're dealing with at any given moment and really can change the experience of a game. There are people who would argue that Eldon Ring with a mini map telling you where to go

Starting point is 00:31:24 would be like a completely different game. But at the same time, there's also a... totally an argument that's like, yeah, but whatever. If they made out an option, that'd be kind of cool. And I can kind of see that both ways. Yeah, a minimap would affect Eldon Ring less than, like, boss difficulty settings. That, I think, would have a way bigger impact on that game. But yeah, that's kind of the eternal debate that we've seen forever is difficulty modes. It's a parallel discussion, right, about difficulty. Yeah, well, because it raises a lot of interesting questions about, like, if you are kind of, if you as a player have the option of reducing

Starting point is 00:31:56 the friction, are you. you just kind of ruining the experience for yourself and as a designer, should I be able to say. Right. And also, like, can you take that? How far can you take that? Can I make it so I'm invincible the entire time and I can't, there's no way to lose this game? And a lot of games say, yes, absolutely. You can do that because that's part of the fun. I think it fundamentally depends what the game is trying to do. If it's a game, I think Balders Gate 3 is a really good example of this. Baldur's Gate 3 is a game that has a ton of those sliders and a ton of those options and its difficulty setting. You can go to like custom and you can pick all these different things of like,

Starting point is 00:32:31 okay, I want, I want one save file and it to be permanent or I want all these different types of things. I want to be able to choose whether I see the dice or not, whatever it is. And I think fundamentally, if you're playing that game, you could play that game for a bunch of different reasons, first and foremost, because you love the story and the characters and the romances and you really want to get into that stuff. And so maybe you don't care about the difficulty and the battles. And so So you're just focusing on that and you turn that stuff down. Whereas with something like Eldon Ring, maybe the game designers,

Starting point is 00:33:03 their whole reason for making that game is to create an experience that you feel like you are satisfied for overcoming these really difficult challenges. Mechanical friction. And if you don't want to do that, then it's not for you. Right. And so maybe for them, it would feel like maybe this can't have a difficulty mode or sliders

Starting point is 00:33:20 because that would reduce, that would eliminate what we're trying to do with this game in the first place. And that, That I think is a really interesting kind of conversation that I don't think has an easy answer one way or another. It doesn't. It's interesting because it relates directly to the art of game design, like to the actual artistry, like to the fact that you're making art and you can make that in an infinite number of different ways. And so it becomes extremely difficult, if not impossible, to get into like what type of art should you have been making when you made this thing?

Starting point is 00:33:50 Because, I mean, who's to say that to anybody? But then again, because you have to use this art, because the art is being designed. it's a game. It's something that we all use. We have much more of a vested interest in the way that the art feels to interact with. So then we wind up feeling much more opinionated and have a lot because, of course we are. Like we're playing the game. We would have a reason to feel this way about interacting with it. Dragon's Dogma is totally this way. I mean, that game is very specific. Like it is definitely the result of a vision and everything in it is supporting that vision. And if you started removing those things, it would really change what it is.

Starting point is 00:34:26 I respect the game's desire to just, like, be the thing that it is. I mean, this is clearly then the vision ever since the first game more than 10 years ago. And that's just what they're doing, very similar to what Souls games are doing in that way. Although it's funny to compare them because, I mean, they're really nothing alike. And I almost feel like the fact that Dragon's Doggant II looks a little like a Souls game. Like, if you watch a trailer for it, works against it. Because actually, the experience of playing it is so different. Like even the experience of fighting.

Starting point is 00:34:58 I agree with you, Kirk. I actually really enjoy the combat. It's sloppy. It's weird. You're constantly just flinging your arms all over the place and then you just manage to get through it. But when it works, it really works. And you can make it way easier or frictionless if you want to. If you recruit pawns who are mega powerful and that's like a whole other secret easy mode,

Starting point is 00:35:19 if you will in the game is simply that you can recruit different kinds of pawns and then let them do the fight for you. I love all of that. Like the fighting is really whatever you want it to be, but it feels nothing, nothing at all, like Eldon Ring. People have talked a lot about how there's no lock on mechanic. I think we at least mentioned that in our show. That alone is like, okay, so you're going to be kind of flinging yourself around a bit and just eyeballing a goblin and being like, I think this is going to connect. Okay, great, it did. I'm going to try to continue a through line.

Starting point is 00:35:50 You're not connecting combos band out of style at all. Like, just the mechanical feel of it is so different from other kinds of friction that I think just everyone's colloquially familiar with. Like when we think about a difficult game, I think a lot of us and myself included are like, okay, so a mechanically difficult game. It's going to need precise timing. It's going to have peri windows. That's not what makes Dragon's Dogman too difficult. And that I think alone is so surprising that it makes people confused because they're like, what? That's not what's hard about us.

Starting point is 00:36:22 Now that I've played a whole lot of it, like I just mop every encounter with regular enemies, like with just people like bandits or goblins. And they're fun because you just get to run around and blow stuff up and it's very chaotic. And then it's really all about the big monster fights, which to me feel much more like Monster Hunter. And they have that same really rambunctious feeling as a Monster Hunter fight. Monster Hunter is a little more precise. There's, you know, it's just like there's more, there's a lot of logistics. Frickson and Monster Hunter. Monster Hunter is actually a really interesting series to think about the frictions because there are all kinds of friction in that game, and that's a big part of what makes it so fun.

Starting point is 00:37:01 That is definitely like a me-shaped hole that I've crawled into more like Monster Hunter. It's funny how often you keep saying that. That is a reference to a terrifying horror manga, and at the end, Kirk will crawl into the game and die. And we will never see them again. But it's a perfect analogy. Keep using it. Memes decontextualized from their original meaning and become something separate. We don't have time to explain memes on this episode.

Starting point is 00:37:26 Keep going. You crawl into the game and then you're inside of it. And that very much happens in Monster Hunter. And these fights really feel like Monster Hunter in that same chaotic way. But then again, like the sticky friction to bring it back to Tim Rogers is fantastic. I mean, I'm playing, I played a lot as a mystic spear hand, which is like maybe the best class in the game. It has this like move where you activate the move and your character like full-on. across the map with their big, with their like two-handed Darth mall glave like held out.

Starting point is 00:37:57 And you can just, once you get a feel for it, like the pause, the animation, the way you freeze in mid-air and like fly forward, the fact that you can jump forward into an enemy and then grab them with the trigger and climb up their back after hitting them and then jump off and like slow them down. And like the physical pauses and delays, the sticky friction of the game is terrific. So like it always has that going for it. no matter how many other frictions you master, it always just feels really good to play it. So that is one reason I've just been enjoying, like, kind of no-braining it at times, just wandering around and leveling up some new class and, like, playing just because it feels very physically good to play.

Starting point is 00:38:37 I think, so I mentioned before quality of life that some friction, stuff like fast travel and being able to save anywhere is often referred to as quality of life. And I was thinking about why that is. and I think that the reason is kind of it comes down to intention and the intention of a game. When you play something like Dragon's Dogma, I'm sure some people out there are like, man, I wish this had fast travel, I wish this had more convenient features to it. But it does feel like it's a very deliberate decision by the designers to not have some of this stuff. And so you kind of play it. You wouldn't consider stuff, you wouldn't consider this stuff kind of quality of life or you wouldn't call it that because it's kind of of it's at odds with the purpose of this game. Whereas where something feels kind of unintentionally

Starting point is 00:39:26 obtuse and annoying and frictional, then I think you kind of, you're like, man, I wish this game had more quality of life features. I think you kind of think of it. I think the way that I frame it in my head is like, I don't know, I think destiny is a good example because when that game first came out, it had a lot of frictions that felt very unintentional and very much like, like, oh man, like why am I not able to immediately like dismantle all of the green items I get? Why am I just freaking like having to go into my inventory every single time and like manually like clear up space, which is just, it feels like a waste of my time for no reason whatsoever. A quality of life feature would be like, hey, I'm going to turn on a toggle to automatically dismantle that. And it didn't

Starting point is 00:40:10 feel deliberate at all. It felt like a very unintentional kind of design choice there or mistake or on mission there. And so I think that like players, players in general are intuitive and smart, and I think people can figure out whether something is, is intentionally done by artists who are giving you this friction kind of in a very deliberate way versus the game is like, this was a sloppy decision by somewhere, somewhere, or they didn't playtest this enough, or they didn't think about this enough, and now you're kind of, you're feeling the repercussions of that. Yeah, the quality of life thing also fits into M. MMO design in a certain way, just because MMOs feel a little bit more like doing a job.

Starting point is 00:40:51 And so they're kind of just like making the basic paperwork parts of the job a little bit faster. Like in Destiny, when they're like, okay, you don't have to go to the vendor to get a quest. Now you can just get a quest directly from the navigator and go do the quest. And then you, right, and it was like a big deal. And that was a very clear quality of life change that they made. Yeah, I don't know. And then this conversation, like this subject makes me think about. technology in general and the idea of reducing friction from how we use technology because we're

Starting point is 00:41:23 kind of we're entering an age or we're in an age where there's less friction than there's ever been. And I think it's really interesting that game designers have to basically introduce friction and figure out fun ways to make friction because so much of like industrial design, tech, product design, interface design is about removing as much friction as possible. And I guess something Sometimes interface designers have to add friction, but a lot of times you just remove it, and that's not always good. I was listening recently to unclear and present danger. I know, Maddie, you've listened to this show. John Gantz and Jamal Bowie's movie and politics show.

Starting point is 00:41:58 Yeah. They were talking about the first Mission Impossible movie. And they went on this tangent toward the end of the episode about the technology in that movie and like Y2K tech and like, I don't know, minidisc players and weird like Sony tech from around the year 2000. and how now phones are like increasingly like there's no friction, there's nothing to the device. It's just a screen. And like how that is actually not as appealing. And Gantz was just talking about he's like, I kind of miss. Like having a cassette tape and clacking it into a place.

Starting point is 00:42:30 Right, like a weird digital camera with like these weird settings on it. I think there was some camera they were talking about that has like a mini disc that you put into the camera and it writes the photos onto the mini disc. And how apparently among younger people there's like a whole movie. toward those digital cameras from that era because people like want that friction. I think a lot about listening to records or like how Spotify has turned music into this frictionless experience that then robs a lot of it of its meaning. And it's all like a big stew that is all related, like all the flavors mixed together with this conversation as well.

Starting point is 00:43:02 So I guess we're out of time and we can go on to one more thing. But I think it would be, I think I want to leave people thinking about friction more broadly in relation to their life. and then also comparing that to the video games that they play and the way that the people who made those games have taken those concepts, those frictional concepts, and deliberately introduce them to things to make them more enjoyable. Yeah, right on. I like that.

Starting point is 00:43:25 I like that way of thinking about it. Yeah. All right. Well, let's take a break, and then we'll be back for one more thing. Thanks to everyone who contributed during this year's Max Fun Drive, we truly couldn't do what we do without you. With the drive in the rear view, it's time for another proud tradition, our annual charity pin sale. This year, the proceeds for the pin sale will support vote riders,

Starting point is 00:43:52 a nonprofit dedicated to expanding ballot access nationwide. Members at $10 a month or more can purchase Max Fund Drive pins featuring shows from across the network, and all members are able to buy our network pin design, exclusive to this charity sale. The sale is live now, and it ends Friday, April 12th. For more info, head to MacDen, Maximumfun.org slash pin sale.

Starting point is 00:44:17 And thanks again for your support. From the twisted minds that brought you the adventure zone, balance and amnesty and graduation and ethersea and steeplechase and uteruspace and all the other ones. The McElroy brothers and dad are proud to reveal a bold vision for the future of actual play podcasting. It's called the Adventure Zone versus Dracula. Yeah, we're going to kill Dracula's ass Well, we're gonna attempt, we haven't recorded all of it yet We will attempt to kill Dracula's ass

Starting point is 00:44:53 The Avengers of versus Dracula Yes, a season I will be running Using the D&D 5th edition Rule set And there's two episodes out for you to listen to right now We hope you will join us Same Bat time, same bat channel For VATs

Starting point is 00:45:07 I see what you did there All right and we are back for one more thing Jason, why don't you go first Yours looks like it's a game it is I am playing a video game called Secrets of Grindia this is an indie game

Starting point is 00:45:22 that has been in development for 13 years it was in early access for 10 years that's pretty wild huh wow it's been in development longer than Georgia R. Martins

Starting point is 00:45:34 the wins of winter or as long as as George R. Martins the wins of winter but it actually came out great so Secrets of Grindia this is a really cool game I think that it's worth checking out.

Starting point is 00:45:47 I think everybody should check it out because it's kind of a, it's a game with a lot of interesting, sticky friction. It's a Zelda-like. It's a top-down, 2D, beautiful-looking, animated action RPG where you play as kind of a little avatar dude. It's co-op so you could play with a group of people who becomes a collector, which in the world of this kind of, of Secrets of Grandia is someone who goes out and, I don't know, helps people and solves things and collects artifacts. And none of it is really important. It just gives you an excuse to go around and fight enemies and collect stuff and solve puzzles and do all sorts of cool little stuff. And actually, it reminds me a lot of the game Crosscode, which is a game I really loved a few years ago and a game

Starting point is 00:46:33 that we may all play if I wind up winning this year's predictions bet. And it's got a lot of cool ideas. It has a huge kind of almost overwhelmingly big talent system where you can kind of get a bunch of different weapon abilities and magic spells and stuff and use them all in 2D and a lot of them feel really good and have that great sticky friction. It's got a lot of really cool, fun block puzzles and other kind of interesting mechanics. It's got some real cool bosses that are big and bad and kind of throw bullet hell at you and you have to dodge and attack and figure out. out the best way to beat them, Zelda style. It's kind of, if you think of like a Zelda game with way more mechanics and way

Starting point is 00:47:16 higher difficulty, like a much more challenging kind of experience in general, that is what you have here in a lot of ways. And yeah, I'm just really enjoying it. The music is really cool. The aesthetics are really cool. Feels really good to play. It's a little bit, it's going to, I have a feeling that it's like going to be a little bit grindy because I think there's a mechanic where you have to like fight enemies.

Starting point is 00:47:40 to get a certain type of loot in order to see the true ending, which seems like it might be annoying, so I probably won't do that. But what I have played, and I played a good chunk of it so far, I'm really enjoying and recommend pretty highly. So again, it's called Secrets of Grindia. And if you're into kind of top-down action RPGs at all, especially this one is very much trying to harken back to the old days of like, I don't know, Terranigma and Soulblazer and Lufia 2 and Legend of Zelda linked to the past, obviously, Secret of Mana, then I think you will really enjoy this game. So check it out. Secrets of Grindia. And the co-op part is cool too. There's also like, I think there's an entire mode attached called Arcade Mode that basically

Starting point is 00:48:27 turns it into a rogue like. So there's a whole other game inside of this game. And yeah, I am really enjoying it. So y'all should go play it. You two should go play it too. It's cool. This looks great. I'm looking at it. I'll totally, I'll put this on my steam deck for the trip I've got coming up. Yes, I've been playing entirely on my steam deck because it's a good one to play in bed while watching TV. Yeah, it looks like a perfect steam deck game. Nice. All right. Yeah, I'll play that. Maddie, what is your One More Thing? My One More Thing is a movie called The Holdovers that I am watching extremely belatedly because this is a Christmas movie. And I probably should watch it during Christmas. It would really fit the vibe back then.

Starting point is 00:49:07 Turns out you can watch Christmas movies whenever you want to. So that's what we did. I really recommend this one. I had no idea. It was such a Massachusetts movie heading into it. It's Paul Giamani stars as a professor at a boys' school that is a fictional school, but it's filmed at Deerfield Academy, which is in Western Mass near where my wife grew up. So we started watching the movie. She was like, oh, this looks like just like Deerfield Academy. And then Google's it. It's at Deerfield Academy. This whole movie said at Deerfield Academy. So, Paul Giamatti, I mean, I love him on billions and he plays a similar, like, curmudgently academic type on this.

Starting point is 00:49:45 He's a teacher who everybody hates because he's too strict. And then there's this boy, Angus Tully, who's played by Dominic Sessa, who is, this is his first time being in any movie and he's incredibly good. And the two of them kind of form a relationship over the holidays because Angus gets stuck staying over being a holdover at the school during Christmas break, which is like the worst case scenario for a teenager, as we all know. And it's poignant and really good. But I also wanted to shout out this Vanity Fair article I read called

Starting point is 00:50:16 How the Holdovers pulled off Paul Giamatti's lazy eye. The first day of shooting, this is an anecdote at the top of the article, the script supervisor apparently said, I didn't know Paul Giamatti had a bad eye because the designers had done such an incredibly good job on the lens that they created for him, that everyone on set was like, oh my god, Paul Giamatti has this. We didn't know this. And like then Zach Rips is apparently the name of the guy who designed the eye.

Starting point is 00:50:45 And then he ended up having to design a second eye because Alexander Payne, who directed this, wanted it to be a different eye depending on the scene so that you would just always not be sure, because you can actually have this probably both eyes. Like in Young Frankenstein. Kind of, yeah. And like all of the kids make fun of him for this and they're always like, oh, we don't know which eye to look at. And that's like sort of a theme of Paul Giamatti's characters that like nobody wants to look him in the eye because they're so intimidated by him. But also he's sort of this like put upon person who like inside has a lot of anxieties and insecurities about how he looks and how he's perceived.

Starting point is 00:51:23 And so like that's kind of the theme throughout. But also I appreciated knowing that fact because it was making me feel onward from reality watching the film because I was like, it's his left eye. No, it's his right eye. I don't know what's going on right now. So Alexander Payne is definitely trying to make you feel a little unborn from reality watching this movie. But yeah, really recommend it if you like a poignant Christmas movie. It's really good. Also, Divine Joy Randolph is a side character in it and she won the supporting actress Oscar for it.

Starting point is 00:51:51 She's really, really good in it. So I recommend The Holdovers is what it's called. We watched it on Peacock. Did Giamani win or no? I don't think. Up and I'm marijuana. No. Yeah, no, Killeen Murphy.

Starting point is 00:52:02 one. Killing Murphy one, okay. Giamatti never wins anything. I don't know. I don't know why. Poor Paul. Always a bridesmaid. Always a bridesmaid. Yeah, a great actor, though. Nice. Yeah, I'll watch that. It was fantastic. Underrated role is him in Man on the Moon, the Andy Kaufman movie. Oh, I've always wanted to watch that. I didn't know he was in that. That's a good movie. Yeah. That's the, where Jim Carrey plays Amy Coffin.

Starting point is 00:52:24 Yes, yeah. I saw that a long time ago. Yes, and Paul Giamati plays his, like, his buddy, his assistant. Interesting. Wow. Wow. I think I think I did. I think I didn't really know who Paul Giamatti was when I saw that movie. I saw it like when it first came out and haven't seen it since. I should watch that again. Cool. That's the same. Bob Zamana, I think that's the same. All right, well, that just leaves me. My one more thing is a show that I've been watching on Netflix that originally aired on Peacock and is absolutely hilarious. And I think everyone should watch it. I want to watch this. This is on my to do list. Yeah, it's good. You will laugh and laugh and laugh. Jason, you would love it as well. It is called

Starting point is 00:52:57 Girls Five Eva. Yeah, I've watched some of it. My wife loves it. So Girls 5EVA is a show that originally aired on Peacock, I think, in 2020, 2021, a couple of years ago. And then I think, I don't know if it got canceled or if it got bought by Netflix, but Netflix now owns it and has produced a third season of the show. This is a sitcom, 30-minute sitcom, very much in the mold of 30 Rock and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. It's created by Meredith Scardino, who is a writer on Kimmy Schmidt. It's produced by Robert Carlock and Tina Faye of 30 Rock and Kimmy Schmidt. Like in that lineage, the music is by Jeff Richmond or a lot of the music, the Tina Face husband and the, of course, incredible composer of 30 Rock who like wrote all those songs from 30 Rock. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:53:41 We're Wolf Bar Mitzvah, Muffin Tops. All those earworms. Yeah. So this show is so funny. I love it. Emily loves it. We watch it every night and we laugh and laugh. It is about a group of women who are now middle-aged women who in the early 2000s were in a girl group called Girls Five Eva.

Starting point is 00:53:59 They are played by Sarah Borella. Busy Phillips, Paula Pell, and Renee Elise Goldsbury. So I'm most familiar with, I guess I'm familiar with all of them. Paula Pell was a writer, I think, mostly before this, but she is hilarious. Sarah Borellis, I know from like the sing-off, the Acapella group, the show that she judged. But she was a singer-songwriter. And also, like, being a real musician. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:54:20 She had a hit that I'm not going to write you a love song. And she was in Waitress on Broadway. So she's like a great singer and musician. Renee Elise Goldsbury, of course, was the subject of an episode of Strong songs. She played Angelica Skyler and Hamilton. But she's been in everything. I mean, she's been around for so long. She's like an actor and lots of shows that I've watched,

Starting point is 00:54:37 a banana singer. She's like one of the most talented people alive. And her character on the show is very funny because she's like a version of her in Aalise Goldsbury that's just dialed up, maybe 20%. Because I feel like she's probably a lot in real life, even like the actual person because she's just like so... So talented?

Starting point is 00:54:53 She's like beautiful and can sing and like do everything. And like she's always... So she's very, very funny. I mean, her singing. You're underplaying. like she steals Hamilton. It's kind of like, she's like... I did make a whole episode about the song.

Starting point is 00:55:06 Yes, it is the absolute showstop. No, I know you know this. You're just underplaying it a little bit here. Yes, she walks away with the whole musical, which is like an incredible musical, but her performance is like completely out of control. And then Busy Phillips, who I know from like, I mean, way back in the day on Freaks and Geeks,

Starting point is 00:55:22 but she's been a lot of stuff. So they're all hilarious. And it's funny that it's a little bit like Yellow Jackets in that it's this group of women who are remembering when they were young, but of course it's a comedy. It's so funny. There's like a song on every episode that's hilarious, like, you know, where they'll usually

Starting point is 00:55:37 be singing a new version of one of their songs or they'll have a flashback to like one of the ridiculous songs they sang, which are all like parodying what pop music was like at that time period and just like how horrible it was and just the jokes that they make, especially for people in anywhere between 30 and 50 who like were sentient around the turn of the millennium. Like you will just laugh and laugh. It sucks to tell a sitcom joke on a podcast and hope that it's funny. But on a recent episode that we watched, we're in season two,

Starting point is 00:56:07 and Renee Lee Scholesbury's character, Wiki, is on her phone. And she's like, yes, I got into Raya. And then Dara Brelas's husband is like, you know, I couldn't because the dragon had hair and there was no singing. And they just keep going. And I was like, it took me a second. It's like, the jokes are all like that. We're like, I'm like, oh, yeah, Raya, that's like the dating app for famous people. And then he's talking about Raya, the Last Dragon.

Starting point is 00:56:28 the Disney movie. It's a very 30 rock kind of a joke almost. So anyways, it's like that kind of humor where it's like happening so fast that you're laughing and you're missing the next joke. It's very, very funny. I honestly like, it's just a total crowd pleaser. It's got everything. I can't believe I didn't watch it. It's all about writing songs and like the ridiculousness of that and the music industry. Yeah, I can't believe I haven't watched it yet either because I'm such a fan of pop star never stop stopping, which is Andy Sandberg's like sort of 2000s pop parody movie. And I just, I've watched that. multiple times because I find it's so hilarious. And this feels like very much in the same vein.

Starting point is 00:57:02 It is exactly like that. Yes. Like you will love it. It is like the easiest show to recommend. Popstar soundtrack is regularly in my rotation. It's a great soundtrack. Kirk, your next sitcom after this and Maddie, both of you need to watch happy endings because you want a throwback.

Starting point is 00:57:19 You want a sitcom that's like a joke a mile per minute. And famous for it, like kind of a genre defining show that I've never seen, but heard a lot about. You guys both need to watch that. I'm going to remember this the next time you give me crap about talking about more than one thing during one more thing. Well, it's your one more thing that I'm just kind of riffing out. This is a good new technique. Yeah, that's how you do it.

Starting point is 00:57:44 You have to be additive not to someone else's. I have heard that that show is good. Anyways, I've definitely talked to some people who were like, oh, I kind of saw that on Netflix but didn't know what it was. So I'm throwing this out there for anyone who thinks that sounds good. You should watch it. Girls Five Eva. It's on Netflix now. It's very good.

Starting point is 00:57:58 And that's it. That's our show. We go on. See you guys next week. Yeah, 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.

Starting point is 00:58:16 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 maximum fun.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.

Starting point is 00:58:39 Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network of artists-owned shows. Supported directly by you.

Triple Click - Dragon's Dogma 2 Makes Friction Fun

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