Triple Click - GTA VI, The Game Awards, And Some Cool Games We've Been Playing

Episode Date: December 14, 2023

Kirk, Jason, and Maddy determine who won last week's award predictions before jumping into a jam-packed episode full of hot news and video games. They talk about The Game Awards, the GTA VI reveal, and the cancellation of E3, then talk about games like Avatar, Fortnite, and God of War Ragnarok's new Valhalla DLC, plus much more.One More Thing:Kirk: GPT4Maddy: Amsterdam (2022)Jason: Eiyuden ChroniclesLINKS:Featuring excerpts from “Love is a Long Road” by Tom Petty from Full Moon Fever, 1989, and the A Highland Song soundtrack, composed by Laurence ChapmanGames Discussed: Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo, A Highland Song, Lil’ Gator Game, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, Fortnite (Lego Fortnite, Rocket Racing, Fortnite Festival/Main Stage), God of War Ragnarok: ValhallaJason’s GTA VI article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-27/gta-6-release-date-rockstar-cleans-up-image-after-employee-backlashSupport 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

Sir, the breach can no longer be contained. The entire games industry is going to be consumed by Jeff Keely. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we do a grab bag of news about the Game Awards in E3, which is dead for real this time, and a grab bag of games we've been playing. Kirk played the Avatar game. Let's get into it. I'm Maddie Myers.

I'm Jason Schreier. And I'm Kirk Hamilton and hello. Hello. Hello, it's us. We're here. We're back for another episode. We are back again. We survived.

We survived. The Game Awards. Gaming's biggest night. Jason's home. He's cozy in his old office again. Everything's where it should be. The triple clickers are triple clicking once again in their home stations. And all is right with the world.

This kind of feels like the night before Christmas or something. It feels like I'm writing a poem about us. It's very epic. Yeah. The gamers were tucked in their gamer chairs with. with cute little controllers. Visions of under buttons danced in their heads. Yeah.

But where does the X button truly go? These are the dreams of gamers. And you know, if you want to hear more of my epic poem about gamers, you can't get it at MaximumFundorg slash join, but you should go there anyway because you could become a member of Max Fun, which is our podcast network, and you would get bonus episodes from us every month. then also you'd be supporting our show. You'd be one of the many listeners who supports our show, which has no ads.

Thanks to all of you. And you could also just maybe send me a telepathic message while you're doing that telling me to write an epic gamer poem. Yeah, I was going to say, that could be a bonus episode. Yeah, I could do that. It's just Maddie reading a poem from there on. I feel like a lot of people would like that. I would have to pay for that.

Watch our subscribers number would double. the night before Christmas, but it's like the night before the game awards? Like, I don't, I got to think about this more. It was the night before the gamer awards. The game rewards is a separate event that I will be hosting. But we'll get to that in a moment. Before we do, I just want to remind the listeners of that wonderful URL, maximum fun.org slash join.

If you haven't been to it, I highly recommend it. Check it out and become a member. And I guess I have two other things to say. The first is we are off next week. We are not releasing a regular triple-click episode, but we will release an irregular episode, by which I mean we will remove one of our bonus apps from the vault and put it out.

And also... Just a little taste, little taste of what she got it every month. A little sprinkling of what's good behind the members-only velvet rope. And then you might dame, you might dame to become a member after you hear it. And also, Jason, go ahead. Yeah. So last week, as people might recall, we put together a little game where we all made predictions for the game words as a tiebreaker for our 2023 predictions bet because there's a good chance that we will end in a three way or a two way tie. And so the results are Maddie had nine correct predictions.

Amazing results. I had 15. Correct predictions. And Kirk Hamilton had 16. Correct predictions. Kirk is the winner. And one thing that's exciting about that is that Kirk won two different e-sports predictions that took him over the top.

The potter, East sports of the year. I was cutting those up and I was like, thanks, ESports. That really won the top prize. When they were blazing through all the awards at the show last week, it was just like, oh, Kirk got them. Kirk got the wins.

No, it's good. I had to make up for not choosing Final Fantasy 7 as most anticipated game, even though it was obviously going to win the most anticipated game. Yeah, that's a bad one. What about Maddie had the lowest because she went with some outlying picks for a game of the year. I think I came up with concepts that made the episode more fun to listen to because I wanted to vote according to what I believe the game words should be. And maybe not according to what every.

everybody else thinks they should be. But I was wrong. Yeah, I mean, we're going to get into the Game Wars in a sec, but I think, so there's some interesting kind of politics that play here. And I think that, like, the winners, I believe that the jury really picks the winners and like that it's all up and up and up when it comes to the actual selection process. But I think the way Keeley selects, like, which winners will actually be shown and, like, get to speak is based on who comes to the awards show.

So, for example, like, Aounuma was there, and so they had to let him speak. He wasn't just going to sit in the audience quietly. So they knew, like, okay, he won Best Action Adventure, so we'll put that up on stage. As opposed to, you know how Best RPG was kind of buried in the categories? And they, like, when they rattled him off, and they were like, Best RPG, Balders Game 3. So Jeff definitely knew that Balders Game 3 was going to win game in the year. So he stuck that in the rattling off categories instead of having a piece. Do you think that's true?

100%. That's really... Okay. Yeah. I think it's based on... Because if he's only going to pick, like, 10 awards that actually get speeches, he doesn't want the same winner to have to come up multiple times unless it's, like, a few key awards. Like, those best performance game of the year are always going to get spoken.

But, like, best RPG, that gets cut for time because you know Swen is going to come up for a game of the year. So... What about the theory that the reason why the best RPG, best action... game, et cetera, existed categories is so that more games can be nominated. Therefore, Jeff Keely can potentially ply more publishers to work with him on advertising at the Game Awards. Have you heard this theory? That that's why there's so many categories total as compared to just having like a best game and best direction. I think people will come and advertise the game awards. Yeah, they don't need to be nominated. Well, something I learned last week, I guess I had known this

before, but had had a very explicitly spelled out to me last week, is that, that like a lot of the people who are, so you know how the Game Awards has commercial breaks in between the kind of like world premiere commercials? So the World Premier commercials, I don't think all of them, but a lot of them have to pay to be there also. So in addition to paying for a commercial slot,

you're also paying for like one of the official, like, we're going to hype up your thing type slot. And it's like, it's a hefty fee. I heard like, like, it depends how much time you're taking, but like it could be $500 grand for like a solid amount the time in that thing. Wow. That's weird to think about. Yeah. So even when you're being not being advertised to you, you're still being advertised to you in every possible way. Yeah. I guess the Oscars isn't really operating on that same level. Very different. But, I mean, who cares? I mean,

that's why so many people watch this and don't watch the Oscars. That's right. The Oscars is boring as hell. In this, you get to see Arcane announce a blade game and like cool new footage from whatever. You get to see Gonzo tell jokes about his chicken fetish. I don't think that's why. I mean, yeah. That's why I tuned in. A lot of people were complaining about this year's game awards because I guess, by the way, we've gotten into the show already without an introduction.

Yeah, should we say what the topic is? The topic is whatever we want. Continue, Jason. Just keep talking. That's perfect. The topic is whatever we want. So they were talking about whatever we see fit. I mean, honestly, that is the topic for this week's episode.

No, it's great. I love it. I love it. Welcome to Triple Click where we talk about whatever we want. So a lot of people were complaining about this year's show because the awards, acceptors, the winners, got to, like got played off essentially. And they were told an email went out in advance saying everyone gets only 30 seconds to speak. And the acceptors, it felt really kind of callous because like Neil Knoban,

the best performance winner played Asarian in Balders Gay 3. He like had this heartfelt speech he was giving and suddenly the music plays him off. Swen Vinky at the end was talking about his like their departed colleague on the team and he like the music didn't play him off but like the the prompter was saying please wrap it up. And so yeah, so it's it was really, it became this whole subjective discourse. And I actually think I disagree with all the people complaining about how it's not an award show. It's an advertiser show because if there were no like world premieres and announcements, none of us would give a shit about this show like the Dice Awards or the GD Awards or the real prestigious shows. The only reason people watch this is for the new stuff and the cool, exciting game trailers. Well, the problem is, the problem is that Jeff decides to stick in, in addition to those two parts, the awards and the marketing, he sticks in, like, all these celebrities and Gonzo and Kojima talking for, like, a solid 10 minutes about, like, nonsense.

And so that's the problem with the show, I think. I think if that stuff was replaced with, like, more award speeches, then it would be a much better balance. Do you want to talk about the Kojima? Kajima's dry ice budget. That was huge. Jordan Peel's dry ice budget. Also huge. I mean, I guess I just am used to that. I was kind of surprised to see those takes this year because I was like, that's the Game Awards. I, have I got back in time?

Well, usually people don't get cut off that quickly. This is all in reaction to Christopher Judge's rambling speech last year where he talked for like eight minutes, like literally eight minutes about nothing. And so this is, but yeah, I mean, I just think that that part of it is the real egregious, especially Kojima. Like, they were, they weren't even talking about a game. They were just complimenting each other, him and Jordan Peel for like the solitimate. So I actually, I don't totally agree with all of this. I think that a fun thing about the Academy Awards is the spontaneity and the sort of moments that can occur,

whether they're Will Smith slapping Chris Rock or just something a little more benign. Like, I think that seeing the people on stage, seeing the sort of, of bits and the silliness and the songs and all of that. That's part of the fun of the Oscars for me. And that was actually part of the fun of this show as well. Like introducing Timothy Salome by his like YouTube idea or whatever. That was just fun. And it was kind of fun to see various celebrities on stage. Like I really enjoyed it when Jordan Peel came out just because it was sort of surprising and I really admire him. And it was just cool. It was like, oh cool, it's Jordan Peel. What I didn't like as much was that they dedicated so much time.

to talking about upcoming projects and to selling stuff. Like the thing that bugged me about that Kojima segment wasn't that it was Kojima and Jordan Peel. It was that they were talking about this like game that was just, they didn't know anything about. It was brand new. That's what I'm saying. Really far away.

Yeah. But I mean, I guess the thing I don't like is all the ads. I think they could have a few fewer of those and a little bit more of the sort of award show pageantry and a little bit more obviously focus on the awards. And they'd have a really fun show. actually had a good time watching the game awards. I definitely, I think that the criticisms of it are valid, like that it didn't really acknowledge all the turmoil in the industry, the people who've lost their jobs. I think there was, like, there was a pretty easy, classy way that Keeley could

have done that without derailing the whole show. And I was kind of surprised he didn't. And that, yeah, like the balance was off and they played people off. Like, there are definitely things to criticize about it. But I have to say that just watching it, I only watched the second half, I wasn't as exhausted as a result. And I thought it was pretty... Yeah, that's why you liked it. because you only watched an hour and a half of it. No, I don't entirely disagree. Basically, I could see in the show. I could see the award show that I kind of want to watch.

It's not the end-all, be-all of everything, but it did feel like it had the right mix of moments and celebrity and excitement and music and actual awards that I could like it. If it was half as long and had, you know, a third as many advertisements in it may be. Kirk, you actually missed the best part, which is the pre-show,

or they announced like 10 awesome, indie games in a row, including a sequel to Curse of the Golden Idol. That's true. I saw that got announced. And that's like set in modern days and it's called Rise of the Golden Idol or something like that. It looks awesome. And a bunch of other stuff like the new game from the inscription guy and a few other

cool looking indies. Yeah, Kirk, I think you're right. And like, I'm sure most people could have done without like the next warframe expansion or whatever other kind of like mid-level stuff they announced. But those are people who pay to be there. Again, not all of them, so I'm not 100% sure who it pays, but like, yeah. No, I don't deny the realities that lead the show to being how it is. I'm more just like completely reflecting on it as a viewer.

Let's keep on moving. There's some other news I want to talk about. So, yeah, we did just get right into it without talking about what we're actually talking about on this episode, which is fine. But we're just kind of doing your rab bag. We're going to talk about a couple of news items. And then some games, because I've been playing a bunch of different games. And I just wanted to talk about them on the show because I haven't yet.

So that's kind of what we're doing. It's a loose end of the year. fall catchup episode. Whatever we want. Whatever we want. That's really what it is. As we said last week, let your pants down and just have fun. We're going to let our pants down and have a good time. So one of the thing that happened last week that we alluded to but had not yet seen when we recorded last week's episode was the Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer that released early because it was leaked. And then it actually came out like an hour after we stopped recording. But we haven't really reacted to it or talked about it. I mean, trailer reactions or whatever. Well, GTA is another

plane of existence. Yeah, it's a little different. Yeah. And I will say for my part that I initially after watching it, my first thought was that the Florida of the show, or the Florida of the game, really landed for me and having spent for increasingly exhausting years in Florida going to school in Miami, that was a little harder for me than I realized it was going to be, I guess, because it's so modern day, they're so leaning into that kind of dirtbag, Florida, Florida man thing. This just has these kind of rancid vibes a lot of it. But, and a way or a bad way, what does that mean for you? Well, in a bad way, kind of exhausting way, in the same way that I find GTA 5 to be exhausting,

where the world is just loud and aggressive and kind of hateful, and you don't like being in it, even though it's so absorbing and a lot of times fun. I was complaining to friend of the show Russ Freshdick about this, and he actually mentioned me on the besties as being like, I don't want to play a game in Florida. So I will just say to continue that or to kind of put a bow on that, I did initially have that feeling,

and I'm still a little skeptical about it. I'm not sure where they're going to go with it, but I did then go back and watch the trailer like a whole bunch more times, and each time I watched it, I was like, damn, I'm psyched for this game. Yeah, I mean, rock's... I do think it's that Tom Petty's song

also, Maddie to your article later. It's a great trailer. It's a good trailer. Like I said a couple of weeks ago, I mean, nobody's better in the business than Rockstar are making these trailers. Yeah, they're very good at it. It's true. Yeah, my only hope, I don't have a ton of thoughts on the trailer itself.

My only hope is that they take a lot more story and narrative lessons from Red Dead 2 than from GTA 5 because, like, the contrast between those two games and the level of quality storytelling in those two games is just like night and day. And Red De2, for anyone out there who's like, I was saying this in Discord actually a few days ago, for anyone out there who's kind of like skeptical of rockster storytelling or kind of dismisses them as like the Gen X, South Park, nihilistic types, go play Red Dead 2 because that game is like, like, an unparalleled achievement in terms of like the confidence and

subtlety of storytelling in that game is just beyond like anything I've seen in a video game. So go play that game. And I just hope that GTA 6 carries on a lot of that, especially when obviously the far out of stuff is all in there. But we also got some hints of the Bonnie and Clyde's story, which I had reported on a while back. And I think that is where we might see some of the like, really interesting kind of cool storytelling.

So that's my hope. Yeah, I'm really excited for that, not just because it's the first major GTA game with a playable female character in it, but also just because I think it's a fun storytelling opportunity to have two gangster characters who are in a romantic relationship, for starters. And also because, I mean, I've played enough GTA5

by this point to know and understand one of the many criticisms of that game was that every character was, unlikable to play as, and that is tough. That is a tough hang, even if you're really enjoying the experience. And at least based on this first trailer, I was really interested. He's all right. I like Franklin the best of the bunch, but sometimes, whatever, we don't need to get a GTA5 here.

But, like, I did like how this trailer kind of made you initially root for these two characters who were at the center of a setting that definitely has rancid vibes. Like, I agree with you there, Kirk. Like, they are showing you the rancid. vibes of Florida. And also in 2023, that's Florida baby. Oh, I know. That is what it is

and it's a modern setting. To be clear, my criticism is not that they're that they're going too hard on Florida. It's just that I don't really want to spend time in Florida. Yeah. Do you think Ronda Santis is going to be in the room? Almost certain. Yeah, he's got or like a Trump type figure for sure. Yeah. Oh, 100%.

That seems very like me. You got a Maralago. Oh, my God. Oh, God. That's almost like the Saints Row at all, though. But I like that idea of them kind of edging more into sort of a different style of comedy that's sort of pointing fingers at specific targets rather than trying to do the everybody's equally bad thing, but comes across in GTA 5 at various points. So, yeah, I'm curious about it.

Yeah, and it's worth noting. I reported on this. I did a big Bloomberg piece. We'll link this in the show notes about their kind of overhauling their culture and everything about rock star as... the quote was they're trying not to punch down. Exactly. Yeah.

And I think that's important. And I don't think not punching down doesn't mean they're like they're going to be like sensitive. Not politically sensitive or like, yeah, politically correct or whatever. It just means like no cheap trans jokes, which is like I don't think anyone. Like who wants that in a game, especially a big blockbuster game these days. There's going to be plenty of like off ball humor and ridiculousness as we saw in that trailer. And it also doesn't mean like not making fun of people of like different. races and ethnicities and religions and whatever else.

Like, that's all fine. It's just like the, like, the, like, jokes on the side of a truck about trans people. Like, we don't need that in a game. And that's what I think is the big difference here. Yeah. I'm looking forward to seeing more about it in a year when we see it nice because it's going to be a while. At least a year.

But it was fun to get that first glimpse. They're very good at, like, sparking the promise of a game. I feel like that's what those trailers always do is they make your imagination, like, a light. you look and you're like, oh boy. Yeah. This is going to be, maybe it's like the best possible version of the game is the one that exists right now in our imaginations. It'll only be down hill from here. Oh, actually, I thought Red Dead 2 I thought was better than the trailers.

Because remember the trailers? Everyone was like, oh, Arthur Morgan. He's like an generic dude. Yeah, and then it turns out he's like in this incredible person. Yeah, that's incredible character. All right. So the last little news item that I think we can mention here is the assassination of E3 by the coward Jeffrey Keely. The Death of E-Stra.

which that was a joke credit to both me and Jason. That was a Shreier Hamilton tag team. And yeah, so it sounds like E3 is totally dead. I feel like we've mentioned this like 17 times on the show that E3 has died. But now it's really and truly dead. We put a stake through its undead corpse and like burn it. We don't have any revived scrolls left. We can't bring it back.

So I'm dead inside when it comes to E3, but do the two of you have any thoughts on this? Kirk, I think you'll be. less dead inside when I show you. Let me see if I can bring up this picture. Tina and Meenie just sent me this picture. That's going to be, you're going to be like, ah, here, let me see if you can. Oh, I remember that.

Oh, that was nice. See, don't you miss that? It's to describe for listeners. It's a picture of a Kotaku crew. Me and Tina and Evan Narcissus and Steven Tutelo and Kirk Hamilton and Chris Sallensrop all at E3 2015. So you can't be that dead inside.

You miss your old buds. Almost 10 years ago, which is crazy. Wow, that's wild. No, but that's not E3, right? That's just people. Those are people that I like that you showed me a picture of. No, they're all dead. E3 is all of us, true.

What Maddie, yeah, what I didn't mention, Maddie, is that they're all blurred out as they each died each one of us. They're, like, fading out of the photo back to the future style. Like, everything that ever happened at E3 didn't happen. We're actually in a J-horror movie right now. No, the appeal of E3 for us at least is seeing old friends. That's why I was so stoked to go to the Game Wars last week. And I got to see a bunch of people I don't get to see it.

often. So that's why I like T3. Yeah. Do you think the Game Awards God, I'm sorry to even ask this question. Do you think the Game Awards is going to replace E3? No, Summer Games Fest has done a good job replacing it. Has it though? Yeah, so last year, I mean, okay, so, I mean, I can ramble a little bit here. I'll try

to keep this concise. E3 is essentially We have some games to talk about. E3 is two parts, right? There's the press conference part and then the campus, the trade show part. The trade show part has been very aptly replaced by Summer Games Fest because what they do is they have this campus. I don't know how many listeners or readers out there even paid attention

to this, but like they have this campus where press can go and play a bunch of demos. Two years ago it was really small. Last year it was a little bigger. Next year it's going to be even bigger as they get the big guys like Nintendo and PlayStation to show up there. And I think that's going to be a really fitting replacement

for E3 in terms of like I'm going to go and talk to developers and maybe we'll do some podcast interviews. Maybe I'll write them up and people will be able to see that. The press conference part, that's a whole another story, but that was kind of going in a totally different direction even before the demise of E3 and that everyone wants to do their own digital thing and not be swamped by other, or crowded out by other people. But Microsoft still does their big thing, like Ubisoft still does the thing. So we're still going to see that stuff. It's just that'll look different. But the

campus part, that I think will look pretty similar with SGF. And then in that way, I guess TGA is becomes yet another version of itself that combines all of the above, where it has the big pumping baselines during the trailers. But also, Aounma's there, and he's doing interviews with press. And also, reporters are hanging out and talk and shop with each other. Which, it was always that. It's been that since it started in 2014. It's like the two points of the year that the whole industry can arrange around,

the winter and the summer things. And Jeff Keeley is just in control of all of them. Yeah, which is that made bad. Well, that's if you're worried about. like monopolies and consolidation. We shouldn't worry about Disney anymore. We gotta worry about Jeff. He's holding too many cards.

Well, now he's got all the power when it comes to the industry events except for like people doing their own PlayStation and doing their own thing. You think Lena Kana's going to go after Jeff Keeley next? She should. She should. Get the FTC on this.

Watch out, Jeff. All right, let's talk about some games. There are a lot of games that, at least that I've been playing lately that we haven't had a chance to talk about on the show. And we're getting toward the end of the year. of course after Christmas

so we're off next week but then the week after that we're going to get together and we're going to each do our top 10 games of the year so we'll talk about some more games there so I pulled out some games that might make it onto my list not that these games won't for sure but they're just some that I've played that I haven't even mentioned on the show

and I think we've all been playing a few things so I just want to talk through them all and do you want to pick your favorite I want to hear the best one what's the best one that you're playing these days that you're most excited about the game that I'm most excited about actually that I'm playing now is called Paranorma Site, The Seven Mysteries of Hanjo. I just downloaded this because you were raving about it. Yeah, this is a try-your-ass type for a game.

It's an extremely Jason game. So this game is published by Squyri-Nix. I'm not totally sure, like, the creative team behind it, like what else they've worked on. But it kind of got buried just amid all the other games that were coming out this year. This is a visual novel, a mystery game where, I mean, it's a visual novel, but you're having to solve some mysteries and figure things out too. So there is some, you have to engage with it. You don't just sort of read.

It's set in 1980s, Japan, and it's kind of a spooky urban legend, haunted, kind of the grudge, the ring. It's got some of that kind of imagery. But I wouldn't really describe it as too scary. It's more creepy than it is scary. There are some jump scares, but they're not, like, really intense. It's more a spooky story. Rampa or like other kind of like... So it's a little like...

I find it to be compelling in the same way that Dangan Rompah is, where I really got sucked into this game and I'm really enjoying it. Though I'm finding it tonally to be very different from Dangan Rampa. And actually, I'm finding it to be... It's just kind of an... It goes down a little easier than Dangan Rampa, which, especially by the time I was playing V3, which I never did finish. I always go back to.

I start to just find... That game feels like it's yelling all the time. There are all these little mini-monokuma. and everyone's sort of screaming and the music is so jangly and discordant. And I'm like, there are times where I'm playing it and I just don't, it's a little too much. Sensory overload, yeah. So this game is a much more low-key, pretty steady frequency. And I'm just really enjoying it.

So it's presented visual novel style, though I think the way that the story is told is actually really nice. It's a little bit, it feels a little more modern in that characters are sort of shot at cinematic angles. there are these different sort of face animations as they talk. So it's mostly still, like there's not a lot of moving, you know, polygonal characters, but there's a much more involved sense of cinematography. And then when you're in a given scene, you can turn 360 degrees, you move a cursor around, and there's all kinds of stuff around you. And that also leads to really creepy scenes where you'll be talking to someone

and suddenly they'll have a horrified look on their face because there's something behind you. And so then you have to turn around and look at what's behind you. So it's good at that kind of thing. This is a game about the seven mysteries of Hanjo are these seven urban legends or myths about different cursed items and sort of old stories that have been filtered through the years and led to modern myths. You know, like a well where you hear a voice and the voice says leave it. And if you fish from that or from that river, you'll have to be, you'll be sucked into the river if you hear the voice, that kind of thing. That kind of stories, like similar to the stories that I'm sure all of us told one another when we were kids.

It's a group of people who become fixated on those stories And gain basically there's a right of resurrection that's Everyone kind of knows about that means you can bring someone back from the dead But in order to do it you have to take a curse stone and there are these different curse stones for each of the mysteries And you have to kill people and charge it up and then you can bring people back This is a little bit like death note too I gather I haven't actually seen death note Or the ring where you have to like find somebody to give the tape to give the yes, that's true very similar there too. So there's a bunch of different protagonists and the story is laid out similar

to some to some other visual novels that I know Jason you've talked about where there's kind of a story matrix and it starts out you're just following one guy but then pretty quickly you're following a bunch of different characters and the stories can branch and then you can go back and there's a whole kind of cool framing device where you're kind of watching the whole thing on a TV and there's a guy who interrupts every now and then to sort of talk to you and talk to you about how things are going. It actually structurally also reminds me of until dawn, where Peter Stormair comes and talks to you in between each chapter,

and there's a kind of, there's like a big branching, you know, butterfly effect thing. So that's what it is. I don't want to say too much because there are some really cool surprises, some really surprising mechanics. There are cool puzzles that require a lot of lateral thinking to figure out. And as you piece it together, you can then go back to the story and, like, keep playing through different sections with the new knowledge that you've gained of like, oh, this person is shady.

You're like, that person has a curse stone, so I've got to watch out for them. And it kind of just like blooms on top of itself as you go. I'm really, really enjoying it so far. I'm like four or five hours into it. This is so my gym that I am surprised that I skipped over there. I think you'll really like it. Well, I think you came out at the same time as like a bunch of other stuff. Just a timing thing.

So, wait, Kirk, what are you playing it on? Because it's on phones. And I was thinking about getting it for my phone. I think it'd be great on a phone. I'm playing it on Steam Deck. Okay, yeah. You know, I think it'd be really good. on Switch, I think it'd be good on anything handheld.

There's quite a bit of reading involved, I would gather. But I just, if I need to turn around quickly, I don't know if I want to be doing that on my phone. But maybe it's fine. Yeah, I think it works pretty well with the thumb. The touchscreen, actually, I use the touchscreen a lot on the Steam Deck too when I'm playing it. But the Thumbstick works pretty well, too. So yeah, that's a real glowing recommendation. I'm loving it, and I'm going to keep playing it.

So two games that I've just played a little bit of that are really nice. One is a Highlands song. Have either of you played this game? I haven't heard an inkle game. Yeah, and it's really nice. The thing I didn't realize about it going in is that it is partly a rhythm game. And it has lovely, lovely music. Lawrence Chapman is the main composer, but he has a bunch of Scottish musicians.

This is the story of a young woman in Scotland who wants to get to the ocean, sorry. She's seen rivers, but she's never seen an ocean, and she wants to get to her uncle there. It's kind of platforming and kind of like a branching exploration narrative game. It feels very inkly in that it's this kind of, it's a creative approach to the story, because the story in the land are inextricably linked. And then there are these moments where you just bound across the landscape, and this music starts playing this beautiful, you know, kind of Celtic-inspired music, these penny whistles and fiddles,

and she bounces along in time to the music, and it's just very magical. I'm really enjoying it. It just goes down super easy, and it's a very relaxing game. So I wanted to mention that. And another game that goes down very easy, his very relaxing comes courtesy our friends on the besties who have all been raving about it. I had never heard of this game. It's called Lil Gator Game. Have the two of you seen this game? I have seen it. I've had this on my Steam wish list for a long time because my coworker Ana Diaz

wrote about it and I read her review and it sounded so good, but then I just had no time for some reason this year. Yeah, it's really good. I gather Chris Grant has been raving about it too. I was sitting next to a plan and fresh dick of the game where it's because they got me into the polygon box, which is great. And they kept mentioning Gator Game and I kept thinking Gamergate. Like I said, oh, God. It's pretty much the opposite of Gamergate in every way possible. I don't think they're going to put that quote on the box, but you never know. This is a game that I would describe as a hike-like, which is a genre that I am trying to establish.

Like a short hike. It's very much like a short hike, a wonderful game that we all played that I'm sure. a lot of our listeners know. It just feels really in line with it stylistically, but it also expands on it in some interesting ways, and it's just lovely. Bing, Kirk here, just an edit to say that after we published this episode, someone wrote in to point out that I overlooked the fact that the Gator, the protagonist of this game, is actually non-binary and uses they-them pronouns.

I had mistakenly referred to them as him. I had only played a little bit of the game, and it sounds like the game has some very cool queer aspects that are explicitly written in by the developers. So I have edited this a little bit just so that I don't misgender the game's protagonist, since I think that's important. Sorry about that. And I'm looking forward to playing more because this is a really cool game. Okay, back to the show. Bing!

You play as a little gator who likes to play with their sister on the island where they live, and their sister has gotten older, and she's busy with school. She has a project she's doing. But the little gator still wants to play together like they used to. Which is, of course, just as a setup, your heartstrings are already like, oh, my gosh. And what they do is basically with all their friends, they start trying to put together a game like they used to play with their sister and make it so fun that they can text her and show pictures of what they've done and she'll want to come play. So it's very much like put down your grown-up things and come play with me like remember what it used to be like when we were younger. Oh my God, I'm going to like start crying talking about it. It's a very, very charming, wonderful game.

It kind of plays like, you know, Zelda or like one of those games, but there's no actual. means there's no, it's all just you and your friends, so it's all make-believe. And it's really wonderful. I've never quite seen anything like it. It's great, and it's another game that you can just, that's just very relaxing to play. I really want to play it. It sounds so

good. So yeah, the last game that I've been playing that I want to talk about is Avatar Frontiers of Pandora, as though I think only one among us who at all likes the Avatar movies. I seem like the prime candidate to play this game. Ubisoft sent me a code a couple of

weeks ago. The movies are a video game, so why not make a video game out of them? Yeah, I think that's about right. Do you search for unobtainium in the video game? No, no. Well, you would know this, Jason, but unobtainium is no longer the thing. Now it's whale brains that make you live forever. Right. I don't remember what it's called. Oh, it's called, what is it called? It means it was an A. I should know this. Alive forever, E.m. Yes. It doesn't have, I think they got rid of the overly dumb name. It has, it's still something that means life, like Amrita, maybe? Oh, God, I remembered that. Oh, no. That's terrible. Okay, so this game is made by Ubisoft Massive. They are the, formerly the makers of the division series. This is a

pretty big departure for them. And I would say a welcome one because the division games, you know, were interesting at first, but they've got that Tom Clancy thing. They're just kind of military in the city. What if the military just could shoot everybody games? And I don't know, that's not my thing anymore. This game, however, what if you were a 10-foot-tall, beautiful blue person on a really cool planet? I mean, I'm a little more into that. I don't know what you do. So this game casts you as a Navi, and it takes place in between the first and second movies. And you're kind of, you were kidnapped as a child and raised by the humans, but you're not an avatar.

Like the world of Avatar, it's called Avatar, right? because the people can plug into these genetically created navi, and that's the whole plot of the first movie, is the guy who is paralyzed from the waist down, is able to get into a Navi, and then eventually become one. And it's this very cool thing about him getting this incredible body that he can use again.

So this is just you are a Navi, but you've been kind of brainwashed. Like it's a mirror of real things that have happened in America, of, you know, taking Native Americans to schools to teach them how to, like, be proper. American. Kirk's using air quotes here, by the way. I am using air quotes. Sorry, yes. They're very horrifying, discussed in Killers of the Flower Moon. And actually, in a really good and really intense episode of Reservation Dogs that I just watched. Yeah, Res Dogs episode. Really good.

The Deer League episode. It was a good episode. It really messed up. So this game is not going to get super deep into that stuff, but it's there. It's there in the framing anyways. And you break out, it's your like cry of sleep for a little while, and then you wake up and uh-oh, you have to go into Pandora and start, you know, living among the Navi and figure out who your people used to be and who you are. So it's a way for them to let you be Navi, but also have the framing of the movie where you're kind of a newcomer, so everyone explains everything to you, which is, you know, which works. And I'll say this game is pretty cool. I don't, I'm not crazy about it. It is got that Ubisoft feeling where there's just a lot of stuff to do. There's a lot of upgrades.

There's a lot of side quests. A lot of people have described it as Far Cry on Pandora, which is like, I think, a fair way to nutshell it, but it's a little reductive. I think it's more interesting than Far Cry. It's probably closest to Far Cry primal, which is the most unusual Far Cry game, the, like, Caveman Far Cry,

in that it's not really, like, it doesn't have that feeling that Far Cry games have where you're amassing this sort of arsenal and you're fighting against some dictator. It's much more a game where you're just sort of chilling. And there are bad guys like, you know, sky people or whatever have invaded and you're fighting them. But most of the game is actually exploring. It feels like that's where the developer's heart was at.

They wanted to make a game where you just get to go to Pandora. It looks freaking amazing, which it does look amazing. It's one of the best-looking video games I've ever seen. And that's it. They've clearly had access to all of the art from the movie. And they've recreated Pandora and made it so you can run around. And like being a 10-foot person running around in this amazing planet is really cool. I mean, the mobility is really fun.

You have this like super high jump. You can hold down the jump button to charge and then just jump like 20 feet in the air. And it almost feels mirror is edgy at times. Like it's like a very traversal focused, very fast-moving game that makes combat pretty fun too. And honestly, it's a pretty fun game. I just played the mission where I got my, the flying bird, which, you know, he gets in the first movie. So now I can fly everywhere, and that's pretty cool. And it plays the music, you know, the like chanting choir and everything that's very triumphant.

And, yeah, I mean, it's not going to set the world on fire. Well, it hasn't. Definitely hasn't set the world on fire. Yeah, it has not set the world on fire. But it's a pretty pleasing game. I could see, you know, for people who are looking for just kind of beautiful-looking, pretty chill-open world game, you know, I think they would dig it. Oh, and my last thought is, I think it's interesting that this game in Hogward Legacy both came out in the same year. I think they're very similar in a certain way.

And that's that the licensed game, like technology and development budgets have gotten to the point where licensed games like this can exist. I think they're both kind of, they're pretty similar in that they're pretty high quality, they're amazing looking, and they do the thing from the movie. Like they let you go into the world of the movie in the case of Hogwarts Legacy. Like you do the thing. You get to go walk around, you know, inside of Hogwarts and look at the moving art. And in the case of Avatar, you get to go be a Navi and walk around on Pandora and you get to see the little plants that go thump, boop, poop into the ground when you touch them. Like it's the thing from the movie, but in a game, and it looks really good. And, you know,

I think that's kind of cool, like that we're entering a world where that kind of thing is more common. Yeah. I guess people want that still. Do they, though? I think it's interesting also that this game came out in December. It's always a weird time for a video game to kind of Well, it was supposed to be December of last year alongside the movie. And instead, it's, uh, yeah, that would have made more sense. That would have probably made it more popular. And I guess, I guess when you say, Maddie, you say do they? I mean, with Hogwarts Legacy, they did because that game sold exceptionally well.

And Avatar is not selling well. And I think that matches up with the sort of perplexing successive Avatar as a film franchise where, like, I think they're cool only because I like, I think James Cameron is just an awesome action director. And I'll watch anything he makes. He is. It's fun to watch his movies. That's the main reason I like them. And I think people just kind of go to them, but they don't seem to have the same kind of passionate engagement from fans that certainly that Harry Potter has. Even though I know there are the people who are obsessed with Avatar, like I think that's a pretty small group of people.

And most people are like me. Even if they like the movies, they kind of just, it's because they're like, well, they're pretty looking and they're fun to go see in the theaters. And they have really rad fight scenes. Don't you remember how to with John Wilson, the Avatar people? Yes, that's right. That's right. I was thinking of that and trying to remember if that was a YouTube video I watched or if it was John Wilson. Anyways, I've gone on long enough. It's a pretty good game. So I've been playing Fortnite. I don't know if you guys have heard of this. It's a video game. I have. Kind of a big deal. Yeah. So Tim's when he's trying to make his money back after laying all those people off earlier this year. And I think he just might do it. So Fortnite has put out in the past week as we record this, this little package of games, which are, Lego Fortnite, Rocket Racing, and this mode called Fortnite Festival. And those last two I'm going to talk about first because I played them the least. And they're kind of follow-ups on some acquisitions that Epic Games did.

So Rocket Racing is Epic Games had acquired Cyanics, which is the Rocket League people. That's probably how people think about them, or at least it's how I think about them. And they made Rocket Racing. It's a racing game in Fortnite. It's really freaking fun. I recommend it. It's super fun. You can press a button and your car flies and you can fly through the air and you can knock into other people and sparks fly.

It feels really good even with a mouse and keyboard. It felt great. Really fun multiplayer racing game. And then Fortnite Festival main stage, Epic Games acquired harmonics. And this is basically rock band. Except it's also a little bit like that game fuser that I talked about on this show as one more thing a while back and how it's kind of a DJ game. where you're playing kind of you're mixing songs. And the Fortnite Festival version of these rock band slash user elements

combines all the multiplayer fun with Fortnite in that you can be Naruto or you can be like a goat man and you're playing a guitar on a big stage and you're like doing emotes and dances and stuff when you're not playing your instrument. And it's just really fun. I don't know. I played it for a little while and it unlocked some of the really warm, fuzzy feelings that I had when I was playing Fuser on Twitch and people would like react to my mixes and stuff.

Like that sensation of playing music with people, it kind of evokes it a little bit. It's fun to play rock band. I always thought that. It is also fun to play rock band virtually if somebody's dressed like Naruto. All that works for me. I don't know that it's going to work in the long run. But a lot of people are playing Fortnite right now because they recently put out the, OG map, which is like the very first Fortnite map. So there's like a lot of people who logged in

recently just because they're like, oh, Fortnite OG. I remember the first map. I'll, I'll re-install Fortnite. I'll play that. I remember when I was eight. And now I'm 13 years old. I'm an old, wizened teenager by now. And I'm going to check out Rocket Racing and Fortnite Festival and the main stage mode. And also Lego Fortnite, which I would say is the star of the show. So this is like epic games working with Lego to make Minecraft. And I've played a couple hours of this. It's really good. Like, they super just made Minecraft and it's really fun.

And I don't, I don't. So, okay, so you can only pet animals in this game. I don't think you can kill anyone. And it's very pleasing. Like, in order to get wool from a sheep, you just walk up to a little sheep and you press E to pet it and then it makes a little noise. And then you get some wool. that in and of itself adorable, kid friendly,

perfect to have a totally kid friendly Fortnite mode. But also, they have the rights to all these different Lego blocks. So, like, if you're building your structure, because, you know, it's like Minecraft, a couple nights into the survival mode, these Lego skeletons are going to show up and they're going to try to kill you. There will eventually be skeletons that show up.

And you can build a wall to keep the skeletons out, and you can build, like, a fancy wooden wall. Or you can do what I did, which is use actual Lego blocks and just build, like, a cool Lego wall. Hell yeah. And it rules. It just feels really good to stack up some Lego blocks. Like it just makes your brain do that, that burr noise where you're like, yeah, this feels really good. This is satisfying. And you can like design a little Lego guy. I've paid for absolutely nothing.

So I have no good outfits. That's why I'm not talking about any of that. I don't have any good emotes. I'm just using all the free stuff. And I don't know. I think Lego Fortnite is probably going to be a thing. everybody plays for a while. I've seen a lot of people talking about it. It's pretty freaking fun is why. And it's kind of got that Tears of the Kingdom-ish feeling when you like stick together something and then it forms a new thing or like you build a car or you build some absurd artifact-y thing and then you know you meet other people or you can play with your friends.

And I mean, come on. That's the stuff. So after playing all that, I'm like, yeah, I guess Tim Sweeney's going to get all this money back after whatever happened where he... Tim Swinney is going to be fine. Well, they just won their lawsuit against Google, right? So yeah, Tim Swinney is riding high this week. They did.

They did. They did. So yeah, Fortnite. I have Fortnite back on my computer and I'm playing Fortnite now. I don't know how long that's going to last for me. But if my friends, I'll get into Lego Fortnite, I feel like that'd be a fun place to hang out. So that's what I'm playing right now. Jason, how about you for your fall catch up? Have you been able to play anything?

Yeah, a couple of things. I mean, I've been mostly writing a book. I've been playing through the new Ace Attorney collection that's coming out next month. I'm excited for this. Yeah, I'll talk about this later. Maybe we'll play some of it because I've been, but obviously you have rules because Ace Attorney rules are. The best thing about Ace Attorney is I just watched that four-hour H-bomber guy video that everyone watched about plagiarism. And at every new act break, he plays the Blay-do-de-de-flunt. But then it gets like more and more. distorted and weird through the episode. And it cracks me up every time. It is never not funny.

Everything does it. Anyway, continue. And I just played, I actually, I want to talk about this. I just played some of God of War Ragnarok Valhalla, which is the new mode that they announced to the Game Awards and just released this week, totally free. And it's really, really cool. It's like, it's essentially a rogue-like God of War. So it's like God of War, Hades, essentially, where you go through Valhalla and you fight through a bunch of what I assume are procedurally generated.

levels and as you go you get to pick between various skills that and you make a build of Kratos and then if you die you start from the beginning what I didn't expect going into this knowing knowing that it was that what I didn't expect was how story heavy it is so like from the get-go I mean you were in Mamiro are talking about how you got an invitation to go to Valhalla and it's not clear like what that was like you're not you don't know who it came from and then you hang you meet up with Freya Mamiro is like hinting that you disagree with Freya about something, and then Freya, you meet up with Freya, and this, it should be noted.

It all takes place after the story of God of War Ragnar. So it's kind of an epilogue to it. And then you find out, this is all very early, you find out that Freya wants you to come and be the God of war of the Norse mythology world now. And Cratos is resistant to that because of his past as the God of War. And so there's a ton of story that's beginning to unfold. And that, I think, is really what might intrigue a lot of people who enjoyed the God of War games so far for the last couple. I think that's what might make them interested in playing Valhalla if they're not super into Rogelix, but they're into the story.

So, yeah, I'm very curious to play more. I haven't played a ton. Just played a few runs of it. But God of War Combat, pretty pretty good. And so that combined with Hades structure. Sounds cool. I feel like anytime one of these companies has made a combat system like that, I think they did this with Rise of the Tomb Raider.

There was a pretty cool sort of rogue-like mode there where you were freezing in the snow and had to survive and kind of make it really far. And they're doing this with The Last of Us part too, which, granted, has a weird story tie-in, but also, like, the combat in that game is incredible. So, I don't know, like a rogue-like version is probably cool. Yeah. It might be cool, yeah. I'll definitely be checking that out, too.

And well, so, for Godavore, I mean, what they do here, is smart. They kind of, you start out, there's no like equipment that you have or skills or anything. You're kind of starting with a fresh Kratos build. And then you accumulate stuff as you go. And some of it is a little gnarly in terms of it's like 5% boost to this thing as you go. But I'm hoping it'll open up a little bit more, the more and more you play. But yeah, I mean, so far, nothing really beats. I've played a fair number of Roglites and nothing is really beaten Hades when it comes to like, like immediate understanding exactly what all the powers are, when you should choose what, like why you should choose what, and all that other stuff.

It's, it's that has not, like Falhalla has not trumped that so far from me yet. But curious to play more and then we'll see. Nice. I'll totally check it out. That sounds great. Yeah, it does. All right. Well, that is a lot of catching up.

We're going to be off next week. But then we'll be back to talk about a lot more games after that. But for now, let's take a break. and then come back with one more thing. If you're black, you probably love you some Paramore, huh? Or what about the TV show Golden Girls? Gingerill? Daytime television? Don't lie. I know you love at least one of them.

I'm Sequoia Holmes, pop-culturist, and hosts of Black People Love Paramore. Contrary to the title, it is not a podcast about the band Paramore. Each episode, I, along with the special guest co-host, dissect one pop culture topic that mainstream media doesn't necessarily associate with black people, but we know we like. Tune in every other Thursday to the podcast that's dedicated to helping black people feel more seen. Black people of Paramore is now on the Maximum Fun Network. Check out the most recent episode featuring Shar Jassel today. Throughout history, sirens have captured men's attention, enticed men with their feminine wiles and fulfill men's primal needs.

The sirens allure persist. They have not. Unless the primal need is, I need to be smashed on the rocks. Yeah, smash me. smash me, Mommy. Smash me, Mama. The silence of lure. Why do we do this to ourselves?

Strand me, baby. Strand me, baby. So, yeah, this is my brother, my brother, me for maximum fun on Mondays. It's just like that. It's just like to have more of it. There's more of that. And we're back for one more thing. Jason, why don't you go first? Because I think you have a game.

Yeah, so last week, like a couple days before the game. give more words, I got an email that was like, Auden Chronicle preview opportunity at the J. W. Marien, and I was like, hey, I will be at the J.D.O.W.M. Marion Marion when this is happening. A. Uden Chronicle, for those who are not familiar, is the kick-started spiritual successor to the Sweencoden series by the original team behind Svodon 1 and 2. And this game is very much aping Svokin and is trying to be Svikodan in all respects you. It's a term-based RPG with a political story. You go and collect an army of 100 people and you build a castle and so on and so forth. And so I got to play the first hour of this.

A couple of quick thoughts because it's very, very early in this game. One is that it was a little janky and I hope they clean up some of the bugs and messiness before the game shifts. They do have a few months. It comes out in April, but this preview was a little janky. There was like missing dialogue. There were some weird glitches, stuff like that. So hopefully it's all fixed by then. random encounters, very annoying. Invisible random encounters, very annoying. Especially after playing Octopath Traveler 2, which kind of spices up random encounters by making them a lot more interesting than just kind of mashing the A button over and over again, as you kind of have to do innate in Chronicles, which is just, again, trying to be speaking too.

So it makes sense that they're doing that, but still a little bit annoying. On the flip side, story, super cool and intriguing, very interesting. So far, it's a story from what I saw so far. It's about these two dudes who meet each other and seem to be destined to be best friends and rivals, sort of like Joey and Ryu and Svikhondo, too, except unlike Svkhono 2, they don't start as best friends. They start as strangers. And I won't get into all the specifics, but needless to say, the hour-long demo, which was basically the prologue of the game, after I finished the kind of the boss of it, the first scene I saw before I had to leave.

was a bunch of like politicians arguing over a big long table and nothing I like more than a good old politicians arguing at a big long table on a sweet-coating game scene. So that got me jazz for what that game will bring. And I'm very excited to play it even if I know I'm going to have to play it while like watching TV to get past the random encounters and stuff. But still pretty stoked and the music is really good. So at least there's that to get you through the the drudgery of random encounters. Yeah, Aiden Chronicles. I'm excited. Obviously, we'll talk about that more when it comes out. Seems likely. It will cover it. It seems highly likely. Maddie, what's your one more thing? All right. So I'm always talking about movies I really liked on this show. And I thought maybe I'd

switch it up this week and talk about a movie we watched that we didn't like and we didn't finish watching. Oh, that's sad. So this movie's called Amsterdam and it came out in 2022. And have you guys heard of this movie? Yes, I remember this. Yes. Yeah. So we didn't, a whole bunch of celebrities in this.

Yeah. A lot of actors in this. We didn't, we didn't know about this. This is sort of like a funny phenomenon of the streaming era of movies where sometimes you'll just get recommended something and you'll be like, oh, that looks good. And we really will take a chance on things for movie night. And we'll just be like, okay, there's a couple of people in this and we won't look up reviews.

And I don't, I don't always agree with reviews even from people I like. So sometimes looking at reviews doesn't even. help you decide if you're going to like a movie. So regardless, we decided to try watching Amsterdam on the basis of a title card that had Christian Bail, Margot Robbie, and John David Washington, three beautiful people. Just three really gorgeous lookers right there. And it told me that there'd be a murder. And it turned out that Taylor Swift, yes, that Taylor Swift is the one who gets murdered in like the first 10 minutes of this movie. She's in this. And as soon as she showed up, I was like, Uh-oh. I think this might be a movie that I remember people telling jokes about on the internet.

Because I remember that gif of Taylor Swift getting pushed under a car being like a meme for a hot second because it's like a really weird scene. So this movie is really weird. I don't think anybody should watch it. This is a David O. Russell movie. Yes. It's like a notable flop. Interesting. Yeah, it almost doesn't exist for me. That's wild. It's kind of wild that like a David O. Russell movie is like really bad. Like it's over long. It must be bad because I've, yeah, basically never.

It's way too long. We stopped, in case anybody's wondering when we stopped watching it, there's a scene where Robert De Niro shows up. And that's the scene where we stop watching it. It doesn't really matter what happens in that scene. But before that point, we had already run into Mike Myers, Michael Shannon, Anya Taylor Joy, Chris Rock is in this movie. Okay.

It's not good. It's really strange. That's funny. This is the thing where like David O'Ressel can call anyone and get them to be in this movie. Yeah. It felt like that. People kind of assume that the movie will be good.

It sounds like the Game Awards. It was a lot like the Game Awards actually. It actually felt like if Knives Out was really bad. That's what it felt like. It felt like David O'Ressel watched Knives Out and he was like, I can do that. And then he made this movie, which is a mystery. It is a murder mystery. Taylor Swift dies, folks.

She dies right away. And they got us all. it. And like an hour in Dina was like, I'm really not feeling this. And I was like, I want to know who killed Taylor Swift. And then another 30 minutes went by. And there was, there was like a part where the characters were singing a song. And I was like, I can't do this anymore.

So yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Don't watch it. Don't watch Amster. All right. It's always, there's always a question of like, who is the first one to express that they're not feeling the movie? Yeah, that's a thing on movie night, right? Who's going to break the seal in the room and be like, this sucks.

Where like you're both sitting there and you're like, is this bad, though? Did we maybe make a huge mistake? Hopefully, usually, everyone in the room is like, thank you for saying something. I didn't want to say anything. Well, I should have listened to her. That's the other piece of this, is that I should have listened to her in that moment and been like,

you're right. We can be watching anything else. There are so many movies out there. But I still don't know who killed Taylor Swift, and I may never know. Well, you can look it up. Yeah, I could look it up. All right, well, I will go last. My one more thing is a new friend, a new research assistant that I've brought into my life named chat GPT4 that I've been playing around with.

Are you paying for it? Yeah, so GPT4 is the one that you pay for. GPT3.5 is the one that you can use for free on the OpenAI site. But I have heard a friend of the show and very famous podcaster Casey Newton talking on hard fork about how he pays for GPT4, and he'd been going over some of the uses that he's found for it. And given that I self-produce a pretty invariable. involved podcast in strong songs that I spent a lot of time prepping and working on and doing

outlines for. Some of the descriptions of the ways that he was using chat GPT for sounded pretty cool. And I was like, okay, I can drop 20 bucks for at least one month to see how this goes. So I've been using it. Can I just say, Kirk, I heard Casey's podcast co-host Kevin Roos talking about this exact same subject on a different podcast and made me want to do this. Anyway, go on. Oh, boy. Yeah, it's definitely spreading. Well, and those guys are everywhere right now because like what Casey just went on PJ Votes show. And then they both went on Ezra Klein show. I feel like every podcast I'm listening to, yeah, because of the Sam Altman stuff.

So anyways, this is, I feel like ChatGPT is having a moment mostly because of the Sam Altman stuff. Really, they tried to depose him and they made him and their company more powerful than ever is kind of the feeling I've got. I mean, it's been having a moment for the entire year. Yeah, but I mean, especially right now. Like, you couldn't sign up for GPT for, I had to wait. I mean, I only had to wait like a week. So if anyone is trying to do this and you're on a waiting list, I think they go through it pretty fast. How much should you say it is, $20 a month?

It's $20 a month, and that gets you access to GPT4, and I think Dali as well, which is the art tool and some other stuff. And you can do a lot with it. I've only had this for a few days, and it's very powerful. You can build your own GPTs, which I think are very cool, and there are some really, really useful applications there. I saw someone saying that in their union negotiations, they built a GPT that was just for union stuff, and they put all of the PDFs of like all of the documents and the organizing and the bargaining that they'd been doing into it and wrote a Python script using GPT to organize it into a single document. Wow. And then they had this way of basically for every organizing meeting, they were really quickly able to access all of the information and everything that they'd done cross-reference super fast to just keep them moving.

And this was on Reddit, I just like saw a comment of someone saying that. But I think you can do all kinds of things that you can divide, like I could design my own strong songs GPT. which I think I'll probably do, where I'll, like, upload all the songs I've covered and all the things I haven't covered and, like, what I'm thinking. And then it'll be able to reference back to, like, that database when it's giving me answers. I heard Kevin talking about how he uploaded all of his transcript so he can search, like, for things that he's mentioned or, like, said. Yeah. Which is, which I think is super smart. Yeah, and there's 11 Labs also makes this AI that I'm thinking about trying out where I was talking to another friend about this, where that can do voice clones, too, which could be interesting for podcast production.

where you can write a script and then have, just dump a really quick audio of me doing it, like of a voice clone that I make of myself. So I can just like start working on it without having to go and record all the VOs since VO recording for Strong Songs takes a long time. Bing, Kirk here, just because I didn't say it, I would actually go back then and replace the fake VO

with my actual voiceover, since that's a really important part of Strong Songs. I just didn't want to leave that unsaid. It just, to take it for me, it would make production easier maybe in some ways and easier to just sort of scratch out ideas and see how things fit together. Anyways, okay, back to the show.

This is all kind of theoretical, and I haven't started doing too much of it yet, but it's really exciting. And using GBT4, just for the last, like, day, has been pretty mind-blowing just in what it can already do. I think if you're willing to pay for it, you can, this is what Casey Newton-Oye says, is basically you can experience the kind of cutting edge

if you pay, like right now. And it's significantly more impressive than the chat GBT that I had used. the publicly available one. It makes fewer mistakes. It's able to just reason more. For example, I'll give an example. I'm doing a, for patrons of strong songs,

I'm doing a bracket to pick one of the songs that I'm going to cover for next season. So people are going to vote. And I have a list of 32 entries to start with. And I just uploaded that list. And it was like, here's a list of artists that I'm putting in a bracket for my podcast. What do you think?

And it was like, well, here's what I think. And at first it noticed a duplicate. So it was like, you have Fiona Apple on there twice. So you probably want to take that off. And then it was like, this is good. And it gave me all these specific reasons. And then I was like, what would you do to make it better? And it gave me some good suggestions.

They weren't mind-blowing or anything, but it was like, well, you could introduce some more non-Western artists. Or like, you could have an instrumental artist on there because these are all singers and actually it'd be really cool to have some instrumental music. And these are all thoughts that I've had before. Like, it's just I don't, I'm not able to like access all of my thoughts at once. So it just helps me kind of brainstorm with myself. and with chat GPT, I guess, just kind of how to approach this list. And then it's been useful for all kinds of things.

I just have it open now on my desktop, and I'm kind of always just talking into it. You can't trust everything it says. It gets stuff wrong, though I have noticed that GPT4 is more correct than 3.5. Like, it makes fewer mistakes. But, of course, I, like, fact check everything it tells me and would never, like, ask it to write a script. I'm finding that what it's really good for is reacting to things I've already written. Like if I were going to write a paragraph, you know, an intro for an episode, if I then dropped that in there and was like, what do you think of this? Give me some feedback. I think then I would actually get something useful out of it. Where if I asked it to write an intro for a podcast, it would give me something really generic. Like it's not very good at generating stuff. Right. It's so funny, man, it seems like the research assistant role this is so perfect for, but what everyone always talks about in regards to AI is like, oh, it's going to, you can use it to write a TV script or whatever. I think that in general, yeah, I think that's going to be. I think that actually looking at how people are using AI, especially over the next few years, is going to tell us a lot more about how to use it than how we think people are going to use it.

Because the more people find effective ways to use it, the more other people are going to start doing that too. I'm only doing this because I heard Casey talking about how he uses it. And that made me realize, oh, that could actually be worth $20 a month to me to do that just for my job. That's exactly how I felt listening to Kevin. Oh, man, that's so funny. Yeah, it's so interesting. I feel like it's not going to replace the job of, like, writers, but it might replace the job of, like, assistance in that way.

I think, yeah, I can't even really theorize what it'll replace. Or, like, replace Google. Well, okay, that, so that was actually what I was going to say. I do, I think that this is going to make people specifically with, like, my job, like solo creators of, like, knowledge work. Yeah. It's going to make our lives a lot easier in the short term. It's certainly going to make my life easier.

Yeah, because you can't afford an assistant ever. So you would just be working longer hours. No, like, well, and like, if Strong Songs was, like, massive in bringing in, you know, tons of money, I could hire someone. But I don't, I mean, it just pays my salary. Like, it pays enough to cover basic expenses. But I can't have a staff and don't want one. So this is actually a really great way of doing it. And yeah, to what you said, Jason, I think this thing already, so GPT4 uses Bing search.

So it can do current search on, like, the current web. It's not like siloed information, like 3.5. Right. And, yeah, I mean, there is no. way. I can't imagine a future that doesn't use this as the primary way of getting information off the internet. Like in a year even or less, or like a year or two, definitely. Like, compared to the experience of using Google now, where it's just trash on trash on trash and everything feels useless and weird, this is just like having a conversation with someone who just happens to be able to

really quickly look at Wikipedia or whatever and then tell you what it says. And that's very helpful. So anyways, it's pretty cool. I'm sure I'll talk about it more on the show. But I just wanted to throw that out there since I've been more impressed with it than I was expecting. Yeah, I'm going to sign up because I really want to see if it can help me finish my book. One quick question. I've been sure I can. One quick question. Have you fallen in love?

No. I've not had any inappropriate interactions with it yet. And I believe they put a cap on a lot of those. But then again, I'm not doing that stuff, like asking it to say the word, let us infinite times until it breaks and starts telling me like, you know, it's developers, personal information. or whatever. Like, I'm not trying to break it. I'm just using it in a pretty straightforward way. Well, I was just thinking, man, the possibilities of this thing. Like, one of the most annoying things about, like, reporting work is going through, like, tons of lawsuits, for example. Could I get GPT to go through?

It's amazing at that. Yes. And, like, yeah, so that, I want to play around to that. I might even download it right now or sign up for it right now. Yeah, I think you should. Let me know if you do. We can talk about it some more. Because, yeah, like I said, I've only been doing this for a little while and I'll have a lot more to say about that. Yeah, we can do a whole episode. Yeah. We've made. I do a whole episode on this, but my main question is for Jason, and it's, Jason, do you think maybe Kirk has replaced himself with an AI and that his so-called new webcam as of this episode is in fact a ploy? And the few times that he's erred out have actually just been the AI that he's developed to replace himself on this show. Right. Or that was just like an AI error. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. I think it's just seems suspicious to me. That's all. That's all I'll say about. Very possible.

It's funny, you know, I know we've gone long, but I shared this with both of you, but I'll share with listeners that this was the first time, this week was the first time that I encountered in the wild a video that had been translated and relip synced with AI. I was watching a how-to Oculus video, and it was weirdly written, and I was noticing that the language was just a little weird, even though it was actually very clear in telling me what I needed to know. And then I realized about halfway through that this video was probably originally in German or some non-English language. And then had been put through an AI and the guy's lips were re, you know, redone to fit English language. And it was redone in another language. It was the first time I'd encounter something in the wild, even though I know the technology exists. And it was pretty wild. For sure.

Yeah. We live in the future. Good Lord. Yeah. I think there's a good chance Kirk is an AI and a good chance Maddie is actually Orrin in Doppler. That's, I will need a confirm or deny that. Nothing is what it seems. That's 2023 for you.

All right. Well, that has been our episode. As just one last reminder, we'll be off next week, but you'll have a bonus in the feed. And then we'll be back for our games of the year. That'll be a really fun episode. So, yeah, happy holidays to you both. And happy holidays to everybody listening. Thanks, as always, for listening to another year of Triple Click.

And, yeah, I'll see you all in two weeks. See you guys 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. Find us on Twitter at Triple ClickPod. Send email the triple click at Maximum Fun.org and find a link to our Discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network. Of artists-owned shows.

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