Triple Click - How Do You Fix Free-To-Play Games?

Episode Date: January 19, 2023

How can free-to-play games be fixed? What are the small details in games that annoy you? And is it censorship for a video game to have a gore filter? This week, Jason, Maddy, and Kirk crack open the mailbag and take some of YOUR questions on all sorts of things. Plus: the rise of the CASUAL WIFE.One More Thing: Kirk: Avatar: The Way of WaterMaddy: The FabelmansJason: New SimpsonsLinks:Triple Click LIVE IN BROOKLYN, May 18th: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/triple-click-live-tickets-513213584647Support 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

It's the middle of January and there are already like three big games on the horizon. Are you ready for this? Just personally speaking, I don't think I'm ready for this. Welcome to Triple Click where we bring the games to you. We've got a little bit more time before the big January games come out. So we're answering some of your questions about casual collection games, monetization, and little things in games that we find annoying. Let's get into it.

I'm Kirk Hamilton. I'm Maddie Myers. And I'm Jason Schreier. Hello. Hello there. Hello. It's us. Here we are.

It is us. Once again, clicking our way through January. The triplets. Someone in the mailbag. Yeah. I thought that was cute. We get the clickers.

The triple clickers. Yeah, you spoiled, you spoiled the intro of a future of this podcast and a feature mailbag entry in this podcast. You spoiled for us. Like when you have triplets,

Jason, and you reveal the triplets that you've had? Is that part of it? Yes. Yes, it is. Okay. I'm sorry for spoiling that. I just thought.

it was kind of a cute thing for someone to call us. It's okay. I mean, I guess I forgive you. That's good. We can move forward with clear eyes wide open, clear hearts. Can't lose. Yeah. Full eyes. Can't lose. Can't lose.

This is going great. This episode is going great. And that's because we're professional podcasters who are entirely supported by our listeners. We love doing this. And we love all of you for supporting us while we do it. If you would like to support the creation of triple click and support creator-owned media and the Maximum Fun Network. In general, you can become a member of Maximum Fun at MaximumFund.org slash join. And if you do that, you get access to bonus episodes of our podcast and all the other podcasts on this network.

But our podcast, I mean, that's the one you want. That's the one you're listening to right now. That's the real. That's like the steak. At the all you can eat buffet, like you're going for the money food, the triple click sections. True. You've got to just get the meat. You can't fill up on all those side dishes, even if they're delicious.

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The most recent one was on Star Wars and or we are going to do one. this month where we go over our favorite ones more thing of last year. So we're just going to talk about a bunch of different things from the year that are not games that we loved. We did this last year as well. We're going to follow a similar format. And that'll be really fun. That'll be up in a couple of weeks week and a half or something.

And you get one every month if you become a member as a thank you from us to you for supporting us, making this show. So that is maximum fun.org slash join. Become a member. One more thing. Not to be confused with one more thing, which we do at the end of the show. An additional announcement. How about that?

An additional announcement, as we mentioned last week, we are doing a live show. And now the three of us are here to say, we're doing a live show. How excited are the two of you excited as well? I'm very excited. I'm very excited. I'm nervous. But mostly excited. It's going to be awesome.

IRL. It is very exciting. I know a lot of listeners are excited as well. It's been very cool to see how stoked people are. This will be our first live show ever. It's going to be May 18th, which is a Thursday. at the Bell House in Brooklyn, New York, which is a venue that the three of us have recorded it at before.

Yeah, you said this was the first time ever, and that is true for Triple Click. Yeah. But technically, we did a show at the Bell House as split screen. Yes. Who can remember that? But it's Triple Click's first live show ever, and I think that is both true and also feels true. I mean, that was so long ago.

That was before the pandemic. Yeah. That was another age. The important thing is, May 18th, Thursday at the Bell House in Brooklyn, We're going to be live on stage doing an episode of Triple Click. It'll be a live show. There will be audience participation. There might even be some music.

Who knows? We're still figuring it out. And one other thing, for anyone who can't make it, there will be digital tickets. So there's going to be a digital aspect of this where you can watch live along online. And, of course, also, if you can't do any of that, we'll put the episode in the feed like usual. So you'll still get to hear it, even if you can't attend. So, yeah, we're very excited about that. There's a link with more info.

Down in the show notes, all right. It's a mailbag. It's time to open the mailbag. Jason, take us away. All right. We got some listener questions to get to you today. That's right. This week we are doing an episode of burning questions.

They are on fire. The questions are so freaking hot right out of the mailbag. Just a reminder to anyone who wants to send in questions for the show. You can reach us at triple click at maximum fun.org. As always, these are all real emails from real listeners as far as far. as we know. What is this normal gossip? They've all been anonymized, but they're real questions from the real world. From a variety of time periods. I think it's actually like an old, I think it's an old Bill Simmons thing that he used to do that. Anyway, all right, let's go around the room and everyone can read in order. Maddie, why don't you start? Yeah, the room that all three of us are in together. I'll start on one side of the room from Tyler, who writes, hello, triple click crew. First time long. time and all that. I've been thinking lately about content filters in games. I feel like when I was a kid,

content filters were more common and allowed you to remove blood or even profanity from a game. I remember in games like Jet Force Gemini, you could even change the color of the blood to make it less gruesome. I have a real struggle with gore in games. Violent images really stick with me and have a negative impact on me. When The Last of Us 2 came out, I was hoping it would include a gore filter like the original did, but I was disappointed, and I had to look away on all of Kratos' brutal finishers in God of War 2018. What are your thoughts about content filters in games? Do they betray the artistic vision of a game to remove blood or profanity?

Should there be more of them in games? And along with that, why do so many modern games pride themselves on having detailed internal anatomy just so you can see an enemy's insides all over the ground after you kill them? It cracks me up to imagine the artist at the game studio who is like, no, we cannot have a gore filter. It really just crushes me to, it tears away in my artistic integrity to be able to tone down the blood that I painstakingly crafted in this game. But then again, I mean like Quentin Tarantino might say that. So why shouldn't a video game artist say that? It's an interesting question.

Yeah, I didn't know The Last of Us One had a gore filter. So I'm learning that from Tyler here. I obviously didn't use it. But that's too bad. The second one does it. Yeah, I didn't know that either. This is an interesting question. Kind of a multi-tiered one, right?

Like, there are a bunch of different ways you can come at it. One is that generally I think it's probably preferable if someone creating art is the one making the decision to put that kind of a filter on rather than having it imposed on them. So I'd say that's a worthwhile distinction to make. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so also, I mean, this really calls back to the early days of video games when games were actually censored. Like, I always bring this up, but like alcohol getting changed into like juice. I think Final Fantasy 6, which we all played, you guys might remember, there's a part where you're playing as lock and you have to go steal cider for a dude.

Like, that is not cider. That is supposed to be like some, I don't know if it's hard alcohol or like wine or something. But that is not cider. It was just turned into cider to get by Nintendo's filters back. in the day. So it definitely is, or at least was, a censorship issue, but it's also, and obviously that was also the case for some Gore stuff, although more to combat got away with releasing on Super Nintendo. But it's interesting to think of as also something that can like make a game more accessible for people. Well, right. And that's, I think that's the sort of, the way that I

tend to come out at it, at least as someone who creates things. Like, for example, strong songs, I don't curse on that show and it's a family-friendly show and I know a lot of people listen with their kids and I am a person who curses when he talks sometimes I find curse words to be sometimes a delightful color for a language but I don't need to use it and I make that decision I sort of weigh the pros and the cons and I can see someone creating a video game making the same decision one example that comes to mind is the game grounded the sort of honey I shrunk the kids style game that has a content filter for spiders I think it's just for spiders I haven't played the game, right, which is also something that has been modded into Skyrim, similar thing,

where the spiders are turned into something else. I think in Skyrim, one mod famously turns them into bears. I think in Grounded, it just removes the legs and eyes and just turns them into eventually like little smiley faces or something. It does a variety of things. There's like an actual spectrum of spider removal that you can do in Grounded, which is really cool. We have at least one arachnophobon staff at Polygon, so I'm very familiar with the nuances of this particular mod.

I thought it was really neat that they included so many layers to it, depending on how scary you think spiders aren't. Well, it's interesting. The spider question is like, that is removing something that is a common fear or common phobia to make it so more people can play the game. But it also, the spiders are not integral to the story or integral to the way that the game makes you feel.

Whereas one might argue certainly that like blood and gore in something like The Last of Us could be integrated. to the game. I don't know if last of us really needs it. I don't know if God of War really needs as much blood and gore as it does. But there's a little bit more of an argument to be made that like, okay, for you the player to really feel the weight of all this violence that Cratos does or whatever, then maybe you need to see the blood and gore. And I don't know, I don't really have like a strong opinion on this one way or another. I just think it's an interesting question to explore. It is. I'd say, you know, it's all on the same spectrum. I mean, when I think of the Shalob

sequence say in Lord of the Rings, if they replaced Shalab with a golden retriever, because some people are afraid of huge spiders, you know, it does kind of remove the horror and the impact of that scene in the same way that editing out, you know, some of the more violent things in The Last of Us Part 2 would make it a little more confusing if once Ellie becomes this broken person having done these horrible things, if you don't see them, it does remove it. And I could see either Peter Jackson or Neil Druckman saying, you know, well, no, we can't change that because this is the intention of this. So I see it's all kind of content filters, different kinds of content filters. And I guess, yeah, my main thought is just, if a creator wants to

create filters, it can be a type of accessibility. It's more work. You're asking them to do more and more and more. I mean, I'm sure that spider filter took work and grounded and coming up with a way to make the story work. Like, each time someone does that, that does require extra labor and there comes a point where maybe they just can't do it and they have to say, look, we're just making this one thing and it has to be what it is. But all of that is like an interesting artistic thing that is sort of creators making their own decisions about their art, which is then very different from, you know, say a console company saying you can't have any blood in our games and we're just going to change it.

Or a government saying you can't have any homosexual relationships in this game. So we're just going to make you remove them all or like change the way that you describe them because like that's not allowed in our country. So like those two things feel notably different to me and I'm more interested in an okay with the one than the other. Yeah. Who's the important part of this is who's making the decision ultimately to do that. And actually taking that one step further a little bit, this is a little bit off base. But like in terms of when people complain about censorship in localization of content, I think oftentimes people are like, oh my God, I can't believe you replace this like Japanese pervy joke with like a,

a US thing, like a US-centric thing or something that would be more accommodating to US gamers. But I actually think localizing, unlike like a publisher releasing a game on a console, localization has its own set of like artistic merits and questions and challenges. And so a localizer deciding, hey, I want to interpret this. Another way is just as genuine and artistic thing as like the developers is sending what they wanted to do. So that I think is a little bit different than like what you described, Kirk, where some, some third party is coming in and saying, no, this is not allowed in our country or this is not allowed on our console.

Right. Since localizers are a part of the development team. Exactly. And especially if that localizer is changing something to be a pervy joke that Americans would understand culturally better. But they're still keeping the intent. Just a specific kind of privy, because I wouldn't call that censorship. Like in some cases, people might use the word censorship when what they really just mean is that it's been changed in some way. And it may have been changed in a way that makes it more easily understood by people in another country because they don't have the cultural reference to whatever joke is being made. The other thing I wanted to mention here is that the Bayanetta games have an extremely funny approach to censorship that I don't know if you two are familiar with,

such that it's extremely over the top, like the cigars become bubble gum cigars and like lots of things become candy and ice cream cones and like it's supposedly nonviolent, but really It's just a way that you could play bayonetta and still have your kid around and just be like, yeah, they're just fighting with ice cream cones and bubblegum and all these other things. But it's still got that bayonetta sense of humor where everything is extremely cartoonish and flamboyant and you're still getting that sense of it. I'm not sure what inspired them to make that change, but regardless of that, it always felt like the implementation of it was on brand for the type of comedy that that game is trying to achieve. Yeah, there have been other games too. I'm forgetting which ones who implement a bleep filter or a violence filter where that kind of blurred out black bar goes over violence. And that can be very funny.

That is another thing that's probably a lot of work to implement. Oh, for sure. Having someone curse someone else out and it's all bleeped can actually be funnier in the right circumstance because you fill in the blanks. And if the bleep goes on long enough, you're like, what on earth could they be saying? You know, it has that kind of humor. There have been games that have done that and that can be funny too. Kirk, I just want to say real quick, I really appreciate that you make

a podcast without cursing. And I've been trying not to curse in this podcast since September, when I started taking... Nice. How's it been going? Well, when I started taking my kid to school in the morning and I listen to a podcast while driving her to school and every time I'm listening to a podcast

and they drop an F-pot or something, I just wince. And she's not old enough to like really understand that yet or know what the significance is. But like, exactly. Exactly. So I do appreciate curse-free curse-free podcast. No, I hear you.

It's kind of a fun challenge as a podcaster, not to get sidetracked, but it's a thing I think about sometimes, too. As much as fun as it can be to curse, it's also like, not that hard not to.

Yeah, it feels, it's funny, I'm playing a game that I'll talk more about next week, but you can probably guess what it is. And I actually really enjoy it,

but the main character just like curses every other word, and it's so superfluous and unnecessary. And, man, we used to talk about this at Kataku all the time,

too. like when people wanted to put curses in headlines. There's so much more powerful when you only do one like once a month or like once every like when they're rare. That's when they're more powerful. When you're seeing them every other sentence, it's just like men, you sound like a teenager who just learned how to curse in the first place. That's true. You have to judicious use of curse words is important. Exactly.

Okay. Next question. Maddie, you read the last one. Kirk, you want to do this next one? Sure. This comes from grace. Grace writes, High team, I've found it harder lately to get into games due to how many mechanics are piled into new games, especially indie ones.

Have you all noticed this one too? And if so, do you think it's to the detriment of video games? I'll start, I guess. I've noticed this not really necessarily with indie games, but definitely with games. I think there's just a lot of stuff in most games these days. And I do think, I don't know if it's to the detriment of video games, but there is something refreshing about playing a game. that doesn't have a million different systems interlocking where you're not learning how to play an optional, you know,

tabletop game that you walk around and build your deck to play that you don't have to both, you know, I don't know, learn how to, like a whole complicated leveling and crafting system on top of the regular gameplay in combat, on top of the branching narrative, on top of whatever else. Like, vampire survivors, one of my favorite games of last year, is literally just move around in a circle and kill all the monsters. And there is something nice about that

that I think even the biggest games would do well to keep in mind. Yeah, I think the problem with that. And yeah, I actually, I'm not sure what Grace means by indie ones. But the triple games, the big budget games definitely are like one thing on top of another. The crafting stuff especially, the equipment stuff especially, because so much of it is like, you have to dedicate this brain space and this time for a system that is like that will make you 5% better at dodging fire attacks or something like that. And so it's like these incremental, like, nonsensical things that I, and they're so minor and, like, insignificant to your enjoyment of the game that I usually just ignore it.

And I think the system, when a system is just like easy to ignore, it probably doesn't need to be in your game. And when there's, like, crafting systems are fine and stuff and equipment systems are fine. But, like, it's, if it's not actively contributing to the gameplay in a way that makes you feel like you want to engage. in it, then does it really need to be there? I've had that thought about a lot of games recently, where it's just like, man, why is it just giving me these more, like, it just feels like they're hitting a checklist of like, this is what every AAA game has to have. It's one of my very few complaints about Marvel's Midnight Suns is that there's just one too many ways to craft an item or object that you could use in that game. And I'm used to it now because I'm like 75

five hours into that game and almost done. But for the first 10 hours or so, I was like, do I really have to go to different stations, like different desks around this huge room to click on something to make this kind of card and then take that card over to this other thing and then turn it in to upgrade this ability? And then also I need to open up my character select screen and make sure everybody's cards are correct. And oh, one of them needs to be upgraded. So I need to walk my character over to this other station. to upgrade this facility. It's all second nature to me now. Like as soon as the hunter wakes up in the morning, she goes and does all over chores and I don't even think about it. But it's too many chores,

folks. It's too much. So, yes. So, Maddie, I agree with you that that's tedious, but at least the stuff you're doing is meaningful to the gameplay, right? Like, I don't know, Horizon, which I don't mean to pick on Horizon, because I feel like we've been pretty mean to that game over the past few months. But like Horizon, you can dedicate all this time to something. And it's like 10% boost in trapping abilities when targeting specific kinds of enemies or whatever. It's just like nonsense. At least in Marvel's Midnight's Suns, when you're doing all that stuff, it's like, okay, this is worthwhile because I'm getting these awesome new cards or like upgrading this card in a way where it'll actually feel meaningful when I'm playing. Yeah, that's true.

I mean, God of War had this problem too. Though having played a ton of Midnight Suns, I do think that game suffers from, uh, says. system bloat, especially once you start crafting, like you have to craft blueprints to craft cards because you need duplicate cards to upgrade the cards. It gets really silly over time. There does come a point where I'm like, I've been doing this for, like you said, I was totally Midnight Sun's Pilled and played so much with it. It all just was like, I was like, whatever, I don't care because I love this game.

Yeah. But there were definitely times, especially at the forge where I'm in neck deep in menus, trying to craft another, I need another purple thing. Wait, how many of these do I need so that I can make this blade cards so I can duplicate. Once I'm hitting the stage where I'm writing down on a piece of paper, which characters need to have which abilities leveled up, I think that at that point you have too many systems. I have officially hit that point because I'm at the stage where I'm just max leveling everyone before the final boss fight, simply because I don't want the game should be over yet.

And maybe the experience of max loving a character is never supposed to be fun, and I'm complaining about the stupidest thing ever. But, hey, who cares? I still think it should just be ever so slightly easier to do. that's all. This is also known as the period of the game where I learned that Ghost Rider is really good, which I didn't realize for most of the people.

He's awesome. You kind of pick your favorites. They're all really viable, but yeah, he kicks ass if you know what to do with him. All right, next question. This is from Adam. Adam says, oh, this is the email that Kirk spoiled earlier. Adam says, they didn't sound like you'd

forgiven me, by the way that she said that. Hello, triplets. Wow, what did he call us? What? He called us triplets. Wow, that's so creative and hilarious. That's such a funny new way to refer to us. If only we hadn't heard that before.

Hello, triplets. My sister is a quote unquote hardcore gamer with a quote unquote casual wife, whom she is delighted and enjoys games at all. I love the implication that it's a casual wife. I know Adam means in terms of gaming as opposed to the wife aspect is the part that's casual. But it's a great way of phrasing it. Anyway, continue. A casual wife.

Yeah. Casual wife. casual life. The sort of things her wife enjoys tend to be collectathons. Ideally, games where one can play on easy as long as she doesn't enjoy combat. Having mastered Spiro and Ratchet and almost all their incarnations, she hungers for more. Do you have any recommendations? I have one.

I have a good recommendation. A game called A Short Hike. That's a good one. That's a really good game that is basically a collectathon. It's not a collect-a-thon quite like, you know, Ratchet and Clank or Spiro, but it is a game where you run around and collect things, and it is very super chill and also really awesome. And that's my recommendation. Good luck. Mine is Super Mario Odyssey, the ultimate collect-a-thon. There's no better collect-thathon than Super Mario Odyssey. Yeah, I have a couple, which I think I've mentioned before is some of my girlfriend, Dina's favorites. She also likes collectathons, although she's a little more hardcore about the collect-a-thons. So I'm trying to split the difference here. Oh, so you have a hardcore wife, not a casualty.

Yeah, we're both hardcore, but about different kinds of genres. So one of them is, I know I've mentioned before, it's called My Time at Portia. It's a life sim. So you can walk around town at Porsche, the place where you live. You're like an engineer girl with a cool dad who teaches you how to build stuff and you collect things all around the world. And there's a castle and there's a bunch of social mechanics. Dina ignores all of those because she only likes the collecting part. So all she does is collect things and fight monsters to get more resources.

to build engineering items. So that's something you can do in that game that she finds endlessly entertaining and you don't have to talk to anyone if you don't want to. And my other recommendation that she's very into is this game's strange horticulture,

which if you've got gardening as an interest as part of what you're into, then this is like the perfect collecting plus tending itch where you have a collection of plants but they're all fictional plants and you have to figure out how to care for each of them. You're also like a witch character, I think. I think these are all magical plants and that's sort of part of the fiction of the world.

Strange horticulture. Exactly. So there's some puzzle solving, but also some tending and collecting energies happening there. And she's very into that cocktail. So that might work for your friend, your casual wife. A friend with a casual life. Cool, good suggestions. Kirk.

Sorry, Maddie, you're up next. Cool. Okay, this is from Benjamin who writes, Hello, Kirk, Maddie, and Jason. Who is holding which controller in your show art? Benjamin, you're not the first to ask. So I just want to say, well, I just want to point out that Kirk, for some reason, thought that we had a canon answer to this. And Maddie and I were like, what? I thought we had come up with it. I don't know if we had canonized it on the show, but I feel like, I think maybe some listener or someone was like, I think I know who's holding which one. And they just said that theory. I thought that you had just canonized it in your head and never told us. It's certainly possible. So what's the answer that you had thought it was? So I thought, for whatever reason, that Jason was holding the Super Nintendo controller,

which is, I believe, in the upper right. Maddie is holding the Xbox controller, which is in the upper left, and I am holding the PS4 controller in the center. And that is how this show looks to me. based on the Zoom call right now. So maybe that's part of why I think of it that way. I also associate Jason a little bit with the Super Nintendo just because, I don't know, you've been over

and I watched you play Super Mario World and some other Super Nintendo games. So I kind of associate that with you. I don't know, Natty, you don't actually strike me as much of an Xbox gamer. In my early days, that was the... You also often talk about games being on GamePass because you use GamePass a lot.

It's true. Yeah, Dante's Inferno, for example. I think I always... also was the person who helped with the look of an Xbox controller when we were designing that logo. I think I was the one who had one handy. I might be, that might be an invented memory. But that could be. That could be why, Kirk, you might think that. Because at that time period, my Xbox controller was the main controller that I used for everything as my default preferred controller. But now, unfortunately, it's been replaced by the PS5 controller. Poor one out for my Xbox controller. I'm not really using it anymore. Yeah, since I don't play PC games anymore, I've never really used

an Xbox controller for anything. I used to use the elite on PC, but now I just stream everything to Steam Decks. Yeah, that was what I was using all the time until that sweet next-gen haptic feedback entered my hands, and I was like, this is the most comfortable controller I've ever used. Sorry, Microsoft. Can I sidetrack us for a second and just put a wish into the universe, which is a wish I've seen many articulate, but I'm going to articulate it on our show. and that is that Valve releases a new steam controller that's basically the steam deck but just as a controller,

I would buy one in a heartbeat. I would just love it for that to happen. Do you want the little pads that were on the original steam controller that they put out years and years ago? Do you remember that controller? I do. Yeah, I mean, if they want to replace the track pads

on the steam deck with those, that's fine, but I'm fine with the steam deck trackpans. I like those a lot. I mean, just literally everything that's on a steam deck as a controller. This has been extremely widely requested. I think Valve has even said, yeah, we're considering it even though we can only do so much. But, man, that'd be cool.

And then I think we'd have to change our show art. We'd have to talk to Tom and be like, can you make us so new art? Yeah, with three Steam controller twos. That'd be funny. Love it. Love it. So there's the answer, I guess. I guess.

That's not final. Sure. It was just sort of what I think. It sounds good. I mean, yeah. I don't think there is a canon answer. I like the dual shock four. It's a fine controller.

Kirk, your controller. We have to imagine it's a dual shock with under buttons. Of course. It's a scuff. Yeah, exactly. Sure.

Okay, well, there's the answer. Let's get to the next question. Kirk, this is you. Sure. Dave writes, high triple click crew. How would you fix free-to-play monetization?

Easy. Easy. This is inspired by Marvel. This is an easy one. This is inspired by Marvel Snap, which I have been sampling. If you're not familiar, the main appeal

of buying the $10 season pass is that it grants you immediate access to a powerful new card that enables a new strategy. In theory, this is a fair value proposition. Is this new card worth $10 to the consumer or not? But that's not what's actually on offer, because in addition to the new card, there's

all these extra rewards you can unlock provided you level up the pass. Predatory mechanics designed as benefits to the player. It doesn't need to be that way. Free-to-play monetization could be more ethical. All we need is appropriate regulation. And then he lists some suggestions and the like.

Yeah, this is a tough one. I mean, I have some thoughts, but one of the two of you go first. How would you fix free-to-play monetization? Yeah, well, so first, just to zoom out for a second, free-to-play exists. Zooming out. Free-to-play exists for good reason at this point, which is that people, especially on mobile, people will not pay for games. They will just download games. And if they're not, like, if they're interested, if they're hooked, they might pay once they're

already in the game, but for the most part, people will not pay for games on mobile. And we actually saw that kind of backfire on Nintendo, which I believe had with Super Mario run, they like, they tried, either they tried to solve the game or they like let you download it for free, but it was only the first three levels or something like that. Yeah, that sounds right. Then you had to pay for it and it seemed to really be a bait and switch for people. People don't want that on mobile. Like this is a it was fun

This is an ecosystem where people don't pay for games So like my solution my instinct would be like Man just give us an option to just like pay for the game And that's the end of it But that's not what people want on mobile And then the other question here is that like So there's all sorts of studies and all sorts of like Psychologists and economists who

Economists who like delve into this world of free to play And there are a couple of different schools of thought one is to try to get everybody to pay a little bit. Another is to assume that most people are not going to pay and make it really appealing for a few people, the whales, quote unquote, of the world to spend a lot and essentially subsidize the rest of your player base. Diablo Immortal is a good example of a game that appeals to whales.

Definitely the most ethical way to do this. Yes. By which I mean least ethical way to do this. So how can free-to-play monetization be more ethical? one immediate thought I had was that I don't think battle passes are a terrible idea I think with marvel snap there's been some controversy over like the length of the passes and like what they have to offer and how much you're actually paying for I think it needs to be a little consistent in terms of pricing in terms of like how much you're spending per month or whatever per week but maybe that's one solution I don't know do you guys have any ideas on how to fix this uh this ecosystem I mean that's that's tough. Maddie, go ahead. You have some ideas. I have some thoughts, but I don't have ideas. Sure. I really don't. It's more that Epic Games has some ideas. I was just going to mention that I feel like Fortnite's Battle Pass system is one of the best ones that I know of. And it's always amazing

to me when I see Overwatch 2 implementing just a completely different and far less popular system of monetizing its game and its Battle Pass. I know those are two very different games. I don't want to get too far in the weeds about what's the team shooter versus what Fortnite does. But basically, I mean, Fortnite does a lot of partnerships and they earn money that way by partnering with specific brands. But they also do a battle pass that is entirely cosmetic and revolves around popular characters and different outfits and, of course, dances. So it's really just that it's entirely cosmetic, but also there are social rewards for using those cosmetics in the game. of the way that the game works. So I think part of it is Fortnite's designers knowing how people

play the game and what kinds of social behaviors are rewarded. And one of those things is costumes and certain characters and like meme-worthy moments that you can create. Not every game is going to be able to include dances. But I also can look at things like Overwatch 2. And I'm not an expert at this, but I still can think to myself, there must be something better to monetize here that is based on what people actually want and how they play the game and isn't just based on more unfulfilling monetization practices where people feel like they're getting ripped off. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. The word predatory is interesting. I think of that word alongside the word manipulative, I suppose, when it comes to this kind of thing. Because I don't have any, I don't use a lot of battle passes

and I don't really engage with a lot of microtransactions in games. So, you know, I only know about this stuff from learning about it. I remember when we talked about Diablo and we talked about Diablo Immortal learning about how that system worked and being kind of gobsmacked by how manipulative it was and how predatory it felt. And it seems to me that if you're just offering someone a straight one-to-one transaction, that seems like the most straightforward way to do this that doesn't lead anyone feeling bad. Like pay this money and you get this extra area that you can go play in. And then that can only become dicey in a competitive game where it's like pay this money and you get this new card or this new ability that makes you more competitive

against other people. We've talked about that on the show before. And it seems to me that it always gets dicey and people start feeling weird whenever game design gets involved in the commerce part of the game. Because games, like any game where you level up, you have to put in a certain amount of time, you have to unlock new abilities, and then you got to, you know, that ability shows you a new ability that, oh, you're going to get this ability if you just play another five hours and you really got to get it. I mean, it's similar to the crafting system you were talking about Jason where in Horizon or in God of War, I'm kind of like, well, I can't wait to upgrade my axe again so that I can get some cool new ability, so I'm going to kind of keep playing. It's the carrot

that keeps you going. And that's manipulative. We're happy to be manipulated if we're having fun playing the game, but it is a thing that game designers do to manipulate players into wanting to play more. So when you attach money to that, suddenly it's like, you know, you're buying this thing and then you have to keep playing it and then, you know, they're slowing you down so you have to pay money to speed up. You could get the thing faster if you paid for it or you bought this thing so you might as well keep using it. It kind of hooks you into the game because you feel like a sunk cost thing with how much money you've put in or looking at Diablo Immortal. I don't even remember all the particulars of that, but that's the thing where like you get one thing for free

and when you plug it in, it suddenly shows you that if you just had four more of the then you could get way better rewards. And so then, well, and you know, you can actually just buy four more right now for $5. And the whole thing is built to manipulate you into spending money. And that is where the word predatory starts to feel appropriate because you're being preyed upon, like you're being manipulated. And I think all of that stuff is just, it's all in that same realm. It all feels ethically weird.

And the more intensely the game does it, the more problematic it feels. So that's the distinction that I make anyways is between just offering someone something they can buy, especially something cosmetic that's just fun. They like the game, get a new hat versus all of this designed manipulative stuff. Yeah, well, so Marvel Stop, I'm not actually super familiar with the microtransactions than that.

I haven't played enough. But Carthstone, which is a game designed by some of the same people, at Blizzard, I am familiar with that, and that is more akin to a traditional collectible card game. Like, nobody's complaining about microtransactions in physical magic the gathering. You go out and you buy packs and you get random collections of cards and that's how you build your deck. And Harstone is similar in some ways in that you're getting new packs. You can buy packs from the shop and open them and hope you get some good cards intact.

And I think that's generally accepted as long as the booster packs. The car packs feel fair and it feels like you have a fair shot at the game, even if you're not spending tons and tons of money. Yeah. I would just interject to say that I do categorize those games differently for myself from a game where you just get the game in the box and then you play against one another and it's pure mechanics versus a game where he who spends $500 on cards every month probably has a better deck. Like those games are different to me. And I do think of that as like it's a different kind of system. And it is a little bit. You know, it's kind of manipulative. It's rewarding people for spending a lot of money.

Yeah. Well, so more akin to what you're talking about maybe is something that's character. based, a league of legends or a hero of the storm, maybe Overwatch is similar and it will be similar at some point as they start adding more and more new characters. And that is a game where you can spend money to get new characters. And in theory, they should all be balanced so that like one character isn't just going to dominate the game. But at the end of the day, if you want to play as everybody, you have to spend money. And there are different ways of doing this. There are all sorts of like rotations that these games,

use to make it feel fair to make it feel like you can try out different characters before you spend money on them and stuff like that. But that's another game where like so far it hasn't felt super unethical. You don't, I mean, League of Legends is a good example of a game that I don't think is super unethical from a microtransaction point of view because there's a cap on how much you can spend. You can only spend so much on like to buy every character and skin and stuff in the game. There's a finite amount. You can't just keep spending over and over again on loop boxes or on just like, I don't know, booster is to like make your your items better or whatever it is in the game. I haven't played very much League of Legends.

But when there's a cap on how much you can spend, that helps it feel more ethical, I think, when you can't actually have whales. But that would, of course, destroy the entire business model for a lot of these games. Those are two good questions, right? Is like, can you spend an infinite amount of money on this? And these actually, these questions are related? And the other one is, is there a random element? Like, are you just buying a thing that maybe gives you,

what you want and maybe doesn't? Or are you just giving them $10 to get the hero you want, which is a way more straight-up transaction? Mm-hmm. And it's something that as a fighting game player, I'm so used to having a set amount that you need to pay to get every single character, and that has become socially normalized over time. But I also remember, at least in my memory, the first time I experienced that, I was really mad that you had to pay for Jill Valentine in Marvel versus Capcom 3. That was my first moment of being really mad and being like, I bought this game. I should have every single character. But now it's just completely normal to have a fighting game come out and then have those

characters be add-ons that you buy later. And so whenever I hear people complain about Overwatch too and the fact that you have to buy characters or play a lot to unlock characters, I'm like, well, but fighting games have been doing this for ages. So I'm not saying that's good or bad. It's just interesting how different genres eventually normalize certain patterns of monetization to the point where now I'm like, yeah, that's completely normal. But I was really angry about it in like 2011 or whenever the heck that was. I was infuriated. In Overwatch's case, it wasn't even that the genre normalized it. It was that the first game normalized it and trained you to think about the game in a certain way. And then the second game

changed that. So that I think is what really peeved. Peeped some people. Speaking of Peaves, let me read through this real question. We'll cover this one real quick. Dunkie Boo writes, I was wondering, what are the small details in games that can get on your nerves? For example, I hate it when games automatically change your weapon when you pick a new one up. Like, hey, just because it's new doesn't mean I immediately want to use it. Guys, what are your gaming peeps? I have one thought immediately, which is frigging, let me pause during cutscenes. Marvel's Midnight Suns.

I'm looking at you. A corollary to that, a corollary to that. This is less common these days, but like sometimes it feels like you're gambling when you press the start button on whether it'll pause. or skip the cutscene automatically for you. That fortunately, most developers have changed that. I mean, it's so you have to like hold a button to really skip it. Or you pause it and then you have a skip option from there. But there used to be a day when you press pause and it's a gamble and you're like, God,

I hope this doesn't skip the cutscene and sometimes it would. That gets on my nerves. Just to stay on that, I don't like it when games have multiple ways to skip dialogue. and that I'm confused about which one is applicable to each scenario, The Night Suns does a little bit of this, where you can skip certain kinds of conversations entirely, or you can skip line by line. And I'm sure it's just how the scenes are designed,

but it has me clicking around, like, is this one I can skip? I'm a fast reader. What can I say? Not to brag. But if I finish reading a line, I'd like to continue, please. And so, also, I need to be able to skip dialogue in games. That's another just more general large pet peeve that I have. That's funny.

That makes me think of cyberpunk 27, which I've been playing through. And in that game, you skip by pressing the crouch button. And while they have improved a lot of things about that game, it plays pretty well now. It's still a weird thing where sometimes you're crouching and you want to stand up because you're talking to someone and crouching and looking up at them. And then you go to stand up and you skip the line of dialogue. And it does a kind of fast forward thing. Amazing. You're like just crouching like a weirdo because you want a conversation to end.

We've all been there. folks. It's a known social gear. Every week when we record, nobody out there can see me, but you guys can see me just crouching up and down. And it's like, come on,

come on, Kirk, hurry out. Yeah, when we need to wrap it up and move on to the next segment. Yeah, wrap it up. You see me crouching. That's his wrap it up, crouch, as we call it. I have a couple. One is characters that interrupt

whatever I'm doing to, like, grab my attention and talk to me. I think that's very annoying. Also, overly panicky NPCs in open world games where I'm driving, like, where they freak out and they jump out of the way when I'm like, I don't know, I was just driving down the street. I'm doing a pretty good job of driving. And they're like, oh, my God. Or like, I wasn't even going to hit you.

I remember that happening in Gotham nights with somebody that I was like not even going to hit. I was like, calm down, man. Like, I'm not that bad at this. It was Mafia 3 is the game that always sticks in my mind is the one where everyone is leaping out of the way all the time. That's pretty funny. A little funny. Maybe it's because you're a mafioso. It doesn't have anything to do with your driving. Okay.

I have some more. I have some more. When the pick something up button or like interact button is the same as the jump button and you're like jumping around trying to pick things up for interact things. Unfortunate button redundancy. Final Fantasy 15 was very problematic in that regard. Another one is in a shooting game when you're not, when reloading like throws out the whole clip.

So if you reload when you're partially full of ammo, you're actually wasting ammo. Oh man. Yeah. I believe that's like an old school problem. I don't think that's when relevant for a while. It can be a like immersive thing. Like I think the Metro games might do that. There are some games.

And some horror games. We'll do that too where it's like, oh, you only have so much ammo, et cetera. If they're trying to encourage something really specific that can work, but yeah, it can also be annoying.

Yeah, it can be annoying when it's more of like, when it's less of like a conserving your ammo type of game and more of a like just running and gunning type of game. I have a million like interface. I mean like PC graphics. things. I could be here. We could be here forever. I know. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, oh man, so many things. That'll be an episode we'll do someday about user interface. We should have had this be the first

question and then just answer it for 45 minutes and just complain. 45 minutes talking about that. All right, guys. Now, now we're going to have to do our own UI transition from one segment to another. So please sit back and enjoy this loading screen while you wait for us to come back and bring you one more thing. Parenting. It's hard, but don't worry, you're not alone. Belly up to the low bar with one bad mother and let us remind you that fine is good enough. They want to climb on different things. And how am I supposed to keep them both from dying? There is a right way to do this. And if I can figure out that right way, I'm going to be a good parent.

So that is not a thing. So join us each week and let us tell you that you are doing a good job. You can listen to One Bad Mother on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. This week on Bullseye, Tom Hanks, as you've never heard him before. Mad. You moron. Thank you for the use of the turn signal. Way to use your blinker. Idiot.

That's Bullseye for Maximumfund.org and NPR. And we are back for one more thing, Kirk Maddie. It is time. I'm going to go first real quick. So I've been playing this video game that I can't talk about until next week. So look forward to my thoughts on that next week. But for now, I've been pretty sick over the past week. I've had this really nasty cold and has just been like hopped up on Dayquil and chicken soup.

And that month ago and it sucks. I hope you're feeling better. It really sucks. It's lasted way longer than any cold I've had before, which I assume is just like part of COVID and this new world we live in. But anyway, so pretty much every night after putting the kids to bed, at like 7.30-ish, I just go and lie down in my bed and I've been watching TV. And usually I just put on The Simpsons because The Simpsons is my go-to just like, I don't want to think, just zone out. And after watching, usually I watch like season, anywhere between season three and like 14 and

just like marathon it. But for whatever reason, I was like, you know what? I'm just going to jump ahead and like watch some new episodes, which I haven't watched. I think a lot of people our age, millennials in their 30s, probably haven't watched. a lot of New Simpsons and probably are more familiar with the older stuff. And some random thoughts are, well, really one random thought I wanted to share. I mean, first of all, I don't think it's that bad. Like there's some episodes that are just as entertaining as some of the older stuff are. But Marge Simpson's voice has changed drastically.

And the reason for that I've realized is, or I've learned, is that Julie Kavanaugh, the voice actress, has just gotten older. I mean, they've been making the show for 33 years, 30 years. 30 something years. No, 36 years. 1889, I guess. Okay, so 34 years. Something like that, late 80s. Yeah.

And so all the voice cast are getting old, getting up there. And Julie Kavanaugh's voice has kind of naturally changed at some point to become, I don't know, totally different. Like if you listen to a clip, if you go out and find a clip of Marge Simpson in like 1993 versus today, you will hear. a massive difference and it is so unsettling to watch. Like I would almost rather it just be like a different voice actor entirely. It just sounds so off. And so it makes me kind of like, oh, I don't know, it makes me uncomfortable to watch new episodes of The Simpsons just because of that.

And it's sad. I feel bad. But that's how it is. Just an observation on the Simpsons. This is just about the passage of time. It's the interesting thing about animation. It is. Well, it's interesting.

The characters don't get older. but the actors do get older, and as you get older, your voice changes. Well, so, Kirk, to that point, another weird thing is that now they just did an episode recently where, it's like a weird musical episode where Kristen Bell is singing as Marge, but they're talking about the Simpsons, Homer and Marge being in high school. And now they went to high school in 1999. I think I saw a time travel episode like that, yeah. Yeah, whereas, like, if you watch the old Simpsons, they went to high school in the 70s.

But now they graduated high school. in 1999, like 2000, which is so weird. Well, I read an essay that I think this was in the Atlantic somewhere, one of those, one of those prestigious places about how the Simpsons family is no longer like representative of any kind of middle class family where like the dad works and the mom stays home and they have a house and like they're able to afford going on vacations and stuff. Yeah. And how that was, it's just like a relic from another time that makes the show a little bit more

unusual to watch. It is. Yeah. That is another strange element of it that like, okay, in 1991, you could maybe be, you can maybe accept that like this this incompetent dad, this one family, one income family has this humongous house and like is raising three kids. Well with like a union job or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. You could maybe accept that in 1991. But now it's like they have iPads and stuff and they're a modern family, but like living like that, it's very strange. Yeah, you're right.

But anyway, Marge's voice has really thrown me off and kind of immediately made me go back to older, older episodes of the show and stuff. Anyway, that's the Simpsons. Maddie, what's your one more thing? So mine is a movie called The Fable Mends, which is described by many as a Steven Spielberg biopic, but I don't know that that's quite the right way to put it. He's been very transparent about the fact that much of it is not true and is invented, but is based on some aspects of his own life. You're telling me that a movie called the Fableman's is invented. Uh-huh, and it's not called the Spielbergs. Yeah, it's, and the main character who's the clear inspiration. for Stephen Spielberg is called Sammy Fableman. I kept calling him Steve while we were watching it

because I refused to acknowledge the discrepancy. So we loved this movie. It's quite long and a little self-indulgent at parts, but really, really wonderful. And I am not a huge Steven Spielberg fan, I should say. I was a little skeptical about this movie, but had it recommended by enough people whose taste I share that I was like, all right, I'll give it a shot.

And I ended up really loving it. And sometimes you just are down for a really feel good, cozy story about how beautiful it is to make art that you're passionate about. And that's very much what this is. It never shows Steven Spielberg as an adult. There's a lot of scenes of him as a very young child and then as a teenager growing up as one of the only Jewish kids in his neighborhood, experiencing bigotry when he's older, but as a kid, mostly just being a very anxious Jewish kid. which Dina could deeply relate to. I'll say there's a, and just to give you guys a taste

of what it's like to watch, the very first scene is him, young Stevie, young Sammy, watching a train crash in a movie, his first time going to the movies. And he becomes fixated on it and how scary it was and then recreates it with his own toy trains

in a series of absolutely adorable and eventually incredible scenes because he ends up filming it and making a movie of the train, crash as a child. And it's just, it's so cute and also incredible at the same time where you're like, wow, this is how he became really interested in making movies. I don't know if that story's true. I don't care. It's a great movie. And the other thing I wanted to say is that I feel like I watch a lot of biopics that are sad and like include some abuse that's happened to someone. And in this case,

the parents are unhappy. They're in an unhappy marriage. But, The depiction of that is very mundane and human, and it does get sad, but I really liked watching a story about a family that had moments that were unhappy, but wasn't depicting that as like the be all end all, horrific, traumatic experience, and more just a series of events that happened to people who all really love each other and are really trying hard.

I don't know. Do you know what I mean? Like it's not like some horrific thing that they're all going through. It's more just they all love each other, and they're trying, but sometimes they break each other's hearts. And that's very relatable. So I recommend it.

The Fableman's Good Feel Good Movie, Very Cozy Stuff. Nice. I really want to see it. Check it out. Yeah, it's not too mockish, because that's like the Spielberg problem a lot of the time. There was only one scene that I thought that about. But I'll let you watch it and make your own call. Yeah, you know.

It's great to check it out too. Kirk, what's your one way? Do you ever watch the West Side Story? Yes. I mean, I did. I talked about it on this show. It was pretty good. It's pretty good. My one more thing. What is my one more thing?

My one more thing is speaking of movies that are... The magic of making movies. Long and self-indulgent. I was going to say long and self-indulgent. But also that I liked. I went and saw Avatar the Way of Water in IMAX over the weekend with Emily and had a really good time with movies. So I wanted to share a couple of thoughts about it. So I am on the record as someone who enjoyed the first avatar as well. I saw it in IMAX in 2009 in 3D.

was like, wow, I can't believe how this movie looks. This is pretty incredible. And then 13 years passed, and a new one came out, and I went and saw it in IMAX, and I was like, wow, I can't believe how this movie looks. This is pretty incredible. So the main reason to see this movie, and I would suggest anyone with a passing interest, go see it in theaters, is that it's so spectacular looking. I saw it in regular frame rate in IMAX, which there are a number of different ways to see this.

It was in 3D, but it was not in high frame rate. And I think it is interesting that the high frame rate treatment of this film is apparently variable. So dialogue scenes and a lot of other sequences are at 24 FPS. And then when it goes into action, it kicks up to 48 FPS. So you don't, presumably it reduces the weird uncanny valiness of dialogue scenes at 48 FPS, where it just looks like you're watching big weird actors. But then it makes the action more smooth. I don't know.

I kind of want to go and see that in theaters just because... You should. I've heard a lot about. what that experience is like and how apparently it feels really weird at first but then eventually you're like oh no I get why these scenes are in

a higher frame rate. Especially given how visually unbelievable the movie is especially in the last hour I can see how having more frames on screen would just be helpful because I mean even at 24 frames per second it is just absolutely outrageous the things that you're seeing happen on screen

so I will just say as a movie where every single shot every frame is incredible looking, looks better than anything you've ever seen. Like, it's always something cool. It's always some huge blue person talking to some normal size person with like a cool screen in the background and some weird beautiful setting. The guy, I mean, James Cameron knows how to make movies that look awesome and he knows how to shoot action. But how is the story? But the story, that's fine. It's like a very broad, it's kind of a retread of the first movie. It's very broad, a lot of big emotions. It's a family story this time. So Jake and Neteer,

have kids and their family is sort of under attack by, you know, the humans. You know, Jake and the Terry, the iconic, iconic duo. Yeah, of course. Jake Sully, the main character of Avatar. I don't know, yeah. I mean, I do know his name. I am a person who watched Avatar a couple of times and I know the names of the characters. No, I watched it too.

I don't remember anything about it. Also, they say Jake Sully so many times in it, Jason. I don't even know if you can joke around about not remembering his name. The only thing I really remember from the first movie is Unupdainium. Fair enough. Yes. which is no longer the thing that the humans are going after. They're going after something actually much more horrifying.

So anyways, I really like this movie. And everyone's already seen it. This movie is doing really well. So I just wanted to share a couple specific thoughts, which are one, E.D. Falco is in this movie. She is fantastic. She's playing a human, not playing a Navi. And there's a scene early on where she's in a mech suit. And it's like one of those mech exoskeletons.

It's a new one in this one, but it's kind of like the ones in the first one where, like, she moves her hands and then the big hands move like around her. And because it's Avatar, it looks unbelievable. Like in 3D, it looks like she's in this suit and you just kind of can't figure out how they even did it. And then she's sitting there looking at a screen, giving people a briefing and she's drinking a cup of coffee. But the mech suit is holding the cup of coffee. And she's sitting there holding the cup of coffee. And it's this big cup of coffee that's in the meck arm right above her regular arm.

But her regular arm is in the position that you are, you know, in when you're holding a mug. And I'm sitting there, and I'm not even listening to what she's saying, because I'm just, I'm like, under my breath, I'm just like, come on, drink from the coffee cup, drink from the coffee cup. And then at the very end of the scene, she's like, boom, and she drinks from the coffee cup with her giant robot arm, and it's amazing. So that happens. The other thing I wanted to shout out is Sigourney Weaver is absolutely wonderful in this movie. And I wasn't sure. I knew she was going to be in it. I didn't know who her character was going to be.

And I won't say too much, I guess, because it's kind of a lovely part of the movie. of the movie, but she died, of course, her character died in the first movie, and she returns as a teenage Navi in this. And so it's age-blind casting, I guess. Sigourney Weaver in her 70s is playing this like 15-year-old girl who is this kind of awkward blue teenager. And she's so good. The way they've recreated her in the film is amazing. It's not weird at all. I didn't find it to be like uncanny or strange. I just, her character is great and her performance is great. It still has her amazing voice. And so the whole movie, she plays a really central role. And she's just the key to the whole movie. Her and the whale. There's also a whale. That's really great that anyone

watching knows the whale is the other key to the movie. So So Cigernie Weaver and the whale are a reason to see the movie. But then there's also a lot of amazing action. And really, it was fun to go see a movie that was just like absolutely unbelievable looking, just like a ravishingly beautiful visual feast for like three hours and to just sit there and be like, well, this is pretty cool. I guess I'm glad James Cameron has infinite money to make these because I'll go to the next one too. So yeah, I dug it. It was a good time.

It's just, it's so funny to me how much this movie is made and how little I've seen people actually like referencing anything from it or talking about it. Really? All I see is whale chat. But I guess it's just the world's running. If you saw this whale, you understand.

I mean, you're talking about people here. Like millions and millions of people have seen it. They're maybe not tweeting about it as much. Or maybe they are. not even on Twitter. It's true. Maybe it's the specific internet spaces we each occupy. Yeah, we're in our own bubbles. Like, you're in a non-avitur avatar bubble. I'm hanging out in a lot of whale-centric clicks. It's true. Yeah, well, you're on the Reddit, the subreddit for whales all the time. So I get it. No, it's just, it's just, this is an old chestup of the whole like critical impact versus commercial impact thing and how, or cultural impact versus commercial impacting. And now, like, I don't know, even the fact that I have nothing against this movie. I'm glad it's visually spectacular. I'm glad he gets to keep making them.

I'm glad people are digging them. It's just so funny to me that, like, I haven't even seen a single, like, meme or quote from the movie the way that you normally would. Like, even the fablements. I've seen people like screencapping and meaming and talking about it. The memes are really good. Yeah. The menu.

Like, there's so many movies that come out and I'm like, oh, okay. Like, tar. I've seen people like meeing that all the time. But I haven't seen anyone talk about Avatar ever other than to say, hey, this movie looks really good. And it's cool. I enjoyed it. which is fine. It's just so weird for a blockbuster to occupy that space, especially in an era of

like Marvel quips and stuff and everyone debating over what the MCU is going to do next. And here's just a movie that's just like, hey, I'm James Cameron. I want to make cool looking shit. And that's it. Yeah, I think that speaks to the unique space that Avatar occupies. I mean, this is its own thing. When you see it, it does not feel like watching a Marvel movie or anything in that realm or a Star Wars movie. I mean, it is, it feels. It feels. like watching an avatar movie. It feels like watching avatar. I mean, I can only speak to the first one.

But yeah, it is its own thing. And it only exists in the theater in a way that I'm sure cinemas are very grateful for, given how much avatar is making. Cinemas need it. Okay, well, that is it for this week's episode. Just a reminder, you can buy tickets to our live show in the show notes. And we are very excited. May 18.

That's going to be super fun. May 18th. Other than that, we will be back next week. See you guys then. 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. 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

and 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. Maximumfund.org. Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Audience, audience supported.