Triple Click - How Do You Know When A Game Should Be Canceled?

Episode Date: March 21, 2024

Happy MaxFunDrive! This week, the Triple Click gang opens up the mailbag and takes some listener questions: Are libraries ethical? How bad will ads in video games get? And when does a game developer know if it's time to cancel a project?One More Thing:Kirk: FF7 Rebirth Piano Minigame & Music NotationMaddy: ShogunJason: Dragon’s Dogma 2LINKS:Hearthstone’s Ben Brode on Search Engine: https://pjvogt.substack.com/p/how-do-you-make-an-addictive-videoTantacrul’s incredibly good video about music notation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eq3bUFgEcb4Preorder Jason’s Book! https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/jason-schreier/play-nice/9781538725429/Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinBuy Triple Click Merch: https://maxfunstore.com/search?q=triple+click&options%5Bprefix%5D=lastJoin the Triple Click Discord: http://discord.gg/tripleclickpodTriple Click Ethics Policy: https://maximumfun.org/triple-click-ethics-policy/ Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointripleclick 🚀  SUPPORT TRIPLE CLICK:Join Maximum Fun | Buy TC Merch💬 JOIN THE TRIPLE CLICK DISCORD🎮 Triple Click Ethics Policy📱 SOCIALS | @tripleclickpodInstagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitch

The U.S. government may force bite dance to sell or divest from TikTok. Should Triple Quick buy it? Well, that depends how well Max Fund Drive goes. Welcome to Triple Click where we bring the games to you. This week, we are opening up the mailbag for some of your hot, hot, burning questions. We answer them all from cancel games to libraries. I'm Jason Dreyer. I'm Kirk Hamilton.

And I'm Maddie Myers. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hey, there. Hello. Hello. Hello, my friends.

We made it again. Guys, I was listening to a podcast that I really enjoy the other day. And I got this kind of weird moment when I accidentally, like, listened to the ad break. And the podcast hosts were, like, read this marketing copy. And I was thinking of myself, thank goodness that the three of us, a triple click, do not have to do that because of our wonderful listeners who support us. and how cool that is that we were able to be a listener-supported show. And we were only able to do that because we are part of the Maximum Fun Network, which is currently doing Max Fun Drive.

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All right, let's read some questions, shall we? Let's answer some listener questions. And just a reminder, if you out there would like to send in a question, email us at triple click at maximum fund.org with your question. Nice short, short questions, short and interesting questions is what we're looking for. Kirk, start us off. All right, I will start us off. This question comes from Spencer.

Spencer writes, I just listened to your episode. why are there so many video game layoffs, and you ask if subscriptions may be a way to remedy the issue of a free service game, or the issues that free service games run into? Why not do what every other free digital thing we consume does and run ads? Instead of loading screens, there could be 15-second unskippable ads that play, or an ad bar that constantly updates along the bottom of the screen. Do you think something like this is inevitable?

and how do you think it would be received by gamers? They would love it. There'd be no downsides. Well, so mobile games do this, and a lot of free games are supportive by those terrible ads. And in fact, there have been to several apps where the ads are so annoying that I, like, paid the lifetime subscription or whatever, $40 to get rid of the ads permanently. So they are effective. They are. I mean, mobile games are a great poll there.

I didn't even think of that. But mobile games have the additional aspect of play an ad so that you can get more cash in the game. And more often than not, when I'm playing my stupid little mobile games, I will watch an ad on silent and just put my phone to the side of the couch while it plays. And I'm racking up cash. So I could be doing that in Palo Infinite or whatever, I guess. What mobile game are you talking about? I like word games a lot. Like anything where you do anagrams, I really enjoy anagrams.

puzzle format. And many Anagram games are terrible on mobile. There are no good ones. Listeners, write in. Tell me your favorite anagram games so that I can avoid. The New York Times app has a good one. There's like that, uh, that word one. Yeah. The New York Times app is one of my go to kind of the New York Times games app. Yes. The New York Times spots when I'm not playing threes. Yeah. I've been avoiding reading the New York Times, but I've been using the cooking app and the games app. It's good for them that they have both of those apps for the sake of my subscription.

out. Maybe I'll just get off the train that I'm on. But yeah, when I was reading Spencer's message here, I was also thinking about EA games, sports games, that have included kind of predatory micro-transactions. Or so people have described them and also included some kind of latent advertising.

Like, wasn't there a State Farm guy in a sports game recently? Jason, you're nodding. What game am I thinking of? Was this a... Yeah, it was Madden. Yeah, it was a Madden game? The Jake from State Farm, because he's, like, ubiquitous on the football commercial. Yeah.

There's also, there's a lot of like sponsored content type stuff in those sports games especially. Yeah. And there's also like cross promotional stuff in online service games. Like, I mean, Fortnite is the obvious one with all the brand stuff. Yeah. That's how Fortnite makes money. I guess it's not really clear who's paying whom when it comes to that sort of thing. It depends.

It does depend. I think there was like there have been cross promotions with brands like car brands and in online service games. But I just, I love the idea. of like, hey, I'm going to go play. I love the idea of picking up Eldon Ring. And then you just like, in addition to like the capital, Lane Dell, you also found the Mountain Zoo Zone, the Mountain Duke Code Red Mountains in the Northeast Territory. Yeah. Or like there's just a Chiron at the bottom of the screen that's like feeling hungry,

grab a snickers or whatever. Like that would just be completely wild to juxtapose that. Yeah, dying too many times to, uh, To Mogg, grab a sinkers. Mog runs with better health ad. Yeah, that I don't think it's inevitable to answer Spencer's question. I think that some aspects of advertising will continue to happen, like a Lara Croft appearing in Call of Duty kind of a situation to like advertise one or the other game. But I don't think an unskippable video ad would happen. Maybe I'm naive.

Well, it's funny that you say that it's not inevitable after we just described. a million examples of advertising happening in games. Well, but not an unskippable. There is a difference, though, between those two kinds of advertising. I feel like that would be a really... Oh, you mean the specific example of an unskippable ad? Yeah, I mean, I don't know. There are already things like that in some mobile games like we talked about.

And, you know, it's like a freebie, you know, Amazon streaming with ads, all of these ad-supported services on streaming where the effectiveness is either the ad gets you to buy something or the annoyance of the ad gets you to pay the company more to not have to watch it. And either way, someone's getting... Which is extremely much money. And that would be a very effective thing, I think, to do in a video game. Many, I was talking... Remember, I was talking a few weeks ago about how it's, like, boiling a frog where you don't even notice it.

Like, how bad it's gotten. And I think with the unskivable ads, right now, that seems like a bridge too far for us. But, like, we're going to get to the point where it'll just be like, oh, yeah, that's just popped in here. in the same way that you go pump gas and you're like, oh yeah, these unskippable, like, unremovable ads have just popped up here and there's nothing we can do about it. What you're describing, yeah, those unscapable ads that you're describing are just going to appear one day and we'll just have to, like...

You're convincing me, yeah. Well, I'm thinking back to a long time ago now, I believe it was Rainbow 6-2. Ubisoft had this initiative to add dynamic ads into their game worlds. I'm pretty sure this was in Rainbow 6-2. And if it wasn't, I will bing in here and say when it was, but it was around that period. When did that come out? Bo 6-6-2.

Let's see. Oh, it was, right. It was Rainbow 6, Vegas 2. Of course. Because Vegas was that kind of. So that was in 2008. Okay, we got there. So in 2008, this was around when Ubisoft started floating this idea.

This was 16 years ago now. They were talking about this. And I remember, gosh, I remember a screenshot of Vegas 2. This was a first-person game where you took cover and it snapped out to third person. That was the cool thing about it. And it was the character. snap to cover next to an ad for something in the game, and it would update it over the internet and change it.

This was very controversial at the time and also seen as sort of forward thinking by Ubisoft as a way to make money. And something that games are uniquely good at is advertising in the world. Like that is something that I could see there being more of, and I'm kind of surprised there isn't more of it. You know, some of the more organic advertising that we're talking about, like if you're driving around in an open world and like whatever, you know, I mean, I guess they couldn't do it in Assassin's Creed, but in any modern set in a watchdogs game or something, I could totally

see there being movie posters and it would like really piss some people off. Then maybe you could pay extra to have the ads not turn up. You know, it reduces the ability of the writers to build out the world. Like the fake ads in Grand Theft Auto are actually a big part of that game's overall fictional vibe. But it's a way to make money and these games do need to make money. And as the budgets keep ballooning. They need to keep finding ways to make money. And that's why we're seeing advertising and everything else. It's totally, I just think there's no reason to think that this wouldn't also happen in video games.

Yeah. Well, so to get at the crux of Spencer's question just real quick, before we move on to the next one, he's asking specifically in response to us talking about live service games and that model just like being so ineffective. And so like in a lot of different cases and us talking about subscription models instead of that. And him posing that advertisements we used in, say, a, I don't know, suicide squad game or no, actually, that's not free to play. In an Overwatch 2 as an example instead of for people, because it's not making enough money

through battle passes or whatever. And yeah, I mean, I can see people definitely trying it. It's just that like, I think it would be such a tough sell to people without kind of a clear, here's what you're getting from this. Like, there needs to be a net positive, I think, for people to react to it well. Or it'll just be like blowing a frog and it just kind of happens. And we just kind of have to deal with it. Yeah. Yeah. For something like that, I feel like it makes more sense to sell cosmetic items that are themed around something that the person likes, like a brand.

Although it is hard to imagine somebody buying like a Coca-Cola T-shirt. Unless it's ironic. Yeah, we could always buy it ironically. I feel like that's how those games get away with it. Still, I'm against unskippable ads. I'm against them. Morally. Yeah, just for the record.

Sounds pretty bad to me. Maddie, why don't you read us the next question? Sure, this question is from Matt, who writes, let's get right to it. Thanks, Matt. I love utilizing the somehow still existing miracles that are my local libraries, especially the surprisingly deep and updated video game selection. Although, especially in the current atmosphere of mass video game industry layoffs, I feel a little uneasy about not supporting creators with my wallet. But on the other hand, it's just hard to justify spending $70 on Spider-Man 2 when it's just sitting there down the block for free. ready for me to pick up with one scan of my library card. This might be hard for you all to apply to video games since you're not having to purchase a lot of the games you play. But do you ever have these feelings surrounding books, movies, or other things from the library?

Libraries are great. I just like this question. Yeah, I mean, so I have a little bit of insight here in that when a book, so the library pays for the books that they have, right? And so the library gets all of its funding, either from donations and kind of philanthropy or from taxes or usually a mix of both. And so if they want to stock blood certain pixels of the library, they buy that X number of copies from me and then they lend them out in the same way that one of you might let your

friends borrow it. And so I guess people could borrow it, like an infinite number of people could ostensibly borrow from the library. but like the idea of the model is that, I mean, some of these books get lost or they get kind of torn apart. And so the library, if they have really popular, if a book is really popular, they'll replenish it. So it's not like the author or in this game, so the game designer, developers are making nothing from this. In the case of games, because the translation of sales into the pockets of the, like into money for the people who actually made it is so kind of winding and indirect. it's there's even less of an ethical question so yeah i mean i don't really think uh you're not

supporting creators by going to the library in fact i think most people who are creators certainly most authors are very supportive of libraries yeah i i mean i feel like matt your taxpayer dollars are paying for spider man too when you get it from the library and i think you should take advantage of that that is not the case at every library not all libraries have a video game selection but some of them do now, which is amazing. And a lot of them have movies and music and all kinds of things you can check out. And like Jason said, the librarians will pay the originator of that item to replace it when it gets worn out. And that includes a physical disc for Spider-Man too. They'll still have to pay to replace it if a lot of people are checking it out. So it's the same as anything else. You shouldn't

feel guilty is basically what I'm telling you. I'm absolving that of all guilt in using the public library. You should use it more. And I hope more listeners listen to this. And they're like, could I be going to the library? Because a lot of libraries are really underfunded and are actually amazing and have so many great things that you can just go and get quote unquote for free. But it's because you're paying for it. Like your community is supporting that as a public good. Let me take this one step further. I think instead, if you feel guilty, you should take that $70 and donate it to your local library instead. I mean, yeah. actually, they need it, possibly more than anyone else who made the game.

The library really needs it, most likely. A friend of mine went to the library and checked out a piece of music production gear, like a sort of groove box that he was playing with. His library has, like, cool synths and stuff that you can play with, which is so perfect because a lot of times you get a toy like that, like a cool little synthesizer or something, and you use it for a little while, and then you're like, okay, I don't know if this is going to make its way into my, rotation. It'd be so cool to just go to the library and get a theremin and just use it for a couple of

of weeks. I don't know if the Portland Library has that, but I should go find out. This is a good reminder. So I go to the library like almost every single weekend with my kids because they all have incredible children's sections and that's how you get like kids into really into reading is by taking home a stack of 20 books from the kids section and like letting your kids read them for well. So I'm very, very supportive of libraries. Can I tell a library story about when I was a kid. Please. When I was little, I was really into Ghostbusters because I was only human and it was the best movie

ever made. And I would go to the library, the Monroe County Public Library in Bloomington, Indiana, with a proton pack that I had made out of a fox and a stick and, I don't know, a hose or something. And I would bust ghosts. And I would talk to the library and there I would come up and say, hi, I'm a Ghostbuster. And I heard there are some ghosts here. And then I would go through the stacks with my PKE meter looking for.

for ghosts. That's a really, really good. Wow. That was me. I was cool. You were really cool. That's a really cool story about something else you can do at the library. So I hope listeners are inspired by that too. Yeah, I think if you, yeah, I just am very, very in favor of libraries. I really think everyone, go donate to your library. That's what you should do. All right. Next question is from Octavius. Octavia says, with the cancellation of Blizzard's Odyssey, that was their survival game that they're working on. And the release of the suicide squad, I wonder where the line is with game development when you know it just isn't working. What makes developers say we've tried and tried, but we can see we haven't cracked it versus continuing on knowing the product will be

received poorly? Those working on it know better than anyone the quality of the product. So I'm sure they voice their concerns, but does that make a difference ultimately? I have a lot of thoughts on this, But first of all, I should say, and I think all three of us can say this with first-hand experience, when you're working on something creative, you have no idea if it's going to be received poorly, like most of the time. In the case of games, you might know if a game is buggy, and then you're like, oh, this is going to get bad reviews because it's buggy. But, like, you have no idea when you're working on something for years,

how it's going to be received from an artistic point of view if people are going to like the creative work. It's very, very difficult to tell. I mean, I think you can guess, and you always hope people will like it. guess and hope. And you might be so close to it that you're like, I feel like this is incredible. And that can be the reveal that you are in fact too close to it. And you've made something really archaic and bizarre that no one understands. This certainly has happened to me before with things I've written. But I think also part of this question, like to have these examples, they're both

extremely large groups of people. And even just leaving aside like, oh, stockholders had this to say, investors had this to say, put that aside for the moment. Having that many people working on a creative project, it's really, really hard to change course. Like just, it's just a huge generalization that I think is fair to say, pivoting in one direction or another, even just to say, this one part of the game is really fun. I think we should devote more resources to this part of the game and have it be a bigger part of the game. Like, that's a massive proposition to even make happen. and you may or may not have a hierarchy that allows for that kind of sharing of ideas, or you might not figure out that that part of the game is really fun until it's actually too late

to devote any more resources to that. And instead, the rest of the game is what it is. And there's just one really fun bit. And that's part of why I'm increasingly sympathetic, the bigger the team, when I see a game like Suicide Squad, where I'm like, well, there were a lot of ideas here. And some of them are fun. And some of them aren't. And I understand, or I think I can guess why that happened.

Yeah, it's an interesting one where there's kind of both things are kind of happening in game development, or at least from the game development stories that I'm most familiar with, where there are times where the developers are very familiar with the problems that a game has. Maybe a tester or a reviewer will point out some broken aspect of the game or like the power creep or like a boss that really sucks, and they'll know very well how bad it is or that it doesn't work, and they're like, ah, this confirms that, you know, people don't like this thing. But then, I mean, the Psychonauts Documentary, the Psychonauts 2 documentary is a great example of a lot of that, of a lot of developers sitting around saying, this just isn't working, this sucks, we need to make it better. But also them being surprised by players.

And I think that's something that I've certainly heard from plenty of game developers where a game is released. And then they're totally surprised by what players are actually doing with it and what they're finding appealing about it. And all these things that they were worried about are complete non-factors because it turns out, you know, players are just doing something completely. unexpected and really loving it. And sometimes even the game becomes really successful as a result of that. So yeah, I don't know. It's sort of both. It really depends, I guess, which isn't a satisfying answer.

But, you know, game development is extremely complex and manifests in a lot of different ways. Yeah, and there are a couple of different factors here, right? Like, so in terms of like knowing whether you've cracked it or not, first and foremost, if you're working on a game and it's a team of 100 or more people, you might not be playing the game. Like, you might not actually.

actually get your hands on a build of the game for quite some time. So you might just be kind of in your own little corner working on art or writing code or doing whatever it is you're doing, just kind of siloed from understanding how it actually fits in, what what you're working on actually fits into the game. So you might have no idea if you've cracked it or not or whether the game is fun to play. The other big thing is that oftentimes in game development, it's very difficult to know if something works until everything has come together in a way that makes it playable and that is and makes it feel like kind of fun and polished and it could be like having the audio come in takes it from like something that feels like crap to something that is like amazing like

imagine playing i don't know final fantasy seven rebirth without the music it's really hard to have any idea like what that would be like right and then add on top of that like uh tons of bugs because the game has not really gone through QA to the fullest extent possibly yet. And maybe some of the kind of levels are still using big, ugly gray blocks. And so not everything is finalized. So, like, you have to kind of imagine in your head what it's going to look like. And a lot of people get really good at that over time. But, like, it can be very difficult to be like, hey, Odyssey is a good example.

I mean, I'm sure there's some people who are like, hey, this project, it's got some red flags here. And that project was canceled. I think for bigger reasons than just it not coming together. But a lot of times it can be very difficult to see whether it's, hey, this thing isn't coming together, or, hey, we just haven't gotten everything online yet. So it's not fun to play yet because we don't really know how the final product is going to feel. And so there's just no way to actually make that call with any degree of certainty. And so, like, people at the top sometimes have to make it go with their gut. But yeah, it's tough.

Yeah, speaking of Blizzard, actually, I listened to Ben Brod, one of the creators of Harthstone on PJ Votes podcast. Search Engine. On Search Engine, yes. We'll link that in the show notes. Cool episode. Talking about some of the same things that are in your book, Jason. And telling the story of Harthstone. And there's a bit there where he says to PJ basically, well, we knew, I knew the game was going to be good.

Like, we were really confident in the game. And PG's like, how do you know? And he's like, we couldn't stop playing it. Like, everyone just couldn't stop playing it. Like, we were thinking about it all the time and play. playing it. So there are these moments sometimes internally where it's like, oh, this works. Like you can kind of imagine them while looking at each other and being like, this is fun. I want to keep playing even though I'm on lunch break or whatever.

Yeah, but an important part of that is that usually that's at the end of the project. Or like when you have enough of a build that it's playable. In the case of Suicide Squad as an example, I mean, I do think I think the developers actually felt like it, I think they were more optimistic than the review scores. And I think that came in a lot of things working against it in the first place. I think they were people on the team, I think, thought it was going to be received better than it was. But aside from that, you might not be in that room, like, playtesting it constantly until much later in production to the point where it's, like, probably too late for it to be canceled. It would be, I guess there is a sunk cost fallacy of it all, but still, like, I mean, a game isn't typically going to be canceled a year out. I bet you do kind of get in your head sometimes when you have a game that isn't really working, but works okay.

Suicide Squad is a great example. I could very much imagine working on that game and just kind of talking yourself into thinking, well, it's pretty fun because it is. If you're just playing it, you're like, yeah, this all works. It all works. It all gets. It's fun when you counter a shot. Yeah, all right, all right. And the better you get. You've been in it so long. You've played it a ton.

You're super familiar with it. And you start to think like, all right, maybe we could just have like a little thing that people say is an underrated gem. And then it comes out and just belly flops and you're like, oh, God. Right. Oh, no. Everyone hates it. That's probably a terrible feeling to have to confront that sort of of cognitive dissonance or have it revealed in that way.

And then combine that with the conflicting feeling of like, oh, well, hey, if it's a flop, that means we can maybe pivot back to single player. Oh, yeah, right. So there's a lot of conflicting. Yeah. Yeah. There might have people who were like glad that it didn't succeed and were like, I told you so.

And we should have done this or that. And then other people who are like, yeah, I mean, when that many people work on something, I feel like there's all the just the confluence of disagreements about what is and isn't the right thing to focus on. And it's like, don't listen to Brian. He wanted this thing to fail for the start. Yeah, even internally. I mean, I think people, including us,

we tend to talk about the devs of a game as a monolith, but even internally people tend to have a lot of conflicting feelings. One more thing I'll say real quick about Odyssey, since that was specifically brought up in Octavius' question, is that that game, like many canceled games, was canceled for a bunch of different factors. Team size got way too big. they kind of floundered with direction.

But the biggest one was, I think the biggest one was the engine that they were working on. And I won't get into all the specifics. But in short, they weren't really able to work on the game to the extent that they needed to. Because the tools to actually work on it were not in a good enough state to be like actively entering production on that game. So that just is a whole other can of worms on its own that can also make it really difficult to kind of tell what the state of your game is actually like. All right, let's get to the next question. Kirk. Next question comes from Alexandra, who writes,

Hi, Maddie, Kirk, and Jason. I've been a long-time listener since the split-screen days, and new episodes of Triple Click are always a highlight of my week. I had a question for your consideration the next time you do a mailbag. I am about Kirk's age, and I am blessed to have a ton of gamer friends in my life. However, how do you balance the social aspects of many games at once? For instance, I feel pressure to change games every few weeks to keep up with my social groups. As an example, this year it was the finals, then Pal World, now it's Hell Divers. In two

weeks, I'm sure it will be something else. How do I keep up with my friends? I would be interested to hear your thoughts. I love the show. Well, first, thanks, Alexander. I'm glad you like the show. And yeah, this is a good question. It's interesting. I haven't been playing a ton of multiplayer games for my part until Hell Divers. Hell Divers, too, more specifically, I guess. Just recently, like in the last month, I kind of got back in with this group of guys that I used to play Destiny with. They played together a lot, though. They would actually be good people to ask about this because they have a really regular thing going in this Discord that they're in.

They play a lot of GTFO that game, which I think the two of you may be heard of. It's like a, I think it might be PC only, but it's like a co-op extraction zombie survival shooter, a little like Left for Dead mixed with. It's got a little hell divers in it. So they play that a lot, and I know they have, they have to put a lot of work into scheduling. to be able to play together. And hell divers runs up against that because there are times where I really want to play hell divers

and I don't care about other games. I just don't have time to do a bunch. But they'll be like, well, sorry, but we got four people for GTFs so we're playing tonight. So then I have to just kind of go play something else. I guess I don't have anyone to play with. Wow.

Yeah. I'm so impressed by Alexandra's friends group, like really staying on the cutting edge and keeping Alexandria on her toes constantly. Like buying a new game every two weeks. Maybe you just need to get, gamer friends who are a little more chilled out. I feel like my friends group, even including YouTube, where the three of us, you know, we try to stay up to date on games. We do have a

gaming podcast after all. But we're, we also have conversations where we're like, what do we have time for? Like, when are we going to play this? Let's work around our schedules. And that's, that's kind of how I am with my other friends that I also game with. We have like a lot of just really frank conversations about when we're all going to play a game together. Like, it's kind of family therapy-esque. Like, I streamed Hell Divers 2 for them, and they were like, this is fun to watch you play, but we actually aren't going to buy it. And I was a little heartbroken in that moment because I was like, oh, I guess I'm going

to have to find some other people to play with. But thanks for letting me know, guys. Like, hey, I guess you didn't want to play this with me and that's fine. And we gave it a shot, you know? And that's how it is. I think that kind of streaming, that's like a good type of video game socializing. in general. I mean, in this Discord that a bunch of my friends are in, there are

a lot of times just streaming stuff into chat. They're streaming their screen and other people can watch. So Alexander, you mentioned, say, wanting to just go play an older game like Deep Rock Galactic, you put older in quotes but I know what you mean. And like, if you were doing that and then just

sharing your screen in Discord while your friends maybe play, yeah, the finals or something and you haven't bought that game, then you could kind of just be talking to them and some of that can get a little less fun when they're like really specifically strategizing and you don't know what's going on. But then again, they could share their screen and you could just watch a little bit if something crazy is happening and keep up. That's a nice way to connect with your friends, even if you don't all have to

have the same game. I do that a lot. And I got through a lot of Eldon Ring and Dark Souls, the game that shall not be named, just while on a voice chat with my friends all playing Overwatch together, which I don't really play. But I have a lot of friends who do, and that's like kind of low-key socialization form while I have on one monitor their Overwatch match and I'm listening to them and they're like freaking out. Oh, the point. Oh, get on the point. And like shouting and I'll be like watching that. Like it's an e-sports match on one monitor. And then I'll be like, you know, trundling through the mountains of Elton Ring, just like grabbing stuff and fight in skeletons or whatever. And it's a really nice way to spend a weeknight, you know? And I still,

I don't have to play Overwatch. I can just get all the social rewards of it without being invested in The ultimate multitasking. It is pretty fun. It is fun. And then I don't feel like I have to jump onto every new game. And I can kind of have some experiences of just watching them. And they get to have that too because I got Hell Divers and they got to watch me play it for a while and be like, this looks really fun.

We're not going to buy it though. Or you play it for a while. You watch your friends playing something and then it's sticky enough. They're into it enough. Yes, that's the other thing. And then you socially pressure them into buying it because they keep watching you play. Or it's just fun and you stick with it and everybody kind of decides to play it. Yeah, that's true.

My answer to this question is that I have two small children. Right, of course. You have no idea what we're talking about, and that's valid. Used to play a lot of destiny, but those days have long since past. All right, Maddie, what's the next question? So this one's from Connor, who writes, Hi, Triple Click. I'm late to the party on this one, but I just finished reading Jason's first book, Blood, Sweat, and Pixels.

I really enjoyed the book. But reading it in 2024, made me really itch for an updated version with deep dives into more recent stories. Jason, Maddie and Kirk, if we lived in some fantasy world where you had access to the development teams from any game in the past decade, which games would you be most interested in getting a better understanding of? Thanks to the wonderful podcast. Well, first of all, Connor, Jason Trier's written at least one other book, so you might want to check that out and there's another one coming. That's about Blizzard, so you might enjoy that one also. But on to your question.

maybe a good question for Jason. Jason, which games you wish you could hear more about? Well, I was going to say Warcraft 1, Warcraft 2, Starcraft. Interesting, okay. Yeah, you really wanted to learn more about that. Overwatch, Diablo. Heartstone. If only there were a book called Play Nice

coming to stores, October 8 that you could pre-order right now. Yeah, I actually, so the answer for me is that because I'm in a position where I do have access to a lot of development teams, there are some who I don't, and most of those are in Japan. And so my answer would be almost entirely Japanese developers. One that comes to mind immediately is Final Fantasy 15, which was previously known as Final Fantasy versus 13,

and that was like a 10-year saga. But even like Final Fantasy 7 remake, like, did you guys know, do you remember that Final Fantasy 7 remake was originally in development at a company called CyberConnect-2, and then it kind of got rebooted and moved back to Squarionix internal. And so that game has its own kind of like development saga that nobody knows anything about it because of the language barrier, the cultural barrier, Western journalists can't

really have, would have a hard time kind of cracking that in terms of getting developers to talk to them, kind of sideline their NDAs, so to speak, or kind of like unofficially talking to them. So all we're really relying on, we're just relying upon these kind of official PR sanctioned. developer interviews and those you can get some insight out of, but like they're not quite the same as like sitting down with someone and really picking their brain unfiltered and kind of without having to worry about the official message. So yeah, a lot of Japanese games is my real answer. Yeah, that's a good answer. I would pick two recent games in the Suicide Squad and Hell Divers

too, actually. Those are both games that I'd love to know more about. They had similar development cycles. Assuming that Hell Divers 2 has really been in development since Hell Divers 1, it's been in development for almost 10 years. And it would be really cool to just follow that team as they made that game, because the game is so incredible, was clearly the result of so much iteration and so much testing, and still has a lot that's yet to be revealed. And I just think it would be super fun to watch people put something like that together over however long it took them to do it. And then Suicide Squad, for reasons we've talked about on the show, is such a kind of befuddling game. It seems to have fallen victim to so many familiar AAA development

problems. And yet those are always unique and interesting in their own ways. And I would just love to hear that story. I think it would just be edifying and probably cathartic for some of the people who would get to tell it. So I think either of those would be great. Yeah, I really agree about Suicide Squad. That was one of the first things I thought of when I read Conner's message. And by the same token, we sure won't hear about it anytime soon, but like the Beyond Good and Evil 2 game that's just been in development hell for a really long time. Like anytime there's games that have been in that stage of, well, what's going on with that game? And every few years, somebody on the team will come forward and be like, we're still working on it with a couple

of pieces. Imagine Star Citizen. Yeah. Or Star Citizen. Like those kinds of development hell games. I know these fascinate you too, Jason. It's like, these are some of our favorites. Well, I'm just sitting here being like, all right, I'm getting article ideas here. Yeah, I know. What should I do a story about? Good, good. That's what we're really here for.

You know what's funny about the Suicide Squad story and really a lot of these stories? I think a lot of times people just kind of assume it's kind of like, oh, publisher or pressure, like the executives coming in and meddling. But oftentimes it's the developers kind of in a specifically developer leadership making decisions. that take the game along a certain path. And a lot of those decisions are done with good intentions, but they wind up leading to problems along the way. And at a certain point, I mean, Anthem, I think, is kind of like, the story of Anthem is kind of like a quintessential example of the development story

that, yeah, goes awry. I'd also like to hear about some successful games that have kind of divisive reactions. like I'm sorry to bring up the Lassoas part too, but that is another one where I would love to know more about just the machinations of that story. Like I remember hearing just from kind of reports on playtesting at the time that like they were trying to make Abby a more likable character.

And I think that that balance between Abby and Ellie is one of the things about the game that is like a tight rope walk that I'm really curious how the HBO show version is going to handle and I would love mostly it's just my plea for transparency. Like I would love to have more people come forward and just talk about that process without feeling like they need to get bogged down and being like, but we love the final product so much. Like, no, tell me about the rough drafts. Like, tell me about all the decisions that you made in between. And like, that game takes place out of order. Like, were there versions of it that were more in order where you knew more of what was really going on?

I just that game in so many ways I'm like I just wish I could edit it because I just it's a little too long for one thing and like did you see Maddie did you see that they released a documentary about the making of my I did and I heard it was fine with a capital F oh you should at least watch it yeah you should watch that I mean it'll give you at least a couple of answers I know I'll check it out I'll say I'm busy finishing the 33 part double fine documentary right now I actually have been watching that a lot it's really good Speaking of stories that are just fun to hear about. And the push and bowl of developers disagreeing with each other about features.

And I just wish every game had that because it's so fascinating. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, although I also wonder how much it impacts the actual development of the game and the kind of chicken and egg. Oh, I know. I know. Because it's like the quality of being observed makes you change your behavior. Like that's just the way it is. I would also read the Jason Schreier chapter about The Last of Us part too.

I think that would be really fascinating. Well, that's not a blizzard game, so unfortunately. No, that's true. That's true. Should have thought of that. Oh, well. All right. Next question.

Last question for the day is from Anon. And Anon says, hi, Triple Click, huge fan from back in the day. Triple Click is the only podcast I listen to where I know and anticipate exactly which day it drops. However, I do listen to other video game podcasts. Occasionally, I will catch one of you guessing or another podcast or just hear a name drop. And my question is, what is the camaraderie like in the video game podcast community? Is there a community? I never hear bashing or even boasting that one podcast is greater than another.

Everyone seems to be on a chill vibe. But is there a dark underbelly? Any drama you'd like to share. Yeah, finally. Finally, we're coming forward about the dark underbelly. The video game podcast niche of podcasting. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. I don't think there is one.

I don't think there's any beef. I mean, or I don't, I certainly don't feel any beef. It's all Kirk beef. Kirk has so much beef with Russ Freshda. I know people hate him because he's such a drama queen behind the scenes. Yeah, that's really my... It's crazy. Kirk and Ben Hansen are secretly rivaled.

We hate each other. Oh my God, that would be great. Can we manufacture a rivalry between you two? I think that would help both of their careers. We should. That's what I really need is some good beef. Ben Hansen did tell us that we thought that we got a question from him and it wasn't him. So, oh, yeah, that's right.

That could be the start. There's the rivalry between that other Ben Henson and the real Ben Henson and who is the real one. Yeah. That could be the start of the beef. There really isn't any beef, though. I'm sorry, that's a boring answer. Yeah, I never really felt any serious competition. Like, you know, I would see work that people would do back when we were games journalists and be like, ugh, I didn't really like that piece or something.

But I never felt any enmity with anybody. And in podcasting, it's so, it's such a different vibe. even than written like media, you know, web journalism. It's so just a bunch of people hanging out. And most people who have podcasts are pretty nice, or at least the people that I know who make them. And there's only a few gaming podcasts that I'm really all that familiar with. Some of them are made by people we used to know.

Jason, I saw you just guessed it on the Aftermath podcast. Like, it's all people that we work with or know. I don't know. Either in my case literally work with still or have worked with in the past. Yeah, I guess let's try to see. sanction here. I think when we talk about this, when we read this question, when we're talking right now, I think we think of a certain group of podcasts. We think of like IGN and Kataku and our friends and the besties and the besties and kind of funny and Mimax and all these like super

chill people. I think there are definitely some kind of gamer podcasts that we wouldn't necessarily like be guesting on and as associated with. They're in kind of they run in different crowds, I would say. But like the podcast world is so big that we don't really have to think about them. Like I don't really, I can't remember the last time I even thought about like some. Yeah. No, I know what you mean. Like the podcast world is small, but it's also big.

Like every now and then I'll get a trip into another niche in podcasting and be like, oh, wow, here's a show or like a group of shows with a ton of followers that I've just literally never heard of. Yeah. And there's just no, there's no benefit in picking a fight with someone whose podcast you don't like or something. Like, I mean, maybe if that's your whole brand. Well, there is. I mean, if you're in a certain world, yeah. Right.

If that's a good of it for us. It's not our best. That's what I mean. I mean, if you're making the kind of show that we're making, where you're just trying to have interesting conversations every week, you like what you're doing and you're not really into making enemies, like, then you're not into making enemies. And I think most of the people that we know have worked with and are kind of keeping that energy going

are also the people whose shows we guest on. So, yeah, you get a kind of reinforcing thing. And it's like a, it's a virtuous cycle, in my opinion. It's like positively reinforcing. Everyone just sort of goes along to get along. There's enough, you know, listeners to go around and everyone just sort of enjoys the fact that we get to have a variety of different games podcasts. So, yeah, I think that kind of explains it, even though it's not a very exciting answer.

Except for Greg Miller. We all hate that guy. That's Jason's beef, and it's going to help his and Greg's career. Is it, you know, as a K-fan? You be the judge. You be the judge. I should start a beef with Greg. All right.

On that note, why don't we put our beef aside and take a break? And then we'll be back with one more thing. Hey, it is us. Usually you hear someone else talking right now, but now you are hearing your buddy is a triple click because it is a very special time. And that is, of course, maximum fun drive, which is where we are doing a pledge drive for our network and for our show. We, at triple click, are entirely.

listener supported and now is the perfect time to help us make this show possible because you get some cool stuff. Did you know that if you subscribe at like, so go to maximum fun.org slash join and you'll see like all of the different options of stuff you can get. But my favorite and I think I think all of our favorites is the pin, right? It's so good. The pin is really good. The pin is legitimately great. Can you guys tell us, Kirk, tell us everybody about the pin that we made. Okay. So the pin this year is named an honor of something that you will often hear on the show, which is the bing sound that I make whenever I interject on the show. I go, bing!

And I make that sound, and then I start talking. And we've joked about bing a lot. It's like a running joke among listeners. And so this year we made a pin that looks like the objection graphic from Phoenix, right? The explosion underneath the text with an exclamation point. Only it says bing. So it's a bing pin that finally commemorates an immortalized. Bing, which I believe was just something that I did because I didn't want to take the time to do a sound effect.

And I had to make it clear that I was interjecting from the future. And then I just sort of stuck. And now it is immortalized forever. This part of the brand. Which is kind of how the best things like that become a thing. So yeah, you get that if you're a member at $10 a month. You can also, I think you can like increase your membership. I think I'm going to do that so I can get an additional pin.

Yes, you can send us one, but I want more than once. I'm going to do that. To cover every item in our house with bangpins, you can get as many big pins. If you're $5 a month right now, you can upgrade to $10 a month and get a Bingpin. There's also go to maximum fund.org or slash join. You'll see a bunch of the rewards that you get. So again, it's maximum fun drive. Go to maximum fun.org slash join, become a member, get cool stuff.

Feel good about yourself for supporting. Not only, by the way, I should mention before we go back to the show, maximum fun over the last year became a co-op. Yeah. Worker-owned co-op. Pretty freaking cool. Yeah, it doesn't affect us as a show. It has nothing to do with us, really. But the people who actually just run the network itself

all own a stake in the company instead of the company just being owned by one person. And that, I mean, is super cool. Even cooler reason to support our show is that it's part of Max Fun. They get a little kickback from it too. and we love working with them. And I was so psyched that they became a co-op. It was really exciting to watch that process unfold.

I'm proud of them. I'm proud to be part of this. It's just, I don't know, it's good vibes all around. I'm so pumped. Yeah, it is. And I was actually, I was just thinking about this. I think the term co-op has become kind of associated with like, I don't know, lefties and kind of socialist mentality.

But I feel like, even if you're the biggest capitalist in the world, you should feel like, like, yeah, like free market. Like, everybody should own a stake and like growth. brings like elevates everybody so being like co-ops are like a win-win for everybody anyway capitalists for co-ops yeah man that should be yeah it should be a slow that should be a shirt that max fun should sell i don't know become a number um anyway maxillumfund dot orr slash join become a member today all right back to the show and we are back kirk mattie it is time for one more thing mattie start us off okay

Finally, I'm talking about the television show, Shogun, my new favorite television show. It's all I think about. Pretty much shorting four hours a day. I love it. I think everyone should watch Shogun on who live. What is it? It is a historical drama. It has a opening credits that is very reminiscent of Game of Thrones.

And I'm sure there are people out there who are going to compare it to Game of Thrones. But it is. Musically very different. Very musically different. interesting opening credits. Really like the opening credits. But also some key differences. This is historical fiction.

And no dragons, no magic, not a fantasy show. This is historical fiction. And they worked with so many historical consultants to get this right. It is, it takes place in Japan hundreds of years ago during the time, in 1600s, specifically, during the time period when, uh, European ships. were sailing all the way, like through it's Magellan's Pass, right? All the way down below South America and then all the way, or not South America, below the other continent, I don't know what maps are.

Don't ask me that. Much like completely unlike John Blackthorne, the pilot star of this television show, I am not good at maps. However, I know it was really freaking hard to get from Portugal or England to Japan in this time period. It was like a death-defying proposition to do it. And yet that is what the character at the center of the story has done in this time period. John Blackthorn gets shipwrecked in Japan and he becomes sort of a pawn in various intra-country schemes whereby the Portuguese are trying to lay control of Japan via sort of like sketchy means,

crappy means. Yeah, like mission outreach. And the Japanese lords are in fighting with one another over whom should be the shogun, which is sort of like this kind of dictator-esque role that none of these five lords has a claim to. And there's sort of like a Ned Stark type who's Torinaga and like purposefully is like, I wouldn't want to be the shogun, but I need to kind of like figure out these political machinations. And so Taranaga and John Blackthorn form this like weird alliance with each other because they can't, speak each other's languages.

But of course, there's this beautiful woman named Mariko, who you like totally know is going to fall in love with John Blackthorn or whatever. But she also speaks English. And so she gets to be like the woman in the room with all these. She speaks Portuguese. To be clear, no one is speaking English. Sorry. But it's in, of course, no one's actually speaking English.

But they speak English and they tell you it's Portuguese for the purposes of not having subtitles the entire time. Yeah, I appreciate it because, of course, there's subtitles for all the Japanese in the show. And then the English. English spoken, where to assume it's Portuguese. And I don't know how to explain how freaking good this show is. I'm obsessed with it, though. The machinations, the twist and turns, I'm rooting for Torinaga to work things out, but I just don't see how he's going to freaking do it. There's so many different characters on the show and they're all fascinating. There's a lot of really cool

female characters. Mariko is obviously the best, but there's all these other women who are sort of like disempowered in various ways, but have more power than you might think because it's a totally different society with different gender roles. And also, I really like it when Mariko makes one of John Blackthorn for not knowing what germs are and that he should be taking baths. Just a funny thing about old-timey England. They didn't understand they need to take baths. I don't know. It's just a really good television show. And I feel like I'm learning a lot about historical Japan and the 1600s. And I've been Googling a lot about like the invention of gun powder, that kind of thing's really fun for me.

Anyway, watch Shogun if you want to do more Google searches about the invention of various types of guns. It's on. It's on Hulu and, what, FX? It's an FX show. Yeah, it's an FX show. So whatever you watch it on, I watch it on Hulu. If I can just interject, because I wouldn't make this my one more thing, but I just want

to say, Anna Soi, who plays Mariko, she was on that show, the Godzilla show that was on Apple, that I found really disappointing, but I thought that she was very good on it. She's amazing on this show. It's very cool to see her get to be on a good show. And Hiroyuki Sanada, who plays Torinaga, is so freaking good. He's so good. What an actor. He's been in a lot of other things.

Anyways, I co-signed this show and think it's fantastic. It's incredibly good. And really, just really, really, really good show. Yeah, it's based on a book series. Also, there was apparently a 1980s TV show that was also called Showgum that was based on this, but I kind of want to watch you for those. It's probably bad. Probably, yeah.

So don't get confused. I mean, watch the 80s show if you want, but maybe watch the 20-24. show that is also called Jason, I'm psyched for you to watch it. You'll date the show for sure. It's so good. It's very up here street. Yeah, I mean, I've been watching beef on... Oh, nice. That's a good one too.

Maybe Shogun next. Kirk, what's your one more thing? My one more thing is the Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth piano mini game. Yay! I wanted to say this for the beans cast. Nah, it's fine because it didn't come up on our two episodes about this game and I kept laughing at the fact that I somehow had

mention this on the show. I was chatting with a listener in our discord today about it, and I realized I could just make it one more thing. I think it's bad. I don't like it. I agree. I think it's really bad. I agree. And I'm kind of relieved because I was worried you were going to say you thought it was good. And I'm like, I find it really hard and weird. I think it's hilarious. When I first sat down to play it, it, you know, so anyone hasn't played the game. Cloud sits down at the piano with his massive buster sword on his back. Yes. And it makes for the funniest image in the world. And so I'll say at the outset that this piano minigame is great at being a very memeable and hilarious minigame and terrible at having anything to do with music. So that's kind of the

distinction I draw. And I would say if you can play the piano, it actually is harder to play this mini game because it will break your brain. It has so little to do with the piano except that I suppose you usually play chords with your left hand and the melody with your right hand and you do that with the thumbs sticks? What if you didn't? And also the experience of playing chords was nothing like playing a card. Yeah, it was just a miserable. Yeah, what if to get your brain to change the type of harmony that you were playing, you had to like press a button and then press the trigger. So the way this works, I'm not really going to explain it in detail because it would make my brain break. But when I did first see it, I started laughing because it was

very much like the developers watched the guitar minigame in The Last of Us Part 2 and were like, hold my beer. I'm going to put the entirety of Western Harmony into this fucker. And we're going to see what happens. Because you can hold down all these modifiers. There's like chord types on the left stick and there's a circle and you like swing the thumb stick in a circle to select, you know, C minor, D minor, E minor. And then you like press a button and then it goes to accidental. So it's like C sharp minor, D sharp minor, whatever, F sharp minor. You know like on a piano where you press a button. Modify it. It's actually more like a harpsichord or something. Anyways, then you can like change the chord type and this is when I started cracking up because the chord types

are like, you can go, I think it's major seven is one of the types of chords, which is, you know, a fairly common type of chord, but not like the most common. And then if you modify that to minor, it goes to a minor major seven chord, which is not a very, I mean, it's not a very common type of chord. And I was like, wait a minute. And I started getting into it. And there's like every type of chord basically ever, you could play any song using this thing. But the problem is that the piano is a very good device for playing lots of different kinds of chords. A video game controller is not. And it's a super crazy experience because then once you start actually playing the game, mostly what it is is a weird, like, rhythm matching game with the two sticks,

where you're flicking the sticks in opposite directions. You're doing more with the right stick because that's the melody, and then you have to change chords at the left. It starts out pretty straightforward. It's kind of silly. And then it gets more difficult. Cinco de Chocobo is that one that's like in 11. It's like in 5 and then 6.

And that was the last one where I decided I would get an A on it. The one after that I can't remember with the pieces, but it's bananas. It's just this ludicrous piece that makes no sense at all. And I was like, I'm not doing this. Like, I have actual musical instruments that I need to practice. You don't want to get better at this fake instrument? No. Though I will say that the final appearance in the game, no spoilers, is incredibly wonderful

and is like one of the greatest musical moments in the game. So a real mixed bag, really wonderful for like what it kind of is doing aesthetically. And also, yeah, in terms of the memes, but also just, I think, just very silly when you actually try to play music on it. When you say the final appearance, you mean like if you keep playing the mini game or you mean just in the story when the whole thing is... I mean, yeah, there's, I'll just say I guess so people know what I'm talking about without any spoilers, that there is a side quest, one of the green side quests for the end of the game culminates with a performance on the piano that is just a really wonderful moment

musically and narratively. And I really loved that. And I just, I love it in general, even though it's terrible. So I just wanted to say related to that that I am fascinated by music notation in a past life. I taught a college course on score writing and music notation. So this is something that I have found very interesting for all of my life. And I've always found video games that do different types of music notation. In fact, Final Fantasy theatricalism, if anyone remembers that game. Very interesting music game.

A new one came out last year. Yeah, they're still making them. And of course, rock band guitar hero, the sort of rolling, like piano roll that rolls away from you, kind of an interesting, or I guess toward you with the gems, kind of an interesting way to notate music, all of these different ways that you can kind of make it a little simpler for people to read music since reading sheet music is so insane. And I just wanted to recommend this video that I think anyone who thinks this stuff is interesting would like. It's by a guy Tantacroll. His actual name is Martin Kiri. He is a musician and, you know, I think he designed software

and how he works for a music notation company. And he makes all kinds of great videos about music. He made a video about music notation that I think is really, really amazing. It starts with this 10-minute thing about chess and chess notation. And it just is about notation and notation systems and how you take something that is happening in the world and turn it into a written format that can be documented and maintained. He talks a lot. The chess thing is because, you know, how people talk about chess moves, you can just replay really old chess games because there's been a method of notation for hundreds and hundreds

of years. And so music is very much the same way. But of course, music notation is this crazy kind of amalgam of a ton of different things that's just evolved over the years with all this cruft and weird crap and I mean the more you learn the more you're like how is it possibly this way

and this video kind of gets into that and also has some very funny dunks on Epic's Tim Sweeney who apparently tweeted some shit about like music notation is bad and it should be disrupted and redesign like it should be more like

you know a piano role why isn't there a startup for fixing music notation it's very much the kind of thing that someone would sort of just swashbuckle their way right into and it's like dude welcome we've been trying to do this for hundreds of years so it's a really wonderful video that i'll link in the showdust i think people would would just enjoy if that sounds at all interesting great all right um my one more thing is a video

game called dragons dogma two from capcom and unfortunately uh i am not really into this game um so i know the first game in this uh series dragons dogma one i suppose was a cult classic and it became like revered over the years by people who had played it. And so I was excited to check out this one just because I thought I would see I hadn't played the first and I thought I would see what all the fuss was about. But the first couple hours I played, I've just not grabbed me. The kind of the setting and dialogue are very, they almost feel like I can't believe it's not souls, but like with way more generic like dialogue and writing.

and it all feels very flat. You, of course, are like a chosen hero, whatever, and you have to go fight a dragon. And the things that kind of people have raved about over the years just, like, did not really impress me. And the number one of those is the pawn system, which is the system where you can, like, go and recruit people to join you. And in this game, you can have, like, three companions hanging out with you at once.

And so they go and fight with you and hang out with you and stuff. And I found this really irritating for a couple reasons. One is that as I'm walking from like one place to another, they will just kind of talk and the dialogue is so insipid that it made me want to like boot them all from my party. Not only is it just like generic and flat, it's also like repetitive. So like this one guy just kept saying he said this like four times within 10 minutes. A treasure chest. I can hardly wait to open it. And then like at one point he said this.

I'm always saying that. And then the other, a second pawn in response to that says, not all chests contain treasure, you know. And so this happened multiple times, including once after I had already opened a treasured fist. And then so on top of that, like the quests are, hey, go over there and kill some monsters. Or, hey, go forage a plant for me and bring it back. And that's it. There's no, like, twist.

There's no subversion. Nothing. It's just like the most generic fantasy, schlocky stuff. I played a few hours And then the other part of the pawn system That's a problem is that like So I did this one kind of one of these early quests Is like you're you're kind of following this dude

This guard who is going to take you from this one city To the capital city And on the way you keep running into bands of goblins And I was like okay cool I could check out the combat system But because you have this group of like three pawns with you They all just kill the goblins And like you don't actually have to do anything

And so I'm just kind of standing there watching the goblins die before I can even hit them. And then, uh, uh, uh, like I found a boss and that was kind of okay. But like, again, the pawns just like slaughtered the boss before I could even do much of anything. And then on top of all that, I'm playing on PC and I get to the capital and the performance just like chits of ed and like the frame rate just drops. And I'm playing on my brand new PC that I upgraded last year on like a 4070 TI. So this has no issues the performance in any game that is that is like like properly optimized so uh that was also that was kind of the last draw for me and i was like i i just am not feeling this game sorry to everybody who

loves dragon's dogma out there but uh it is not it has not been for me it is not impressed me in the in the few hours that i played so far so um yeah it was kind of a bummer i was hoping for another cool RPG but um have just completely bounced off this one yeah i haven't played very much you've played much more than I have, but that's a bummer to hear. I'll check it out more at some point. The initial part didn't grab me, but the first game I felt that way too, and I kind of got a little more into it. I will say this game has one of the most incredible character creators I've ever seen. It does, but then it looks like garbage. Like I made a, my dude's face just looks so dumb every time. Yeah, my walking animation is, it's pretty weird. My character

is kind of bow-legged. The animations in general, it's very, it reminds me of, do you guys remember the era of like the late 2000 slash early 2010s when there were be all these kind of at risk-of-sounding crass here Eurojank RPGs because a lot of them originated. I think of like two worlds is a good example of the kind of game. I played this one called Venetica back in the day. There were a lot of these games that like no offense to Europe, but a lot of them came from Europe. There were a few Western like US ones. Why the word Eurojank became a thing in that specific era. Yeah. And they were. were just all kind of like mediocre, like super, like the animations were just so janky.

They all just looked like trash and like I guess you could find some, some, uh, things to love about them if you really wanted to. This reminds me very much of those. Um, and especially coming off, uh, something as kind of meticulous and, um, something that struck the chords with me the way Final Fantasy 7 rebirth did. It's very hard for me to latch on to dragon's like, Yeah, it's not a great time to be diving into another huge RPG, no matter what, at least for me. Yeah, maybe emotionally. Yeah, well, I would, I mean, if this was, if this was better, I would be all in. Like, I'm fine with that.

That I don't, the going from one to another, I don't mind. It's just that, like, the quality bar has been set pretty high. For me, the question is, would I rather be playing this or Bellotra? Yes, Balacho, which we will talk about. A tough bar to clear for most of the years. We will talk about Bellacho more suit. and guarantee you all. We will talk about Bellatra more soon.

All right, on that note, and it's time to say goodbye. Remember to go subscribe, become a member of Max Fun today, and we will see you all next year. Yeah, see you next week. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ.

Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. you can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network, and if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at Maximumfund.org slash join. Find us on Twitter at triple clickpod, send email to 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. Supported directly by you. I'm Jason Shry. fire. Am I next? Yeah, you are. You think after 197

episodes, we would know the order, but we do not. No, I just didn't have that up, but I like to look at the little list. 197 times we've done it after me. I never know who I'm after. Look, 198 and I'll have it cold, I swear.