Triple Click - How Should Video Game Companies Be Run?

Episode Date: August 29, 2024

What's the best way to run a video game company? Do people care less about graphics these days? And did Maddy get a say in the Polygon redesign? It's time to answer some burning questions!One More Thing:Kirk: A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder (Netflix)Maddy: 5-4 podcastJason: Star Wars OutlawsLINKS:Ethan failing every QTE in Heavy Rain’s best chase scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSTYpaRp5kQPreorder 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

A lot of people listen to podcasts while they play video games, but right now I'm playing a video game while recording this podcast that you're listening to while playing a game. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we're talking about a range of topics from whether people still care about expensive graphics to things that make us quit games to some tips for a listener entering video game corporate management. I'm Kirk Hamilton. I'm Maddie Myers. And I'm Jason Schreier. Hello. Hello.

Hi there. It's us. Hello, my gamer friends. Hi there. It's good to be back in gaming, as always. Yep, back in gaming. That's us. Back in gaming.

That's what we said. That's our show motto. Did you know, did you guys know that if you like Google the gaming industry, all that comes up is like the gambling industry because that's what they call themselves. That's right. It's just very funny. It's great. This is what we cover is the video game industry, not the gaming industry.

That's right. Really clear. Right. Right. Like if you're tuning in and you think maybe we're going to be talking about Vegas. and like casinos and stuff, we are not going to be discussing that today. Not today.

I mean, triple click does, like, that name does conjure the image of like a slot machine where it's like click, click, click, click, and then you win $100. I'd call that more of a triple chunk than anything. Triple chunk? I think this is best exemplified

by the age-old battle between R-slash games and R-slash-gaming, which, of course, are both about video games. Right. The two video games are, of course. What are they should be about gambling, though? But they should change. Oh, my God.

Okay, enough riffing. Let's just tell people really quick how they can support us, which is go to maximumfund.org slash join and become a member of our network and support our show. And you get bonus episodes, including a bunch of cool ones we've done this year and an upcoming one that we were about to record all about the state of Marvel in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which we've been a little bit delinquent in keeping up on for reasons that we'll probably talk about in that episode. Man, we are kind of all over the place this summer. There's a lot of games coming out. And I just want to promise everybody that we do have some game-focused stuff coming up, like specific games that we will be doing triple plays on. But we have a bunch of great questions from you all as well.

So, Jason, why don't you tell us what we're doing today? Yeah, I mean, we got a lot of questions. And, yeah, before we get into all those hot fall games, I think we're going to talk about Star Wars soon. We're going to talk about Astrobat soon. Today we're just going to answer some of your listener questions. And as always, you can reach us at Triple Click, at Maximum Fun. We should probably make it so triple chunk at maximum fund.org also goes that. We should.

We should. We should. I don't think we need to purchase it. I think maximum fund.org is the only thing that needs to be purchased. And then you can just do whatever email addresses. But yes, triple click at a maximum fund.org to send in your questions and let's get on with it. Kirk, take us away. This first question comes from Mark who writes, hi, click, click, click, or should I say chunk, chunk, chunk, chunk.

Longtime listener and MaxFun member here. I am about to start in management at a major game publisher, corporate management, not managing developers. This is my first time breaking into the industry after trying for a long time. I've heard your thoughts on crunch layoffs and unions, which I support, but I'm wondering if you have other thoughts on how you think games companies should be run from the business side before I am given the Kool-A to drink. Thanks for consistently putting out AAA podcasting on video games. Yeah, I asked Mark for a little bit more context on this question because it's kind of a broad topic and we can get into, we can interpret it how we want. But he was talking specifically about like people management and product management and kind of trying to figure out like what should this company be doing with these people. What what should the IP look like and so on and so forth? But I think for the purposes of this discussion as hypothetical studio heads out there, let's all put on our Bobby Coda. and imagine that we are CEOs and what would we do? How would, what would, how should game companies be right?

And by finally, I mean, I never want to do it. Yeah, I mean, I immediately responded in my head by saying, Mark should just watch the double fine documentary that we talked about. I mean, he should watch all of them. But I actually do think they're a really good lesson in one of the things he mentioned in his follow up email to you, Jason, where he was like, what do I do if I have a developer who would be really great? making a 2D puzzle platformer, but that's not what we develop. How would you encourage that

type of talent? I'm not saying every single studio should do an amnesia fortnight, but it is a workflow that seems effective for one studio. And I think it would be cool if other studios came up with other workflows that would be effective for whatever their situation is that would just develop talent. I mean, I think that was one of the main concerns that Mark had, at least in his follow-up thoughts. He might be maybe a little too high up to have like that granular of a sense of what every single person is working on. But I do think some of that is is a culture that can start from the CEO side and be like, hey, I'm actually really interested in even creative ideas or risky ideas that aren't the games that are our core competencies or big moneymakers or big franchises or whatever

our massive company is doing. I want to try to develop those risky propositions. I mean, that's the dream, right? That's what we talk about on this show a lot, is how do a big, how do big companies still take the time to take risky bets? And what does that even look like in a really, really big company? Yeah, the amnesia fortnight thing really stands out to me as like a way to allow people to just kind of pitch ideas and figure out who could make a good leader. And they talk about that a lot. Yeah, I've been thinking about Blizzard, because I've been thinking about Blizzard quite a lot. over the last few years because of a certain book that's coming out. And something that they used to do in the old days is they would have like a main team work on, say, StarCraft. And then while that,

when that game was finished, they might have some other people, some kind of lieutenants to the main director or whatever, step up to lead the expansion and kind of see how they did that, how they handled that. And an expansion is kind of, it's less stress. It's easier to put together. because you already have the tools in place and you already know what the game looks like. And so you can see how people perform as leaders when they're working on the expansion. And then they can go on once they've proven themselves to do new things as well. But yeah, it's really, it's an interesting dilemma when you're making overall strategy choices about do we make sequels to our hit games from the past.

Do we do new IPs? What is the risk factor there? How much are we going to spend on these things? What are we going to do when these? games are inevitably delayed and super late because that's always going to happen. And yeah, I think for all the flack that CEOs and management folks get from people like us, I do think it is an unenviable position to be. And I think there's a lot of tough decisions you have to make. Although really, a lot of that stuff isn't even, if you're talking about a publicly traded company,

most of that stuff is happening more on a studio head level than a CEO level. CEOs, I don't really know what they do all day. Just hang out. Yeah, like watch their, open up their brokerage accounts and watch the numbers go up. But yeah, it's very difficult to try to be juggling all of this stuff. And I imagine has taken away years of people's lives because of the stress, unfortunately. Yeah. I also think it can be hard to tell when you manage managers who's a good manager and who's just

really good at seeming like they're a good manager. So I hope there's some type of structure at this place, big as it is, for upward feedback from all the people under everybody in the C-suite. Because at my significantly smaller situation at Polygon, I really appreciate upward feedback. And it's definitely how I do my job where I manage other people who manage other people. And that's effective for me. It's one way to find out what's really going on. is for the people below the people you manage to actually have a way to describe what's really going on. Yeah, I don't know if I have too much to add in terms of advice other than you're going to have to be realistic, I think, with how much change you can make, especially as a new employee. I think that's just going to be a challenge of coming in somewhere new where you're not being brought in to reimagine or, you know, really even make changes.

Like, this is sort of a new job that you're starting for a while. you're just going to be getting your feet under you, learning how things work, you know, learning which slack channels to use to talk to who and who's good at what. Like you were saying, Maddie, which managers are good? And then which of your bosses are the most effective? I mean, just how to kind of navigate the structure of the jobs. So, I mean, that's going to be a lot to focus on on its own. So, you know, trying to come in and also say, hey, I have some fresh ideas.

Like there will maybe be a place for that and it's good to keep an eye out for that. but also, you know, I think a lot of the job at first is more likely going to be just assimilating and figuring out what's going on. And that's kind of the problem with a large organization. It's why they resist change is because you bring in new people with fresh ideas, but because it's such a large organization, they have to be effective at all. They have to learn how things already work. And that kind of leans things more toward reinforcing the status quo. Yeah, inertia is a very difficult thing to stop.

Yeah, something else I was thinking about. is trend chasing, which has always been a large part of the video game industry since, since, I don't know, the 90s when everyone was chasing Doom or before that, when everyone was chasing point-and-click adventures from LucasArts. It's just always been cyclical and everybody's always been, then it was MMOs, and it was MOBAs, and it was hero shooters and so on and so forth. Live service. Well, that's what these days we're getting a live service. And I think Concord is a game that everybody's talking about now as this just kind of gargantuan flop. And I saw someone tweet that that game

had been in development for eight years, which blew my mind a little bit for various reasons. But first and foremost, it kind of speaks to how the trend chasing really doesn't work in the modern video game industry because these products take so long to make. Trend chasing might have worked if you can come out with like the next big thing a year after the trend started. But eight years from now. I mean, nobody knows what the next big thing is going to be. So you have to be really careful about that. And it's easy, not just for, like, out-of-touch CEOs to fall into trend chasing. It's also very easy for game developers to fall into it. And a lot of the people, like, who are in charge of game teams now, might be in their 40s, maybe Gen Xers, who, like, jump on a new game,

like Player and Owns Battles Grounds or Overwatch or something, and really fall in love with it and play a bunch of their friends are like, this is the coolest thing ever. I love shooters or whatever. I love shooters because I grew up playing these and then they want to make that. And so it becomes this trend chasing that is actually from the creative side of things. But it can lead to doom as it did with Concord. The other lesson there is to put other people in charge of your projects. Maybe put untested people on your, maybe put younger people in charge of your projects. Maybe don't hire the same group of 20 middle-aged dudes to just keep running projects. over and over again just because they've experienced doing it.

So, yeah, I mean, I think there are a lot of things you could do to try to shake up the status quo. But yes, to Kirk's point, maybe a little bit at a time. Yeah. And also do management training if you're going to bring in untested people because that's also like, oh, it seems so great. Like we're going to give people, like especially marginalized people a chance to be managers.

They've never done it before. Please actually support those exact people because they need the help just as much as any other new manager would. if not more so because they're facing just unconscious bias on the part of everyone around them. So just a really big fan of those programs that like give them a mentor that's like assigned at work or whatever or management training like that stuff can be really, really effective. That seems like really big picture type C-suite stuff that maybe Mark could help with. And to that point, I mean the double-fine documentary, the Amnesia Fortnight thing,

which again, Amnesia Fortnite is when the entire company shuts down for two weeks and just has people work on like these small game jam type things. And it's everybody can pitch a game and they pick four of them. And it's super cool. This is all document, like about the last few that they've done and documented. And it gives some of these people a chance to like learn in the fire, child by fire. And that actually I think is way better than any sort of management training. For sure.

Management training can be a little bit like floating. Cerebral. Yeah. You can't quite grasp it without actually getting your hands dirty. And I think that giving people an opportunity like that. could be really cool as a form of training. Like literally set someone up with a team for two weeks and see how they do. Yeah.

And like a small project with really manageable goals and just see what happens. You know, this is not really related to corporate management, but more related to trend chasing. It's just a thought that I had, Jason, when we were talking about that. Yeah. It's interesting that one of the most successful examples of trend chasing in at least, I don't know, the last 10 years, is Fortnite, transition. to become, you know, a battle royale. And the reason that that worked, I guess, is just that that game already existed. So it wasn't trend chasing like you were describing, Jason, where you say, oh, okay, well, the thing

that's hot right now is hero shooters. So let's make one from scratch. And then eight years later, the whole world has changed three times and you're releasing a hero shooter to die, where if you can look at what's happening right now and then just change whatever you were just making or what you just made to. match with the trend, you can't actually jump on a trend and in the way that Fortnite did somehow release this fully fledged battle royale game that was the perfect game at the perfect moment, even though it had been a very different game just a month before. And again, kind of unrelated,

I'm more just throwing my own topic out there, but I thought that was kind of interesting. Yeah, I mean, the reason this happens is because there's always room in the market for a couple of these. I mean, Fortnite is a good example. So PubG came out in the, I believe it was February or March of 2017, around there. Spring up 2017. and Fortnite Battle Royale came out that fall, fall of 2017. So just a few months later, both of those games obviously took the world by storm, especially Fortnite. But then three years later, College Duty War Zone, aped at Battle Royals and also just exploded. It had like 100 million players on that thing, which is a mind-bongling, bonkers number of people.

So the reason this happens is because there are a couple of winners at the end of it. Unlike Battle Royals, there can be a few winners, not just one. But for every war zone and Fortnite, there are two dozen battle royals we've never heard of or that died before they could even. I mean, do you remember Radical Heights? Do you remember like all the other just kind of battle royals that came and went? I think you maybe just made that up right now. Yeah, no, that was the Cliff Lazzinski game that he made after a lot ofakers. I'd forgotten what that was called.

But yeah, I mean, people do it because it can be really effective. And even after World of Warcraft came out, there were a couple of games that did okay. Like Elder Schools Online is still kicking Star Wars Galaxy. Really, I mean, World of Warcraft came because it's looked at EverQuest and wanted to copy that. So there are some examples of like winners in this formula and it can work. It's just that like you're really sending yourself up for failure. If you release a new hero shooter that costs $40 in 2024 and then you're competing. I mean, Conquer, we could get into that another time because there's a lot of factors.

actors there, including Valve's new deadlock game. I don't know if you guys have tried that. I just downloaded it. I have tried it. Is it cool? It's weird. It's a combination of a MOBA and hero shooter structure, which is, I don't know. I haven't played enough to have a full opinion on it.

Okay. Another time. We'll talk about that down the road. Let's get to the next question. I'm going to field this one. Jared asks, with the new redesign of Polygon.com, it got me thinking about who makes the decisions for these kind of things. I'm curious if employees like Maddie even have a say or get to see the in progress design or does it all just come from the corporate overlords at the top,

are these redesigns even done in house? Maddie, we got some questions. Well, I can't speak for every redesign, but I can speak to this one. Yes, it was done in house. And yes, I did have a say. And it wasn't just me who had a say, Polygon leadership generally has a say. And also, now that it's kind of done. I would say it's a work in progress still. We're still filing bug reports and all that good stuff. Websites are always a work in progress. Yeah, of course, of course. But like there's still a lot more that we want to do with it. But I feel like to just answer the core of the question. I did get to have some involvement in this and I'm really excited about it. And I think that process was really cool at Polygon. That hasn't been my experience everywhere. I've gotten to work. There's certainly been times where redesign has happened. and I've just either been low enough in the hierarchy or uninvolved because of the nature of my job that I've just been like, okay, I guess that's how the website looks now. But at least at Polygon for this redesign, we did get to be involved in it. And we are working with a design team at Vox, and they certainly have their own opinions about what looks good,

as compared to the writers who have their opinions about what looks good. And I wouldn't say there's tension. There's just like a healthy back and forth between people whose entire job is making something visually beautiful and people whose entire job is blogging and being like, well, this is how I think a post should look. And that's a pretty fascinating part about designing a website actually. And it's been really cool to see traffic change. I know we don't need to get that granular, but because the way the website works now, I don't know. It's interesting. Yeah, I'm curious about that too. We can get a little back end here. Why not? So the way the website worked previously, we also could

design the front page. And my coworker submit, that was his whole job, was just kind of making making sure the front page modules, all the stories, the way the stories were put in order, just looked good and had the top stories of the day at the front of the website. It was actually really, really hard to use that backend. And we didn't always see a ton of success just in terms of like trying to float certain stories to the top of the page. You too remember we used to do that at Kotaku too, where we'd all be like, okay, what's going to be in the top slot? What's going to be in the other slots? What are the major stories of the day?

It was mostly like writers angling together. story at the top. You know, oh, I wrote the big review. Come on. I want the, because you get a big traffic bump. Absolutely. And at Kataku, we certainly did get big traffic bumps in a polygon, not always. But that's changed because I think the redesign makes it a lot easier for the reader to see what they want because of the way that it's set up visually. And it's a lot easier to change it on the back end.

So we've had a really fun time just changing the website multiple times a day and being like, okay, like these three stories just went up. We're going to put them in this section where they can all go to. together or like, oh, the latest queue has all these stories that should be in the main feed or whatever, should be in the main slots. We're still like deciding what the terms are, clearly, like to even describe the new modules on the website. I don't even know how to describe them in these sentences I'm saying. But yeah, it's actually been really fun to just make the website look different every couple hours every day. Maybe it won't stay fun, but for now we're really

high on life with the redesign and just all really digging it. And, uh, just making the website look really pretty every day. And it's way easier to do. And it's serving in traffic because people are seeing things that they wouldn't have otherwise seen because they could have gotten buried in some other type of way. I think it looks great. I like it. Yeah.

Yeah. I also think it looks great. Yeah, it looks good. Cool. All right. Maddie, why don't you read the next question? Sure.

So this one's from Shimon, who writes, Hi, guys. I've been noticing more and more gorgeous games coming out, prioritizing hyper-realistic graphics and having a ton of, of work put into character animations. While these games are a joy to look at, they often aren't as fun to play, e.g. forespoken or suicide squad, be it due to bloated production costs, not having enough playtesting, or other reasons.

Do you think people still buy games just because they look good to justify such prioritization, in parentheses, looks over gameplay? Do you think anything will change in that regard in the near future? Man, I was just, okay, so I was just talking to someone. about the PS5 pro, which is going to be announced imminently, like in the next few weeks or months. And like, I was just like, who wants this thing? Like, PS5 games, you load up a PS5 game and you're already like, this looks incredible. No, it looks good.

I guess it'll be cool if you're, like, really into 60 fBS and 4K or whatever. So that's all another conversation. But I keep thinking, and I think the three of us have discussed this before, that we've just like hit the point of diminishing returns with graphical. fidelity. And it's not like the previous eras where like from PS3, really it was, PS3 to PS4 was a huge leap and felt like a humongous graphical evolution. And then PS4 to PS5 has not really felt like a huge leap, at least to me. And I haven't really seen any games this era that are just like, like even as good looking as Red Day Redemption 2 is. So I think

we've hit that point, that plateau. And I also think that we're seeing so many games that are hits this year that are not high-end graphical fidelity. So I do think that like we're getting to the point where people are way more interested in unique, innovative gameplay and games that are fun over trying to be pretty. But yeah, what do you two think? Yeah, I largely agree with you. I also wonder if Unreal Engine 5 making games look so freaking good is a part of this trend increasing. I've noticed it for games that I don't know that otherwise people would be excited about. I don't if you two have seen the buzzer on this game called Inzoi, I-N-Z-O-I, one of our classic, why is the game called something that you don't understand that this fella? But it's a Sims killer, but it uses

Unreal Engine 5 and so it looks hyper-realistic. And I've seen so much buzz about it purely because it looks hyper-realistic. Not because people are like, oh, it has all these mechanics that the Sims doesn't have or things I'm really excited about. It's literally just, it looks hyper-realistic, and it's using the Unreal Engine 5, just the character modeling tools that UE5 has released tons of marketing and promo of these. You can see really long YouTube videos of it.

I just think it's interesting that people are really latching onto that. And I think it's natural. Like, you know, you see something that looks really impressive. But let me make a counterpoint there, Maddie. Let me counter here. Is that I don't think the selling point there

is that it's high-end graphical fidelity. I think it's that high-end graphical fidelity here serves the gameplay because the idea of the gameplay is to create a realistic environment. And so it really enhances the premise of the game that it looks so realistic because it's literally a life sim. The idea is to create people and act like you're living a world with that. So I think in this place, in this case it serves the gameplay as opposed to just being pretty

the way that, I don't know, Star Wars Outlaws is super pretty. But it doesn't need to be. It could be stylized and it would just have the same effect. here like this is a game where you're taking selfies with people and like the idea is to like have like your characters are getting married and stuff and the idea and you want them to look like you. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, maybe that is the best use case for it. But I also feel like the Sims is fun because you can build buildings and there's a million other things you can do in there and just having fun shenanigans unfold. And that's a product of systems being refined, not just the character creator. So I guess I just have this natural hesitancy when people see a game trailer and they're like, oh my God, it looks so good. And like, that's the main thing that people are saying about the game. It doesn't mean it's bad inherently for a game to look really good. It's just that I feel like I've been burned before by games that look really good. And then you play them and you're like,

is anything happening though? Or did they just put everything in to how it looks? And that's it. Yeah. I mean, and the other thing is I think that these game companies like demand that their games to a certain level of graphical fidelity because that's what they think they need to do in order to sell millions of copies. But nowadays, we're seeing so many games have viral success without high-end graphical fidelity. I mean, look at Bellatra. Like, you sold two million copies. And it's frigging, all you see is cards with two-d-drawing, like hilarious two-d drawing. So, yeah, I don't know it. I feel like we're moving away from the world where people bought games just because they looked like crisis or whatever. Yeah, I guess so. I mean,

I think that we're kind of talking about art direction and we're talking about technology. And if you're just talking about raw technological power and checking off the boxes for path tracing and ray tracing and whatever complicated type of tracing you're putting in your game, like that can be, that's kind of a little more empty as an end unto itself. I think there aren't that many people who are that excited about it. And there's also just been a kind of sourness to the experience of playing those types of games on PC. over the last couple of years because there's been a really consistent cadence of games on PC with significant performance problems.

You're still mad about Jedi Survivor? It's not just that, right? It's so many games and so many UE5 games come out in her just a total shambles and run with hitches. But yes, Jedi Survivor was a bummer and I am still mad about it. So, you know, I think that that has probably caused some people to at least realize that they prefer performance and gameplay smoothness over just raw technological prowess. But at the same time, I think that those new technologies, those cool lighting technologies and, you know, atmospheric effects can be really effective.

I actually think that Star Wars Outlaws looks really great. We're going to talk about it more next week and I'll have played more of it next week. But part of the appeal of that game is that it is this appealing or this immersive Star Wars experience. It feels like walking through, you know, a Star Wars amusement park where you're getting your ID checked by a stormtrooper and you're like walking into this dingy canteena. And the fact that they're using, at least for me on PC, like all of these beautiful lighting effects and there's kind of smoke that's sort of backlit. And it really is amazing looking and it's the kind of thing that wouldn't have been possible before. It enhances it somewhat for me. It's not like the reason that I would buy the game.

But I do think it kind of serves the experience of the game, even if it doesn't serve the game. So that's just one thought I had. And the other one related to what, to Maddie, to what you were saying about this Sims-like game is that I think specifically the power of modern technology to create human-like faces and beautiful people and strange-looking people is like a very particular use of graphics technology. And like if you looked at Dragon's Dogma 2, a big part of the initial buzz around that game and just what people were talking about was the character. character creator because the character creator is amazing. And a lot of people were sharing them because they released it as a standalone thing. And while that game actually doesn't have incredible visuals and had huge performance issues when it launched, it did have those amazing looking characters. And like that alone was just kind of a cool thing. So that use of this technology is like,

is very powerful because we just like to make realistic looking people and to just play around forever making like photo realistic duplicates of any person that we want. Yeah. It's true. It's very human impulse. It's like playing with dolls to just be like, I want to make a really realistic looking person. And then maybe I'm done with the game, which is not not a good way to play a Sims game. So maybe Ensoi has it right.

Right. It's like central to the Sims. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I don't. I think you're absolutely right. And yeah, maybe Outlaws wasn't a great example for me to bring up earlier. But I do think that that Shimon has a point that we've hit this like,

a point in gaming history where people aren't quite as impressed with graphical revolutions anymore and that is no longer really a selling point you're no longer seeing people being like yeah like look at the graphics in our game look at the amazing water effects and whatever um because yeah i think that just people are more sophisticated these days than they were back in the day um when it comes to gaming stuff yeah and they're like well does it run at 60 frames per second i mean the fact that there even is a performance mode versus a graphics mode or whatever you want to call it is itself indicative of the change. Well, and we've really been in an era of those big expensive games being disappointing in part because all of the work required to make them look so big and expensive also bogs them down

and causes them to chase their tail for so many years and lose track of what it is they're even making. I mean, I'm playing outlaws and that game is fine. It's, you know, it's probably best as a Star Wars simulator, but mostly it's okay. and that at the same time I'm playing tactical breach wizards, which is like one of the best games I've played in forever, and it plays just perfectly. It's designed just immaculately, and it doesn't look like anything special.

I mean, I love how it looks. I love the character models, but it could run on a phone probably. It's a very simple game graphically, but that's fine because it's an exceptional game. So it seems like we're more in an age where, you know, there are just more of these games that don't spend quite as much time and money and energy creating really realistic explosions and instead just drill down on what makes

the game good and then they find success that way. Yeah, and also you can take bigger risks because you're spending less money on the game and so you don't have to sell 10 million copies. You can be fine selling 100,000 copies. Like if Tactical Breach Wizard sells 100,000 copies, that's a huge success. Whereas if Outlaws does, people are getting fired. Big worry. They're in trouble.

All right, let's get to the next question. Kirk, read this one. This comes from Callum. who writes, Hi, I love your show, but I love listening to podcasts and playing games at the same time, even more.

The only issue is I feel like I'm missing out on great game soundtracks because of this, and it makes me a little sad. Not sad enough that I'll stop listening to podcasts while playing games, though. Do you ever think about this? I do. I sure do.

I do. Yeah, I don't because I almost never listen to podcasts playing games. I knew you would say that. Kirk, I bet you only listen to the soundtracks and you only listen to them in beautiful headphones. that make them sound perfect every time. I am ashamed. Yep, that's true.

I'm out here disrespecting the musicians. Yeah, I mean, I think there are two factors here. One is that, like, some of us, like myself, are kind of natural multitaskers or people who like doing a lot of things at once and kind of can't sit still, focusing on one thing. Maddie's the same way, whereas Kirk is the opposite. And my wife is also, is just like you, Kirk. Like, she can only really focus on one thing and gets distracted

if she has something to do something else. Yeah. But the other factor also is that sometimes you're playing a game and the gameplay is repetitive and monotonous and you feel like you're wasting your time if you're not doing something else while playing. It doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad game. Diablo 4 is a great game and that game is incredibly repetitive and monotonous.

That's the perfect podcast slash TV watching game. Or the perfect game to play while your friends are there and you're all talking, which is kind of what it's designed for. But yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a perfect game to play. Invite your friends over. Play it and try to talk to them while you're playing it.

You can though, is the thing. It's very friendly to that. But yeah, I mean, I think that like that there's nothing really wrong with either of those. But that's because I do it all the time. The other thing is like what's the difference between playing Destiny while talking to your friends and playing Destiny will listen to a podcast or playing another game while listening to a podcast? Same sort of thing. You might be missing out.

on cool music, but that's why you can then listen to the OSD while working and do it the other way around. Exactly. I do do that as well. And then you're still getting it, but just in a different multitasking context. Exactly. I find it just, I mean, it depends on the game. If it's a game like Destiny that I've played so much that I've heard the music so many times, I've had the experience of hearing all the explosions around me and all that excitement so many times that I just don't need to hear it anymore. It's less of a big deal. And yeah, if I find out, I'm doing something that's just repetitive, like I'm farming some, you know, whatever, some item from a chest that I just run into the same cave over and over and over. God, what was the name of those resources, like spindle something?

What were they? They were on Venus? Yeah. Or you just had to do this run around the level. My God. I can't believe I had time for that shit. So, yeah, anyways, I think if I'm doing something like that, I'm more likely to put on a podcast. Spin metal.

Spirit bloom, relic iron. God. Spirit bloom. God. This is somewhat triggering. You had to find like 10 of those things and they like never appeared. Oh my God. Yeah.

We had so many hours. Just lost to that game. No, but if you were listening to a podcast, you weren't losing the hours. You were learning because you were listening to episodes of you're wrong about or whatever. And it was actually, it was important time for your brain. All of it. Fair. Yeah, I did listen to podcasts during, during some of those, you know, during some of those runs in those games.

So that's like an example of a time that I'll do it. But yeah, mostly I just, it isn't even about the music. Like it isn't some, I have a sacred responsibility to the musician and must listen to their beautiful work. That's not it. It's just that I like having the audio experience of a game. It's just a big part of it for me. So I do usually have headphones and I do kind of play in a way that I can really hear it just because, yeah, I don't know. I mean, I guess I'm sensitive to sound and like that part of the game experience.

But it's really just that. Like, if I have a podcast playing, I don't want to hear both. so I just turn the sound off entirely. Then, yeah, I feel like I'm missing something, so I don't do it. Yeah. There are certainly times where I'm like, I really just want to listen to the music. And sometimes it can really help you, like, especially in a FromSoft game, having not only the music, but just every sound effect there usually makes me better at the game and just more

responsive because the sounds are also clues to what's going on. So again, it really depends on the game. Like there are some games where not only is it just helping my enjoyment, it's just making the game the experience it is intended to be in terms of you noticing every aspect of what's going on. Resident Evil, too, also comes to mind. You got to hear those zombie groans, or else you don't know, they're coming up on you. It's very hard to play that game on silent. This makes me think of something I'm sure that I've talked about in the past that's kind of the opposite of this, which is when I'm really stuck on a hard boss fight, a lot of times the move is to take off my headphones. Yeah, that's also true. Even if

I need to hear something, I let them hang around my neck maybe. But it makes it actually easier for me to just zoom out a little bit and just focus on the patterns and the rhythms and the, you know, the moves that I need to do to avoid getting hit. And a lot of times that's what I need to do to get successful to like break myself out of a kind of boss failure loop. So it's a little bit different. But sometimes the sound is too much for me. I need less of it. No, I know what you mean. I've done that too. It's like one or the other is like sometimes the weird hack that you need in order for the boss fight to be achievable for you. I think both ways are valid. All right, let's do one more question.

I will read this one. This is from Spencer. Spencer says, have you ever been stopped dead in your tracks by an impossible set of objectives, a brain dead NPC escort mission, a killer time limit, a nefarious boss, an unforgiving stealth mission, an underwater level? And the list goes on and on. What games have defied completion for you? Can a bad level ruin an entire game? Yes, it sure can.

Oh, I have a good example. I have a good answer for this. Anthem. Do you guys remember when we all played Anthem? Yes. I know exactly what you're talking about. I got to the point in Anthem that anyone has actually played this game will remember where you have to go around the world to the tombs

and do all these like friggin' checklist objectives. And I was like, screw this. I am never playing this game again. Yeah. That's a good one. That's totally fair. It was just like essentially just grind in four different. for four different checklists of grinding.

It was insane. Yeah. The thing that comes to mind for me is actually the battle at the very end of Final Fantasy 7 rebirth with Sephiroth, which is when I turned the game down to easy. It did not stop me from completing the game

because I did want to see those final cut scenes, not only because I have a podcast, but also because I really wanted to see them. But, God, it was such an annoying boss fight. It had a thousand stages. You two remember how many stages it had? And they were all really hyper- For specific, like, elemental stages where you had to, like, pay attention to what color parts of his wings were or whatever, it was infuriating and not okay with me.

And I'm not sure if I would have continued if I hadn't really wanted to see the story ending of that game. There are a lot that come to mind for me. I actually mentioned last week Resident Evil 7 has a turn where it just becomes less interesting, which is sort of like what Spencer's asking about. One that I will mention, though, is there's a chase at the end of Assassin's Creed 3. where you chase Charles Lee, who has betrayed you. I don't even remember. He turns out to be the bad guy. And you have to chase him, and you chase him, I believe, through Boston Harbor.

Classic Hamilton character. I'm a general, whee! That guy. So you have to chase that guy. That has not been portrayed well in historical inventions. Poor Charles Lee. Poor Charles Lee. I don't know.

He probably sucked. Yeah, you probably sucked. He probably sucked. That's true. So anyways, you have to chase him, and it is, I'd say this can stand in for any of a number of Assassin's Creed missions, especially in the first three or four of those games, where there are these tailing, like stealth missions, insta-fail stealth missions, and chase missions that are just unbelievable.

And that chase, it was so bad. I wrote this huge Kataku article about how much I hated it. I think they wound up changing the mission maybe or maybe not because of my article, but at least because people probably complained about it a lot because it was so bad. I just remember that it started. It's like Chase Lee. And so there's a cut scene and then it begins and he's ahead of you and you're in a crowded harbor and you begin running. And the first thing that happens is just these barrels next to you explode and they knock Connor your character off balance.

And it's, I think because Lee, like, you can kind of see him shoot them as he's running, but it's not clear. It was never clear to me what was happening. So this race, this like chase begins and I'm like, all right, go. And then immediately I'm like knocked off balance. And then the rest of the chase is just so annoying. You're like, there's a thousand reasons why I listed them all in that. article. Anyways, it was so, so bad. It did not stop me from playing the game because I was reviewing it. Or at least, I wanted to finish it because I was going to talk about it with

Stephen. I think maybe Stephen reviewed it. But I did make it through it, but man, if I hadn't been writing about that game, I never would have. It would have stopped me cold. Yeah, it sounds unbearable. I feel like every time I've had to chase a character in a game, I can't remember them all, but it's always bad. Has it ever been good? Do you ever want to chase someone? No. I'm happy to never do it again. The best chase in any video game ever is in Heavy Rain, and it's the version of it that's on YouTube where you're chasing a guy through...

I think it's Heavy Rain. It might be Detroit Become Human, but I'm pretty sure it's Heavy Rain. You're chasing a guy through a supermarket. Yeah, it's from Heavy Rain. And there's a version of it on YouTube that I will find and put in the show notes. I have rewatched that so many times. Whenever I'm in a bad mood, that YouTube video is there for me.

It is a person chasing a Sussexed Serial Killer, and because that game is all QTE, and it's just kind of motion-capped chasing, if you just fail every single QTE, the guy just eats shit over and over and over and over again. It is so funny. It's so good. And so anyways,

that's maybe the greatest terrible chase in video game history, and yeah, I'll put it in show notes. It's amazing. It's amazing. Highly recommended video. It's good. Every chasing should also be passable, even if you fail every QT.

That is my amendment to my rule, is that it should be like that heavy rain chasing. The other thing that always makes me want to rage quit a game is bad checkpointing, and this is happening a lot with Star Wars Outlaws. Also in the Sephora fight I mentioned, by the way, but keep going. Yeah, true. This is happening a lot with me with Star Wars Outlaws where, like, I'll lose in the stealth and get killed or, like, lose the mission immediately and somehow wind up respawning in a different place every single time. Yeah. Just like, okay, now I'm 200 feet.

away from the base. Okay, now I'm inside the base in the wrong place. Like, it's just completely insane. All right, that has been our burning questions. Let's close up the mail bag for now. Just another reminder. You can reach us a triple click at maximum fun.org

with your own questions. Let's take a break and we'll be back with one more thing. Have you been looking for a new podcast all about nerdy pop culture? Well, I have just the thing for you. Secret Mysteries of Nerd Mysteries. Secret Histories of Nerd Mysteries is a weekly pop culture history podcast hosted by me,

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I'm going to go first. My one more thing is the game I was just talking about Zowers Outlaws. And I actually want to talk about, I'll give my brief impressions and then I want to talk about something specific, which is the reviews for this game because I think it's an interesting topic. So first of all, we'll talk about this more next week when the three of us have had chance to sit more with it, spend some more time with it. I'm glad that we don't have to rush through it for reasons we'll get into in a second. But overall, my impressions of this game

after a few hours are that it's cool. It is fun as kind of the scoundrel simulator, as you mentioned earlier, Kirk. It's like trying to do a lot of things at once and is not particularly good at any of them, but combined they make for like a fun package overall. It's not like you'll be playing this game and bragging or like just raving about the shooting or the stealth or the hacking or really anything in it. But combined, it's got a lot of stuff. So it feels like that kind of open world's traditional UBesoft package where there's just a lot of stuff to do. And it's pretty fun to do it for the most part, despite the short of the checkpointing frustrations that I mentioned earlier. But yeah, we'll go more in depth on that next week. But for now, I want to talk about

the reviews because what happened with this game was that Ubisoft sent out review copies on, I believe it was Monday the 19th, is when they started sending out codes. I got mine that afternoon with an embargo, a review embargo of Monday morning the 26th. So that gives people essentially six days to review the game, including two weekend days. For a massive open world game, that's a bit of a problem for multiple reasons. So from the reviewer's perspective, it really, really sucks. If you're a game reviewer, different kind of game review websites handle this in different ways. Some of them use freelancers.

Some of them use full-time staff. But most of the time, if you're reviewing a game, it's not your only job. You have to be juggling other stuff too. On top of that, you have to now figure out how to play this game that could be dozens of hours long if you're trying to mainline and finish it before the review embargo, while also writing the review and somehow fit that into six days, which means giving up your personal life for six days, giving up all free time for six days, essentially.

It's also just kind of a very stupid move from a Ubisoft perspective, because if you're like this multi-billion dollar multinational company that is trying to set up your big tent pole August fall title, one of your two biggest fall titles for success, why would you not want reviews to be as potentially high as possible and therefore give reviewers more time to spend with the game? Because chances are if reviewers are marathoning the game over the course of six days, they are not going to enjoy it nearly as much as they would have if they got the chance to spend a few weeks with it to take their time with it. And this game especially is a game that really suffers from marathoning, I think, because it can be really repetitive and going through these bases and sneaking around over and over again, especially at the beginning. From when I've gathered, you unlock a lot of stealth abilities and combat abilities as you go through this pretty cool unlocking system.

But, like, you don't have that from the beginning. So you're just kind of sneaking around at a bunch of bases that all look the same, and you're sneaking around the same stormtroopers or bandits or whatever. And it's got to be awful. And so, of course, review scores were pretty mediocre. I don't know. I mean, we can discuss if that's inherited or not. I don't really want to get into that. But I do think that, like, having to play a game under a time-compressed schedule is always going to make it feel worse and is always going to make you hate it more than you might have if you were taking your time with it.

I certainly would have hated this game if I had to, like, just binge it over six days and write a review for it. So, yeah, it just seems incredibly short-sighted and stupid and just makes no sense to me that this bazillion-dollar company would then take such a humongous risk of, like, only giving reviewers six days and then, just expecting. And reviewers are essentially, most of them are going to hit the embargo because otherwise your review is irrelevant to people. If you don't hit the embargo, there's a whole lot of reasons that people feel like they have to hit the embargo that, again, we won't get into. But it just is, it's inexplicable to me. And I know why. I mean, the reason is that like bug fixes come in hot, these PR people might be asking for review copies three weeks in advance. And I'm sure they were. Yeah. And the devs are like, yeah, and the devs are like, no, we can't.

We have to fix all these bugs before we can get into people's hands. And it's all coming in very, very hot. But at that point, I mean, I think you just need to plan this out better and be like, you know, if we can't hit August 30th, we need to add a few more weeks to push it back a few more weeks so we can get this out to people because it will make the difference on our metacritic score between a 75 and an 80 potentially. And that could lead to many more sales. So I really do think it makes a big difference. And it just is inexplicably that a company would spend hundreds of millions of dollars and four plus years and thousands of people on this game only to then expect reviewers to play it through in six days and just rush it out

the door like that. It's just like it's baffling to me. I mean, talking about bad management in the games industry. Yeah, that's a great example of something that baffles me every time it happens to for all the same reasons. I mean, even they could have pushed the embargo back a couple more days and that would have helped. Well, so the embargo is, it was Monday because you can buy the game with the digital whatever version, deluxe version, and play it three days early. So it had to be before the game actually came out for people. And then that makes everything harder too

because of all these like pre-order bonuses that then have to be baked in. And that's essentially the real release date. Yeah, Ubisoft does that a lot. That has been happening. And Ubisoft has never been great about like giving earlier like code. Like they've,

the past few games that they've sent out has always been like a week and events. But still it's just like inexplicable to me. I think it's because all these games are coming in so hot. that they have to be fixing bugs up until the very last minute. But still, it's just incredibly short-sighted and risky from the game publisher's perspective. And, yeah, I don't know what they're thinking because they spend so much time calculating risks of everything else that this is just like, it's all very silly. Maddie, what's your one more thing?

My One More Thing is a podcast I've been listening to. It's called 5'4, like 5 to 4, like you're doing a score. But it's about Supreme Court votes. you know how sometimes things go five to four on the Supreme Court. Their tagline is a podcast about how the Supreme Court sucks. It's basically three lawyers, Peter Shamsuri, Michael Learoff and Rianan and Hamam, who are complaining about Supreme Court decisions, but they do so by going over some of the most notorious ones.

Like, they do one per episode. And there's, like, you can hear the, like, glasses of whiskey in their hand. Like, they don't edit the ice out. There's a, like, intense energy that this point, podcast has because of that where like it's like lawyers unfiltered after hours and they're just like swearing and it's it's got a certain kind of vibe that I've learned to really enjoy. Lawyers saying what lawyers would like recommend they not say. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I feel like it kind of says something that like the early episodes they didn't, you know, give their last names at first and they were kind of trying to be

anonymous initially and then eventually they were sort of outed. I haven't gotten to that point in the podcast yet. Didn't Peter lose his job at his firm? That's correct. And then eventually Peter actually gets fired because of the podcast. I again haven't reached that point in the show yet. I've started at the beginning. But it's funny also because I recommended if books could kill, which is a different podcast hosted by Peter Shamshery and Michael Hobbs.

And Peter is so much more buttoned up on that show, even though he jokes around and swears on it. But it's just really funny to me in comparison to hear like a much more unfiltered, like, a whiskey glass having Peter on this show. So that also took some getting used to from me. Does he now make enough money from podcasting that it doesn't matter that he was fired? He describes himself now as just a podcaster because he has two, I think, fairly successful podcast. But I don't know. I don't know what Peter's wallet situation is currently. Hopefully fine. I enjoy both of his podcasts. But yeah, I recommend it if you just want to learn more about the Supreme Court and how it operates. They really try, all three of them try to put it in really plain language, like all the decisions and just make it as intelligible as possible. and just demystify and deromanticize these decisions. That's definitely just the ethos of the show overall.

And I really agree with that. So yeah, I recommend it. It's called 5-4, like 5-4 if you're searching for it in your podcast app. And is this all, are they all leftist? Is this like a leftist perspective? Oh, yeah. I guess I should have said that right from the jump. Yeah, it's a pretty far left podcast.

Periodically, they do make fun of some of the progressive decisions as well because they're like, this one make no sense. Like they do try to take an even hand. but it's only so even as could be when you've got three leftist lawyers arguing over drinks. So there's that. And about this Supreme Court. Oh, for sure. But I mean, they do.

They go pretty far back in history. So they talk about all the Supreme Court. Yeah, I guess the episodes I've listened to are about recent decisions. Sure. The thing I found just to add one thought to this since I don't know when I'll have a chance to talk about the Five Four podcast again. The one thing that I found is that it is refreshing to listen to people speak of the Supreme Court with absolutely no respect. Yes.

They have at least when it comes to this current court and the decisions that it makes, and in particular the judges on the far right, it is refreshing to listen to people, not even pretend that the Supreme Court is an august institution and to just treat it as the raw, just the raw political object that it is. So anyways, yeah, I enjoy it. Though it makes me pretty mad and I don't listen to it that often because of that. Yeah.

There's sitting there like fuming, wishing you had a glass of whiskey too. Yeah. Cool. Kirk, what is your one more thing? My one more thing is a Netflix show that Emily and I watched on the recommendation of my 13-year-old niece. That was pretty good. It was actually better than I was expecting. It's called A Good Girls Guide to Murder.

And it is a pretty recent Netflix miniseries. I feel like both of your nieces have pretty good taste. Yeah, right? They do. Is this a different from your... This is, nope. This is the same niece. And yeah, she has good taste and has introduced me to lots of good music.

She's the reason that I'm very up on Sabrina Carpenter and Jenna Ortega and, you know, Olivia Rodriguez and all the rest. So she has read these books, my niece, and I really enjoy them. There are three books in the Good Girls trilogy. They're by Holly Jackson and they're kind of Y-A murder mysteries. And I went in kind of expecting it to be a little bit cheeky, a little bit sort of, I don't know, light with maybe some sort of voiceover or some sort of silliness. I don't know, a good girl's guide to murder just sounds like it's going to be a kind of a silly thing. And it really wasn't. And I actually found that kind of surprising and interesting.

It's a six-part series. It's a British series, so it feels more like a British show. Six episodes is great. It's the right length that doesn't feel, it feels maybe a little over stuff, but it doesn't have that problem that some Netflix mysteries have where there's like 17 twists because there's 10 episodes and they make it go on too long. It stars Emma Myers as Pip, who is a, sort of good girl in a very small village in England where five years earlier a girl was murdered.

And her boyfriend was suspected of being guilty and then eventually he committed suicide. And everybody believes that he did it and then he went and killed himself. And she, of course, does not believe that and chooses as her senior project to try to figure out what really happened. And that means going into the, you know, meeting up with all of the students who graduated five years ago, who are all still kind of around, talking to them about what really happened, and doing a lot of detective work. It's very similar to Veronica Mars. I would say that anyone who has watched this and liked it should totally watch Veronica Mars. There's even an ongoing marshmallow joke in Good Girls Guide to Murder that feels to me like an actual callback to Veronica Mars.

Well, you saw me. But it's similar in that it has, but it's also, it's got a much more down-to-earth, really grounded and kind of intense vibe, even than Veronica Mars, for all the kind of, you know, tough stuff that Veronica Mars was about. There was still the kind of arch voiceover. There was the noir stuff. There was Kristen Bell's performance, which was so kind of, she had that certain spark, that charisma. Emma Myers is really good, but she's playing it much more straight. She's very small.

Anyone who watched Wednesday will recognize her as she's Wednesday's roommate, who's like a werewolf on that show. So she's this little girl, and she's often in very dangerous situations on this show. She'll go, you know, to a party with people where she kind of maybe shouldn't be there into room. She maybe shouldn't be in talking to people who seem actually dangerous. And that's the thing that surprised me about the show is that it is very like hard edge. There's a lot of drugs and, you know, sexual assaults and just kinds of things that are scary and intense. And it's never really funny. It's not really going for any kind of cheek or humor despite the title.

It's more like mayor of Easttown or something. And it's really, so it's not gimmicky. It doesn't really have anything like that. It's just a pretty good mystery about a bunch of students, and it's a good story. We really kind of liked it. It was fun to, I was down there staying with my sister over the weekend, and so we watched a couple episodes with my niece. It was kind of fun to just talk to watch it. I will say that I called the killer the moment we saw them the first time.

That's maybe just me, but I was like, there it is. I just accused. I was right. though of course it's more complicated than just there being one killer who was so yeah it's a good story I think anyone looking for just that kind of murder mystery

should check it out if you're down for a kind of grounded surprisingly hard-boiled English murder mystery I dug it anyways a good girl's guide to murder it's on Netflix totally worth checking out you have me of Veronica Maris that was all I needed to hear is the Veronica Mars nice and maybe want to re-watch Veronica Maris

and get my niece to watch Veronica Maris oh yeah it's a great great, great, we watch. Especially the first, the first season, because the first season is so tight. The second season is a little more sprawling. We should do a beans cast on a Veronica course. I feel like we almost did. Because I rewatched all of it. Or maybe we did. We may have done that. Maybe we did. I definitely rewatched it not that long ago. Hold on this show. Yeah, tell me if we did or not. I think the three of us, I think we just talked about it a lot on split screen.

We didn't actually do it. Also true. So yes, let's add a to the list for 2025. beans cast is Veronica Mars. Veronica Mars and the Sopranos Season 1. Okay. Party like it's the early 2000. It's just going to manifest. Exactly. Party like...

Lost. Lost is the other one Jason says. I know. All right. That is it for this week's episode. We'll be back next week to talk more Star Wars. And of course, bonus episode hitting your ears very, very soon. What we talk about, Marvel.

All right. See you guys next week. Yeah. See you next week. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreyer. Maddie Meyer. 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 the triple click at maximum fun.org

and find a link to our Discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network Of artists-owned shows. Supported directly by you.