Triple Click - How To Keep That "New Game Magic" Alive

Episode Date: October 15, 2020

Jason, Kirk, and Maddy open up the mailbag and answer some of YOUR great questions. How do we Maximize our Fun when playing video games? Is it possible to be a successful journalist while staying totally anonymous? And does Xbox Game Pass cause more anxiety than it cures? One more thing:Kirk: FacebookMaddy: Animal Crossing Halloween updateJason: Dan Brown's OriginShow Notes:Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinKashmir Hill cutting tech giants from her life: https://gizmodo.com/i-cut-the-big-five-tech-giants-from-my-life-it-was-hel-1831304194  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

You know how everyone always has a backlog of unfinished video games? Well, you can't not finish them if you don't start them in the first place. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. Today, we are opening up the listener mailbag and answering some of your questions on hot topics, such as how to maximize the fun from your video games. I'm Jason Trier. I'm Kirk Hamilton. And I'm Maddie Myers.

And we are back for another episode of Triple Click. Hello, we sure are here. Hello, my friends. Before we get started, just a quick shout out to those of you who are supporting the show by becoming Max Fun members. If you do so, you get our monthly beans cast and other bonus special episodes. This month, we were doing a beans cast where we spoil and talk about Horizon Zero Dawn. There's also now a growing backlog of beans cast. There is, it's true.

Backlog of beans. There's a lot of beans. College Judy, modern warfare. canned beans. They don't really expire. God, so many beans. Just beans on the shelf. These are all the things people say. To become a member, go to maximum fun.org slash join and help us make this show, help Kirk eat his beans. Yes. Without further ado, let's go to it. This week, we are doing a burning questions where we take your questions and read them and answer them and discuss all three of those. Oh, four,

four things. We could just do one of them. We could just be like, right, let's just read them and then move on. Let's just read the time of question. Or we could just answer them.

And then people could guess what the question was. It's like Jeopardy. Jeopardy. Yeah, let's do that. That's solid. Maybe next time. No,

I think we should read them. Maybe next time. Just a reminder, you can reach us at triple click at maximum fun.org. I actually spent a good couple hours today reading through all of the backlog of questions and emails we've been getting.

We have some smart friggin listeners, you guys. Yeah, I know. It's a little bit intimidating. It is intimidating. It's always hard to pick the burning questions. Yeah, they're also burning. We have some extremely smart and great questions. We have a big file full of amazing questions, but we've picked out a few to talk about today. So let's get to it, shall we? Maddie, you want to take us, kick us off with the first question? Sure. So this one is from Max. Who writes, during the pandemic, I decided to pick up Assassin's Creed Odyssey again. Over the last year, I've jumped in for about 10 to 20 hours at a time, but would always get distracted by another game

and put it into the backlog. At around the 45-hour mark, I was in the final stretch of the main story quest, wherein I started to rush and noticed my enjoyment of the game basically bottomed out. It started to feel like such a slog. I was just going through the motions, skimming dialogue, running from point A to point B, and getting annoyed at every little obstacle that occurred on my path. I got so annoyed and frustrated that I shelved it again, ready to banish it. it to the backlog indefinitely. After about a week of taking a break, I started to feel the call of ancient Greece again and I jumped back in, but this time I decided to focus on the process of playing it, not even caring if I finished it. And when doing so, I got to some of my absolute favorite parts

of that game and found myself loving every minute of it. My question is, what have you noticed about your frame of mind in regards to maximizing your fun, pun intended with a game, and keeping the magic alive when playing a long game. Any rituals or rules you have for yourself to keep gaming from feeling like a chore? Oh, man. We have so many open world games on the horizon. We need to start strategizing now. On the horizon, you say, ah, yeah, that's one of them. Kirk, I bet you're a big rituals guy. I bet you have some thoughts on it. Yeah. What's your strategy? Yeah. You know, I do have a few different ways of approaching, especially open world games. I feel like this is an open world game question. I guess kind of limit it to that.

I replay games and I replay open world games and tend to find that, man, when I'm replaying an open world game that's really long, like a Grand Theft Auto game or Red Dead Redemption, I take such a more grounded approach. And I think just like Max is saying, I don't try to just go through the story and move too quickly. And that helps. I also find that I play the game in a different ways at different times of the day. This is something I believe we talked about.

back on the split screen days, I can't remember. Did we talk about different days of the week? Yeah. And like the best day of the week to play games, right? The best time. Yeah, I don't remember what we decided. I think my answer was Friday maybe. Yeah, I think we all had different days at the time.

Yeah, we all had different days. Yeah, we did. I think that mine was like Saturday morning because it's still early in the weekend. Oh, that's good. Yeah, I think I picked Sunday. It's morning. So you like haven't, the day hasn't started. So you're not like at the end of the day at the beginning.

And I think that one so morning playing for open games, I find is nice because that's when I'm much more I'm like, I'm just going to go do some side quests and wander around. And I think that that kind of playing, it's so weird. It's like the game itself, the design of the game is really up against you and the way that you're trying to play it. The game is really trying to get you to do stuff. Like all these games, they pull you along, they design things to try to make you do things where, for me at least, a lot of the most enjoyable stuff in games, you have to really

push against that and slow down and then just like look at this one person. This is something I used to do when I wrote it at Kataku. I would like follow an NPC around. Like in Hitman too, it's a really fun game to do that in. Just follow an NPC and listen to their conversations. And you have to just ignore all the icons and the whole, the whole U.S. that's telling you, go kill that guy or, you know, go explore that cave. Just stand there and like just watch a thing.

But I think you can kind of get in the habit of that. And the more I get myself in the habit, I do find that a very rewarding way to play open world games, like systemic games. That's interesting. So I almost have the opposite. answer, like kind of the opposite answer. Yeah, me too. Go ahead though. I have found that, like many people, I'm sure, when I'm playing something and only playing that and then something else comes out that requires the same machine, the same switch or console or PC, I will switch to that and then ignore the last one and like it'll just sit there abandoned forever, right?

Like this is a problem that many people have. I found that the way to actually maximize the enjoyment I'm having with the game and actually see the ending and finish it is to allow myself to not do what Kirk is describing and allow myself to skip side quests and skip random diversions and just stick with the main stuff to the best extent that I can. That's not to say I won't do side quests because I will. But often what I find to get the most out of a game, what I find is like looking up online if you can like on Reddit or whatever the best side quest in that game and like the cyclists that you can't miss and only focusing on that stuff. Because so many of these open world games have so much menial filler stuff that just exists to like get endorphins in your head by like filling out checklist.

And I find that like only focusing on the best stuff helps me actually maximize my enjoyment and stick with it and and like finish it hopefully. Do you not have Max's experience though where he describes feeling like it's more of a chore because he's created the checklist? Maybe that's just not a problem. No. Well, so I feel like it's a chore when I feel obligated to because it's always very tempting to be like. like, oh my God, I have all these exclamation points on my mom, but I have to, like, systematically knock them all out and get them all done. That's what makes it feel like a true for me. So to enjoy a game more, I have to let myself be like, no, I'm not going to do every

side quest in this game because that would suck. Right. So just to really quickly sort of elaborate, or at least like, I think that that's very true, everything that you're saying. And to explain a little bit of what I'm, like, the way that I experienced this, it's, I don't do a completest thing where like I do every single side quest like that. I find that to be kind of stressful too and overwhelming and actually will push me away from a game. And the kind of way that I'm talking about playing where you just walk around following people or looking at little details, I do think that I do that more like sometimes on a second time through a game, which is a very different kind of experience where there are times where the first time through,

especially in open world games, I'll just say, okay, screw it. Like we're going for the finish line and then just power through it knowing that at some point I'm going to play it again, especially if it's a game I really like, the Witcher 3 I did that the second time through. I like did everything in that game and took wait longer. So that is sort of a version of what you're talking about. Yeah, I think I'm closest to Max of the three of us because I could really relate to this email,

especially having just beaten Horizon Zero Dawn for this very show because we're going to record a Beanscast about it. And in order to beat that game, I did what Jason described. I googled the best side quest because I didn't want to miss the best ones, but there are too many side quests in that game for me. to have beaten it in a timely fashion, I would say. And I also just focused on the main storyline in that game. But that's not actually how I prefer to play a game like that. And I had to really

make myself do it. I don't think I'm a completionist with games, but I feel like if I allowed myself to be, like if I had infinite time, like that is the, that's the place my brain would prefer to someday approach. It's just that I fight against that impulse because I have other things I'd rather do and play and experience in life as opposed to just playing every Assassin's Creed for thousands of hours. But I'm always having to get myself not to play every single side quest in those games. And sometimes I'll play them and I'll be like, that wasn't even a good side quest. Like, why did I do this? So yeah, I don't know. At the same time, though, like Max is saying, if I just focus on the main quest, sometimes I'm like, well, what's the point of this?

don't I want to stop and smell the roses, as it were? It's hard. I think open world games are hard. Yeah. Like psychologically hard. So Max has this question of how to keep the magic alive when playing a long game. And, you know, you can do that. Like you're sort of the, you know, person trying to coax this plant to keep it from dying, you know, in the darkness. But there does come a point with some games where you just can't, like where it's just too much, right? The game is just, it's too long. It goes on too long. You're just like, okay, oh my God. like is this ever going to end? Like there's been four narrative twists and then you're still going. And you just kind of see it through to the bitter end because you've had that sunk cost thing. And I don't know, like there does come a point with a lot of games where you just can't get around that, right? Like I feel like I didn't totally feel this way with The Last of Us 2, but I knew that feeling was there. I think it was maybe more there for maybe one or both of you.

Just that feeling of like, ah, my fucking God, like are we still going? I guess at the very end of that game I did feel that way. The rattlers, man. The rattler faction. So you're like still going and it's very hard to have the sort of frision and excitement that the first five hours of that game had by the end, partly because the game itself is just so brutal. Well, every game, the first few hours of every game.

We're always been setting. Always the best. I mean, I think what we're describing here is just a game design problem of like these games being extended for way longer than they should be. And like, therefore, something always gets lost. But the Assassin's Creed Odyssey especially, I mean, I love that game. We've talked about that game quite a bit. but the combat is one of its weaker points in that you have to kind of like lean on a few special

abilities that are stronger than all the others and you just keep repeating that sweep strike. It's just that one strike where you knock the person down and then do a time damage like for free. It's just that one. Yeah. And it kind of ruins the experience because it's just monotonous. And so the best games, I'm also thinking of Disco Elysium because that's a game that solves this problem by A, making it so you're, you have a finite amount of time to do everything and you can do a lot in that time. Like you don't feel like, oh my God, I have to do everything because the game limits you.

And then B, by not just not having any filler or monotony or like boring-ass combat that extends the game by 20 hours and makes you never want to finish it. So really, I mean, to Max's question, I feel like maybe the answer should be like play better games or like pick games that resonate with you. Play games without filler. That is a good point. Dividentity Original Sin 2 is a great example. Wherever I fight in that game means something. And there isn't just repetitive. That's like the rare open world game that I've actually, the rare open world game that I've actually finished.

Well, semi-open world. But I've spent 80 hours finishing that game and that game was incredible. And like I never got bored. I never felt like the game was to drag a little at the end. But still. Do you think that Breath of the Wild counts as a game with filler or is this a game without filler? Let me just throw that out there. I think the moment-to-moment gameplay of Breath of the Wild makes it so there is no filler

because the act of exploring and gliding and shooting enemies and, using your magnets is so enjoyable that like I could just do it forever. I think some games just have that magical feeling. Mario Odyssey is a lot of Nintendo games have that magical like design core, those verbs that like really stick with you and just make it fun to keep playing no matter what. What do you think, Maddie? Yeah. And I think filler, for me at least, applies to dialogue usually or like side quests that involve people talking about something you don't care about. Like usually that's what I associate that word with is story filler as opposed to like gameplay filler. That's not always true. There's certainly, it's like a separate question about

what the idea of filler is in games. But in an open world game, which I suppose, Breath of the Wild is, like, anytime I'm doing a story quest where I'm like, this didn't matter and I didn't care about anyone involved, like those are the worst ones when you've completed something, like you've delivered someone's mail or like you've found their lost pet or whatever. And you're just like, I don't, you didn't need my help. And also this was boring. And like, I had to go do six things around town just for you for no reason. And I got no. no reward? Yeah.

Well, actually, to that point, I think Breath of Love, so Breath of the Love does have some quests, and a few of them are like filler-y quests, but you don't even think of those because so much of the game is exploring and finding shrines and solving puzzles and stuff, and that stuff is so enjoyable.

Imagine, like, Horizon with the combat, a game of the Horizon, and like, more, fewer, like, filler, menial delivery quests, and more exploring and puzzle-solving and stuff like that. And that, to me, is, like, a game that would not feel as padded as Horizon

It comes down to central mechanics, right? Like where most game, like most side quests are going to be built around just repeating the central mechanic over and over again. So the richer that mechanic, the less repetitive, whatever you're doing is going to feel. So in Horizon, even when the story of some of the side quests is pretty good, they like followed that Witcher template. The Witcher is actually a great example too, Witcher 3. Usually the story is cool, but you're going into the woods and killing a lesson and then you're going into the woods and killing a bunch of whatever, drowners. And it's always just kind of, you're doing the same stuff over and over again. So if the thing that you're doing is interesting, then there's less filler. And I think that's

kind of, once you get to a game like Disco Elysium or Divinity Originals and 2, what you're doing in those games is completely, it's not exactly bespoke. Well, it is in Disco Elysium, actually. And in divinity, it's systemic, but it's still pretty bespoke. Like, each thing that you're doing is unique. So it stops being filler entirely. All right, let's go to the next question. Kirk, you want to take this one? Sure, this comes from Callum, who writes, When I look at contemporary games journalism, and the online networking that seems to be required as a part of the job,

it seems heavily personality-based. Most games journalists have their own substantial internet presence, and it seems that they're expected to build a public-facing personal brand around their writing, which exists outside of the outlet they're writing for. We've also seen the dangers of harassment and doxing that journalists, and especially games journalists face online, often over seemingly trivial things that blow up all out of proportion. So, my question is this.

Is it possible to be a games journalist and be anonymous? For example, writing under a pseudonym, not having Twitter or your photo online anywhere, or is your personal brand an essential part of the job? I'm British, so I read Edge Magazine quite often, and it's startling how little the journalist's names actually feature. Reviews and previews aren't attributed to any individual at all. Interviews and features have small bylines. Do you think this undermines the importance of authorship,

or perhaps it highlights the collective authorship of any institutional journalistic setting, writing, editing, house style, editorial vision, etc. I've been feeling that you two, especially as active journalists, will have a lot of thoughts on this, though I do too. Jason, why don't you, what do you think of this? Yeah, I have a lot of opinions on this.

I actually, I feel pretty strongly. Shocked to hear that. I'm shocked that you have a lot of opinions on this question. I was never a big fan of Edge doing the whole, like, masking, not having bylines thing, because I feel like that kind of, I mean, it hurts the reader and the writer in a lot of ways. But anything that, what people have to understand about the modern media industry is that like... It's a nightmare.

What people need to understand is total nightmare. No, sorry, go ahead. But also, the one thing that is promising in journalism right now is newsletters and writer-owned content. Yeah, but I think there's a certain power to having a brand in journalism and having a loyal audience. And we've seen a lot of cases where individuals kind of like exceed the outlets. it. We've seen that in like politics with Nate Silver or like in in sports writing with Adrian Wajnarowski and like a bunch of other, there are a lot of journalists who become so well known that like they have superseded their brand and they're a lot more powerful than the

brand. And that is a really, really good thing for everybody except for fucking corporate executives and private equity chuts. But like when, I mean as we've seen, as the three of us have all seen firsthand, no matter how much you might think that you are like, like have ownership over a brand and are participating and helping making a brand great with your talented smart co-workers ultimately the brand is owned by people above you who are like who might be shitheads or might get bought by a bunch of shitheads we want to run it completely into the ground and so ultimately the only power you can take in journalism is your own name and what you kind of bring to the table and and like convincing readers that you are what matters the writers are what matters not what not the

brand so i feel like it would actually you would be doing to answer question, I feel like you would be doing a disservice to yourself by writing anonymously as much as you might be able to, I guess, dodge the harassment and the doxing and one another that comes with it. And even then, like, if you became, if you, if you were wrote as author X or something, people would be want to dox you even more because they would want to figure out who you were if you wound up getting any sort of traction with your work. So ultimately, I mean, yeah, I think it's really important for writers and critics and reviewers and journalists to just build their own brand and like take some power as writers as people. I mean you kind of have to now. That's more my

answer to this question. I see this example. I don't know anything about Edge as an editorial standard, like what their standards are. But to me, that smacks of an old school journalism ethos of like, oh, the editorial board published, published this essay, for example, and we're not going to put a byline on it. The staff published this recommendation. And it's from the entire staff. And certainly Polygon does some things like that. And I advocate for certain things like that. Kataku did too back in the day for like best of lists and things like that where we were as a group recommending something. But yeah, I agree for individual stories. It's to me very old school and weird to have like an editorial board or something like that be the byline. But I mean,

this is basic as hell take, I guess. But it's really just that the rise of the internet has changed all of this so fundamentally that it's hard for me to even imagine how it would have been journalist 30 years ago. And in my career as a journalist, I've had to think about this, even though I started out working at a print newspaper, I still had to have a Twitter and think about my personal brand. And that was how I got jobs after the Phoenix went out of business in 2013, because there was no other way for me to get jobs. Luckily, I had a pretty big Twitter following at that time so I could get freelance gigs. And people knew me as Maddie Myers because they, like, remembered I worked at the Phoenix, but mostly they knew my name and didn't remember even where I worked exactly,

which was like a weird phenomenon, but one that I think happens to a lot of journalists who manage to carve out a space for themselves. And I agree with you, Jason, that you pretty much have to do it, but I think I've been a lot more bitter about it because I think experiencing that as a female journalist has been so unpleasant for me. It's not to say you haven't gotten your share of death threats and like other horrible things have happened to you too. But like having my personal brand be also about what I look like, what I do in my personal life, who I'm dating, like all of the fun things about my life that I share casually on this show, like to get weird ass emails from creepy people about that over the years is always,

it's just always part of it for me. And I'm just like, well, that's, it helps my career to do this, but it's, it's definitely weird. So I don't know. I have mixed feelings about it. I guess in the way that I've mixed feelings about the internet, generally, and the way that we all have to operate as content creators on the internet. Yeah.

You know? Yeah. What do you think? Oh, I have a million thoughts about this. I mean, having gone from writing for Kotaku, where I guess I kind of built a brand. I think that the... You did.

It felt like the thing that really built a brand. It also called for the removal of mini maps. I did. That was my brand. Well, because it was always like, yeah, what am I really defined by, according to my work? Some reviews that I wrote, but they were all just reviews that I wrote. And then, yeah, various

things, like, I didn't like minimaps. Like, there's, like, 100 people in the world who know that Kirk Campbellton doesn't like minimaps. I think you were defined by posting videos of the harp twins singing in the first. For a little while, the harp twins thing, sure. I think that starting split screen, when you and I started that, Jason, that was the first,

that really made a difference. And, like, you're talking about Maddie on the same sort of subject, where when you're having a conversation and you're just sort of sharing your life in a more conversational way. That, like, is a type of a brand that I think is helpful, even though I don't, I legitimately don't view it in that cynical way, like of just like, oh, this is good for me, you know, professionally. Like, I think that there is an element to, you know, I listen to podcasts hosted by people that

I don't know, and I'm like, I love the connection that I feel to this person, even though I understand the nature of it, like, it's just like an important thing. And it makes me like them. And I think it makes them more stable. as a creator because there are doubtless, lots of people like me who know who they are. And that's just a skill. That's just a type of work that is important to do for the reasons you said, Jason, that that's the only way you can really take power over your own creativity these days.

But it is very good. It's actually a really good thing to be able to do. I mean, the internet has let a lot of creators, artists and musicians and all kinds of people, like do this same thing, where you can exist outside of a record label or like a publishing house and you can just make your own brand online and eventually just totally make stuff online. I'm thinking lately about Defector, which we've mentioned before,

our friends and former colleagues who used to be at Deadspin, then left, and then started their own site. That's an interesting example of this because they are each well-known, like some of them very well-done, like Drew McGarry is like just really well-known as a writer and a personality.

As a collective, they're also known in a different way. And that I thought was really cool, that they were able to say we are all together the people who made this thing that you love and we're going to make a new thing and it's going to be our thing and you should support us

and they got the support they needed and I think that's really interesting like I've almost never seen that happen I've seen plenty of what we do I thought that was really cool to have that spark of dead spin it was a very unique situation and have that story

and go national with the story like everybody knew what happened to them yeah too so Maddie to your point so yeah I've gotten I mean in the past two weeks alone and I've gotten so many friggin, like, nasty messages and death threats just about the CD Project Red Crunch, like, reporting on their crunch. And like anti-semitism.

I get a ton of anti-semitism. Yeah, by the way, we've been meaning to bring that up. How dare you? Yeah, I know. It's terrible. But I want to say, but I have no idea what it's like to get emails about, like, creepy emails from men who want to, who want to comment on my looks or like, like, ask who who I'm dating or like, I have no idea what that's like.

So I'm curious to hear your take on, like, have you, overall, do you think it's worth it to be like a public figure as you are like do you think it's it's worth it for you to kind of have to deal with that shittiness and the creeps um to be able to take like sort of to know that like if you if you were fired tomorrow you would have you would you would have enough of a readership and like the show and like enough of a you have some power as a public figure is that worth it for you i mean i do now i would say it's changed a lot like at this point if i were fired tomorrow i have enough of a brand that i would be okay but when the Phoenix went out of business and I had a brand but no platform, it felt really weird because there

were like a lot of people who were familiar with my work, but I had no power. And I feel like that's the part where this gets really strange because it's like, oh, everyone knows my name if I go to an event or whatever because like they've seen a viral tweet I've done or something and they remember me as like the angry feminist gamer or something. And I feel like I experienced that very weirdly when I was a freelancer. But at this point, I feel pretty differently about it because I've kind of like gone around the Ben multiple times on the topic and just been like, okay, I'm used to people perceiving me as a public figure, which is something that takes them getting used to.

And I'm a lesser, I have fewer Twitter followers than two of you. So it's probably even weirder for you two when you run into people at a convention who know you are. But for me, every time, it's very weird. But I've gotten used to it over time. And I've just been like, oh, they're not. reacting to me the person because they don't know me. They're reacting to like the series of pieces of my personal life that I've chosen to put out there. And I can like very carefully titrate what

those things are. And I have more control over that than I think I do. And I can be very careful about what I choose to say and not say. So I guess it's that I've changed and I've gotten over it, but also I've had to get used to a lot of things about the job that are crappy. But, I think it's worth it in the end. I don't know if that's an answer to your question, but it's, I wouldn't change it. Well,

the reason I ask is because I think that like a lot of aspiring journalists like Callum or like other folks who are out there, maybe even people who are working at game sites, but like are kind of semi-anonymous to most readers because they're doing work that doesn't necessarily get them the big byline and the big feature story and get them a ton of attention on Twitter or whatever. I think there's kind of like you have to kind of figure out if you want to pursue like internet fame,

if you want to pursue building a brand, or if you're okay to kind of like just do the work. And sometimes people just don't have the option. They have to just keep doing the work. But I think it's a really... Or they become an internet brand even if they don't want to. And then they have to deal with that. Right, even out of their control.

Yeah. But I do think some people have the choice of being like, okay, do I want to be on this podcast? Do I want to be on this YouTube channel? Do I want to start something where my face and my name will be out there? And I think it can be a really tough question, especially as a woman who is going to have to deal with that side of things that a man would have to do. Yeah. Or like any marginalized person, really. Yeah. I think it is really hard. And I think it changed me. Like I changed the way that I interact with the internet. And I think you too can relate to that more than you might think. Like, Kirk, you've talked to many times about changing your relationship to social media over the years. And I can always relate to you on that. I have too. Like I just don't look at as much stuff nowadays because I'm like, well, if I look at certain reddits, it's just going to be. be people making fun of me or like whatever it may be.

Like there you just you figure out what you can handle looking at and you find the places where you're getting feedback on your work that's valuable to you and like hearing from readers in a constructive way and you learn how to dismiss the other stuff. But yeah, I don't I don't really. I think Callum's asking a good question here by like, oh, is it possible to do this and be anonymous? I think you can do it. I think there's certain jobs in games journalism specifically where you can get away with it.

Like more tech reporting, for example. but or like guides writing and like things where having a personality isn't as much a part of it. But game reviews and the kind of reporting Jason does where people remember his name because it's controversial reporting, people are going to know who you are. Like that's, that comes with the territory. To be clear, like Callan is asking if practically if you could like do it without putting your name on anything. And I don't think that's really possible. Like other than Edge, no other outlet does that sort of thing. And I don't think it would be beneficial to a person to do that. that. Like, you want people to know who you are in general. Yeah, or like creating a pen name or something.

I feel like that. That's the thing. This is like, I just listened to that reply all about Q and Q and on and who Q might be and how there's this whole thing where the person they think might be Q clearly wants to be like, I'm Q, but he can't say that he's Q. And I think you would run into that if you were writing under a byline. Yeah, it would be exactly like Q&O. No, but it's the thing where like you created something phenomenal. And then you, you want to take credit for it. But the whole, point of it is that you can't take credit for it because it's anonymous. So it would be kind of self-defeating because the thing is, if you are just kind of writing guide somewhere and your name isn't really known, you can have a job doing that. But in this industry now, you're going to not have a lot of stability. The stability comes from being like, yeah, but I have this whole

thing that I've built. A brand. Right, you have to build a brand. And it's just, I think there's a kind of a nostalgia based into this question looking back at just the work. Like, that's not really the work of journalism as we think of it in terms of just doing the reporting, like writing the review, like doing the writing, being a good writer, being a good editor, like doing that work. It's this whole other thing that's this like social PR. Are you funny on Twitter? Right. Like how funny.

Yeah. And yet that is an important skill set for a modern journalist. It's just a way that journalism has changed and kind of grown almost. It's like this growth on the outside of like traditional old school journalism. And it just can't go back like the industry is what it is. But the thing, I mean, you guys are talking about this as if it's a negative thing, or maybe as if it's a neutral thing. Kirk and I don't like Twitter very much. Well, to the credit of like the brand building, I mean, I think it gives the individual, like I said before, so much more power than they had in the past.

I completely agree with you. I'm not, I don't think of this as a negative thing. It's something that I do happily. I really like interacting with people online. I mean, I'm pretty extroverted and I think this is, I largely have fun. And, you know, that's for a lot of different reasons. But, but it's not an entirely negative thing at all. Yeah, yeah.

Well, you're much more positive. You have a lot more positive interactions. Like you probably way fewer. You know, I don't want to get in fights with people on the internet. I don't get a lot of value out of that. Which is, yes, which I'm very jealous of. But the point is that like I do think there is like a lot of value to being able to be like, okay, if I get fired from GameSpot tomorrow, I know that I as a person like have this ability to take power on myself.

Or if I get fired from my gym, whatever. I don't want to pick on an individual site. But yeah, and I think that like 20 years ago, that was so, like, people maybe knew Woodward and Bernstein, but, like, people weren't following individuals so they are now. Yeah, maybe. And I think that the fact that more readers are able to follow individuals on Twitter and, like, learn individual names. And not just, like, the super famous people, the super famous journalists and critics and whatever,

people who are doing your favorite podcast. But, like, also, if you go on Twitter, you can follow the entire staff of your favorite gaming website and get to know the people you might not know otherwise the social media managers and the guides writers and people who are doing really great work but like more anonymously and even that has power and i think it can like is ultimately a really good thing for journalists and it's too bad that it has to come coupled with this creepiness and toxicity that the internet still and some of that is the social media platforms themselves like if they were better then this whole thing would be better and any of this yeah it shouldn't it shouldn't really be like this

for journalists. Twitter does not have to be Twitter. It doesn't have to work the way the Twitter works. That's why I'm bullish on newsletters. And I know, Maddie, you think they're kind of a bad. No, newsletters are cool. I mean, they're trendy. But I also, I remember being bullish about Patreon 10 years ago for the same reason.

Well, Patreon is still, I mean, Kirk is making a living off page. And I have a newsletter and it's great. So, like, those two things are both are both really cool. I'm obviously in favor of it. We're on an audience-supported show right this very moment. Hell yeah. Here's the audience-supported thing. Hell yes. But, but yeah, I mean,

the fact that it's possible for people to use those platforms is great. Okay, let's get to the next question. This is from Alex, and I will read us Alex's letter. On this week's, this is a few weeks ago, triple click. You had praise for Game Pass, Xbox Game Pass, not only as a business model, but on the consumer side as well. It does seem like a great deal on paper, but when I take my own psychology into account,

I wonder if I'd be better off buying games the old-fashioned way, one by one. When I spend $20 to $60 on a single game, I tend to take my time going through it, exploring and trying things out. I also usually achieve some measure of completion, whether that's finishing the main story or 100% again. But when I buy multiple games at once through humble bundles, steam sales, or Apple arcade, I feel some anxiety when playing any given game. I always have some other game I could be playing. So if I'm not maximizing my fun, then I feel like I should be playing another game that I just bought. And if I'm not speeding through each game, I want

of time to play all the ones I want to. Somewhat paradoxically, this means I have much less fun and playing through any given game than I otherwise would have. This is much less of an issue when playing two to ten hour indie games that can be played through in a few nights, but I rarely complete AAA games that I get through these sorts of bundles. The Elder Scroll 6 has been my most anticipated game for approaching a decade, so I want to experience it in the best way that I can, and I don't think that will be through Game Pass. Do y'all experience similar issues, or is this a personal problem? Oh, Alex, first of all, you're not going to experience the Elder Scroll 6 for like 10 more years anyway.

So you'll be a different person. Yeah, I totally experienced this. Oh, yeah. Well, I get a lot of video games for free. We all do through various press passes, and we get sent codes by PR. And so, you know, I have a similar experience to having game pass, which is pretty cheap, but it's the same kind of thing, where, like, you just get a bunch of games and you're like, well, now I can kind of play, you know, whatever, all three of these brand new

games. And I didn't really invest any money in them or choose them. I just have the option to play them all. And I have definitely found that when I've been like, you know, I just need to pick a game to play of these three that I don't have codes for and haven't reached out about it, I'm just going to buy one and play it, that it does change the way that I think about the game. I think Animal Crossing was one where I just was like,

I'm just going to buy this game. And I bought it. And it was cool. Like I felt like, well, I'm going to play through the whole story because I paid $60 for this thing. And then I did and was glad I did because it was a good game. I just think it's funny that we've gotten multiple questions from people about maximizing their fun. Not only because of the network we're on, but also because it's an anxiety I can relate to so much because it's not even just the subscription trend of games nowadays,

which is great largely. And like what I always wished games would start doing is having subscription features. But it's also just like even within a game, am I maximizing my time well enough? And am I really enjoying my free time as much as I possibly could be? Because everything in the world is terrible. So I need the free time, the leisure time, to be as good as it can possibly be. I don't know if that's the wavelength you're on, Alex, but it's the wavelength I'm on. So yeah, I definitely can relate to this. And I also experience that that sensation of this is the game that I'm buying. So it's the game that's really special to me. I think I also bought Animal Crossing. I feel like I remember buying

Breath of the Wild at the time and not getting a code for it and just playing it on my own time. And I don't think I was covering it. I think I was only writing about e-sports at the time. was like a very special like nothing to do with my job game that I was just playing in my leisure time. And you just have a different relationship with a game if you approach it that way. But if you're just dipping in and out, I think people probably imagine that because we get codes for games, it must be just like a wealth. And of course it is. It's it's very prestigious to be able to get free games. But you do end up in this weird mindset where you're like, well, I can just play this game for a few minutes. I got it for free. But like, are you really experienced?

it and enjoying it and giving it the chance that it deserves in those few minutes, or are you just kind of like dipping in and out? I don't know. Jason, what do you think? Well, I mean, it's up to the game to convince you to like keep playing after a few minutes, right? I mean, if a game, really, I mean, everyone should have the option of demoing games for like a few minutes. That was the magic of demos back when demos were a thing. Well, so that's the nice thing about Game Pass is like if a game doesn't hook you, then it doesn't

hook you. And I do relate to those anxieties. I have sort of a different anxiety because I've gotten back into Final Fantasy 14, which costs X dollars, $15 or whatever it is a month. And so then you feel this anxiety of like, oh, man, I should be playing this because I should be maxing out the time that I'm paying for every month. But I mean, you can't really think about it that way or else you have to think of like, oh, I'm paying for Netflix every month. I should be watching Netflix every hour of the day. But whatever. I'm sure Netflix would love that if you thought of a I actually think that with GamePass, I think that's the big advantage is like you can kind of sample and see what hooks you and what doesn't. And oftentimes, I mean, there are a lot of games.

Obviously, it's a running joke that like, oh, it only takes 40 hours to get to the good part of this game. Only stick with it for five hours and this RPG will really hook you. But with Game Pass, I mean, it does let you sample a lot of things that you might not try otherwise. And maybe you'll discover some gem that you wouldn't have spent $60 on and then you'll get really into it. And I think that is a huge plus. The commitment factor, though, is a part of the thing. Like, the fact that the game pass or any subscription service, it gives you all the games and you can sample, but then you don't have to make that decision to, like, actively

commit to the game. Right. It does really change the experience because then the whole time you're playing, even if you're 10 hours in, which I've had this experience for sure, where you're kind of thinking, do I really want to be playing this? You've been playing it for 10 hours. I keep playing it multiple nights. And yet still, you can find yourself being like, maybe I should go play something

else. It would suck even more if you spent $60 on that game and then you're like, oh man, I feel like I have to play this to get my money's worth. Broadly speaking, that's true. But I don't know. Because I feel like when you're, do you guys remember being a kid and like you bought the game so you may as well beat it? Like I still have like stupid but fond memories of like purchasing a game that wasn't actually good. But that's because you're a kid when you're an adult and you've limited free time. It's a very different world. You have more money than you do time in general. If you're an adult, you have disposable income, you probably have game. pass. But also, I do understand the sensation of, yeah, okay, you're 10 hours into a game. It hasn't gotten that good yet, but it's not that bad. Do you keep playing and see if it gets really good later? And it's worth you playing 30 hours to beat it or 60 hours to beat it and you would be really grateful to yourself for having done so? Or do you just like try it a bunch of other games on game pass and you never really get past that initial hurdle? You ask the internet. You check the internet if it's worth like. So, okay. So I have a thought here and it is, this is just something I'm thinking right now.

it's going to sound very consumerist. Great. So Alex is asking about the Elder Scroll 6, which I joke, it's going to come out in 10 years. It'll come out at some point. Is there something to be said for those steel book collector's editions? This is sort of similar to movies. Because if you get yourself, if it's the most anticipated game in the world for you, and you get yourself this kind of really nice physical thing that you have and then you set up,

like I don't do that. I don't buy those. I don't just see the value in them. And like I said, I get a lot of games free, so I'm not going to go buy the Collectors Edition, but I get the ritual around that, and I get why having the cool stuff that comes with with the cloth map, so to speak, helps you kind of be kind of emotionally bought in to the experience that you're going to have with this 120-hour game. So maybe that's one thing to think about, especially when it's like your most anticipated game ever and you're, you're just

so excited for it and you can't wait. Yeah. And then if it's really bad, you can cry onto the Collector's edition. Right. You use the map as like a tissue. Or it'll have some resale value down the road. Yeah. Well, so Alex is saying that, like, he rarely completes AAA games that he gets through these bundles because he feels like he has to juggle them and maximizes fun and and won't have time to play all the ones he want to if he doesn't get through them all. That's not going to happen to you with Elder Scroll 6, Alex, because you are, like,

feverishly anticipating that game and you're going to want to spend every hour playing. That's a good point. Like, that doesn't happen with games that you wind up loving are, like, you're highly anticipating. And that doesn't happen with us either. Like, the three of us, when we get the next horizon or whatever other. huge game that we're all anticipating, we're going to sink right into it. And even though all of us have access to like tons of other games, if we want, we're all still going to be diving into that

game because it's a game we really want to play. And I think the bigger issue that Alex is facing is that he's sampling all these AAA games and maybe none of them are really that great or none of them really hooking him the way that a game should be. Maybe they're all bad games. They're all bad games. They're all terrible. Maybe the games are the problem. You should play some good games. Play better games. No, Alder's School 6. Do not worry. Even if you get Alder's scroll six on game pass. I have a feeling you will not play anything else for two months because you'll just be immersed in that game.

None of us will. Man, Skyron was a good-ass video game. All right, why don't we take a break and then we'll be back with one more thing. Hey, I'm Dan McCoy. I'm Stuart Wellington. And I'm Elliot Kalen. Together we're The Flop House. A podcast where we watch a bad movie and then talk about it.

Movies like Space Hobos. Into the outer reaches of the unknown and the things that we don't know, movie and also who's that grandma zazzle zippers breakdown two and backhanded compliment elvis is a policeman baby crocodile and the happy twins leftover potatoes station wagon three herbie goes to hell new episodes available every other saturday available at maximum fun dot org or wherever you get your podcasts bye Hill, co-host of the brand new Maximum Fun podcast, Fan Time. And I'm Travelle Anderson.

I'm the other more fabulous co-host, and the reason you really should be tuning in. I feel the nausea rising. To be fan-tie is to be a big fan of something, but also have some challenging or anti-feeling towards it. Kind of like Kanye. We're all fans of Kanye. He's a musical genius, but like, you know. He thinks slavery is a choice.

Or like the real housewives of Atlanta, like, I love the drama, but do I want to see black women fighting each other on screen? We're tackling all of those complex and complicated conversations about the people, places, and things that we love. Even though they may not love us back. Fan time, maximum fun, podcast. And we are back. Kirk, Maddie, let's do one more thing. Kirk, you want to start us off?

Sure. My one more thing is Facebook. I don't want to play that. Best game ever. It's a brand new game. It's a hot video game. get the most likes. It might be selling your data.

Don't worry about it. Okay, so I am going to be playing VR games on the new Oculus headset, which I pre-ordered when it was announced and just arrived. It's actually sitting over here. I haven't opened it. Oh, that's exciting. The Quest 2, which is freestanding VR headset. I've never had one of these before. It also can plug into your PC so you can play games like Half Life Alex, which I really loved,

or I really want to play this Star Wars squadrons on it. So it can be a kind of... of wired PC, or wired headset, but it can do wireless. Apparently it's pretty great. A lot of the reviews have said it's good. Ours Technica, I should note, did not say that it was good, so I read kind of all the reviews. But I decided what the hell I'm going to, I'm going to pre-order this thing. I reviewed the Oculus Rift, the first one for Kataku, and I've had that headset set up

this whole time, like when I'll talk about VR games on the show, that's what I'll play. But this is the first time I bought a VR headset. And a thing that is true of this headset is that you need to have a Facebook account to use it. This has been the subject of... Yes. I am right there with you. This has been the subject of much consternation. Debate? Yes.

Among people who like VR because it's very cheap. It's $300 or $400 depending on how big it is, which is very cheap for a full... It's like a controllers and a headset. Not very, very cheap. Facebook is clearly subsidizing this thing because it's probably not as nice as like the $1,000 or valve one, but it's pretty good.

So I deleted my Facebook account earlier this year. It's been disabled for two years, but then over the summer, I was like, I'm just going to delete it forever because it's probably the data thing. I'm not really a fan of a lot of things they do.

It was also just... Playing a good reason to delete your phone. Yeah, I didn't like using Facebook. I didn't want to be on there anymore. I got more out of Twitter. And I actually still use Instagram, which is owned by Facebook. So I actually really like Instagram now.

So it's kind of like... Jokes on you? Yeah. Like, I'm in the Facebook ecosystem. Like, they know who I am. I mean, you just bought an Oculus Quest, so like... No, no, right. But, I mean, before that, I had actually destroyed my Facebook account completely.

Right. So now I'm sitting there thinking, okay, when I ordered it, I thought, oh, I can keep using my Oculus account, no Facebook. Turns out you can't do that with the Quest too. So you need to make a new one. So I'm kind of thinking, okay, do I want to use Emily's Facebook account? And then... But then I'm looking at Oculus, and they're like, this is going to be your permanent thing.

And, like, you can't ever untie it. And it's tied to your identity. And I was like, I don't want to really mess with this with somebody else's. identity, like that just could cross wires. So I decided to make a Facebook account that is literally just... Kirk's Oculus account. Yeah, it's like, it's me. And it has to be you. And the thing, it's just made me reflect on how these really big tech companies with their accounts, you have to have an account to do so many things. In this case, it's going to be like all the Oculus games that I own and the hardware that I bought are tied to this. And it won't turn on without it. I'm sure,

hopefully at some point someone will hack the thing or something, but it won't turn on without a Facebook account. And Apple, Facebook, you know, Google, all these accounts. Increasingly, it feels less like an account, like a user account that you sign up for and almost more like citizenship to a nation. And it feels like I like renounced my citizenship to the Republic of Facebook. And I was like, okay, I'm no longer a citizen. You know the way that you can become not a citizen of America anymore.

And now I'm kind of saying like, never mind. I want to be a citizen. I just like don't want to live there anymore. I need my password back. And there is this feeling where. like, it was kind of hard to sign up and I was running into some technical problems. I was sort of wondering, am I hitting errors because does part of my account that I deleted still exists? Because it takes them a long time to delete things. And it just made me think about how,

about what it means to have those accounts, like what it is to have a Facebook account and all of the things that are tied to that. And then also my Google account and my Apple account and my Steam account. And we kind of just take it for granted that we'll always have these accounts. but deleting one is a way bigger deal than it probably should be. Yeah, it's almost impossible now. It's almost impossible. The more robust they become. Well, Google, especially.

Yeah, I mean, Google is even bigger than Facebook. Google especially, because if you use the Google ecosystem, I mean, I use Google Drive to write books and articles and stuff. I can never delete my Google. And my Gmail is many years old and goes back many years. And it's not a huge deal if you just use the service and don't really have any problems with it. But the minute you start to go outside. of the very easy to stay within, you know, box.

It becomes really clear really quickly that actually, like, this is very, these companies are very powerful. They control a whole lot of stuff. And you really buy in when you're signing up for all these accounts. So it's just something I've been thinking about. That reminds me of that great series that Kashmir Hill did for Gizmodo about like cutting ties with all, like, trying to cut her life out of Apple and Facebook and Amazon. Yeah.

And how hard it is. We'll link it in the show notes because it's pretty great. Yeah, yeah, we'll link it. So I'll talk about the Quest 2 next week probably is my one more thing. I haven't plugged it in yet, but I think it'll be cool. And hopefully it'll be worth making a Facebook account. So my wife and I and baby and my in-laws, we went upstate to upstate New York. We got an Airbnb for the past week.

We were just there on vacation. Pretty fun, pretty chill. Pretty lots of farms and stuff. It was a really rural part of upstate. It's funny. Like the city is obviously the city, but you go like an hour and a half north and suddenly you're in farm country. It's pretty wild.

But anyway, so we were there. There were a bunch of books in the, Airbnb. And all I was playing by the way is Hades, which we will talk about a lot next week. That game is so frigging good. It's by far my name of the year this year. But I've, like, on a whim, I just like grabbed a book and from their library, like was looking through the books. And I was like, oh, hey, a new Dan Brown book that I haven't read before. And I remember when I was in high school, I have this vivid memory of like my senior year of high school. We all went on a trip. We were all in Israel for a couple of months as part of like my

Jewish school experience. And we were all passing around all the Dan Brown books. So this was when the Da Vinci Code was like going super viral. And so it was like, oh, do you have a copy of Da Vinci Code? Angels and demons for your Da Vinci Code. I read them all. And I remember them just being so fun, like such fun page Turner books, as awful as some of the prose and dialogue and like characterization was.

They were just so fun to read. So I was like, okay, what's this new Dan Brown book like? And of course, it's like a page churner and you start reading it. And you're like, oh man, I have to see what happens next. He does this thing. It's like book clickbait because a chapter will end. A chapter will end will like, and then he saw the text and it changed everything. I won't tell you what the text is and you won't find out what the text message is for like another couple of chapters.

And it's like it's so good in some ways in that it's like a good thriller and like it's carefully plotted and intricate and keeps you reading. And like that's what a book should do. It should keep you reading. But it's also so bad in so many ways that you're kind of hate reading it. But I enjoyed it. I've got to say, I enjoy it. I'll credit to Sam Brown. Like, he does what he does.

And, like, he doesn't try to be anything else than what he... Like, Airport Thrillers. And Airport Thriller is, it's a book. I think it was the Hunger Games that did that. I think it's a very that kind of book where every chapter ends with a cliffhanger. And you're like, well, I mean, I'm going to keep reading and I'll read this entire book in one sitting. I know what happens.

I got to say, so a cliffhanger is different than, like, withholding information. And I think, I think there's a... You'll never believe what's in the next chapter. Yeah, there's like, there's a certain. art to cliffangers. And also, these are all like valid literary techniques. But like there's someone, I've been thinking a lot about fiction writing recently because I really want to do

some more fiction writing now that I've now that I've farted out two non-fiction books. I really want to write a fiction book. Make the transition. Pivot to fiction. You want to write an airport novel, you think? I would totally read a Jason Shire. I do. No, I kind of do. No, but I've been thinking a lot about structure. And there's a lot of like in storytelling, there's

like an art to writing good cliffhangers and not making them feel from, making them feel in but not frustrating. Sometimes they feel really frustrating when it's like a piece of information that they're deliberately withholding from you as opposed to like a twist in the story or like a wrinkle or like wondering what's going to happen to a character, like leaving a character hanging off a cliff, literally, cliffanger, versus like, and then the character like found something and you won't believe what it is.

And that sort of shit is like really annoying. It can't be done artfully, I guess. But like in this book I found it particularly annoying. But it made me want to keep reading. So it worked. Clickplate works. Mattie, what's your one more thing? Okay, so I don't know if you two have booted up Animal Crossing lately, but there's a

Halloween update. I've heard. You can grow pumpkins in the game now. It's freaking adorable. I haven't opened my Animal Crossing for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks. My girlfriend, Dina, has been playing it this entire time. As long time listeners know, Dina's Island is beautiful, it's perfect, it's pristine. She has every color of flower.

It's the greatest island you've ever seen in your life. So she's playing the Halloween update. And for Halloween this year, we are all going to try to trick or treat on all my friends are going to try to go to each other's islands in Animal Crossing. Are you going to all go together? Well, like individually, I guess. Because you can give out candy in the game and you can like kind of make a costume and stuff. And it's like the next best thing to going to a Halloween party, which is what we did last year.

But of course, it's not going to happen this year. And so that means that I'm going to have to update my island Because people are going to visit it You haven't decorated your house Yeah, you haven't decorated your house This always happens to me So yeah, I don't know The past couple weeks I've been watching Dina Water her pumpkins

And like set up all of her great Halloween decorations And then last night she was like Oh yeah, so for Halloween we should visit your island Have you even opened it? And I was like, no, no We don't go there anymore We can't go to my house We don't go to my house.

We can't go to my house. What are we going to your house? Like, what do you, what are you saying? No, you're the friend, you're the girlfriend with the terrible house that no one ever goes to. I have a terrible bachelorette camping tent in an Animal Crossing. I don't have a house. But anyway, we'll see. We'll see if we go to my house or not.

I don't think so. But anyway, I'm pretty excited to go trick-or-treating. I kind of fire up Animal Crossing. You get Emily to play it again because I kind of stole the switch back for Hades. I should give up and just play some Animal Crossing. It's been a while. It's just so hard to stop playing Hades. Yeah.

The pumpkins are so cute, Animal Crossing. They're real cute. And it's like the first farming mechanic where you can actually grow a thing. And it makes me wonder if they're going to add in a bunch more farming stuff. Kind of stardew-esque. Interesting. It's just so hard to not play Hades all the time. I know.

They've got to set up crossplay or cross-save. Then I can play that on PC while Emily plays Animal Crossing. It's just so good on Switch. You got to get Zagrius visiting your island. Crossplay between Animal Crossplay and Hades. Between the underworld and also. Honestly, I could see it. They're like the two defining...

It is kind of Animal Crossing-ish. You're giving gifts and like having conversations with like people in your house. Like it is, it does have similar concepts. It is. They're pretty similar. They're pretty similar. Building relationship. We've reached the Galaxy Brain portion of the podcast.

It's like one brain, small brain is like, Hades is better than Animal Crossing. Like big brain like they're both good. Like Galaxy Brain, they're the same game. We've done it. Okay. On that note, it's definitely. to say goodbye for this week. Next week we'll be talking a lot more about Hades because I have so much

to say about that game. I love it so much. I'm at this point where I'm just like like clearing pretty much every run that I do because you really get so much better as you go. But we'll save the talk for next week. All right. That is all Kirk Maddie. Farewell for now. All right. See you both next week. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers and me Kirk Hamilton. I added and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network, and if you like our show, we hope you'll head over to Maximumfund.org

and consider becoming a member. Doing so help support us and gets you access to an exclusive Triple Click episode each month. Find us online at tripleclickpodcast.com, on Twitter at Triple ClickPod, and send email to triple click at Maximumfund.org. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximumfund.org. Comedy and culture. Artist owned.

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