Triple Click - LIVE from Summer Game(s) Fest in Los Angeles!

Episode Date: June 13, 2024

LIVE FROM LOS ANGELES... it's Maddy, Jason, and Kirk! The gang talks about what we all saw at Summer Game Fest, what they played, and how much they miss E3. Plus: audience Q&A!One More Thing:Kirk: Like a Dragon: Infinite WealthMaddy: Dune Part TwoJason: Holly (Stephen King)GAMES DISCUSSEDCivilization VIIMonster Hunter WildsHeartwormDragon Age: The VeilguardWanderStopMetaphor: ReFantazioFatal Fury: City of the WolvesUFO 50ArrangerBuilding RelationshipsStormgate & Battle AcesSpinRhythm XDSlitterheadAlan Wake II: Night SpringsLINKS:Preorder 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

Hey, gamers and gamer adjacent pals. It's time for the world premiere that Jeff Keely couldn't get Triple Click Live. Hello, everybody. I'm Maddie Myers. I'm Kirk Hamilton. And I'm Jason Shrier. Hello, everybody. Hello.

Hello, Los Angeles. Thank you all for coming out. This is so cool. I hope everyone's having a great E3 and that you're just, Thank you all for coming and seeing us. Shout out to all of you, fine Los Angeles, and the Terragam Ballroom for having us here

to do this show. Exciting stuff. Exciting stuff. So we're going to do a lot of stuff today. We're going to talk about summer games fest. Summer game fest. We played some video games that we're going to talk about,

and we're going to open it up to you guys to ask some questions a little bit later. We, yeah, you guys, did you guys have, You guys had a good show so far? It's not quite over yet. It's been pretty good. It's been pretty good.

I can't say more. It's under embargo, but, yeah, it's been all right so far. Everything, you have seen some stuff that's under embargo. I have. I have. And I'll let you imagine what it could have been. The next thing is, I was, I was, I was, I was saying, you can't edit this out. You can't.

Normally that would totally just get trimmed out, but now you get to hear us. I was thinking that we could just, like, say it anyway, because, like, whatever and then well actually the discussion was that we're going to release this in the main feed next week and the embargo will have lifted after the embargoes yeah but I think the spirit of the embargo is to not like get on

a microphone in front of a bunch of people and tell them all about it. The spirit of the embargo! That's what haunts you if you break the embargoes. That's right. The spirit of the embargo is coming out. Oh my God, it's right behind you. All right well we can talk about some other stuff that we saw right but first we're going to talk about

like the event itself because there's a whole keynote thing on Friday. Did you guys watch that? Did you watch that? Who watched that? The Keely keynote? What do you think? Good, bad, mediocre. We're seeing a lot of sideways thumbs in the audience. So Kirk and I went. Maddie watched from her hotel, but Kirk and I went and we laughed after 45 minutes

because what you don't see on the live stream did any of you go to the YouTube theater? Okay, a couple of you guys. So you know that it is like, it's like an experimental, like a sound torture experiment where they like raise the volume so high. It is quite loud. Right? Like you were comparing it to like one of those like FBI like sound wave. Yeah. It's wild.

It was the loudest room I'd been in a long time. I like increasingly take hearing protection seriously. I have some hearing issues in my left ear and like wear earplugs everywhere I go. Try to be really careful. I have like a little decibelometer on my phone. that's not super accurate. And did it break it? And I use an app.

Here's a tip for everybody. It's called Soundprint. Does anyone know of the app Soundprint? I was expecting some cheers, but literally know. Yeah, right. All that, just wild cheering. I want to cheer for decibelometers. Sound print is really cool.

It was started, I think a single guy made it, and it like tracks every location, like restaurants or venues anywhere in a city, and it creates a sound print. and then when you're there, you can check, like, what's the average decibel level and what's it like to be there? Because some restaurants, you'll go in, and it's, like, super loud and unpleasant. And some people really struggle with that.

Like, for some people, it's just kind of not that fun, but for some people, like, you know, there's a real bummer. Right. So anyways, I have been paying more attention to this kind of thing. And, yeah, being at that show was wild. They had the subwifers turned up so loud. It was, like, I mean, it's shaking your body, which I think people want, because that's kind of exciting.

We wanted them to turn it up here, like, to be so loud that we're, like, physically damaging everybody in the audience. Because that's what you want when you put on a show. You want the people to come out to be injured afterwards. In some way that they might not know about for like 20 or 30 years. I mean, usually it's just in the mosh pit of Summer Game Fest that you're really worried about injuries. But in this case, they wanted everybody to really get hurt. It's like the sound equivalent of asbestos where you're just like taking it in.

Right, it is. It kind of is. That's like more accurate. Well, I think Jeff, he's a great guy. He just wanted you to know what it was like to be a PS5 dual shot control. controller with haptic vibration. Right. This is the new haptic technology.

So it was very, very loud. It was laugh, but we still saw there were a couple of cool announcements. For sure. In that first 45 minutes before you two just left. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, so, Kirk put it on his phone. He put the live stream and I was like, and I was driving Maddie and kept being like, here, here, look at this.

I was like, dude. Well, for a while I was trying to describe the trailer. So I was like, this looks like a coffee bean or like an almond. And it's like Max Payne. bullet time and it's flying around. Yeah, the killer bean game. I spent most of the time trying to figure out if it was what it was an all-man. Apparently there's a killer bean movie. Okay. No one else knows that, right? Killer bean movie? There was a lot going on in that game. Yeah, it's real. Okay, nice. Yeah, that looks good. That was what you were trying to tell Jason about. It was killer bean. Well, I think

Kirk wanted me to fit in in Los Angeles by just driving terribly. It was a harrowing car ride back from the event. Yeah, so we saw some cool stuff. So, Was there anything you guys, Maddie, what were you most excited to see at that thing? I mean, there was no one more thing, but I feel like Jeff could have put Civ 7 at the end, and I would have been pretty excited about it. I enjoyed the Civilization Games. I remember playing them on my laptop and getting it so hot that I would experience significant burns. You know, this was in college when I didn't have a good gaming PC.

So you had to just play Civ on your laptop to make do. Slowly burn yourself. Really brought me back. But yeah, as you told me, I, afterward, we didn't really see enough of it. No, it was just like, Civilization 7, it exists. I mean, you can kind of picture it, right?

Yeah, you can. It's going to be a grid and you're going to lose your whole weekend. Should they do trailers like that? Like, should Jeff just come out and be like, you can kind of picture it, right? Right, yeah. Six seven, guys, come on. Just picture it.

You know, it's the seventh one of these. They've been doing it for a long time at this time. It was cool. They had a video of Sid Meyer. That was pretty cool. What did he say? He was like, stay civilized. Yeah, stay civilized.

Yeah. Thanks, Sid. Yeah, man, he must be in his 70s now, but a very sweet guy. I met him before, a very nice guy, beloved by the people who work for him. So that's cool. Rarity in the video game. Right, uncanceled, a senior game developer. What did you see?

What were you excited about? Not just the Keeley thing, but also there were like other streams. I don't know if you followed anything because we've been here doing all this stuff. Yeah, there are things. One thing I appreciated that that makes me think of is they've had several trailers for Monster Hunter. Yes! All right. Yes.

My Monster Hunter's Psychos are here. Hell yeah. I keep trying to... These two haven't really ever gotten into it. This might be the time. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. It's going to be great.

Obviously, I know that game is going to be great, and I don't need to see anything more. But what I appreciate about Monster Hunter trailers... You can picture it, that's why. It's true. What I appreciate about the trailer... Another Keely, you'll just be like, Monster, come on. Come on.

Come on. Come on. We all the way could. Well, so the trailers, I think that the trailers are kind of true to the experience of playing Monster Hunter in a way that other trailers aren't. I think this wasn't quite as true of the one they showed at this event, but there was an earlier one that they showed like a week ago, and it starts out, and it's like exciting music and a cutscene,

and there's a big monster, and they're running around, and then the monster, like, absolutely creams to the player character. And then they, like, swing their weapon, and it just hits the ground and, like, misses. And then they are, like, running away for a while. And then as the trailer goes on, they, like, figure it out, and they start fighting back, and they're doing better and better, and it ends with, like, some hero shot or something. You need, like, a solid 10 minutes of someone looking at the controller

being like, wait, I hold L1. Remapping all the radial. Pressing start, looking at the control mapping. That's the special radial menu trailer that they're going to put out. So anyways, I appreciate that because it's kind of true to the experience, there's something like, okay, there was another game called, I'm going to try to remember the name, Phantom Blade. Okay.

That's right. Because there are a lot of blades now. There are a lot of blades now. Stellar Blade. Stellar Blade. Or Blade from Arcane. Or Hellblade. Or Hellblade.

Made by the same studio that, made heavenly... These are all just different Pokemon, like evolution forms. Yeah. There are a lot of blades. So this is the phantom blade. And it's basically another samurai supernatural souls like. And the trailer for that, it's like sick.

It's like that one guy, what's his name? He tweet, the legend something. He tweets videos of himself playing games set to like Imagine Dragons where he's like pulling off the sickest combos. Do you know what I'm talking about? It's like Suhi legend or something. Do you guys know who I'm talking about? He's always going viral with these like he'll edit together, like the Last of Us Part

too. Sickest kills. Yeah, it makes it like a movie. So this trailer was like that. It was someone playing the game better than I will ever play it. Of course, yeah. That's the fantasy.

Yes. So I feel like the true experience of that would be like the guy like fights the boss and gets absolutely destroyed and then fights it again and again and again. It cuts to like later in the weekend and he was like finally beats it and throws his controller and like quits playing the game for a week.

Yeah, that's actually they should organize the streams over the course of the multiple days or like they keep checking back in. Yes, that would be amazing. On how that person's doing. That's a free idea. Yeah, that would be, people would talk about that. They would talk about it.

To cut all the rest of the space, Jeff just comes down and it's like, Monster and are you guys know what that is? You know what that? Civilization, nope, no worries. And then the rest of the time is just someone dying over and over. Let's check back in.

That is what people want to watch. Okay, so I was very struck by Wander Stop. Did you guys see that? Great name, Wander Stop. Killer roster of talent. So that's the next game from the guy, Davy Redden, the guy who did

the Stanley parable and the beginner's guide. Really interesting, like subversive game designer, so I thought that looked pretty cool. Also with Carla Zimonia, who did art for Gone Home and C418 doing the music. So it's kind of a murderous route. Yeah, cool, cool. That came, it like started off with like this woman just like doing chores and like a cozy town. When she's like, I don't want to be here at this tea house.

I'm like a warrior, but I'm not supposed to be here. But here I am and every day is the same. and then she starts having an existential crisis and it starts to turn into the Stanley Purrida. I think that'll be cool. Yeah, yeah. It's time to take cozy games down a peg. We all agree.

I think we're kind of entering in a new face. They've had it too good for too long. Do you think there's something to you that? There was also the Bloom House reveal that they're publishing like 16 games, which is cool if they want to become like another Anna Perna. Yeah, I think they are trying to do that. And there was a cozy game in there.

It looked like a cozy war. A cozy war. A cozy murder game. Yeah. It looks super cool. And I do feel like there's kind of of a glut of just, there's like the cozy game and the cozy game with like supernatural fairies and magic and there's the cozy game with whatever.

Like we have all of those covered. Yeah. Now we need the weird ones. We need cozy horror. Right. Or like cozy, you're sitting around being like everything is perfect. Everything's the same. I hate this.

I'm not supposed to be here. And having played the Stanley Parable, I mean, like that final moment of that trailer, that was probably the most excited I got of the trailers that I watched. Why are there so many cozy games these days? I don't know. No life is hard. Like things are bad and people are stressed. Right, right.

I can't imagine why people would want to feel calm and in control. People are physically and emotionally uncomfortable and want to be cozy if they possibly could. Live out the fantasy of having a job that treats you well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Having neighbors that you regularly talk to and don't dislike. You could go outside without getting it by a car. Yeah, it's cool. Yeah, it is cool.

I kind of get it. So yeah, summer games test, it's weird. I don't know if you guys are, how many of you guys have ever been to E3? You guys, I assume a bunch of you from a lot of time of you. Oh, a lot more hands. Okay. So, yeah, I mean, this is, this is. This is very different because there isn't like, it's not at the LA Convention Center.

There's a little thing for press downtown on the eastern side and what is it, the market, market house. City market house. But it's like a tiny thing and it's only open to press. It is nice. To its credit, it's like very well run. It's like to check out games. Yeah, they even let you eat a sandwich. But it's kind of a weird vibe.

I do, I miss E3. I got to say, I miss E3. You don't get the same experience of like you're sitting at dinner and then like Shigaro Omiamoto walks by. and it's like, everyone is just like looking. The best you're going to get is Jason Schreier. I have to say, people recognize this guy. They do. This is like, this is where Jason is the rock star.

So the best thing about walking around with Kirk is that Kirk is my hype man because I sent him an early copy of my new book and so whenever that comes up, you like, oh my God, it's so good. And I'll be like, I paid you a lot of money to say that. I do it in Sam Robinson voice just like that too. Like, it's so good. So yeah. But since you did get to go on play stuff, there is some.

stuff we can talk about that isn't under Embarios. We should talk a little bit about the stuff that we actually got to play. Yes. Starting, of course, with metaphor, re-fantazio, which is basically fantasy persona. I mean, come on. You and I get to play that. What do you think? I liked it.

I think it looks very promising. It looks a lot like Persona 5, the way that it moves, the way the UI looks, the way the general flow of the game. It's fun. A lot of these games, when you play them, they sit you down in front of a huge TV. Yes. And so you're playing it on this giant TV. And you're like weirdly close to the huge TV.

That's been my experience. Oh, yeah. It's always kind of uncomfortable. One, it's persona. So I'm trying to be like, what is this going to be like on a much smaller screen in my hand, which is where I'm actually going to play this game for $100 hours. And where I'm like slouched on my couch and I'm not like a weird chair. Right.

With someone checking in every so often. And someone being like, are you okay? Emotionally? What do you think of it? I'm trying to read your body language and see if you like it or not. It looks great way to play a game. What are you just memorable? No, I'm not okay.

Have you ever said that at a preview? I feel like that's the preview you should do. Yeah. I mean, I don't know why they ask. Because usually I'll just be like, I'm too emotionally overwhelmed right now to tell you how I feel about this game. You don't want my opinion.

You don't want to know what I think right now. But anyway, metaphor refantasio. The most memorable thing about this game is that there was an enemy called a feral hondo. When I was like, I feel like I got a feral hondo in my wallet. I don't know what it means. Every time I saw it, I was like, there's the Hondas. Jason was playing, and I was watching.

I was like, go fight some of this. There was another, there was an enemy that was like, it was like an egg with a creature, like a face inside and then a sword sticking out of the whole thing. Yeah. Great. Yeah, the enemy designs are fantastic. A little bit of real time combat, a little bit of turn-based. It's not some twists.

It is actually, I think, going to be, have its own identity. Yeah, it seems pretty cool. I was jazzed about that one. Yeah. Matt, do you play anything cool? I did play something cool. I'm really surprised you two got through that entire, segment without talking about the title of that game, but it's fine. We can just move right

and pass that for our titles episode. Yeah, what am I saying? We're going to save it for the title episode. It's not metaphor, the veil guard. No, and I, if I had seen that, I wouldn't be able to talk about it. But what I did see is a game called Heartworm, which isn't about something that your cat can get. It's actually a horror game that I thought was really cool. I saw this at the indie mix. It's an indie horror game. And if you liked Silent Hill, the originals, Resident Evil, the originals, tank controls, you can play this game with tank controls or a fatal frame where you like take pictures of ghosts. It's super creepy and it's definitely like in the style of like those throwback horror games. And I got really freaked out while playing it. And it was funny

because I immediately was, you know, it's me. I was joking around. I was like, well, I'm not going to get scared at this event. I'm surrounded by like a whole. hundred people and I have a beer. Like, what is going to go wrong here? And they're like, well, put it on the headphones. Like, see what happens. And I'm like, I don't like this. I don't, I don't like what's happening.

But it's really good. You're okay? No. Not okay. Actually, this was one of those. This actually was like a very different preview where like the two people who made it just walked away. Like I, they were like, yeah, go ahead.

And they didn't help me at all. I was just like, all right. I guess I'm really, I'm truly a lot. And you go to this mysterious house, I mean, it's a horror game. And it's a place where it's sort of like between the veil of the two worlds. And if you have somebody in your life who's died, you can maybe speak to them at this house. And that's why this young woman goes to the house. And so you're just wandering around this weird house and you start seeing things like sort of in the corner of your eye, like walking by.

I don't know what that is that games do, where you just kind of like you turn around and you like see something kind of going by. I hate that. But anyway, it's incredible. You too know what I mean, though. Like that effect of, like, you turn and you're like, what was that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was very effective. And I think, I mean, it depends on whether you think, like,

that kind of retro style horror is particularly scary. But for me, I do find it scarier because I think it takes me back to, like, a sense memory of playing Resident Evil One and being really freaked out. And so it also has that nostalgic component of remembering. A nostalgic horror. Yes, exactly. This is your equivalent. of cozy games. It is, actually. But this wasn't cozy. I really enjoyed it. And there's

some cool stuff in that game. I'm excited for that to come out. Very cool. Nice. So I was really, really enjoyed, I think my favorite game that I saw at this thing so far. It was a game called UFO 50. Have you guys heard of this? Anyone heard of this game? Dude. It's extremely cool. So this is a game. It's by Derek Yu of Spalunky fame and a couple other people. And it is a game that is 50 games in one and the conceit is they're all kind of retro-looking 80s 90-style games and the conceit is that

they were all created by this imaginary company, this fictional company within the games universe called UFO soft and so they're all connected and they're all super creative and ridiculous we were playing one game that was like my favorite one was the it was samurai

pung what was it called Bushido Pong or something like that? Bushido ball. Bushido ball. That was it. It was like palm or like table tennis, but with two, Samarize. And so Kirk and I were playing or sitting on the couch playing, going back and forth. And then I realized at one point that you're kind of, okay, so there's a samurai on the left side,

samurai on the right side, and there's a ball going back and forth and you have to hit it. And whoever misses it in tennis, like you lose. I realized at one point that you could actually cross to the other side and just start hitting the other person. Hitting your opponent and then hitting the ball from there, which was extremely. chaotic. Yeah, the way the game works is you start playing a game and you don't really have any idea how to play it because it's like you're unearthing all of these old

games that didn't actually ever exist. So you're like, you just start playing and of course Derek Hugh was like watching us play this game and we have no idea what to do and he's not saying anything because we're not supposed to have any idea of to you. I keep asking him, I'm like, we're not supposed to know how this works and he's like no. So then

you kind of uncover things as you're playing and then we see him start cracking up when Jason yeah runs across the middle of the field and like hits me with a sort. It's so funny. And we realize that that works. We play it. There's one where you're like, it's like on a train.

It's like a train robbery. So there's kind of lawmen and bandits. And the bandits are trying to get to the money. And the lawmen are trying to protect it. And it does not explain anything about how it works. It just starts. And you take turns and each turn is 10 seconds. And you have 10 seconds to move one of your characters up the train.

And then it jumps back and forth from one to the other to the other. And we're like, what does this do? What does that do? We're like blowing up bombs. And we had no idea. It was wild. And so all these games completely. So single player are all set, so they're not all just multiplayer stuff.

But, yeah, it was super cool, and it's like, yeah, such a creative concept. And the games themselves, it's not like 50 minigames. It's like 50, or maybe some of them are small. But they're all like, they would have been full releases in 1982 or whatever. Yeah, they would have been full Nintendo. It's like, yeah. They have full, like the title screen on every single one is like totally believable. And then the idea, right, is that there's some mystery.

Like there's something connecting all these games. I think so. I'm not sure how deep it's going to be. I guess we'll find out. It would be cool if there was like some deep dark secret behind the UFO stuff. Yeah, like it's a little bit of like retro game master, a little bit of like Polybius or like one of those urban legends. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Something creepy, that would be fun. But I don't know if that's the idea. But what we saw was pretty cool. I guess given that Derek Hugh made Spilunky, it's probably got a lot of like deep hidden stuff. Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like six people made this one also.

It's not like a solo thing. And it shows. It feels like a lot of people were. Very cool. Yeah, very fun game. And then we also played this cool indie game called Arranger. I got to watch this for a little bit.

Yes. I met up with you too. Super cool game. You want to talk about it a little? You want to explain it? Yeah, sure. This is art by David Hellman, who did the art for Braid,

and I think hasn't made a game since then. I know he's been doing graphic novels and stuff, but a cool guy and a great artist. So it looks a little like Braid. It has very beautiful mix of like sprites and backgrounds. And it's basically, it's like a top-down puzzle, kind of Zelda-ish game, but the mechanic is that your character actually

really never moves, does she? So she's standing on a square, and the whole world is like a grid of squares, like, I don't know, a square floor or something. And to move, you actually move the entire row of squares that you're standing on. And that moves everything on the row of squares, and if it gets to the wall, it like loops back around to the beginning. So it's kind of like a Rubik's cube. He described it as kind of a Rubik's cube. And the whole game, you never hold anything, you don't have any inventory, you never do anything.

You just have to move the floor or, floor around and like manipulate everything to move yourself around through the level. It's the kind of thing that maybe that makes sense or maybe I explained it badly, but if you see it for like 30 seconds. Just watch the trailer. Yeah, you'll be like, oh, okay, I'm 100% get what this game is.

What if Jeff Keeley came up on stage and it's like it's like a Rubik's Cube? You move around. You get it. Picture it. It's one of the challenges of podcasting about video games really. You're like, trust me. It makes sense. We have this cool screen behind us, but it just says our logo. We can't put our trailers on there.

Oh, but it has our... We could show people. It's true. We could have, like, brought a... Ladies and gentlemen, Civilization 8. That game looks cool. Yeah, that was super cool. Anything else that you saw that you were stoked about?

Sure, I mean, we can change years completely. You saw how much of your embargoed on. I am, but I did also see Fatal Fury. I think it's called City of the Wolves. I think that's the little subheading I gave to it. Yeah, that's a good name. I believe it's not under embargo, but here's another way you can get around that. You can just sit down and play it, and then after you've done that for a little bit,

you can have a PR person come up to you and say, what's your name, sorry, while they're holding a clipboard. And you can say, oh, ha ha, I didn't realize that, you know, I can just start playing Fatal Fury. And then you're like, oh, I'm Stephen Totillo. Yeah, so I played it with Polygon contributor, Kazimha Hashimoto. We just sat down and started playing it. And had a really great time. We both wanted to play as Terry. Terry's really cool.

So we just kind of switched off playing as Terry for a bit. had a really great time. I think that game's super fun. I'm much more of a street fighter person, but I definitely got the hang of it and there were enough moves that were similar that I was like, cool, yeah, I understand how to do a quarter circle. But yeah, it was, I had a great time. I think that one's going to be really fun. Is that just like a standard fighting game? Yeah, standard two-dimensional fighting game. There's one person on one side and another person on the other, and then there's health bars at the top. Yeah, it's cool. And they, you know, they give you fight sticks to play with here, which way easier. I don't know. I love that. It was a great, it was, it was, it was

really fun. And I know they're doing the Fatal Fury crossover with Street Fighter 6 to you that I'm excited for. I didn't get to play that, but I know that's at the Capcom. People were psyched about that in the audience. Yeah. Yeah. People got pumped. I also hear they're putting like a bunch of raw Julia jokes into Street Fighter 6 now to kind of refer to like the movie or whatever. And I love that. I mean for M. Bison. So that's great. So yeah, I'm really hopped up on my fighting game bullshit at this time. That's not really the show we do. But yeah, I had a great time playing Fatal Fury. Maybe I'll become a fatal fury person. It could happen. Yeah, so there are some, we're talking mostly about smaller games. There are some bigger games at the thing, but they're embargoed the same. Because at E3, which is unusual because at E3, they couldn't embargo anything.

They couldn't be like, you can't talk about this for a week because there were thousands of people going and playing and looking at this stuff. But here, because it's all pressed and it's much smaller, they can be like, you can't talk about this. So Tuesday, even if you have a live show on Saturday night. Yeah, even if you specifically asked about your live podcast and said, I'll talk about it, on the show. So something I'm not Embargarred on is that I think that Dragon Age, the Vail Guard, is a worse

name than Dragon Age Dreadwall. It is bad. And I'm just going to throw that out there because I think that it's just much worse and I wish they hadn't changed it. It is, and I personally don't think the the should be there.

Well, you know what happened is Justin Timberlake and the social network came into the office and he was like, out of the. It's less clean. You're like, you're right. You're right. You're right. It is harder to say.

You know how we get around this is you're not in like games media anymore. So you can just be like, screw it. I'm going to talk about it. Yolo. Yeah, you could, you, Kirk, you could say some rumors that you heard earlier today. Like I heard from a podcast co-host friend of mine. Some people who told you over lunch. Uh-huh.

We found a loophole. Right. There was another. These guys are cool. There was another indie game we saw. It's fun. We're acting like we have so much information. Raise your head if you're in PR.

Right. If you work for EA. Some of them are raising their games. We would never do this. You guys have to leave and come back in 15. Earmuffs, please. Earmuffs, please. There was another indie game that we saw briefly that I want to shout out.

Oh, please too. Probably because the developer who made it seem like a really nice guy. Oh, my God, this game. It was a game called Building Relationships. Oh. It was kind of, so there's like a little play area where they have all these big TVs everywhere. And this one was, I think, it's like real estate matters at these. things because you can really see, you know, some of the big games.

Phantom Blade has like 16 TVs. Stocker 2 is like on 14. Yes, yes, yes. So you can really see those big games. His game was kind of, the TV was facing the wall. So it was hard for everyone to see it. Yeah, which is just a bummer because his game, I think if people could have seen it. They probably would have been like, what the hell is that game and can I play it? So building relationships is a game.

It's about building relationships, but not about building relationships. It's about building relationships. You play as a house and you're trying to find another. house to hook up with. And you bounce around this little island. So it's got kind of like, is it vector graphics? It looks kind of like a short hike or

it kind of has that like PS1 style. PS1 core. And you're a house, just the house. And actually often the house will just go flying. Like you push the stick and it just goes rolling forward. It sometimes really looks like the house from the Wizard of Oz in the scene where it gets picked up in a tornado.

It's kind of like tumbling end of quapish like a little bit fumble Because you're just like stumbling your way as this rolling house. But it's not quite as awkward. Like you can figure out, you can kind of grok it, but you're just tumbling this house around. And then there's other houses that want to talk to you. The dialogue is really, really funny. And the developer is a single guy.

I'm forgetting his name, but he like, or at least he's like the main guy working on it. Tanah, Tanai, I want to say. I can't remember, but shout out to him. And the writing is really funny. It was very, very funny. You're talking to these other houses and trying to date them. And so at one point, you find these chests called Chester. And when you find them, if you like answer a question, they'll give you an item.

And at some point you can ask them like, hey, would you date? And they'll be like, oh, no, sorry, all the Chester's here are in a polycule. And our schedule is really packed. So we can't add another person to this. It's very charming. And yeah, it just sounds like he was like making the game and sort of submitted to Day of the Debs. Like totally cold. And it was like, I don't know, whatever.

A million people are submitting. all some bit. And I'm guessing they saw it and they were like, when you play it as a house. Yeah. You go and roll around and talk to their house. And they're like, they took it. He's like, I don't know why. I'm like, I think I know why I'm playing it. So that was a very charming game. I think that was on the stream. So you could probably catch it. Catch a trailer online. Yeah, that was cool. That was cool. Yeah. A bunch of cool indie stuff. And then yeah, I mean, the big AAA stuff there, you'll see stories about it. It's something that's going to shock you or anything. We're not sitting on some big secret. Well, I mean, we saw trailers for a lot of the things

that we're going to see at the show. Right. Yeah. That's true. what we saw. Based on those. Yuba saw some stuff there and a game that rhymes with ag and phage. A game that rhymes with bar floors.

There was one narrative that I kind of feel emerging that I'm curious for Jason's take on, which is there are a couple of RTS games here. So last year on the show, Jason made us all play StarCraft too, which I'm sure so what you know. Pretty good game. It was really fun for him and kind of a nightmare for me and

that. Which is like, that's always the best case in our, like, something is fun for me and a nightmare for you. And you're just like, ah, ha, ha, the whole thing. So there are a couple of RTSs, which are called, wait, let me see. Oh, boy. Can you remember the names? It's like something arms, right? Battle, battle arms.

Battle war, battle cards. That would be a name. You can tell them that a name is good when we can really remember. And like Shatter Zone or something. We're professional podcasters. It's like two words. Stormgate. Stormgate.

Oh, of course. I could have come up with that. That's the one that is intended. That's it. Okay, cool. Intended to be reminiscent of Starcraft as StormGames. Yes, both of them. In different ways, I think.

So I'm curious for your impressions of those, because I've got to watch him play them, and that's like watching Mozart sit down at the piano or whatever. He just immediately begins his, like, 8 p.m. is at, like, 7,000. How many of you guys, how many of you are RTS fans or RTS players? Okay, a couple people. Literally.

Somebody is actually going thumbs down. Like, somebody wanted to say that they didn't like RTS games. That is so sad. Great answer. The person who had thumbs down actually runs Blizzard. Oh, sure, yep. We'll never make another StarCraft, says that guy. They might, I don't know.

I kind of hope they do. It'll be a shooter, though. Yeah. I mean, they've considered that. A few times. You can read about it in a book. Can't wait. Yeah, they're both very different.

Stormgate is very much like a traditional, like, trying to be more like the Starcraft Warcrafts of the world. There's creep camps like in Warcraft 3, and there's a lot of units that are very similar to Starcraft 2, whereas battle aces, I'm pretty sure that's it. Yeah. Just Bing, if it's not. Just added in. No, that's the name of the name.

Whereas that game is very different. That game is very much streamlined, feels kind of Mova-ish, and feels very different in a way that might be more appealing to the person who put their thumb. down. Still real time, probably. Yeah, it's still real time,

but it's a little simpler. Like that game, you could have played. Wow. Wow. Just going to read me for filth on stage. For what it's worth,

I thought Kirk was pretty good at StarCraft when we all played it together. I thought you were fine. I don't think you should be so hard on yourself. Thanks, Maddie. I appreciate that. I don't know.

We should talk about, yeah, we should talk about how many times you died in return. Yeah, that's true. Let's talk about that a little. Yeah, let's talk about that a little bit. Yeah, that was interesting.

Yeah, those are cool. Watching that second game, especially like a kind of streamlined. It's cool to have the genre that was like really popular for a long time and then died for a while. Yeah. Now come back. I feel like there are a few of those examples. RTS being one of them. Point and click adventures came back for a little bit, right?

Like there's a little bit of those here. Yeah. Are there former StarCraft developers working on? Yeah, so both of them are former Blizzard people, both of those games. And they're like going up against each other. Oh, really? Yeah. Although they're such different games.

I mean, we're allowed to play both of them, but the developers don't want us to. No, you can't. Only one. You have to pick now just based off of trailers. You can't play them first. No, you have to pick based on our descriptions. Yeah, right. That's right?

I mean, you can picture it, right? Yeah. Yeah. Was there anything else? Anything else you saw that was cool or anything else that you saw that was cool? I'm trying to think I played a couple of other indie games. Nothing that really stood out. No, he's checking her notes.

You know, check the schedule. You got to check the old the old SGS schedule. I mean, this game was already out, but I did play a little bit of spin rhythm XD if people want to play that anytime. They can. It's a fun rhythm game.

It's an indie game. I played at the indie mix. I danced around while playing it. That's a good sign for an indie game. Indy rhythm game. It's basically like, you know, classic beats coming towards you. You're hitting the button in time.

But the part that's really fun is that there'll be like occasional like scratch breaks where you get to like DJ it up and you try to just make the joystick go freaking crazy during those moments and just rack up points. That's like the fun part of it and the rest of it is kind of standard. The drum fill. Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. And I thought that was really fun. I mean, that's where the spin and spin rhythm XD comes in. I wrote down Jeff's jacket. We didn't get into that at all. Oh, yeah. Probably the highlight of the show.

I was obsessed with that jacket. Did anybody else clocked Jeff Keeley's jacket? Pretty good, right? So was that suede or was it like velvet? Velore? See, I'm hearing. Okay. Okay, okay.

I don't know. I don't know. I think it was swayed. And I had the benefit of watching it in my hotel room so I could see it on. I actually connected my laptop to the hotel room television because I just, I wanted to see Jeff's jacket. I think Jeff's out in the house tonight. If you're here, Jeff, let me know where you bought that coat. If Todd really wanted to serve readers, they would put up a guide to like his jacket.

Commerce play. Get those affiliate links in there. Jeff, let us know. I would click that affiliate link. I would have bought it. I would have bought it from the audience on my plan. Andrew, I hope you're listening. $5,000.

Yeah, I also wrote down Slitterhead, which I don't know if you guys cared about this. I thought this game looked disgusting and cool. It's by some Silent Hill devs. It's basically like you're like a weird worm and you're like jumping from person to person. You're like jumping through an eye socket. And then you're fighting against like even more disgusting, ungodly abominations, even as you yourself are one.

I don't know what the circumstances of this weird world are. You played Carian, right? Did you play Carian? Yes, Carrion's a great game. Kind of similar idea. It's kind of like that, but it's like an open world. It's like how if Watch Dogs Legion, like, you know, you kind of become different people in the world, it would be like that, but if it were a horror game where you were a worm. Prototype-esque. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Horror game is definitely like having, been having a big thing in the last few years. Yeah, for sure. I feel like it's become a lot more normalized. I mean, I feel like even horror movies, like it's more. more people are willing to try that. Because then PewDie Pyle play your game. Yeah, that's true.

And like Scream a bunch of fire or whatever. Make a bunch of money. Yeah, for sure. And then also I wrote down Night Springs because Alan Wake too. That looked really good, right? Kind of one of the only and it's out tomorrow. Yeah.

And it was for one of the best games the last year. So that's pretty cool. I know. It looked so cool. It was classic Alan Wake situation where I was watching the trailer and I was like, I have no idea what's going on. And I'm having a great time. I don't actually remember what.

happened at the other way too. And I barely understood it at the time and I'm just smiling and I'm having a good time watching a bunch of surreal Twin Peaks inspired images on my screen. I'm excited to check that out. And so we are recording this at Saturday night.

We're recording this before the Xbox thing tomorrow. So maybe a billion things will happen. Maybe Phil Spencer will melt our brains. Maybe. Do we have any predictions? Do you want to make predictions? Melt your brain and then crawl onto your eyes.

Yeah, and crawl into your, he's going to crawl into each of our eyes and then lay us off. Yeah, I was going to say. Because we're replaceable, get it? Is that? We're kind of mad at Xbox. Xbox has a, like, mixer going on right now.

They counter-programmed us. Thanks for not going to the Xbox mixer, y'all. They're definitely like triple click. Fuck those guys. We're doing. So thank you all for not going to that. I mean, you can go after this. We won't stop you.

there you go word well I mean the inside baseball here is that a couple months ago when we were planning out the show I emailed their PR and I was like hey I know sometimes you do a mixer are you doing anything on Saturday night

I can't believe you're sharing this and they said no at least I didn't name them no I know it's true just an Xbox PR person I mean it was Phil Spencer which is it was Phil we have his personal cell

But yeah, but other than lies, I'm sure they'll have some games tomorrow. It's going to be a hard sell. It's hard to imagine. It is hard to imagine what they're going to say. We're so psyched for them. Because honestly, like, it really could be like this game. They're going to ship their game and then we're going to close them down. Yeah.

And like, it's hard not to. It comes out with a t-shirt and instead of like, oh, he's buying whatever. Obsidian, oh, he's shutting down. Like, he's teasing the feature layoffs. Like, he's teasing who he's going to lay off next. Like, that's where the teacher will be. Getting too dark eyes. And it really feels that way.

Like, I think that that is going to be a subtext of the entire show. We need a cozy game up in here to cheer things up. Yeah, maybe that's what they'll announce. They'll have like the typical stuff. It'll be like the, I don't know, avowed in Indiana Jones and. Yeah, they're going to show that. Doom and Gears of War. Starfield D.L.C.

Yeah. Yeah. They're adding maps. Or no, maybe they added maps to the town. Yeah, they're in the town. there's a map and you can see where you are. A really exciting new feature for Starfield. Wait, it was someone, we were playing a game.

I think it was the building relationships guy. And you were like, is there a map? And he was like, no, because they're really hard to make. And I was like, oh, okay. That's why Starfield didn't have a map. He was like, no, I read on Kataku that maps are terrible. There's some guy who was always talking about it. So I decided it's more immersive with that one.

Not a mini-map guy. And then Ubisoft has a thing on Monday. And then Nintendo. question mark in late June sometime yeah they said June right we don't know we don't know when yeah they could do it

they could do it any time they could be doing it right now they're really everyone wants to screw over triple thick live yeah can you imagine like our audience just leaving and droves

like watching on their phone the E3 experience I have vivid memories every single year of coming out and there was always the press conferences before the show actually starts and it was always

just like misery. Saturday was EA and it was like cars and sports and everyone was like I always felt bad for them having to go first. And then Sunday Xbox maybe they'd have a couple of cool things and then there'd be like Ubisoft would be super boring like same games every year. Oh, towers.

Just dance. No, Ubisoft would always have a just dance and they would be like a really good dance. A band would come out with a marching band. But what I'm getting to is that Nintendo would always come in and just like save you three by having all these delightful games. Yeah, that's true. And they're all playable like in November. Yeah, they're all day one.

Go download them right away. Right. Because Xbox would be like games that are coming 40 years from now. Nintendo would actually... Games your children will play. Not having them this Tuesday is kind of a bummer. It kind of like it feels like something's missing. Yeah.

Maybe later. Do you think Jeff just stays up at night being like, how do I get Nintendo? Probably. Yeah. I think he probably does. If he had the right jacket, maybe. Yeah. A red jacket, maybe they would have liked red, like Mario?

A different pair of sneakers. Like Link. Someone should make a dating sim where Jeff has to go to different companies. That's actually a really funny idea where you're just trying, you're just like, you know, a trailer even, just a trailer with a little gameplay. Has anyone ever made a video game about Jeff Keely or like put him in a game? I can't believe that hasn't happened yet. Someone said Fortnite? He was in Among Us.

Oh, okay. Is there? Is there? So it has happened. Oh, yeah. He is in Deathsrand. Oh, Of course.

Forget everything we just said. Of course that counts. I never found him in death training. I played a lot of that game. I found Conan O'Brien, but I never found Jeff. He must be later or something. He's somewhere in there.

Yeah. Do you think he's like angling for a better spot? He's like, I want to be more on the main thoroughfare. So that people will see me. Yeah, do you think he's going to be in two and like have a huge role? And it's going to be like kind of weird

how big of the role it is. Get some better Jeff. All right. So why don't we, so we're not going to take a break here, but I guess on the recording we're going to take a break. or should we say we're going to take a break? Yeah, sure.

If you're not here, if you're not in the room right now, then you have to wait. If you're here, you don't. You don't have to wait. We're going to take a break and then we'll be back with one more thing. People say not to judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree. Which is why here on just the zoo of us, we judge them by so much more. We rate animals out of 10 in the categories of effectiveness, ingenuity, and aesthetics,

taking into consideration each animal's true strengths. like a pigeon's ability to tell a Monet from a Picasso or a polar bear's ability to play basketball. Guest experts like biologists, ecologists, and more join us to share their unique insight into the animals world. Listen with friends and family of all ages on maximum fun.org or wherever you get podcasts. I'm Dan McCoy. I'm Stuart Wellington. I'm Elliot Kalin. And together we are the Flop House, a long-running podcast on the Maximum Fun Network, where we watch a bad movie and then talk about it. And because we're so long running, maybe you haven't given us a chance.

I get it. But you don't actually have to know anything about previous episodes to enjoy us. And I promise you that if you find our voices irritating, we grow endearing over time. Perhaps you listen to one of our old episodes and decided that we were dumb and immature. Well, we've been doing this a while now. We have become smarter and more mature. And generally nicer to Dan. But we are only human, so no promises.

Find the flophouse on Maximumfund.org. Or wherever you get podcast. podcast. All right, let's do one more thing and then we'll open it up to some questions. We have a mic for all of you. Think of, yeah, think about questions. If you want to ask us anything. Maddie, start us off. What's your one more thing? So we watched Dune part two. If you two seen this, is anybody in the room seen Dune part two? Yeah. Timmy, he's looking good. Zendaya. She's looking good. Everyone looking good in that movie. So I read Dune when I was in high school. And I feel like the thing everybody said about it was like, oh, it's impossible to adapt. You know, of course, I've, I seen like the version of Dune with Sting in it. We all have. And I said to myself, it's not impossible to adapt. This is awesome. Or at least that's what Teenage Maddie thought. And, you know, these Dunes are cool. And this Dune is like three hours long. And I was like, this is probably going to move really freaking slow, right? But it actually doesn't, like, a thousand things happen in like the first 30 minutes of Dune part two. I was like getting whiplash. Like they were like,

Timmy Chalemi comes out he's like oh I don't know how I'm going to get all these people on my side smash cut everybody's on his side and he's fighting a thousand guys from the very beginning it's like I'm pregnant okay we're going I'm talking to my unborn child psychically I know and you're like and my unborn child is Anya Taylor Joy and she's a full woman now and here she is in a dream secrets guys and then smash cut and Zendaya and I are to fight now

and now that's a whole other thing we've already been in a relationship and now that's the totally different thing Like, they have to move so quickly. It sounds like the last season of Game of Thrones. I did feel like the time kind of flew by. I mean, maybe other people didn't feel that way about that movie. I don't know. But I was like, it was a crazy three hours of my life.

I was like, wow, this much stuff happened in the book, huh? And it did, I guess. Yeah. I think I saw it in theaters, actually, and it was very, very loud to complain about loudness again, like an old man. Did you watch it in the, like, 3D, 40s immersive experience? No, where they, like, spray sand on me. chair around and like, yeah. No, it was just a regular theater.

That's probably for the best. I think it was the part where they go to the like Harcun and Homeworld, which is amazing. Yeah. But that was the part I was like, okay, this is a pretty long movie. Because it's like a whole movie that takes place with Elvis killing the guy. Yeah. Like hairless Elvis.

Stabbing the undrugged man or whatever. Yeah. That part was very cool. They put the ball cap down over his eyebrows. Like they really committed to that. It was great. Everyone was great. He also sounded like a scars card.

He like heeded the voice very well. Yeah, I liked it. It was pretty good. It's cool to watch a movie where, like, the good guys are winning, but it feels bad. Yeah. And you're like, dang. And the music is like, this is bad. Yeah.

And like the Benad Jesuit are like, not cool. They're really scary. And you're like, I don't know about any of this. And then it ends and it's just like a bummer. Yeah. It's kind of cool for a three-hour walk-poster movie. Yeah, it is kind of cool. I've always loved, and this is in the first one, how they do the voice, capital T, capital V.

The reverberations on it. It's how I pictured it. Abomination. Yeah, it's so good. It's really good. Yeah. Kirk, what's your one more thing? My one more thing is a video game that I've finally been playing

that came out earlier this year called Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth. I had a feeling there would be some people out there who like this game. This game rules. Damn, it's good. Can we talk about the name? You know, we'll get into it. We're going to do an episode about names. We'll talk about it.

Because this series, formerly known as Yakuza, yeah, has struggled with names. And yet has retained its charms. Like a Dragon, Infinite Well, okay. I'll hold it. This game, starring Ichibon Kasuga, is the protagonist of this game and the previous one. And it's kind of a new hero for this series, where Kyrieu and I'm forgetting the other guy's name, but he rules. Bing! Kirk here as I'm editing the episode, the name I was looking for there, of course, was Goromajima, and he does indeed rule.

Okay, back to the show. Bing! Anyways, there have been other leads of this series when it was called Yakuza. but now they've kind of handed it over to Kasuga and it's a turn-based RPG now which is also a change for the series this is the second one of these and this one is primarily set in Honolulu

which is also cool because it's just sort of different surprising number of people fluent in Japanese in Honolulu as it turns out if you're playing with the Japanese stuff like this game so these games are very famous for being like kind of serious crime dramas that also are very very silly they mix in all kinds of side activities and side quests.

And they're also, like, surprisingly touchy-feely. They have really wonderful characters. They have really great writing. There's a lot of, like, positive masculinity. Like, it's a lot of dudes, but it's, like, dudes talking about their feelings. This game is really that way. Like, it's, like, a shockingly well-written game. It's a big, it's all about second chances.

And the idea of, I guess, at the end of the last game, which I didn't finish, the Yakuza kind of all had to disband. And so there's a whole bunch of former Yakuza members. like guys who are just working in these different clans who now have to get jobs. And Ichivan's job is to like get people, like he basically works at an employment agency. And he's trying to help all of these guys like find jobs and stick with them. And he goes way above and beyond and gives everybody as many chances as he can. And throughout the game, they're like, you'll get jumped by some guy who's a jerk

and he like, you know, takes advantage of you and then his friends beat you up. But then later you'll meet him and like kind of help him out when he's in trouble and then get to know him. and then he starts talking about his story, and he becomes like a main character. This has happened multiple times in the game, and it's because the main character is like this really generous, open, supportive dude. So it's, like, funny, it's really lovely looking.

It has a segue, just like Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, and you can drive around on it. Be here for segways. I kind of, I actually wonder how I would have felt about rebirth if I had played this game before it. They're so similar in so many ways. They're these, like... The segways.

The segways. For starters, they're these kind of big sprawling kind of JRP style games. They have like a million side activities and side quest and a billion characters. They go on forever. I think this game is like 100 million hours long. And I don't know if I'll finish it. But I really like what I've played. And I kind of think I'm going to keep playing it.

I just, I really wonder if I would have had a kind of a cooler opinion of rebirth if I had played it after this. And it really is wild that they came out so close to one another. Like, that's just a coincidence for the ages. Anyways, I think it's a great game. I'm going to play more of it. I'll keep trying to pressure the two of you to maybe check it out so we can talk about it more. I wanted to play it.

It just, you know, so many other things came out, including rebirth. It's going to be this kind of dead period for a little while. I guess we have to play Residence. We owe you. That's true. A debt must be repaid. But anyways, it's a great game. Anyone out there looking for something to just chill out and play?

It's very good. And we can talk about the name later. Yeah. On a name episode. We're going to do an episode all about me. We really need to. I think the mail guard thing really cemented that we need. And we need to start a consultancy where we just help people.

Like, people, we'll do it for free. People can come to us with their names. Yeah, the consultancy is free. No, that fucking sucks. Like, what are you doing? Why would you go? You worked on this for seven years. Right.

Why would you add a the? Yeah. Three fewer colones in the title, please. My one more thing is a book by Stephen King called Holly. Oh, I just read this. Are you ready to? Yeah. Okay.

So this book is really cool. Pretty good. for a bunch of reasons. I mean, it's a great book. Oh, that's so funny. I mean, not a lot of bad books in that repertoire, but this is a really cool book because it has some of the creepiest villains.

They're horrible, yeah. Maybe in history. So this is a book about this woman named Tully who has been a character in previous Stephen King books, and now she's a private investigator, and she gets called to investigate this missing woman. And we learn pretty early on, because Stephen King likes to give away

like all of his twists and mysteries. So I'll say it. We learned pretty on that the woman has been taken by this elderly couple who do not seem like villains because they're this like sweet-looking elderly couple. And they took her and they stuck her in their basement and then they ate her. And this elderly couple, it is slowly revealed, they use, they eat like different parts of the body, they use like bone, marrow from humans to like rub on their like aching joints. It's very like new age medicine.

If you eat the liver, it like helps deage you. Right, right. That's the other thing you can see like Aaron Rogers doing. And it's really fun to have. They're horrible. They're really awful. And they like, they get people to come with them by like pretending one of them is in a wheelchair.

And they're like, oh, can you help us? So they're really good villains because they're so creepy. There's nothing quite like the friendly grandparents. who are like actually horrifying. And it's very like King's proclivities and obsessions always make their way into the game. And now he's an older, or into the book. And now he's an older guy.

And I'm sure he's thinking a lot about like, because there are also elderly characters in the book who are like the paragon of like aging well, of like supporting younger people and being really great. My favorite part is actually a subplot about the poet, the writer, who is like being mentored. And it's just this awesome side plot. I kept, well, I won't spoil anything like this.

Yeah. It didn't go where I expected. in a kind of wonderful. Yeah, it's cool. So you can tell he's thinking a lot about being an older guy and mentoring and stuff. The way he describes the elderly couple on their various, like, laddies that they have to deal with is very... The metaphor is not subtle.

Like, we are eating the young in order to prolong our own lives. It's like, yeah. We get it... It's pretty literal. I don't know if that's a metaphor anymore. No, right. It's actually just literal. Just what you're doing, yeah.

It's a metaphor re-fundazia. Right. It's a special kind of metaphor. Yeah. That's a great name. Is it? Yeah, I've come around on it in the course of this episode. It's a good name because you can just call it metaphor, and that's pretty cool.

Metaphor is a fun name for a game. It's like Re-Fantazio, the F is also capitalized. It's bad, but you can ignore that part, so it doesn't matter. It sounds like Maddie maybe can't ignore it. All right, we're saving this one. We're saving the name. That's true. We're burning future cast.

Yes. All right, that is it for our one more things. Usually we would say goodbye at this point, but we're not going to say goodbye. We're going to say goodbye. We're going to say, ask us a question. So I would say, so there's a microphone in the middle there. If you want to ask questions, you can come and line up in an orderly fashion. And we'll let just anybody ask a question.

Anybody. Yeah, come on up. Don't be shy. Come on up. We'll give you guys a couple of minutes to assemble. Just kind of line up over here. And let's get and let's take a couple of questions. It's the best part of these live shows.

It is. It is fun. All right. Come on up. Say your name and then ask away. What's up guys? Do-d-D-D-D-D-D-D-D. My name's Rubin.

So, Metroid Prime 1 and 2 are, they're really, like, it gets the isolation going on there. And I found that 3 got a little chatty. It's got some NPCs on there. Oh, yeah. So, like, 10 years from now, we're playing 4. Do you prefer that, like, we keep those characters in there and it's fine and you don't mind it? Or do you want to just, like, thrown in and explore the space? Great question.

I love you, too, just immediately just turning your entire bodies to me. Just like, we have nothing to see. The worst faux pie I could commit is like, well, here's what I think about Metror. Yeah, you know, it's funny because I kind of have some weird nostalgia for Metroid Prime 3, even though there is all that talking in it. Because I also find it to be a really funny kind of Nintendo stereotype where Samis is never talking, but because there's so much more talking in that game, it becomes so noticeable that she's not saying anything, which is such a, again, it's such a Nintendoism.

Like she's like Link where like everybody else is like, so Sammas, where are your fellow bounty hunters? And like, here's some wacky new enemies that we're going to fight. Let's all get together. And she's just like, huh. It would be such a good twist if like in Metroid Prime 4 at some point she starts talking and it's the Gurney Weaver. That would be sick as hell, actually. That would be really good. And then I feel like because Other M came out after Metroid Prime 3 and it had Samus talking so much, everybody was just like,

she should never talk, she should never talk. That shouldn't have happened. And that was kind of like an interesting contrast with how much other people were talking and she wasn't in three. So I actually feel like, especially given in dread, she's so minimalist still. I think they're really sticking with that

because I feel like there's some fear just among anybody who's writing Samus at this point about ever having her say anything. But as for whether the other NPCs are going to talk, I think they will. I mean, I think people remember those characters. I do, and I like the other bounty hunters and the other characters, so I think they're going to bring them back.

But I don't know, that game's been rebooted like 12 times. Like, is it ever going to come out? I don't know. So I predict chatty, chatty everyone's laconic Sammas, just like in three. All right. Dread had a pretty good talking

computer, though. It did. I really liked that whole storyline. It was really good. It was really good. Hello. Hi. What would you guys dream about for your next year summer game fest like what would be your favorite game in genre like ex-man cozy games sim or something like that oh that's a good idea like you're just in the ex-man mansion and you're just like your gambit and you're like frying up food for everybody

i mean that's just marvel's midnight sun yeah actually that game rules kind of is right the cozy part of midnight suns of gamut was in it that's a good poll what's your dream game yeah what's your dream game G.F. 2025. Well, the Switch 2 has to be out by then. Yeah, the Switch 2. What would be the release games for that, I guess? A new Mario. New Mario game for like the holiday of 2025. Yeah, I think that'll happen though, right?

We need to think of something a little more... Oh, a little more outside the box. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Silk Song. They bring back rock... Realistically. Something that'll never happen. Never. Games will never come out. They bring back rock band. They like come out on stage with a bunch of plastic instruments. Wasn't that like a prediction that you had?

I've been dreaming of it for years. Yeah. I'm still dreaming of it. They'll bring it back. It would be in Fortnite because Epic bought them. Now it'd be somebody new making it. They'd like sell the license

to somebody else. Oh, okay. Okay. Interesting. I'm announcing my game development studio. We just bought the license for Rockman. Would you do anything different with it? Or you would just be like, nope,

you got to buy the old instruments again, folks. That's a good question. There would be saxophone. That's what it would be a little bit. Why did I even question? It would be four saxophones. It would be called sax bands. So, okay, how would that, would it be like...

Hell yeah. It would it be like the guitar hero controller, like with the saxophone? Yeah, like a... But you actually... Oh, yeah. A wind controller, yeah. It's got a bite sensor. Yeah, it's like when you have to blow into the Nintendo DS, it's like that.

Totally. With the saxophone and you're like blowing on it. I have one where if you lean back... Yeah. It like adds vibrato. So you're like, when you lean back. It's pretty good.

That's how it would work. It would totally have a... when you really get into it. You should start a game company just so you can do this thing. Saxophone hero. Sounds great. Yeah, all right. We'll do it.

Strong songs, the video game. Did you answer the question, Jason? No, not really. I don't know. All JRP's. Yeah. Just all Final Fantasy 6 remake, maybe?

No, like that serial box. Like, oops, all JRPG. That's summer news. Two big scoops. 2026. Nice. Yeah, the Nintendo stuff, I don't know. I just want to play indie games on my Steam deck.

That's all I want to do now. Yeah. Animal Well, too. New Oberdin or new like, oh, that'd be fun, yeah. Okay, sure, sure. And we'll probably get Case of the Golden Idol, too, whatever that's called. Yeah. So that doesn't even count.

Yep. All right. Cool. There you go. Some hopes and dreams. Thanks, so. Next question. Hi, I'm Cameron.

Hello. Hi. Hello, hi. So I didn't, I got to write my question now because I was nervous. So I didn't catch any of the question. the showcase yesterday, but I did make a point to watch the Devolver one this morning, because I think that I was put on a great show. What did you guys

think of the devolver style of presentation? Do you want to see more of that, kind of like out there, bonkers sort of presentation, or do you think, like, just leave it to one studio? You might have to tell us about it because I don't know. Is it still the same style? I mean, I remember how they've done it in previous years where they have the, like, the woman,

the actress who plays, the like the corporate Nina Struthers. Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't like that this year. This year, I don't know if you got a saw the one last year where they had Volvi. Like they had, they got fake fake mask. So they're continuing with Volvey.

Okay. It was Volvey's 15th birthday celebration. This is a fake mascot? A fake mascot. It's like his birthday. This guy having a weird crisis. I can't. You guys should watch it.

But yeah, I guess, I don't know, would you want to see more out there style presentations like that? Sure. I think it's like it's better if one person's doing it. Because if everyone starts doing it, then it's like, then DeVolver would be like, we're going to do straight down the middle.

We're going to hire Jeff Keeley. He's going to come out in a velvet coat. It would be terrifying if devolver brought Jeff Keeley out. We'd be like, something's going wrong. Like those rebels, what are they doing? Like, Jeff's about to die. Like, we don't know what's going on. Yeah, it would be, it would be, they should go extra meta and bring Jeff in, I think.

Now that I've said this, I like this idea. And he should wear a different jacket. That should be what blows people's minds. No, but yeah, I really like the devolver's different. And I always like, like, they're sort of the way they run events is usually like in that same punk rock style where they'll like try to, I mean at E3 they had like a fan parked outside where they were just like we're not part of the show. It's like I don't know. I thought that was really cool. Maybe there's room in the middle between like totally off the wall and like world for beer, world for me. Straight Laced. Yeah, like having fun and being a person. Having a personality for your stream or like your publisher or whatever is definitely cool. That's something that more people could stand to learn from devolver. Do you guys remember Mr. Caffeine? Oh yeah. How could I forget? Mr. Caffeine.

That was, okay, for those of you don't know, there was a Ubisoft show in like 2012, 2011. Yeah, like early 20s. They have this guy hosting and he just called himself Mr. Caffeine because he was like super high energy and he just kept, he kept, he like made some weird noises. Really like, it was before cringe was like a thing people said. It was maybe the thing that inspired people to start saying. It was the first, the first cringe.

It was the first cringe. Like as a transition between things, he would go, D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D. It was so weird. It was just so strange. Yeah. Mr. But thank God for him, because we're still talking about him, like 12 years later.

So there have been, I mean, like, E3 is kind of legendary for having all these weird conferences with, like, meme moments. There was a, like, Konami conference one year that was just, like, batch it. That's why I like Ubisoft. Like, Ubisoft does do weird crap. They're a little more, like, they're not as knowing. It's more like they're just being ridiculous, but it was kind of fun. But the thing is, you don't have that as much anymore with the pre-recorded stuff.

Right. You're missing that live energy. and that's unfortunate. But yeah, the Ubisoft had like a marching band one year. Sony had, of course, the infamous Ridge Racer one. People used to bring cars up.

I always get excited when there was a car. It would be like they're doing forts or whatever and it'd be like, a car. Everybody would come up on stage and it'd be like, holy shit, they got a car into the building. Oh my God. And then it just sat there and they'd be like,

so let's look at the game and it was like a car. Thank you. Oh, man. All right. My name's Jesse. This question has been kind of rattling around in my brain for a while, but recently I finished Infinite Wealth. But after like 100 hours or so, but towards the end, you know, I'm like, okay, I need to pick

out my next game. So I chose the Final Fantasy 7 remake slash Rebirth, which I've been on like the last three months, finally finished. But towards the end of Infinite Wealth, or like right when I finished, I kind of had this feeling like I was like, oh, I'm excited to play, but then I finished the game. And I'm like, I just couldn't start the Final Fantasy right then. And so it was like this weird, like, feeling. And I wonder if you guys have ever experienced that playing game that you just really loved. And then like, what did you do to kind of like get past that? I want to say that it's like

a form of grief, but that feels overly cavalier. But it is like, but I'm kind of being serious that like when you're, especially a game that you really love, I'm assuming you like it's infinite well. And you play like a huge, huge game. It kind of becomes part of your life for like a very long time. Eldon Ring was a game. Elton Ring was exactly what I was thinking of. You have to have a funeral for it. Right. And everybody can get together and like say their...

You pay a TV, you talk about what you loved about the game. Right. You start a podcast. You talk about what you loved about the game and then you move on. I do think that there's a point after something ends, and this is true with me anyways, for TV series, movies or anything, where I just need a minute and I can't just start something else. I actually do go and like, I mean, it's kind of like a wake or something. I go and read reviews or, like, watch YouTube videos about it with all the spoilers and everything,

because now I finally can watch them all and, like, see all the different takes about the ending of whatever, you know, Yakuza or Final Fantasy. And then that can be kind of tied me over. And then usually just go through that period where you're like, oh, maybe I'll play this. And then you play five minutes and you're like, I don't want to play this. And then you play something else. And you go to your backlog and you find a much of crap that you don't really want to play.

And then eventually something sticks. But it just kind of takes time, I think. Yeah, yeah. Wow. You're just reminding me how great Eldon Ring is. I mean, hey, DLC coming like very soon. Because we are all about to just play it again. And I feel like, I mean, I don't know that something like that is going to happen for Infinite Well, so I feel like it's not going to happen for you.

But I did get to have that emotional experience, especially restarting Eldon Ring, of just being like, oh, right, this made me so happy. I'm finally experiencing it again. I haven't been happy since then. And so finally I am again. And yeah, I don't know. It is a unique feeling, though. And I do remember, I mean, I think,

feel like we had conversations like that on the show about that game and other games where we're like, wow, it's done. And we need to like process that we're kind of sad, but glad it happens, sad, it's over. This is why a lot of people just don't finish the games. That's true. When I was saying, RAPD.

Just don't beat the final boss. Yeah. As a kid, I would just get to the final boss and I would stop. Yep. The TV shows, there are people who like just don't watch the last few episodes of a TV show

because they're like, they just kind of, let it taper off, but it's really because they kind of don't want it to end. Yeah. Or, I mean, Game of Thrones, you should just stop. That's a little different. But yeah, so yeah, there you go. Cheers, man.

Hello, my name is Leon. Shout out to the triple-click Discord. Hey, shout out to the Discord. So my question is actually part of the introductions channel, the question that they have listed. So if money is not considering, money is no object, what's your ideal vacation? Oh, wow. That's a good one.

You're not going to go to Honolulu because you're playing infinite wealth? That game feels like a vacation, so I don't need to go there. I would go to Iceland. I think that's kind of expensive going to Iceland. Yeah. And yeah, I would like go on one of the, I think you can do trips where you like backpack from hostel to hostel or something, like through Iceland. Are you going to do that? Are you going to do that?

I am going to Norway, but that's pretty cool. It is pretty cool. I think Iceland for me. What about you guys? Oh, well, I am going to Norway, but my sister lives there now, so it's not, it's more just, you know, we're just hanging out. But I think my actual answer is New Zealand. I've always wanted to go to New Zealand.

And not just because I think the Lord of the Rings movies are cool, but that's not unrelated. I mean, it is beautiful. It just looks, it looks so beautiful. When we were in Australia last year, everyone in Australia loves New Zealand that we talked to, I don't want to speak for everybody. But there were a lot of people. Everybody does. There were a lot of people.

We would be like, oh man, like we didn't get a chance to go to New Zealand and we should. And they'd be like, you should go to New Zealand. Australia sucks. Should not have come here. Like next time this go to New Zealand. And we were like, okay, Jesus. We'll go next time, I guess. Chill out.

That's so funny. So yeah, apparently it is a lovely place to go. But it's like it's on the other side of the world. It's quite a flight. It's not even just that money is no object. It's like I would have to be just fully different time zone. You literally lose the day of your life. You do.

Yeah, you're going. You lose it, but they hold it and hawk for you and they give it back to you and you fly that. That's right, sir. No, I don't mean with the time zone change. I mean with the plane. Oh, sure. Well, that's true. You don't get that back.

You don't get that time back. No. My answer's pretty boring because it's Japan, which I know. No, but I mean, I'd love to go there too. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like that's what everybody answers. And I'm just like, yeah, same.

Same. I mean, they answer that for a reason, though, right? Yeah, that's true. It's an incredible place to visit. Yeah, everyone's always shocked because a lot of press people have been to Japan. Yeah. Have you never been? And I'm like, oh, no, I've never been.

Yeah, because at Kitako, we had Brian Ashcroft in Japan. That's right. For a reason for any of us to go or for us to spend the money to send us out to Japan. You should just get Bloomberg to send you. And I don't know, come up with the reason. Yeah, Uncle Mike. You're just not. Hey, Mike.

Well, so now I have a complication. Every time I travel now, I leave my wife home with two small children. Yeah, well. You're just such a good guy. You are. You are a good guy. So if I were to be like, oh, yeah. He's a great father.

I'm just kidding. Well, here I'm making plans to go to Japan and leave her alone with him. So, yeah, that's also a factor. Yeah. But yeah, that's it. Thanks. There you go to those places. That's a good question.

Hello. Hello. Hello. I'm Joe. Hi. Turn the mic up a little bit. Oh, yeah. Yeah, you're tall.

There you go. So, Eldon Ring DLC in a little bit. Hell yeah. I recently, like, finished my first play-through, which took me forever because I'm bad at it. Nobody's good. Nobody's good. And I've also fallen down the rabbit hole of, like, Eldon Ring lore videos. And so I wanted to ask, what is your, like, piece of, like, weird niche part of this enormous game that you hope the DLC comes back to in some way or to see more of in the DLC?

Oh, what was your name? The loathsome dung eater. What was the name of the other, the woman who, like, looked kind of like Malena? I'm going to get all the names and stuff. You did her whole storyline and talked about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That would be cool. Their whole story is really fascinating.

Yeah, I don't fully understand what's happening in Eldon Ring. No. And I may never know. That story trailer was incredible where it's like, at last, the gold was born from the red. And I was like, okay. I know what's happening, but I'm excited. I even watched Vati Vidia's video about it, which is like 45 minutes or something. And even that, I was like, no.

Like a poem that Miyazaki wrote that we all listen to. The lore in that game is so funny because there's like a big plot twist that you can discover by like doing an emote at like the right time and the statue will like light up this message and it's like America is Radagon. And everyone who sees that is fairly like, what? But I guess like the 0.001% people start screaming. He's like, oh my God, America's Radagon. Yeah. Great twist. Great twist.

I do think it'll be fun to play it just because playing those games and trying to take the lore in is fun because it's just really, really hard to swallow it all. It's almost impossible because of how it's designed. And then it is very fun after the fact to go and watch the videos and learn what's going on and then go play it again maybe or like really get a sense for what was going on. I'm so psyched. Got to brush up. Can't brush up before you play. I'm so psyched. I'm excited to learn more about Mikala. I feel like I don't understand who he is. So hey, it's going to be about him, I guess.

Yeah, that's what they said. We're going to find out. We're going to find out. All right. Cheers me. Hi, my name's Paul. Hi, Paul. So are you, any of you guys, are Kingdom Hearts fans?

Yeah, you know I am. Okay, cool. So we're going to do like a live shop slash consultants for Square Nix. We were talking about bad game titles. I feel like Kingdom Hearts is a legends. Legends in the field. I feel like Kingdom Hearts is a perpetrator. Oh, yeah.

One of their worst name titles is 358 over 20. two days. Terrible. They also have 0.2 birth by sleep. And if you're not a Kingdom Hearts fan, you have no idea

what any of these children. If you are, you have no idea. Yeah, even if you are. So that was for the 3D. Yeah, right. Fortunately, their next game is four. But like, you never know.

Maybe they're going to pull out. I feel like after three. I mean, it was such a relief when Kingdom Hearts 3 was announced because it was like, oh, great. And then they even made a joke in the game about the title. I mean, if people played it,

they know what I'm talking about. That's funny. They like, do the, like, Kingdom Hearts 2.5 joke or whatever. But yeah, it's like they know how stupid it is. That's the only way you can have a bad title, I think, is if you lampshade it. But even then, it's like, what are you doing? Where you next is a game called Various Day Life.

Various Day Life. That's a T.S. Eliot poem, I think. To be fair, Kingdom Hearts itself is a pretty great name. That's a great name. Yeah, it's kind of meaningless. You have to say it like, Kingdom Hearts. And then it makes sense. I think you have to go all out if you're going to do it.

Are you looking up all the titles? I'm going to read a title for everyone. You're spoiling our title. I can find it. You got us started. We were resisting the urge to talk about names. I'm still calling it from your future show. I'm going to find it in a second vamp for me for a second.

Well, so Kingdom Hearts, they have 1.5. So 1. And then 1.5 is like a revised version of 1. And then 2.5 is like a revised version of 2. And then there's 2.8. Yes. And I don't know what that is. There's 0.2.

Also, I guess combined they make Kingdom Hearts three? Yeah. Okay, here we go. Yeah, I wasn't really good at fractions as a kid, so I'm not really sure. Only there in a square annex. Yeah, well, and you don't have to do it. All right. So, if you're going to release.

3x8 divided by 2, they could just. If you're going to have a ridiculous name, you can go all the way in and go fully ridiculous, which is something that Kingdom Hearts could do. There is a band called King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. That's right. I recently got a question about this band on Strong Songs, and I had to read the title of this album on the show, and I'm going to read it all for you.

This is how you do it, if you're going to do a long name. Petro-Dragonic Apocalypse, or Dawn of Eternal Night, an annihilation of planet Earth and the beginning of merciless damnation. If you're going to go all in, go all in, because that's a great name for an album, even though it is ridiculous. It has a semicolon and a colon in it, and it works. Pretty good. I feel like that's the Coheed and Cambria album, too.

Yeah, it does sound adjacent. to that. It sounds like it has a comic book tie-in for sure. Nice. Thank you. Anyway, Kingdom Hearts. Cheers. Hello. Hello. This is a question about psychoticy.

My brother and I watched it last year, and we were like, oh, it's so good to see, like, the studio and whatever. I ended up crying at some point. It's really good. Yeah. I can't recommend it enough. And my question is, what studio slash game would you guys wish had a documentary of this? size and detail or you wish it

comes out like in the future. Literally all of them. I know. I think you could tell that story at almost any game development. I know. I mean, Double Fine has some particular characters but I think they all do. But the key that that working is that Tim Schaefer is so charismatic and funny that it's like fun

to spend so much time with him. Because also you're rooting for him. Right, right. And so you need kind of a protagonist who is that charming and fun to watch. And I'm sure there are some out there. Like Phil Spencer. Right.

I'd like to see it in a Japanese studio. I mean, that would be cool. Like a Squarionix. Or like FrommSoft, imagine that? Yeah, FromSoft. I'd always say, I'd love to know more about how Frumsoft works. They're like all just... They're like sitting in a dungeon in a poison.

In a Poison swamp. Yeah. Suffering. There's a remake trilogy. I would like to get into Squierreonyx and just an entire episode about how they name their games. the names department

yeah I don't know we're gonna talk about that on a beans cast and have been sort of Mattie's been finishing up and watching it and also you know I well up God Psychodicy is really good if people haven't watched it yet it's really long but it's super watchable and it's amazing it doesn't feel long

I was kind of intimidated by the length before I began it but then it just starts going down so easy it's like just watching a TV show and you just get attached to all the characters and you're like oh my God what? There's Twitter. The thing it communicates that I think a documentary like that would do for any other studio,

that would be really cool and helpful, is how people leave over the course of the documentary, especially like major people, Anna Kipnis, who we know and who is like, the heart as described as the heart of double fun. Spoilers for things that happened in the world. But it feels like it. She left in the middle of development, and like she's just one of several people. And you can see how people leave and then new people join. And like the way that an organization subtly changes because an organization is just the people in it,

It's really an amazing thing to watch. It's not like tragic or heroic or anything like that. It's just like watching that kind of large scale human story. So I would love to see that for a game development studio or any kind of like collaborative, creative project like that with that many people working together. Because that's the coolest thing about it. We should never get to see that. Just about the three of us. Just going about our day of lives.

Once a week podcast. There's like three episodes on YouTube and each one has like 16 views. It's mostly like each of us playing Eldon Ring in our respective apartments. We're on Discord talking to each other. Yeah, an entire episode. Hey, what should we do this week? Oh, let's do it. I know questions.

Okay, see. It would be good. No, that's fun, though. It's fun to imagine, but nobody else would allow that kind of transparency. Unfortunately. Like, they were like from the beginning. So, okay, so I think what makes psychotasy really stand out from even other documentaries is that a lot of companies that do documentaries,

do it as a marketing tool for their games. Whereas with Psychodicy, Tim Schaefer and Doublefine set out from the beginning to make something that was like a work of art on its own. So they were like, we don't want this to promote psychonauts. We want this to be like a standalone piece of art that teaches people about game development. And so they allowed like ugliness to get in there.

And they like were willing to show things that no other game studio would ever show. So it's stuff. And then also the other wrinkle there is that if you work there, you have to agree to be on camera, which is not something that a lot of studios would do and not something that, like, some people even there, like, we're a little bit uncomfortable with that. So it's tricky, but, man, it's a miracle that it exists. Yeah.

Yeah. It's, I feel like every single person who plays games should be forced to watch it. Like, before you type something on the internet about games. Lazy devs. You're going to weigh in on something. First, you have to prove that you watched all $30? Exactly. Yeah.

And have you seen the first four hours? albums of psychotasy, et cetera, et cetera, yeah, you have to say. Hello, my name is Aaron, long-time listener, first-time caller. Cheers, thanks for coming up. Y'all like to make predictions, so I wanted to ask you to make a prediction. Do we like to make predictions? Or have we held ourselves hostage to the idea of making predictions? Remember when Kirk predicted Silk Song was going to be out in May?

You know, it still could happen. Did you specify the year? I didn't. Okay, okay. So, hey, May 2028. Yeah, right? I don't say that. No, man.

Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, so every couple of years, I guess maybe every decade, a studio will come out of seemingly nowhere with a game that becomes part of like the gaming elite. Think of like From Soft with Dark Souls or CD Project Red with The Witcher 3 or Larian with Balders Gate. Do you have predictions about where the next gaming elite studio is going to come from? Oh, interesting. Something that I noticed when we were talking about was it the Game Award nominees was how many. studios were in Europe now, like how many studios that were making really great game. So it seems

to me as though there's just like a lot more heat coming out of Europe than there was 10 or 15 years ago. So maybe there. Something from Europe. Yeah. Yeah, well the problem is there aren't a lot of like those mid-sized studios that are independent or kind of like under the radar like those barely exist anymore. Unfortunately.

There is though like I don't know, I was just talking about Crow Country which is made by a really small, I think English studio, right? It's just like a couple of guys in Britain. So there are still studios like that that come out of like nowhere. Like they were made, super clips, they made other games.

But I just, they just don't, they're not top of mind when I'm thinking about studios. Yeah, well, I mean, indie devs are not,

like Balatra came out of nowhere and sold a million copies. But I guess for some of it, like Dark Souls, Witcher 3 is kind of another level. You're talking about bigger games. That's like a seminal, like an industry changing phenomenon.

So, yeah, I don't know. Maybe, Powell World, does that count? I mean, I was thinking about how much. Well,

in terms of looking, we have to make predictions about the future, right? Like, so, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, but it's part of why it's hard to predict because Pal World, I mean, in some ways, I was like, yeah, Pokemon with guns is going to be pretty big. Right.

Even though it wasn't quite that actually in the end, but it still definitely was like, it looked interesting. I was interested in it ahead of time. But like something like Hell Divers 2, I mean, I know Hell Divers 1 was cool and people liked it. Right, no way. I would have predicted that. I didn't know how hilarious and fun Hell Divers 2 was going to be. I mean, this is why it's a fun question because it's like it actually is really hard to predict. and we are often wrong, tragically wrong in our predictions.

We try to be right. We score so high when we count them up at the end of the year. Yeah, yeah, we usually get like... And the winner with one prediction right. Two out of ten. Well, because it's really hard. And that's part of what is exciting about it is that we just don't know. I think we can...

I think you can get a good sense of like what's going to be a hit. Like when I saw Animal Well, the first time I saw Animal, I was like, that game is going to be killer. But to predict what's going to be kind of a like... Like what studio? Life-changing. Yeah. Dark Souls, all-generating

once-in-a-generation-type game. It's a little trickier. Yeah. I don't know. Just a little trickier. So predictions are hard. There's your answer. Fair, fair.

Thank you. Cheers. Hey, guys. My name is Juan. I am from Mexico, and I live in San Diego. And I think I'm 46 years old, and I grew up with Super Nintendo

playing J-R-PGs and learning English while reading, you know, those badly, you know, translated. Whenever you guys say it's bad, I'm like,

I thought it was good, right? You know, over the years, like, one of the things that's happened as I go older is that I have less people

to talk about, you know, my passion, my hobby, right? And I've been married for 10 years. My wife is a non-gamer. I'm also a musician,

like you guys, and I listen to strong songs, of course. Oh, nice. Cheers. So I'm, I'm going to go, you know,

watch these podcasters live. She's like, oh, cool. gaming. Have fun with that. What do you want to come? I'll go with you, whatever. And we're driving and we're listening to the latest episode.

And then I go like, let's listen to the strong songs episode. We both love Peter Gabriel and you were like doing it in your eyes. And I was like, I listen to this song a thousand times. And this guy just makes me find new things that I never heard of it. I couldn't identify, right? So I was like, well, everything you're talking about is like all you, right? that I always find it difficult to talk to someone about this and I feel like being around, everybody here is like being with my friends.

That's the great thing about these shows. Last time I was in L.A. was a year ago, and I was just walking around in a farmer's market, and I ran into Hero Noble Sakaguchi. So it was like, whoa, and I took a picture with them, and I told my wife, who do you think I found? And she was like, I don't know who that is. Final Fantasy, like, you know, my favorite game.

It's like, oh, cool, right? So my question is, what is the nerdiest niche thing that you experience that you can't share with anybody only with a crowd like this? You can only experience in a small room with other people that you're in a discord with. We can just bother each other. Yeah, it's true. We're lucky. But, like, what are the things that even each other don't care about? I mean, for me.

Kirk has some, like, music nerd shit that, like, yeah, probably. I mean, I don't know. He's like, I just found the best trombone. I do actually, you know, I'll like buy a like EQ plug in that I'm really excited about. And so then you'll try to tell them about it. I'll be like, this thing, it has like, it does side chaining so you can like duck the audio underneath it really easily. And it was pretty cheap too.

And it's really good. And you guys are like, that's great. Cool. Yeah, I'm so happy for you. I guess that's one for me. Yeah. I don't know. I guess it's X-Men for me.

I certainly have people in my life that I can talk to about X-Men. You have an X-Men podcast. I do. I do. But you have an X-Men podcast. Yeah, but it is like a thing where it's like, you know, it's good to have like at least one other person in your life that you can talk to. You should join the triple click Discord, I guess is what we're saying. I am.

I'm in the Discord. The Discord is definitely a good place. I think we have time just for like a couple more questions. Yeah, just these last two. And then, uh, thank you. Nice to yours. Thank you. Hey, I'm Micah.

Hello. So listening to this podcast, I'm always so impressed that, you know, all of you guys are married. you managed to have careers. You're like, man, I can't believe. Wow. It's impressive the word you're allowed. Surprising. That was the first thing on the list.

And seeing us in person, it's even like, really? So you guys also manage to have careers. You guys, or most of you read books. You cook. And I guess my question is about time management. I'm impressed by how you guys

managed to have all these things in your life and also play, make time for video games. And I guess I'm curious how you manage to do that, you know, what time of the day do you guys spend playing games? And how do you manage to do it? Right. And how do you manage to do it without taking off your respective spouses? Yeah. It's a good question.

I feel like it's hardest for Jason because he has kids. Right. Kirk and I... Not having kids is definitely a huge life hack. The first thing that makes it a good Now, it's hardest for Kirk because if Kirk plays video games during the day, he's not working. That's right. That's true. Whereas where we're working. Yeah, that is actually another life act that we have.

That's true and I don't play video games during the day anymore. I used to when I was at Kotaki. It's harder for me now to find time to play games. It's a rare game where I'm like, all right, I'm going to do the whole thing, the whole hundred hour thing. Well, so the easiest is having a switch and a seam deck because then, yeah, this is really it. I think it's perfectly normal for married couples to be like sitting on the couch together and watching TV.

and someone or one or both of them has the switch out and the seam deck out. So that's how you get a lot of gaming. At least that's how I get a lot of gaming. And it's helpful to set up streaming to like I've got my steam deck finally working with like Moonlight and streaming off my PC and like I haven't set up the PS5 streaming but I could. And that makes it so you really can just play anything. Like even if it's a big, you know, graphically intensive game. This is the nerdy shit Kirk always wants to talk about.

It's true. I do. I just want to tell them about. Hey guys, I just installed Moonlight. Well, really I insult Sunshine because they're going to discontinue game stream on the NVIDia driver. So Sunshine is way better because it's open source. And also it can run HDR streams to your Steam Deck. All right, one more question.

But yeah, Steam Deck and Switch is the real answer. And also it's hard. It's hard to do everything. Yeah, and like pausing the game and talking to your wife periodically is important. I think it's a universal condition. We always feel like we don't have enough time for everything. Thank you, guys. All right, one last question.

Here we go. All right, thanks for coming out, guys. Nice to meet you in person. Yeah. I'm not a game developer, but I love to think of hypothetical games that I'd love to make, even though I've opened Unity once and went, nope. I tried into your pastime. But I was wondering, do you guys have games that you would like if you had money behind you and a team behind you that are,

it's just as a thought exercise games that you'd like to make? The Keeley thing. Keeley going around. Yeah, Keeley, that's a great idea. Getting publishers for his award show. It's a great idea. I mean, I love that episode we did recently where we just went on an extended riff about musicals that we thought should be video games.

I've, like, continued to think about some of those ideas, like the fiddler on the roof idea, and the cats idea or whatever. I just keep thinking of them. And I think that that should happen. Somebody should license those musicals. And you have saxophone hero. Sexo and hero, right? That would be good.

I've always thought, I think that city halls are really interesting, like town hall meetings and that there's a lot there that you could do with, like, a lot of different types of games. I, well, I'll say this idea. This is a podcast idea. I think it would be a really cool podcast if you had a made-up town and it was like the minutes from each town hall, meaning like the recording. And you had people coming in and there was some like ongoing narrative

and people were arguing about stuff, but then things were happening. I think you could make a game that was just about not a town and not like Sim City where you're managing the whole thing, but just the town hall. And like, and it's just people showing up and there's maybe the crank who shows up every time and is like angry about whatever on his street.

And like you have recurring characters. It could be like a narrative game. That would be pretty cool. I just thought of that right now. I don't know. Maybe it'd be terrible. Do you know the story about how I got into like writing about games? I started off before I got into games I was doing like local journalism.

Oh yeah. So you told me the story but I think you should tell the people. I was in a town hall covering it. And it was a zoning board meeting and they were arguing over whether a fence is allowed to be 20 feet or 25 feet. Look, your homeowner now. You know. This is like serious business. Yeah.

And I was like, man, I can't do this. I'm going to kill myself. And again, I was like, what can I write about that? That would be more interesting than this. The picture would be like, what is the most boring thing in the world? And can we make that entertaining enough to be a video game? Yeah. Yeah.

So that's my idea. No, that'd be fun. I've seen, there's like a blog in my town that collects the police complaints. Those are always fastening. Oh my God, it's so funny. Like, neighbor said that kids next door were too loud. Officer came, thought that music was fine. It's pretty incredible.

to blink 182. It was pretty cool. It's the new album. It could be like a papers please, but with like noise complaints. Sure, sure. It could do something like that. Yeah, yeah. With the officer, the police blotter.

But yeah, I mean, I'm sure we're any other, any other game ideas. I'm sure we could, we could come up with some if we really had to. We should do a game jam, a triple click, triple click game jam. That'd be fun. All right. I think that is it for this week's episode. But thank you all. Yeah. Thanks so much, everybody.

For coming out. This is a lot of fun. Thanks, everyone at the Terragram Ballroom. You guys have been great. Big thanks to the Terragam ballroom. Thanks so much for putting this on. Thank you so much for coming. Yeah, thanks everybody.

Bye. All right. See you all next time. Are you ready to do the bye? You have to do another one. I said bye. Just in case anybody didn't hear it. Bye.

Just so you don't worry. Jeff Pelee's jacket, Jack is the Lord. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schrook. Maddie Myers and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration.

You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network, and if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at Maximumfund.org slash join. Find us on Twitter at triple clickpod. Send email 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.