Triple Click - Maybe Every Game Is 'Early Access'?

Episode Date: April 2, 2026

What's the deal with Early Access? What are the pros and cons? Kirk, Jason, and Maddy sit down for a wide-ranging conversation about all the ins and outs of what it means to sell an early, unfinished game, from Baldur's Gate 3 to Star Citizen and so much more. One More Thing: Kirk: Contrapoints on Saw (YouTube) Maddy: Beyond Good & Evil (2003) Jason: Wonder Man (Disney+) 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

So with early access, you might notice bugs, like buckets keep spawning in to various areas. We know, but we haven't figured out how to patch it. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we talk about games that launch in early access, what it means and whether all games are secretly in early access. Or maybe they all should be? What does it even mean to be in early access? I'm Maddie Myers. I'm Jason Dreyer.

And I'm Kirk Hamilton, and hello, my friend. Hello. It's good to see you both. Do you guys remember how my daughter is obsessed with Animal Crossing? Of course. Yes. So she's been obsessed with it for the last two months, still remains obsessed with it. And the other day she was like, Daddy, I wish there was a way I could just take Animal Crossing and like play it somewhere else. And I was like, sweetie, I got some news for you. I realized that she's never actually seen the switch taken out of the dock because she only plays it on the TV.

and it blew her little mind. That's amazing. I'm just imagining your daughter saying this to you and you look up and there's a camera crew and the Nintendo ad department is all standing there. The entire Nintendo advertising department. And then suddenly it cuts out of playing on a rooftop together. Yes, yes.

There's some red solo cups with apple juice. It's all kid friendly. Some ukulele music is coming in from somewhere. A Benetton ad of diverse friends suddenly gathers around you. singing and being like, let's play some Splatoon three. Wonderful. I think I told you guys last year, like right before the Switch 2 reveal, I saw that play out at a coffee shop where like a group of like, they actually were a group of diverse

looking friends like sitting around the switch playing Mario Yacht in New York City. It does happen sometimes. Speaking of thrown together groups of people having a wonderful time, you're listening to triple click and you could join Maximum Fun and be a subscriber to Triple Click. Be a member and get bonus episodes along with everybody else on the cool rooftop that is the exclusive party only available at Maximumfund.org slash join and once a month you'd get a bonus episode from us. Our most recent one is us spilling the beans about everything in Resident Evil Requiem. Really fun. counterpart to our main feed episode about that game.

And the next episode that we're going to put out is going to be about the Sopranos again. We talked about season one a few months back in a bonus episode. This time around, we're actually going to do a big double-stuffed Oreo of an episode. We're going to do seasons two and three and one mega. A little context here is that we wanted to talk about the Spranos for us. ever, and we asked listeners, and a lot of people were like really into the idea of us doing a ton of bonus episodes about the Sopranos, we decided to do a little bit of a compromise and do a couple of smashed seasons together. So we'll do, we did one, we'll do two and three together,

four and five together. Maybe we'll just do one big one for six down the road. So rather than doing a new bonus episode for every season of the Sopranos, we're going to condense a little bit. But it'll be fun, and that'll be our project over the next year or two. It will be. And it will be. And it will. definitely be, like I said, a double stuffed Oreo. It'll be a big ep, but that'll be really fun. So you're definitely getting something good if you're subscribed to that bonus feed. So once again, it's maximum fun.org slash join if you want to join. It's as if you're getting two bonus episodes for the price of one. Kind of. I mean, it's about two episodes of the Sopranos. But also you're getting many,

many dozens of episodes. I'm getting like 70 bonus episodes. Yeah, you're getting like a heck of a lot of episodes for the price of one. I don't know for the monthly price. Don't worry about it. You're getting a lot of bonus. The value of a triple subscription just goes up with every passing month as we add more to it. Exactly. It's kind of like Xbox Game Pass, except unlike Xbox Game Pass, we do not remove things. I don't know if we want to compare it to that. Could you imagine if we did? We're actually removing the Last of Us Two Beans cast. We're taking out some of the older ones. The Mario movie episode. But then we put it back in later and we like announce. and we're like, the Mario movie episodes coming back, people.

We're not doing any of that. All of those episodes are available all the time. It's an incredible deal. You can slap any device in your house and say, this is a triple-click, and it'll be completely accurate. Okay, Kirk, what are we talking about today? Today we are talking about a topic that comes to us via the digital version of the rooftop where everybody gets together to listen to Triple-Click.

That is the Triple-Click Discord server. where user Nick a little while ago, who suggested this idea that we talk about early access just as a hot topic. And that seemed actually like a great idea. Sometimes we get great ideas from our listeners, and that is one. If you have a good idea for the show or a bad idea, really, if you have an idea, we prefer good ones, though. Send it to triple click at maximum fun.org. That's the most reliable way to get something to us. You can post in the Discord, but we don't always check that.

So email is the best way to go. So anyways, thanks, Nick, for this episode suggestion. We're going to talk about early access, that being the practice of selling games that are still in development and allowing people to start playing them early, something that became a practice known as early access anyways in around 2013. But early access to games has been around a little bit longer than that, and we can, of course, talk about that as well.

This is a really kind of a broad topic, and something that we are just going to kind of throw out there. I'm going to throw some chum into the water for the two of you and then I'll sort of study it and eventually dive in and see what I want to chew on myself. But yeah, early access, let's just start. What are your thoughts on early access, the two of you? What is your history with it?

What are your current impressions of it? Maddie, how about you kick us off? I would say we all probably have a similarly long history of it. The first time I think I played an early access game was Day Z. although I could be wrong, could be misremembering. But I remember thinking that was kind of an interesting way to play that game. It was in Early Access for several years. And it was already felt pretty complete when I was playing it way back then.

And my biggest Early Access memory, which I'm sure we're going to talk about today, is Hades, where I remember a friend of mine playing it in Early Access a ton and streaming it on Discord and watching it. I didn't play it myself at the time, but I saw him playing it and was like, oh, okay, this game looks kind of cool. Doesn't seem like it has a lot of story going on because at the time it didn't, but it's got some cool fighting mechanics and Greek gods I like those. And then when it actually launched in full, it was a super different game because it had way more going on. But that core combat that I'd seen my friend playing was there except also evolved. And so those are kind of two examples that I would propose, which is a game like Daisy, which was already pretty similar at its

core concept in early access, it just would get refined over time. And then something like Hades, which I saw as being pretty different in early access, much more minimal, and then became really different when it launched in 1.0 and was kind of more prominent in 1.0. And I think people kind of think of the Hades 1.0 release as a big cultural moment for that game. And those, there's a lot of examples in the middle of those two. But the fact that early access encompasses those two games and everything in between is pretty fascinating. You really don't know what you're going to get at all as a player when you hear the words early access. Yeah, that's true.

It can mean a lot of different things. Jason, how about you, your history and some opening thoughts on early access as a concept? Yeah, I think my first early access game, I guess if you want to describe it as early access, even though that term wasn't around back then, is Minecraft because that was in its kind of alpha state before it was formally released to the world in 2011. And yeah, it's interesting. I think there are two kind of big buckets of type of video game. And one is the kind of the gameplay-centric kind of systems-based games, sort of like Elkirk is pantomiming, holding a bucket and starting around in it.

It's full of systems. That's the gameplay bucket. Scaring up those systems. kind of the Minecraft, the Daisy, where really a demo of the game can tell you everything you need to know about it. And from there, it's just about expanding and adding new things. And, okay, that's actually really distracting. Okay, Kirk, put the bucket down. And so those are also like the perfect games to pitch to publishers because you can very easily make a vertical, not easily, but you could make a vertical slice that demonstrates what the entire game will be about. And then there's the more narrative-centric games, which I guess Hades would be a little closer to that. maybe that would be in that bucket, where it's a lot harder to see what the entire story is going to be like, what the entire game is going to be like, but you can still play around with early access.

Baldur's Gate 3 might be a good example of a game that has its feet in both buckets. It's kind of like imagine a person standing in front of the buckets and instead of picking one, just sticking a foot in both of them. It has a foot in each bucket, which is quite the mixed metaphor. Is this the developer that has three points that people are hanging out in? That's the metaphor that we're describing. Well, okay, so Baldurz's Gave, well, in this metaphor, what is inside of the buckets that we're described? Are the games themselves inside the buckets? Baldur's Gave 3 is, we split it in half and put one in each bucket?

I mean, the buckets that I have here on my desk, yes, the games themselves are in there. Got it. It's a little bit of a slurry, just sort of. It is. A bunch of different narrative games in that second. And Baldur's Gave 3 might be a good example where, like, if you had told me in advance that a story of a game like that would be in early access, I would be like, that's so weird. why would you do that? But because it's so system-heavy, you can have all of Act 1 or a good chunk of Act 1 be in early access and just have players test out and flesh out the systems and they spent years iterating because of Early Access.

Broad thoughts are that I used to be very skeptical of Early Access. I think my initial reaction back when it first started becoming a prominent thing in 2013 was, I can't believe people are just trying to take money from players to just like pay for these buggy. buggy games that are just unfinished and might never be finished. And that part is still the case. And there are still examples of games that were in Early Access but just never actually launched and people just wasted their money. Same as kind of unresolved Kickstarter campaigns, that sort of thing. Maybe that's the third bucket, the unfinished bucket, the bucket that was never finished.

But as time has gone on, I've grown to appreciate Early Access as a unique part of the video game industry, something that only games can do that we can't really see in other forms of media, and also something that I think can do a little bit more than just sell a game early and help that developer finish it financially. It can also build a community and allow for the kind of back-and-forth playtesting and development and iteration that I don't think would be possible if you kept a game to yourself. And it's gotten to the point now where I think some games not choosing to go early access or have kind of an open process,

where that was actually a death blow for those games, such as High Guard might be the most prominent example of that, where if that game had gone into some form of early access or open beta or something, would have been a very different story for that launch, I think. So my thoughts on that have evolved quite a bit over the years, and I've grown to appreciate the value in early access and seeing a lot of the charm.

And I also think I've been surprised to see that for players, a lot of the times, at the beginning, years and years ago, I assume that players wouldn't be that interested in. A lot of them would just want to wait for 1.0. But what we've seen over and over again is that sometimes with early access, a game can have this big spike of players in sales when it launches in early access, and then another big spike of players in sales when it goes into 1.0.

So it can really work out nicely for a lot of games. So I guess my opinions have kind of leaned positively in recent years. Yeah, that was a lot of interesting ideas. I'm going to come back to one of those, I think. But I'll just say that my... Are you saying it was a bucketful? It was a whole third bucket. It's just so Jason's interesting ideas.

The fourth bucket now. We've added a lot of weekends. Oh, is it? Okay, I lost track of those. They're here on my desk. Oh, you've got some buckets there. Okay. So I'll come back to one of those, I think.

and we can go from there. But yeah, just to say my history with this, like you, Jason, I played Minecraft very early on. It was right when I was kind of first getting into writing about video games. I remember actually Penny Arcade talking about it. And I think they were instrumental in spreading the word about that game. And they had talked about it on their blog or something or I don't know. And they were pretty visible around 2009.

And that kind of got a lot of people talking about it, and I saw it around and started playing it. That's so funny to remember a day when people like read webcomics. I know, and read Tyco's blog and where that could really move the needle for Minecraft. Yeah, it really did. It really did. And it made me check out that game, or at least led to the sort of popularity of the game that made me want to check it out. Because at the time, it wasn't like anything I had ever seen before.

And, yeah, I actually played more of that game in early access than I did when it came out. it was actually pretty great when it first launched and the roughness of it was interesting and it was kind of elemental to what it's like to play it even now it still kind of feels like a game that's constantly in development

even though it's owned by Microsoft and is in some ways far more corporate when you log in when you look at that first screen I mean it still is just like all these weird updates and servers and all this really open-ended stuff

that looks very early access even though it's been around I think I mean it's to Microsoft's credit that they've kind of allowed it to be its own thing, very independent from the rest of Xbox. It really is. Honestly, that is such a surprise and so cool. It's like something that Microsoft never gets credit for.

And it's not to say like, oh, Microsoft, whatever, I don't know. Microsoft has screwed up so many things. But it is crazy because it's so easy to imagine them screwing Minecraft up. And they didn't. At least they haven't yet. And that's remarkable. Anyways, so the other game that I think of when I think of Early Access is actually Divinity Original Sin 2.

I was a little earlier on Larian than a lot of people that I knew. I can't even remember why I wound up playing that game. Actually, Divinity Original Sin 1, I should say. That was the first time that I played a game in Early Access, and it was Larian. They have done Early Access, I think, for all of their games, or for that one and for the sequel, and then for Baldur's Gate 3. And I remember playing it and thinking, this is remarkably feature complete, this is really cool, it really plays well. I think it was the whole first act of the game, the kind of same approach. that they've subsequently taken.

And then when the final game came out, I found it overwhelming because it was so much bigger. And I'd already spent so many hours playing the Early Access build that I didn't wind up ever finishing it. So I think that's kind of a recurring theme where if I put a lot of time into a game in Early Access,

I then don't finish the game when it finally comes out. Or now more commonly, when a game comes out in Early Access, Hades II is a good example. I'll just kind of say, I'm going to wait, you know, Fields of Mystery. There's another one where I really want to check that game out, but I'm just going to wait until it's in 1.0, even if the Early Access version is incredibly feature-rich and complete. For Divinity Original Sin 1, was that like Ballard's Gate 3,

where it was like the first act of the game was in early access, and so that's what you played a bunch of? Yes, that I think is right. I don't know how much of it it was. I played a lot, and that game is, like, structured pretty differently, even than Divining Original Sin 2. It's been a while, but it's a game where there are, like, two protagonists, and it's designed to be played in co-op,

and there's a whole, like, rock-paper-sissors system for making decisions, and you can play online with people. It's very cool, but kind of a different thing than the sequel, and it's been a long time since that happened. But, yeah, I'm pretty sure it was something like that. It was a big chunk of the map, or it was kind of a whole complete map with a bunch of quests and all kinds of stuff to do.

And because those games were so involved, it was, like, a lot of time to just screwing, around and it's so systemic that you can sort of just play with it forever. And of course, they're watching everyone do that and they're learning and, you know, changing stuff and fixing things and, you know, squashing bugs and so on. They make a ton of changes over the course of that early access period. It seems to be kind of one of their secrets to their success. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like getting players in there. I mean, a lot of developers during the course of game development, and you constantly have people come in and play your game. You have playtesters giving you feedback all the time.

but like early access is just that at a bigger scale and I guess the risk is that you burn people out you reveal kind of too much of your game in advance people get sick of your game etc etc but I don't know in today's world it feels like more of an advantage than not especially for a certain type of game and those larion games I think it works really well for for a variety of reasons also bug testing and a lot of bugs got squashed I remember playing early access for Alders Gate 3 in Act 1. It was a lot bugier than it was in the final product. And you could see that because Act 1 is so much more polished than the rest of the game. You could see that Act 1 was in Early Access for three years. Yeah. I remember having mixed feelings about early access early on like you, Jason, for that reason, because I saw it as a way to take advantage of player goodwill. And I still feel this way on some level. I just feel a little differently about it now, given the financial struggles of the. the industry and my increased knowledge of them and just the fact that it's almost impossible to make any game in the first place, especially for indie devs. And so the idea of crowdsourcing,

bug testing for people who are willing to do it, which is essentially what you're signing up for a lot of times when you're playing an early access game is the understanding that you will be playing an incomplete product. And you can choose to engage with that product as a bug tester. And sometimes there will be specific avenues to do so that you'll be openly invited to do by the developer on the store page. They'll have an email where you can submit requests or problems. Like that entire culture of early access is something that I would say I still have some mixed feelings about even though now I think I have a more understanding and compassion towards the fact that that is the way that early access works for a lot of developers.

For what it's worth, it's kind of a larger scale version of something that's always been around. I mean, friends and family betas have been a thing for a long time. Back in the day, I'm not sure if this still happens, but it certainly did happen that companies like EA would go and like find people off the street and bring them in his tester just in exchange for like a pizza or something like that. So it's not always like a paid gig, this kind of bug testing aspect of it. So yeah, I mean, I can see why you might feel conflicted about the labor issues there. But it's definitely been around for a while. And then, yeah, I don't know. It's an interesting one.

It's like when I have a book manuscript and I ask people to read it and give me feedback, like I'm not paying them for their work there. Granted, most of the people I'm asking are like friends or family members. So it's not like I'm asking the public to just like give me free labor. but I don't know if I were to do that and be like, you know what? I want to kind of crowdsource this and get like a thousand people to read my book and give me thoughts on it if they want. I don't know.

Is that taking advantage of labor? I don't know. I don't know the answer to that question. That'd be really weird and kind of cool. I mean, I think that if they want part of that question is the most important part. If people want to do that, they can. I mean, I do early access for strong songs on Patreon now, where I release episodes a week early on Patreon,

is a little bonus for people. And most of the time, it's just a nice little thing. People can check out the episode early. Almost no one cares. They just want to support the show, and they get this nice little extra thing. But occasionally, someone will notice, especially like if there's a noticeable just editing screw up or something, they'll catch it and say, hey, there's a weird thing where the guitar plays when I don't think it was supposed to. And I'll be like, oh, man, like, thank you so much. And I think that's fine.

I mean, like, they want to do that. Like, people like the show. they want to support it. And of course, it is just me. You know, I'm not electronic arts. I'm not rock star games. You're an indie creator. Yeah. It feels like people are maybe a little more, like allow for more early access with indie games than with games from big publishers, even though, as we're talking about, and as you've both sort of alluded to, big publishers have a really hard time now. And, you know, not even big publishers, but like larger studios, like the studio that released Highgard, can release a game that's a sort of mid-budget but significant undertaking that crashes hard enough on a release that they, a lot of people lose their jobs.

It's this really awful outcome. And I look at something like that, and I think, man, they totally could have done Early Access, and this could have been a very different narrative. I always think about No Man Sky when I think about this topic, because No Man Sky released by Hello Games in 2016. So a few years after early access had become a thing And it was this kind of It was this very weird situation Where the game did very well But was kind of reviled by a whole lot of people

Because it fell so short of the promises they had made And then they spent years Making those promises come true And rebuilding goodwill And it almost felt like the game was an early access game It just wasn't called that And now No Man Skyas is this completely transformed unbelievably different and really impressive experience.

And it's like it's, I don't know when 1.0 would have even been. I'm not sure what anyone at Hello Games would even tell you about, you know, when they consider the full version of it to be. But it's a game that has just continued to change forever. And that brings me to the question I want to throw to the two of you. Is early access a meaningful, is it just a descriptor? Or does it actually mean something? And to put that another way, are all games really synonymous?

early access. Okay, so I have some food for thought. All right, this is, this is, maybe this is a hot take. I don't know. Let's, let's declare that this is a hot take to go into the fifth bucket or something like that. I'm running out of space for buckets on my desk. I feel like early access is the same thing as a live service game, except generally without the monetization part of it. So kind of a live service game is by nature in early access. Fortnite when it came out is a drastically different game than Fortnite is today. And you could describe it as like, oh, when it came out before it even had Battle Royale, it was in early access. Just like No Man Sky. When that came out, it was very different than it is today, just like Minecraft or whatever actual early access games, Hades, too,

was very different when it first came out than it was today. But the biggest difference is that with an early access game, generally you are asked to pay at the beginning, sometimes for a discount than the full price, which is part of the appeal. And you are not expected to pay again as you play. like the game, there are no in-game micro-transactions. Generally, I'm sure there are cases where there are, but generally speaking, especially since some of these are single-parent games. And No Man Sky, I mean, I think one of the reasons they built up such goodwill over the years is that they were just continuously updating that game for free and adding new stuff to it

without charging people for a single DLC, a single expansion, anything like that. People could just buy it and download it for free. Granted, that game, that whole, the whole decade of No Man Sky only worked because that game at high enough sales at the beginning to be able to justify them spending the money to keep updating it over time. But I think that's how you build up goodwill, whereas a Fortnite or something else that sells in-game stuff, it feels a lot grosser because it feels like it is just continually generating revenue off of these new updates and expecting people to keep paying to keep up with the FOMO or keep up with their friends or whatever. So I think it's kind of, we're talking,

these are kind of two sides of the same coin and a lot of games are in this space, but the early access and the games where you just pay once and that's the end of it just feels a lot more, I don't know, genuine, less exploitative, that's for sure. I think you have something there, but I think what's different about early access is very psychological because the term itself has, I think, a inherent goodwill built into it because we all now understand the term to mean this game is not complete. You're here behind the velvet rope to watch as we're still putting together the party. Your forgiveness is implicit there.

And that helps every early access game, I would say, inherently. That and if there's a discount, like you mentioned, Jason, that helps too because it's like, okay, I'm also kind of investing in this. And maybe I'll be glad I got it at a discount because it's going to be so great later on. Whereas a live service game, I think almost has the opposite effect, where people will kind of be leaning back with their arms crossed and being like, all right, you're going to really have to impress me with this because the live service landscape is so competitive. And I'm not even saying that the landscape for a regular, regular, early access game isn't also competitive.

It's still trying to get eyes. It's still trying to get people to stop playing Fortnite and play their game. But there's just something really different psychologically about those two terms. I think people feel skeptical about live service games because they're like, okay, you're expecting me to keep logging into this forever. And that idea that it's going to keep changing and improving is not necessarily a promise that has the same intention behind it as early access. I don't know why, but it just doesn't. I think you're onto something. I mean, I think there's a really profound difference that is psychological on the part of the player.

Even though what we're talking about, if you just look at what's happening, you know, with the game's release and with how things are functioning, you know, yes, with a live service game, they're charging for updates or something like an Assassin's Creed, which isn't a multiplayer game, but Ubisoft does charge for, you know, expansions, even though they release a lot of stuff for free at post-release as well. Like, if you look at what's happening, it's harder to tell everything apart. But, man, the psychological thing is real. you could, I don't know how like early access works with games that will eventually be service games. So if we imagine a World War High Guard, for example, had been released in early access, like how would that have gone differently? How might players have thought of it differently if it was an early access game and it was described as such, instead of being a free to play ongoing game?

I don't know, but it feels to me anyways, Maddie, like you're onto something there, that when someone shows you a new service game and says, here it is, the new hot service game, it's a multiplayer shooter, here's all what makes it so cool about it. Players just look at that and think, man, this better be good if this is going to earn my time. And like we're launching this thing in early access. We're going to see what it is. We're going to find out together. That is just a kind of a different process as a player.

Even if functionally it's like actually very similar. The two things are very similar. It's implied to be collaborative, I think, is part of it, is that it's like you, the player, Even if that's only an illusion, the implication is that the player will actually have some input on the final product and help it in some way. I think that's right. And I think something that happens with service games a lot is that, you know, we've kind of described it as this upward trajectory with a service game. Okay, we're going to just keep expanding it and making it better. But that's not the case, right?

I mean, anyone who's bought into a service game knows that a lot of times the game gets worse or it changes in ways that you personally don't like. It embraces some other type of player who they've decided as their core audience. They nerfs some ability that was really fun, but they didn't serve their purposes. And that kind of thing also happens in early access games. It happens just in single player games. FromSoft will do this, you know, they'll nerf some weapon that everybody really likes an Eldon Ring. It happens across the board. But in an early access game, there is that sense of dialogue.

And you will see players in the early access forums or on the developer Discord saying, no, don't nerve this thing. It was super good. And there are a lot of success stories where developers will say, we made this change, and players were super clear that they didn't like it, and we realized they were right. And we went back and we figured out how to make the game work without the change that we had made, and it made the game better. And those are the kinds of changes that lead to an eventual 1.0 where people are like really psyched. And your hardest score players who gave you that feedback in the first place feel really good because you listen to them and that you change the game to make it more fun for them. I want to get at the question you asked earlier, Kirk, which is are all games really in early access?

Because I think that's another. I'm very glad that we didn't dodge this. Yeah, I don't want to dodge that because that's another interesting just kind of take, interesting food for thought. I was thinking, I mean, you could ask this question about a lot of games. I guess the answer to that question is that like you can kind of feel if a game feels like it's complete or not, or you just have to kind of use your subjective judgment? Like, I don't know. Edmund McMillan was on the show a couple of months ago talking about Mugetics, a game I loved,

and I played to near completion, almost the final final ending. And he told us that he's going to be working on this game for years to come and adding more stuff to it and DLC and all this other jazz, which to me seems like that, isn't that the definition of an early access game? But if you play this game, it's palished as hell, it's humongous. Like, you wouldn't think of it as early access. So I don't know. Is it a live service game?

I don't know. I don't know how you would describe it. I think the borders were just kind of blurred. He was like, I don't know. He was like, yeah, I don't know. I mean, the definitions were at the end, we're just kind of like trying to categorize the chaos that is video games. And that's never really possible. But it is, I mean, I'm also thinking about Crimson Desert, which is one of the biggest games of the year has sold like five million copies. It's came out of Korea. Came out a couple of weeks ago. I dabbled with it, played the first like three or four hours and really did not like it. a lot of people seem like they're really into it. And I was just talking to my friend, who's, this game has, like, penetrated the mainstream. It's like my high school group chat is talking about Crimson Desert. So I was talking to a friend of mine who's really into it. And he was talking about how every week it seems like the developers are adding these patches

based on what people are saying in Reddit. So, like, the controls were complete disaster when it launched. But since then, they've been patching and playing around with them. All this other stuff, they've just been going through player feedback and addressing it, which is the type of thing that you can only. do when a game is out in the world and played by millions of people. And therefore, you're just getting this barrage of feedback. But it does add credence to that point that all games are really in early access. And the flip side of that is like, if you don't want your game to be thought of as if it's

in early access after you release it, then you, what, don't add updates and address player feedback. And that's also a problem. So I don't know. In a way, I think playing any game is a conversation between the player and the developers. And so why not carry that forward? Man, I remember talking about this when Mass Effect 3 came out and everybody hated the ending and they patched it and did a new ending.

And that was very controversial. And some people were like, man, they shouldn't have listened to those whiny players. And I remember we were talking about this at Kataku and Stephen Totillo, our boss at the time, and I also was on his side, was arguing that like this is something that only games can do

where they're in this conversation with the player or the developer and they can be reactive and change things based on how they feel like people are reacting. I think games are closer to like, I don't know, theater than they are to movies or books because they are a conversation between the player and the creators. And so therefore you have to be willing to play around with the form in a way that maybe you wouldn't

in a more quote unquote, auteur-driven medium that's more like, this is my art, here it is. You can interpret it however you want. I think games are a different beast and early access is just a big part of that. And so, yes, all games are early access in some way or another. Yeah, this is an old, I mean, it's an old artistic process, right?

Think of a stand-up comedian who takes their routine to kind of close room and works on their material and looks at what gets the best laughs and kind of develops it and hones it. And then eventually they do their comedy special and that's kind of documented or a band. Which is also like theater and like video games. I would put that all in. let's take out some new buckets and let's put all those in the same bucket. Yeah, I mean, I guess it's performing. Well, it goes beyond even performing, though.

So, of course, like a band that breaks out their new material and works on it and hones it on stage and then finally takes it into the studio after the tour because they've really worked out how it works and what the crowd responds to and what feels right when they're performing and then they record it and you get the final version. But then, of course, it probably keeps changing after that. But then there's also, like, people who write episodic fiction. people who, some people who write like fanfic and stuff on fanfic boards and they release new chapters. And then they had these rabid fandums that read along and give tons of feedback. And so they

write for those people and they change the story according to what people want. But, you know, I mean, Charles Dickens did this with David Copperfield too. Like he released his stories episodically and he would hear back from people about what was happening. So you have to imagine he was at least somewhat affected. Yeah. I always think of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for this and how angry people were when he killed off Sherlock Holmes. It's like one of the first examples of rabid fans forcing the author to bring a character back to life. And that was him being like, I'm sick of Sherlock Holmes and I want to do something else. Right? They're like, no, no, no, no. And the fans, the angry, the angry fans, as we know them today, we're like, you can't do that.

We're doing the equivalent of a Twitter dog pile to you. It's funny. Yeah. It's like what people did with the end of that Sherlock show where they became convinced that it was all a huge, like whatever, a fake out and there was going to be a better finale. Yeah, and then people did that with stranger things also. Yeah, the strange things thing. Everything old is new again. I was just talking about how I met your mother. People did that with the ending of how I met your mother,

and they did an alternate ending for the DVD, though. It's like, actually, this thing doesn't happen. Yeah, so I think there is still something to be said for Steven's observation, which I agree with, that video games offer this kind of unique way that the actual finished product can just be changed or expanded or updated, and that games have always been expanded after release. And it's something that we just sort of expect as part of the medium in a way that we wouldn't expect in a movie or a book. We wouldn't expect someone to be like, oh, reworked the last chapter.

And now in the new editions, your favorite character doesn't die anymore because that bummed too many people out. Like that would not happen in a book. And you actually could imagine that happening in a game. Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, that's what makes games cool in a lot of ways, is that kind of that conversation. that you're having. I always think about this when I'm playing something. It's like, what was the designer thinking here? Like, what's this kind of like, whatever, what are they doing to try to trick me or delight me or surprise me? And yeah, early access to extrapolate it. But yeah, I mean,

any game that gets patches is like technically launched in some sort of early access. Maybe some, maybe there's a spectrum of early access and some games are earlier than others, but all of them are on it. And it's true. Some of this is that it is like a category on Steam that your game can be call early access, and that simplifies things in a way, because once it's labeled early access on Steam, it has to fulfill a certain number of, you know, quality. It has to have a couple things be true of it in order for it to be early access, even though there are games like Star Citizen, for example, which is in early access and has been forever and possibly will be forever more. We don't know. But has been in early access for a long time. Even though it's not on Steam

early access, the game is not finished. People have been paying them scads of money for more than a decade and they do keep releasing stuff and letting people in. I think some people get a kick out of that. They like just being part of it and seeing this super ambitious thing, even if it never does come out. Isn't it up to a billion dollars in revenue at this point? I have no idea. It wouldn't surprise me, but I don't know. It's a huge number. I stopped following that story a little while ago and then whenever I look into it. I'm like, wow, this is just what a saga Star Citizen is. Yeah, PC Gamer headline December 25th, 2025, so just three months ago, four months ago. Star Citizen is on course to reach $1 billion in player funding in 2026. And we still might not get to play a single player

campaign. Man, so it's looking at that kind of process that, like where you're buying in to be a part of the development for this long period of time, whether it's Star Citizen or a steam early access game. I think that that process actually plays a cool role that will become more important over the years to come. This is something that's come up a few times when we've been talking about AI and its role in game development or just creative work in general. But something that I've noticed more and more is this trend toward disclosing and showing how your work was made. Like, you know, not just the sort of this was made by humans disclaimer at the end of the episode, but also the documentary about the show. know, the behind the scenes, look at how things work. The Patreon or the other, you know, sort of crowdfunding site where when people join it,

they get to see you making the thing, you show them all your work. And it's partly, it used to be you would do this to justify the fact that people are paying you. You'd say, look how hard this is. Like I'm spending so many hours making this thing. It's your money is going to feed me while I do this, you know. But now it's also become, look how I make this thing. I'm really making it. And I'm not just like, you know, having a computer crap it out for me and then taking your money.

And with more and more games, like with games, AI becoming more and more of a part of video games, having people in there during early access, seeing how it's made, getting to know all the different developers, seeing the teams, you know, hell, something like double-fine documentary, like getting to really look inside the studio, that's very good for communicating the human work that goes into the game. And it strikes me as something that will probably continue being fairly calm. Yeah, it's funny you bring up psychoticy because I was going to bring it up in a different context of related to this topic, which is something I always think about in relation to the idea of games being updated is the very beginning of that documentary, where they have that footage of the developers making Psychonauts 1.

And it's like this really old, grainy VHS footage. It's delightful to watch. Of course, we recommend the whole thing. But just that one pocket of the documentary is really fascinating because when they get to the end of developing, they talk about pressing the game to a disc and still having bugs in the game and like that tension just being part of putting a game on a disc. And that just used to be the way that games were made. I mean, this is like an extremely obvious statement, I guess. But heading into this discussion, it was something I was thinking about a lot, is that games didn't used to feel as much like

theater or comedy sets as they get to now because of internet updates, which, feel completely normal to us as part of this conversation. Console games specifically. Because PC games, PC games always had that. True. Or some PC games always had that. To a degree. To a degree.

But there would also potentially be something that you would buy. And then if you didn't have great internet access, maybe it couldn't be updated. And there's still people now who don't have great internet access and are playing games in this form and maybe don't relate to some of this conversation. And that's fine. And that idea of games, I think, has really changed. from something where the game had to be finished in time to be pressed to a disc and be good enough back then

to be something that couldn't be updated and could at least be playable. And that, I think, is just an interesting piece to this. Like Psychonauts one, I think, is maybe an example of a game that wasn't in early access. If we're going to say all games are in early access, maybe we say that one wasn't. And all the other games of its ilk couldn't have been.

Right, it would be all current games. Yeah, exactly. Any console game before 2013 or so was just static by nature, yeah, for the most part. Yeah, I think about a game like Subnautica, which was a game that I discovered after its 1.0 release. That game is amazing. Man, that game is so good. I was just watching videos when I was sort of doing research for this episode and thinking about early access. It was launched in early access, and people will make videos now.

You can find them on YouTube where they'll release videos where they go back and they play. different builds of Subnautica to see how the game changed because it has, that game has a very, like, a pretty substantial fandom, and I think people are very interested in that whole process. And it did change a lot over the course of early access, and it got a lot better. Like, the version that I played was this exceptional game, really, really cool and well-made. The earlier versions just have a lot of different stuff in them, and it's so cool to go back and look to see what was there and what wasn't, and especially neat that it is possible to get those early builds still and to still play them. Like that kind of transparency, you know, it's sickos only,

right? It's not going to be for most people. But then again, if you're doing early access and the builds exist, why not put them out there and let people see that process? I think that's a really cool part of early access if people are up for maintaining the archive. Totally agree. And I still think it's really fascinating because I didn't play Baldur's Gate 3 in its original early access form to hear about how the characters changed over time and were completely rewritten in some cases. I think the character Will is the one who got the biggest rewrite, as I recall, but like, they've all been rewritten in some form or other. And that I just think is really fascinating that like there's people out there arguing like, oh, this other version of the character was better. Like,

I just, I think that's really cool. I think that's something about this kind of art that is really, really neat and without early access and without like the transparency of including those builds as something that everyone can play. You don't have those experiences and those debates among fans of like, well, what's the real version, quote unquote, of this story? Yeah. Yeah, that's incredibly interesting. Almost like different people like different dungeon masters campaigns that you're just hearing about, but they use the same kind of module to do the campaign. So they just have a different take on these characters that are kind of sketched out for them, but they come up with their own version. And that is really cool. It is. The Larian games are unusual, and that like most, like I mentioned before, most story games

are not like good fits for early access, but somehow it works for those games. One of the thing I wanted to mention that I kind of alluded to before, but just want to dive a little bit deeper into is the community aspect of it all, because I think that's a big part of what makes early access successful. And it's actually, it's a really good model from a developer point of view for a lot of reasons. I guess the big downside is that you kind of ruin some of your surprises and you lose your opportunity to make a big splash and get all word of mouth on launch and stuff. But the upsides are really myriad. I mean, you get, first of all, you get the revenue coming in earlier than expected. So you could potentially be, spend more time in development because you have more people buying

your game and therefore giving you more padding to your schedule and therefore it can make a better game. You get all that feedback that we talked about earlier. But then this is, this might be the most important one is you start building a community and you start getting all these people who will be advocates for your game and start building word to mouth for your game, which is super important in a market like today's where there are so many releases. I mean, there were 20,000 releases on Steam last year, even if like a quarter of those were like real games. That's still so many, right? So being able to build a community early, I think is really important from a marketing point of view. I remember a few years ago when Yacht Club Games announced Amina the Hollowar,

which is a game that's coming out real soon. I'm really excited about. They did a Kickstarter. And I was interviewing them for the announcement. And I asked their studio head and director, Sean Velasco, why they were doing a Kickstarter. And he was like, well, we don't need the money. It's not about the money. It's about starting to build this community of people on Kickstarter who are like invested in the game

and supporting it and can't wait to play it and are talking about it. just like building this ongoing conversation. And that's the one thing High Guard never had until the Game Awards announcement and then it was all just a negative conversation. But if you release your game in Early Access, you can start building a conversation and people are talking about your game.

And if there's cool parts of it, people will be more willing to kind of ignore or at least put aside the bad parts or be willing to let the developers have room to fix the bad parts and just be talking about it and talking about it. and it can really be beneficial, I think, in a lot of ways. I think maybe the swaggiest current early access release,

the one with the most swagger, is Deadlock, the Valve multiplayer shooter, which I sometimes, I very often actually forgot about. You mean the unannounced, a long game. You mean the game we're not allowed to acknowledge it. It's like there's early access and then there's secret early access where it's been out for years and so many people have played it. It is apparently exceptional. And I've seen footage of it and I've seen people on YouTube.

talking about it, and yet it also doesn't exist and hasn't even been released yet. Hasn't even been announced yet. And yet it is out there, which is a pretty, I mean, a unique circumstance for a number of reasons, partly because Valve is the one behind it, but still just a funny game that's worth mentioning in this conversation. And we're running out of time, but I want to say, I guess, at the end here, that I think this is an interesting topic. I'd love to hear from some developers about this. I think if you're listening to this and you're a game developer and you have any experience with Early Access or there's maybe some angle to the topic that we didn't talk about or that you think we should be considering, none of us make video games. We'd love to hear from you.

So shoot us an email at a triple click at MaximumFun.org and let us know your thoughts on early access. If you've ever worked with it or put out a game in Early Access or talked to people about it and have some thoughts or some knowledge, we would love to hear from you. Yeah, I would also, I would love to hear if there are any downsides aside from, like I mentioned before, just kind of like ruining the potential impact of a 1.0 launch or like getting reviews on the internet too early or something like that. That was always the downside I heard a few years ago, but I wonder if that's changed and if there are any other kind of potential downsides nowadays. Because generally it seems like a pretty good thing for games that it fits. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

So yeah, shoot us an email and let us know your experience with it. and we look forward to hearing from you about that. All right, let's take a break, and then we will come back for one more thing. This is John Hodgman and Janiferni coming to you from the flight take. Please be comfortable. We have now reached our cruising altitude. Well, that's correct. You are now free to listen to the latest season of E. Pluribus motto.

As always, this season will discuss the official models of U.S. states and territories for your enjoyment. We'll cut the window. You'll see local iconography and creatures of all sorts. It'll be discussed this season, including California quails. Puerto Rican frogs. North Dakota horses. Spiders of New Hampshire. And all matter of official and unofficial state crudids.

I've now turned on the enjoyment sign. So please start enjoying new episodes of EPLUrubis motto every other week on Maximum Fun and wherever you get your podcasts. Sit back, relax, and enjoy your listen. Saginaw, Michigan, Galveston, Texas, Albany, New York, the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul and Muncie, Indiana. We've just added these cities to the growing list of meetups on April 23rd for MaxFud Meetup Day.

Didn't hear your city or don't know where your local meetup is? Head to maximum fun.org slash meetup, and we've got all the details there. And if you still don't see your city listed, host your own. Find somewhere, a park, library, cafe, bar, any public space a small group can hang. Then fill out the form at maximum fun.org slash meetup, and we'll add you to the page so other folks in your area can find. That's maximum fun.org slash meetup. Hope to see you on April 23rd. And we are back for one more thing.

Jason, what's your one more thing? My more than thing is a TV show called Wonder Man. This is the latest from the Marvel Cinematic Universe came out a couple of months ago, and I just watched it. By the way, if you Google, I was Googling Triple Click Wonder Man to see if we had ever talked about it. I didn't think we had, but just like double check. And it says on the top of Google AI, the Google AI box, it says, on a discussion on the podcast, Triple Click, journalist Jason Shire reported that a source working at the Marvel Studios

Wonder Man described early production troubles, allegedly stating that it, quote, sucked, which is just entirely... Wow, you've really been developing your Marvel sources is pretty good, man. You're branching out. Entirely made up. And then so I click, there's like a little Reddit link and I clicked it. And it leads to a Reddit post that is like, Jason Trier said on Triple Click that he spoke to one of his sources who was working on the Wonder Woman game.

And they are aiming for such and such release. And that seems unrealistic. So... Look, that is an understandable mistake. Wonder Man, Wonder Woman, a TV show, a game. I mean, it's easy to get mixed up with this kind of thing. I mean, the takeaway here is that Google says that gender is not real, and therefore it's all the same, Wonder Man, Wonder Woman.

Typical woke AI. Anyway, so I just watched Wonder Man. It's eight episodes. Each one is like half an hour, so it's a very easy watch. And it is quite good. I really enjoyed it. It's like the least superhero e. a Marvel show has ever been. It's kind of like the, it actually reminded me, Kirk, of the way you

described Night of the Seven Kingdoms, in that it's a grounded story set in within this world of larger things. I mean, there is some, like, the main character is a superhero, so there is that and that's part of his story, but still, it's like a, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a type of show that I think we wanted to see more of from Marvel. I think there was maybe one action sequence in the entire show, which made me very happy. Um, so it stars, yeah. Yaya Abdul Mateen as this guy named Simon Williams and Ben Kingsley as Trevor Slattery, who you might remember from Iron Man 3, where he plays the Mandarin. And that's part of his role.

So he's this actor who had played the Iron, and that was a big twist of Iron Man 3, that it wasn't actually the Mandarin, it was this guy playing him. And so the two of them are these kind of actors at different points in their career in Hollywood. And Simon Williams is hoping to get cast in the role of Wonder Man. in this big high profile kind of Marvel-esque production that is a remake of a film that he grew up watching in the 1970s or 80s. And the show is mostly about their relationship.

There's also Joe Pantoliano, aka Ralph Siforetto and The Sopranos, has a fantastic role in this show that I won't say to think about it. Yes, AKA Cipher, aka Joey Pants. He's fantastic in it. But really, it's a show about Simon and Trevor and their relationship. and the way they kind of interact and just build this budding friendship, despite being very different people, unlikely friends, I would say. And yeah, it's really cool.

It's a very human story. A lot of it is about Simon and his powers. He has some superhero powers. You will be shocked to hear that a Marvel character is superhero artist. But a lot of it is about that. I won't get into the specifics, but a lot of it is about that. A lot of it is about his kind of back and forth with Trevor Sottery, about all sorts of things and their adventures and their discussions about what acting actually means,

which leads to some really good stuff. There's a whole scene where it's just like Trevor is really just trying to convince Simon that he doesn't need to over prepare and he just needs to just kind of act. And they talk about different methods of acting. It's really interesting. And there's an entire episode that is just a standalone story, kind of in the vein of that Mythic Quest episode of Dark Quiet Death, that Last of Us episode about that couple. That episode is super cool, the standalone episode.

And yeah, it's just a really solid show, which is not something you can say about a lot of Marvel shows. I've enjoyed a lot of the Marvel shows I've watched, but more from a perspective of like, oh, it's just having something on while I play video games. This is a show where I put my steam deck down for most of it because I actually wanted to watch it and it looks like a good show and is a fun show to watch and there's no, I don't know, like acrobatic flips and superpower, like CGI effects for me to like tune out of. It's all just people interacting. It's like I said, it's a very human story instead of a superhuman story and I appreciated that. I highly recommend it. So no big like PS2 graphics fight scene in the climactic episode where Wonder Man fights an evil version

of Wonder Man? You're telling me that's not how it ends? Nope. Nothing like that. Interesting choice on their part. Yeah. Yeah. There is a little CGI here and there, but it's used in a way that I did not have many complaints about. And yeah, I just, I really enjoyed it. That's great to hear. I wanted to watch this. I saw it was getting good reviews, but I feel like it really came and went and like very few people watched it. And I just kept meaning to get around to it.

So I'm glad to hear it. No, I actually, it got renewed for a second season. Oh, good. So it must have done well. I saw that. I think that was when I first got on my radar. when it got renewed and people were saying, yeah, it's pretty good. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm glad to hear it's good. It tracks that it's kind of following this trend towards smaller stories. I feel like even like when I was watching Night of the Seven Kingdoms, it just felt like this is a pretty natural evolution for all of these big franchises. They've just exhausted the possibilities of going bigger and bigger and it's time to go smaller.

It kind of makes that upcoming Avengers movie where they're bringing everybody back feel a little like that's moving in the old wrong direction, but I guess we'll see. That's cool. that makes me want to watch it. We don't have a Disney subscription right now, but when we get it again, I'll check it out. It's also very funny, I should mention. And like, the showrunner, Andrew Gass, was a writer for shows like community and 30 Rock and Brooklyn 9-9, so he's got a big comedy background. And you could see that in this show as well. The 30-minute thing is also a big point in its favor.

30-minute's just like Nice of the Seven Kingdom. Remember I said that about that? And yeah, it's a big appeal. And yeah, it's really just a fun bromance between these two guys. and there's some other cool stuff that happens along the way. But yeah, I mean, if there's one criticism that I can make of it in Maddie, I would be curious to hear your take on it, is that like there are literally no female characters that have any like development or story whatsoever. Like they can, they get Wonder Woman.

Okay, this is Wonder Man. Exactly. This is Wonder Man. Actually, they don't anymore. That game isn't ever coming out. Yeah, that's true. Based on, well, according to Google, gender is, is a construct. Yeah.

woman are kind of the same. So like, it's actually all, all of a piece. Yeah, I'll check it out. I, I don't know.

I mean, I, to give like a slight counterpoint to that, I did also really enjoy how grounded the Miss Marvel TV show was. And so that at least, it's not to say that Disney isn't still doing stories like that. And I'm also glad they're finally making anything about characters of color because for many, many years,

it was all white characters and male characters. So, hey, at least there's that. Right. That's something. They're getting around to it. Yeah. Yaya Abdul Mateen, for people aren't familiar, he actually played Dr. Manhattan in that fantastic Watchman HBO show. And he was so good. Remember how good that was? That was so fucking good. And he was he was really good in that. He was incredible. He is fantastic in this. He is, he is incredible. And obviously Ben Kingsley is Ben Kingsley. Yeah. And I mean, that Mandarin character that he played was so funny to me. So just the fact. but he's back is great. Yeah, ridiculous.

And yeah, the two of them, I think one of the reasons the show works is because the two of them have great chemistry and are both great actors. Nice. That's good to hear. Well, speaking of great female characters, Maddie, what is your one more thing? My one more thing is a 2003 video game that I had never played before. It's called Beyond Good and Evil. If you two ever played this game or did you play it way, way back in the day? No.

I didn't play it back in the day, but I have played it. Okay, yeah. I think I bought it on super discount on Steam many years ago, and it was just in my library, and I was kind of between games and was looking through my entire Steam library, just scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, hundreds of games. And I saw it there and I was like, huh, I wonder, I wonder what this game is like. So I installed it and I played it. It is not very long and I was pleasantly surprised by a lot of things about it. So I used to be kind of resentful of this game because in the the 2000s. This was kind of held up pretty often. If you had any type of critique of video games for not having many female characters in them, there'd always be some comment or several from people being like, well, your argument is invalid. There's Jade and beyond good and evil. And she's not like a quote unquote sexualized character. She's a journalist. She takes care of these orphans and this super futuristic version of the world where animals, anthropomorphic animals and humans live alongside each other under this like oppressive militaristic regime and like that's all kind of like a fun

cool world for a female character to be centered in and to have this fun aspect to her where a lot of the mechanics are around taking pictures because she's a photojournalist. And so all of that, you know, always sounded cool to me despite my resentment over it constantly being flouted in game arguments. So I always meant to play it. And also as we all know, there's a beyond good and evil game that has been in development health for many years at Ubisoft and will probably never be released. And that is interesting. Hey, for what it's worth, I heard the things were getting back on track in recent years. Only, only took a 14 years since it was announced. What's the, is Michelle Ansel still technically working on that? Is he left, right? I know he left Ubisoft, but is he consulting or something?

I feel like I saw somewhere that, I don't know, don't know. Anyway, sorry, not to sidetrack. Anyway, I don't know what the latest is. Maybe it'll come out and people need to get caught up on Beyond Good and Evil. So going back to a 2003 game, I have really low standards. I'm just like, this game's going to be so clunky. It's going to be hard to play. I'm probably going to have to look up a walkthrough because it's going to be totally opaque. Didn't feel that way at all about Beyond Good and Evil. I actually think it holds up pretty well. It was criticized at the time for being very simple. The combat is very simple. You like hit things and you have a charge up attack and like that's about it. A lot of the game is environmental puzzle.

that are also really simple at no point did I have to look up a walkthrough, which, again, for a 2003 game, I feel like that's really saying something. But I actually think all of that is part of what made this game a cult favorite, even though it wasn't super well reviewed at the time or like a smash financial success at the time. It kind of over the years became a cult hit because it does some key things really well. Jade is just a cool character for starters, but also the vision of the world is really original. And it's just, it just feels good to play, which again, I don't think I can say that about many games from this time period. As simple as the mechanics are, it feels like the people that designed those mechanics were like, let's just not complicate them at all and have them feel

really good. And that's surprisingly effective. I will say, if you want to go back and play this, I would recommend getting, there's an HD version of the game that apparently is way better on Steam Deck in particular, if that's how you also want to play. I have the original original version of the game and I tried to play it on Steam Deck and it's just a nightmare. Some kind soul has developed. That's funny because there's like there was a 20th anniversary edition of this game. I was looking at this because I was remembering. Yes, which I think might also be better. I would say get any newer version of the game than the original version of the game. Well, just to clarify, because I was remembering this. So in 2024, they released like an updated version of the game that

has like new mechanics and stuff and they like they kind of polished it up and cleaned it up. That's, I just had had a, it was like announced and then delayed or something, but it is out. So that, yeah, that's, yeah, that's, was that, and that wasn't the one that you played? That's not the one I'm playing. I'm playing like the original version of the game, which I think still holds up pretty well, but I think those other versions are probably way better. Some kind soul has developed a controller set on Steam Deck. You know how there's those like fan-made controller setups that you can download for this game

that works pretty well considering, and I've been using that, or used that rather, to play the game on seam deck, and that was pretty good. So shout out to that person, but overall, I would say maybe you don't have to play games from 2003 unless you're me and you're just curious how they hold up Beyond Good and Evil, really interesting game, did some cool stuff at the time, and I get now why people really loved it and remembered it all these years later, especially that Pokemon Snap kind of mechanic where you're going around taking pictures. I think that's really fun and really satisfying in the game and any game where you take a picture of something and it like goes in your logbook and you see the numbers go up. Like, come on. That's just, that's just fun. That's great

stuff. Yeah. I think I played some of that 20th anniversary edition and was struck as I usually am at the beginning of this game by just that feeling of loading into a whole new video game world that is so well defined and feels completely original and it's just full of cool, weird ideas. And they really drop you into the thick of it and it's just all happening around Jade and you have to figure it out as you go. Yeah, I loved that. And you just don't get that feeling that often. There's no like, oh, a big exposition dump is going to happen. Like a guy is going to tell you what's going on. No one ever does that. You're just plopped in and you just have to figure it out. And I think that's really bold as well and cool to see in a game that was from so many years ago. And I think

could still influence how people drop you into it. a video game now. Yeah, it might be like the French connection or whatever, but it makes me think of the fifth element. The fifth element has that same feeling of a kind of slightly bent, zany, sci-fi world that you just get thrown into and has so much going on in the background and you're kind of just like, you kind of just got to go along for the ride and enjoy yourself. That's cool. Maybe I'll play through that, that 20th anniversary edition. It's pretty short. It's like 10 to 12 hours, which is also nice. Like, it's nice to just play a game and have it be over in a reasonable about time.

Yeah, it is. Nice. All right. Well, I will go last. My one more thing is a YouTube video from the wonderful Contra points, Natalie Wynne, who doesn't put out as many videos these days. I think it's probably good for her overall. And when she does put one out, everybody pays attention, or at least everyone who likes

her videos. And I got a notification for this. And the video is just called Saw. And the thumbnail is a picture of Natalie. She always has very, you know, beautiful sets in these very, you know, theatrical. all wonderful looking videos, and it's her in a room full of barbed wire and kind of blades and stuff. And I thought, well, what's this going to be? And I clicked it. And it was a lengthy analysis, a critical analysis of the entire Saw film franchise. So I don't know what I was expecting.

But that's what it was. I have never really watched a Saw movie, not really that interested, or I find them pretty stressful. And so I'm not the target audience. is, you would think, for this video, and yet I watched the entire thing. And I found that by the end, actually, as a person who doesn't like the Saw movies, but is aware of them and has been curious about them, maybe I was the exact target audience for this video, because now I know a lot about them, in a way, after watching this interesting, smart person talk about them for an hour and a half. And I don't ever have to watch them because they seem really intense and gory and scary. I suppose not really scary, just like gross and stressful, I would say.

So the Saw Movies are a long-running, very successful franchise of films that's been around since like the early 2000s, I think. I'm not sure the exact date of the first one, but there have been so many at this point. Just, man, with all kinds of different directors and different actors in different styles of different quality. And they've really strayed very far from where they started just because so many different creative people have taken them over. But the fundamental idea is in a saw movie, say the first one, a group of people each wake up in some kind of horrible death trap. So like a woman wakes up and she has this crazy bear trap attached to her head. Or a guy wakes up. A woman is in like a barbed wire like net kind of.

And there's like barbed wire all around her and she can't move without getting cut. Or someone's like hanging from a arm, like I think it's holding their arm and they're hanging over some horrible death device. And so then the killer or the kind of bad guy of the Saw franchise who is called Jigsaw, and it's actually a guy he gets identified eventually. He kind of comes on the radio. He has a little like Monocuma style, Monocuma from Dangan Rompah style, like toy. It's this little like kind of clown on a bike, I guess, who sort of the voice comes out of him sometimes. And he basically says, there's some, do you want to play a game?

I can't remember it. There's like catchphrases and stuff. And he basically says, oh, well, you know, you always took your life for granted. And so now I'm going to show you that you really need to suffer and sacrifice something in order to prove you really want to live or whatever. He has this kind of ethos and he's trying to prove something. And so then the people have to do some horrible thing to get out of the trap. You know, I don't know, to get out. You have to like cut off your hand or something with a saw and it's horrible.

And so they're all kind of like that. Or maybe you're in a trap with one other person. A lot of times he makes these kind of moral, like, trap. where it's you or the other person and you have to sacrifice someone else's life for your own. It's like a kind of a torturous situation, though, as I think Natalie very effectively argues, these are not exactly torture porn, which was, I think, the term that became, that was used to describe them. And she really gets into the kind of visceral reactions that we have to horror movies and why we watch horror movies and how we're supposed to be disgusted by and disturbed.

by what's happening in Saw, and that that's, like, fundamental to what we get out of the movie, like how they derive meaning and how a lot of critics dismiss them, especially early on, by saying, oh, these movies, like, glory in all of this horrible violence, you know, they exalt in doing horrible things to people. But she says, no, they don't at all. Like, they depict it as horrible, and you're supposed to feel horrible about what you're seeing. But that's, like, what they're actually going for and what they're trying to tell you and what they're trying to make you think about.

So it's a really great video that really kind of elevates the whole discussion. I think she would roll her eyes at that because she jokes a lot about elevated horror and how Saw is like very not elevated most of the time. And she's not even really trying to elevate it by talking about it in her typically intelligent and thoughtful way. But it is just really fun video. So I wanted to throw it out there for anyone who is a lover of the Saw movies or who has never seen the Saw movie but thinks that's still something.

sounds kind of interesting. It's a really funny and just a really insightful and fun video that I was very glad to watch and I wanted to recommend it. So that's Contra Points on YouTube and her latest video, which is about the Saw franchise, and it's just called Saw. The guy who plays Jigsaw, Tobin Bell, has a very distinct voice and makes an appearance at the end of the Sopranos season three. That is very memorable. I hope he's playing Jigsaw. And Tony is trying to try. wrapped in a room. Yeah, Tony suddenly wakes up and he has a vice on his head. And yeah.

Anyhow, a good YouTube video for everyone. And that'll do it for this edition for this episode of Triple Click. This was a fun one. And yeah, sign up to become a member to get some of these bonus episodes we're putting out. That Resident Evil one is a lot of fun. That was a really fun conversation about a really cool game. And that's in the feed now, so you can listen to that. And you sign up to become a member.

week for people who pay attention to numbers. Next week is number 300, episode 300 of triple that's right. Episode 300 coming up. We'll have to do, we'll have to recognize that. We'll do something special. Yeah. Also, happy Passover. Yes, happy Passover. Yes, happy Passover, everyone. All right, well, I will see the two of you next week for episode 300. See you next week. See you next week. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mixed 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. Email us at triple click at maximum fun.org and find links to our merch store and our Discord server in the show notes.

Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximum Fun, a worker-owned network of artist-owned shows. Supported directly by you.