Triple Click - Our Favorite (Bad) Movie Tie-In Games

Episode Date: July 11, 2024

Who makes money when a game is sold but its developer has shut down? What otherwise good behaviors might tank creative projects? And what are the best (bad) movie tie-in games? This week, the gang opens up the mailbag to take some of your excellent questions.One More Thing:Kirk: Elantris (Brandon Sanderson)Maddy: SelacoJason: Final Fantasy XIVLINKS:Jason’s Suicide Squad Story: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-06/-suicide-squad-warner-bros-s-200-million-flop-haunts-the-gaming-industryJason's Hironobu Sakaguchi interview: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-07-03/-final-fantasy-creator-hironobu-sakaguchi-reunites-with-square-enix?srnd=technology-vpRiley MacLeod’s Aftermath article about the Dr. Disrespect story: https://aftermath.site/dr-disrespect-allegations-twitch-journalismX-Men Arcade Game Source Material, “Pryde of the X-Men”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBI8GIjf5HALuke Plunnkett on Chuds and Star Wars: The Acolyte: https://aftermath.site/the-acolyte-star-wars-controversy-ratings-this-is-all-terribleIGN article by Matt Kim about Asian representation and Assassin’s Creed Shadows: https://www.ign.com/articles/assassins-creed-shadows-yasuke-asian-protagonistWriting Tools by Roy Peter ClarkHow To Write One Song by Jeff TweedyPreorder 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

So there are video games based on movies and movies based on video games, but what I want is a movie based on a video game based on an older, different movie. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. And I'm sure someone's already done that triple adaptation thing I said, so don't yell at me for not knowing about it. It's a mailbag episode this week. We've got lots of fun questions from all of you to answer, so let's get into it. I'm Kirk Hamilton. I'm Maddie Myers. And I'm Jason Schreier.

Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello, my gamer friends. Hi. Here we are.

We're back. Back for another episode of Triple Click. A few things up front. I'm going to go through real quick. First of all, we will be off next week. We're going to run one of our bonus episodes in the feed. In place of a new episode, we're taking a summer break. So mark your calendars and don't be too disappointed when you don't get to hear new hot content from us next week.

Do you think a lot of people are going to put in their calendars? Like, no triple click. Do not forget. I think some people might. Okay. just so they don't wake up on Thursday scared, like obsessively refreshing their podcast. Just for anybody who wants to do that. We're just letting you know.

Also, we are playing Resident Evil 2, the 2019 version because I won the Bet, the predictions bet from last year. It's very exciting. I've already started playing it. Good game. Well, you won the tiebreaker. Yes. Yes, yes, yes. We need to stipulate that again.

Very important distinction that you should make every time. Yep. Well, it's just accurate, it's all. Yeah, I'm all about accuracy. It's a very secure way to react to losing something, is to constantly remind people of the technicality that you lost on. So anyways, because I won and I won thoroughly and officially, and I won, and as the winner, I got to dictate the game that we played.

It is Resident Evil 2 from 2019. We are going to play through the Claire play-through. So we're starting with Claire, And we're playing through that for our episode that we'll air on August 1st. So if you are playing along with us, play at least that much because that's what we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about Claire's dinky little pistol and her big huge grenade launcher and all of the fun stuff that she gets into at that police station. It's just a wacky hijinks. It kind of is.

It's a great game. I'm really excited to talk about it. Last thing. So you can become a member to support our show, which you probably know. and if you do that, you get bonus episodes each month. You can sign up at maximum fun.org slash join. You get all kinds of bonus episodes. Triple Cook, which we recently did was a big hit.

We talked about food that we make. We've gotten a lot of emails about triple cook. A lot of people talking about foods. That was really fun. And this month we are going to be doing a beans cast on two Christopher Nolan movies, the Nolan cast on Inception and Tenet. So that is going to be a lot of fun. There's a lot to talk about those movies.

They are very systemic and kind of gaming movies in some ways. And I think they're going to be really fun to talk about. So that's what we're going to do for this month's Beanscast. But you get a whole ton of those if you sign up at maximum fun.org slash join. One last thing I'm going to throw out there. At the end of every episode's show notes, you will see a link to where you can pre-order Jason Schreier's upcoming book, Play Nights, which is all about Blizzard Entertainment. And I've been thinking about it lately.

It's coming up. It's coming out in October. but I just wanted to remind people that pre-orders are very important for books. It is a very good book and that you should consider pre-ordering it. So check out the link in the show notes for that and, you know, support good video game journalism in book form. Heck yeah. That's very kind of you, Kirk. People will not hear.

People, like, people who'll hear no shortage of me talking about it a little closer to then. Well, we're getting in on it. Yeah, it just felt like it had been a minute since we mentioned it. And I know that the onslaught is coming in the fall. So this seemed like a good time to just remind people. you can pre-order it now. I appreciate it. Yeah, galleys, you just got a galley.

Galley's a galilee now. Very excited about that. The worst part about writing a book, though, is that, like, you have to wait so long before people actually get it. Like, it's excruciating, having to wait months before people can actually read the thing. Yeah, that's wild.

That's publishing for you. All right, so, Jason, what are we doing this week on the show? This week, we're opening up the listener mail bag, or, oh, my literal bag full of mail. Yep, we printed out. Yep. Pick out of a bag. And they're piping hot. Hot off the printer. I set them on fire before every burning questions episode. We're doing burning questions. Before we start, just reminder, you can email us at triple click at maximum fun.org. And as I say, every time, the shorter your email, the more likely it is, we'll read it. And the more interesting and unusual your question, not one of the ones we've heard many, many times before. Like, how did you get into journalism or something like that? Which is a fine question, but we've heard it a lot. So, The more unusual and the shorter your question, the better the chance that we'll read it.

Although we are actually starting with a bit of a long email, which I think was worth sharing. Maddie, why don't you start us off with this one? Sure. So this is from Diana, who writes, I'm a longtime fan of Triple Click. Thank you, Jason, Maddie, and Kirk for all the great episodes you've created. I've never actually written to a show's creators before, but I keep thinking about a recent episode where you brought up Assassin's Creed Chadows and their decision to have a black man as one of the leads in a game set in historical Japan. and wanted to share some thoughts. As an Asian-American woman,

I think there's context and historical baggage here that wasn't brought up. Specifically, that East Asian men really don't get representation as strong male leads in Western media unless it's a Kung Fu movie. There's a long and racist history of feminized, sexless portrayals of East Asian men.

Asian women see comparatively more media representation as leads, primarily romantically paired to non-Asian, almost always white men. We have a history of white men starring as leads where Asian people act as supporting cast members. Think Last Samurai starring Tom Cruise, with an Asian woman as a supporting romantic interest.

These days, it's generally accepted that this isn't great and things are slowly changing with movies like crazy rich Asians and Shang Chi. If the male lead of Shadows was a white man, I think the problematic nature would be easier to identify here. But because the male lead is a black man, there's more nuance. But I hope I've been able to share why, at least for me, it isn't as completely straightforward as how I think you portrayed it in the episode.

It just gets my goat that it seems that East Asian men so rarely get to be represented as a strong male lead in popular Western media. And this wasn't acknowledged. Best Diana. So I wanted to read this on the show. I don't think we need to talk about this too much because we'll talk about it more when the game actually comes out. And we could talk about how Yasuke the protagonist is portrayed in the context of the game. But I think it was worth highlighting for a couple of reasons. One, because we didn't really acknowledge that argument when we talked about this.

So worth highlighting here. And two, because I think it's worth noting that because the GamerGady racist elements of the internet kind of chimed in with this anti-Yosuke like we don't want a black man in this game, kind of point of view, I think it really muddied the waters for a more nuanced discussion. And so I'm glad that Diana sent us this email to remind us that, hey, actually, there is kind of a more nuanced discussion to be had here that doesn't need to kind of, we can kind of carve out the Gamer Gators and just discuss this kind of on its own merits, which I think we really should do when the game comes out and we've all played it. Yeah, you know, that makes me think of a recent article that our former colleague Luke Plunkett wrote over at Aftermath about The Acolyte, which is a show that I have not watched.

And his headline was something along the lines of, I wish I could talk about how I don't like the acolyte because he just doesn't like it as a show. But it was a similar thing for how reactionary assholes on the internet can kind of poison the well isn't the word. But yeah, muddy the waters is maybe the word. They can destroy discourse around something to where you can't just have a normal critical opinion about something because it's all caught up in a bunch of garbage that you don't even really want to engage with because it's not worth engaging with. And that's kind of similar here. Anyways, that was a good article. I liked reading that kind of fiery Luke Plunkett take again.

It had been a minute. I love a Luke take. And while we're shouting out articles, I at the time, read a really good article by Matt Kim at IGN that was called, Let's Not Pretend We're Mad, the New Assassins Creed, Shadow, Sam. is an Asian, and it's him kind of arguing over different cases of Asian representation in games. And I just want to quote one of his paragraphs here that made me think a lot after I read it, which is Asian, I'm quoting him here, Asian samurai protagonists are a path already well-trodden. There's Zekaro Shadows Die Twice, Katana Zero, like a dragon nation, samurai warriors, Rise of the Ronan, Onimusha, Way of the Samurai, Way of the Samurai too, Ghost of Sushima.

There's also my personal favorite Miramasa, the Demon Blade. I can go on and on. So it's difficult to come to any other conclusion than that the limited imagination of AAA game development can only envision Asian heroes when they wield katanas or ninja stars. I thought he made some really good points in this article about Asian male representation in games.

And I just think it's just another perspective we can include. We can include some fun links in the show notes for this week's episode. For sure. Cool. So yeah, we'll talk about this more when Assassin's Creed, shadows is out. Yeah, I'm excited to see what it actually plays like and what the story is. It'll be cool to talk about. Yeah, same here. Kirk, do you want to read this next question?

Sure. This next question comes from Alan, who writes, high, triple-click, long-time listener, MaxFund, supporter, etc. In Jason's recent Bloomberg article about the suicide squad flop, he mentioned one of the contributing factors as being a, quote, rigid studio culture of perfectionism, unquote. While he later elaborated and it made total sense, upon first reading this observation, I paused, since perfectionism often has virtuous connotations, at least to an extent. My question, what other potentially virtuous behaviors like perfectionism do you see as hampering creative projects? Many thanks keep up the great work. So before we answer this question, which I really love, let me give some context around the perfectionism part of it and talk a little bit about that. because not everyone listening, I'm sure, has read the article.

So this article was about Rocksteady and the new Suicide Squad game. Rocksteady, of course, known for the Arkham series and then made this big flop service game that came out earlier this year. So what happened is a couple of things. One is that this studio, this culture of perfectionism where you kind of, you iterate on something over and over again until it becomes great. And you kind of, you have this bar that you want to hit and you don't accept for anything less. I think that can work really well in straightforward single player narrative games, but less so in big kind of system-based online service games. And two, it can become a real bottleneck because you have this guy at the top, often a guy, a director, a quote, autur who really has a vision and believes in that vision and wants to kind of see it through. sometimes that vision is clearer than others, but in general he has this vision. And so he wants to

approve of a lot of things and winds up becoming this big bottleneck because a lot of work can't get done until it goes through him. And it can be months of waiting. And then after months of waiting, he looks at your stuff and then he's like, no, throw that away. It doesn't fit. So that can become a real problem. And then I think you're extrapolating that further. I think you can look at a lot of good examples out there of what I think is most likely perfectionism really preventing something from ever coming out as the cliche goes, perfect is the enemy of good. So I don't know, how many things out there will never come out? Winds of Winter, Hollow Night Silk Song.

Oh, no. The new Lies of Lackamore are like the new Patrick Rothfuss book three of that series of the King of the Chronicles. I mean, there are all these things where like the creator or, creators had a certain level of success and then they feel like they have to be perfectionist with this next thing because it has to live up to all these crazy expectations. And I think that can get people in a real, real awful, vicious cycle that is very much not virtuous. So yes, perfectionism is one of those things that seems like it's this good thing. Like, hell yeah,

we're perfectionist, but can really lead to a lot of problems if used the wrong way. So yeah, I mean, now I'll open it up to you guys. Let's answer his question. What other kind of seemingly virtuous behaviors can can really hamper creativity and creative projects. I mean, I think you already mentioned one, which is kind of fan feedback and player feedback and their expectations, which isn't necessarily just related to one's personal sense of perfectionism as a creator, but also like just endlessly wanting feedback or feeling like you need to bend too much to what other people are suggesting to you and you end up getting farther and farther away from what your original idea even was. I mean, I think that can really push and pull

both ways where, like, some artists might be like, I never want to look at what the fans have to say, I'm just going to create my work in a vacuum. But there can also be, I think, virtuous aspect of listening to other people's perspectives and hearing criticisms and reading criticism of it from, like, a professional writer, even, like that kind of criticism, media criticism. And just kind of taking that into account for your next work, except that can also cause you to just endlessly write and rewrite or obsess about something and never have it be done. I mean, it's sort of a similar cyclical problem, but in both cases, it's like, well, when do I know that this is done? When is it ready? I could just keep asking for feedback forever. And people would always have a new opinion. There would always be an

edit suggestion every time. Yeah, I think that, yeah, like thinking too much about what your audience wants or what will please people can definitely slow down production to the point that you lose track of what is that you're trying to make. That has happened to me in the past in plenty of different environments, like creative environments. And I would be really sympathetic to someone, especially making a video game or some really big, ambitious thing that needs to sell a whole lot of copies in order to pay for itself, that you would obviously have to think about what people are going to want to play. And then you could kind of get. bogged down in that. I think also another one that comes to mind for me is worrying too much about

authenticity, which I think happens quite a bit in creative writing in particular, is, you know, people will get kind of caught up and, okay, well, I'm writing this book and it's set in whatever, you know, historical period in like, whatever, Revolutionary War America. And then you kind of find yourself spending so much time doing all this crazy research, tracking down a ton of things so that you can include all these details in your story. And like, it can exhaust you. It can just lead to a lot of unnecessary work and slow you down. And then the result is that you sort of accurately describe polishing metal in one scene or something.

And it, like, doesn't even matter. I really like at the end of the devil and the dark water, the Stuart Turnton mystery novel that's set aboard, you know, basically a, oh, the East Indian company, like aboard a kind of trading vessel, a Dutch vessel in that story, he kind of just totally changes how the ship would function, how the crew would work, who would be where, how many people would be manning the ship, how everything would work in the service of his story. And then at the end of the book, he has a little afterward where he basically says, don't email me. It's a little bit longer than that, but it's very funny, and he's a

very funny guy, clearly. And he's just like, look, I changed a ton of stuff. Like, I read a bunch of books about how these vessels worked and how the crews worked. And then I was like, okay, I threw it all out because I needed the story to have a villain and the villain needed to be in this role on the ship. And so I just like totally winnowed things down. So there could only be five people to make it easier to keep track of, et cetera, et cetera. And I think that that kind of approach, like taking that kind of approach consciously can be a really good thing. Rather than getting bogged down and like period accuracy and making everything perfectly correct. Yeah, totally.

The story comes first. Yeah, that's a good one. Two come to mind immediately. One is unlimited kind of lack of limitations. I think having freedom sounds really cool, sounds like a virtuous thing. Whatever you want. Yeah. No deadlines.

No deadlines. Like infinite time. Any idea. They're all good ideas. Any idea. Yeah. Ultimate. Infinite.

I think that creative people quickly learn that narrowing things down and setting limitations for yourself is the only way to achieve. creativity. And the other one is being in collaborative creation, being too nice, or not being able to say what you think. I was thinking about this in the context of our psychoticy bonus episode and the two, the dichotomy, the two extremes of like Zach McClendon as director, his blunt approach to working with people on the development of the game versus Tim Schaefer, who is the CEO of double fine and he's kind of, uh, well, I'm just going to look at you for a while or, or tell jokes.

Yeah. Am I not joking? Like, what am I really trying to say here? And I think both, both of those approaches, um, are very flawed and trying to find a balance between the two where you're kind of like direct, but kind about it is really, really tough. But, um, something that I think has to be done if you're going to collaborate with people successfully.

Yeah. And being, they, they are both willing to say no. and to say that something doesn't work, which is good. It's better that than if either of them were completely unwilling or just coddled people or, like, you know, kind of kept people floating. Well, no, I think Tim sometimes isn't willing to say no, or he's like not really, like, he's kind of like, just kind of hinting. Like, someone has to ask him at one point, like, is there any way this could work?

And he's like, I don't see it working. Like, it really takes a lot to get that out of them, at least some of the meanings we saw in that. And I think that part of that is him just wanting to be like this gregarious, lovable boss. which he is. But I think that has its frustrating elements as well. I mean, Who Among Us hasn't worked with someone.

I feel like everybody has worked with people on both ends of the extreme. Most people have been to. Yeah, or been the person who doesn't want to say no and is like, I secretly know this idea sucks. How do I say that is like a pretty difficult proposition, even just socially, let alone if you're like working on a piece of art together.

100%. 100%. Yeah, the one limitation that you, well, that I guess I mentioned, but you were talking about among all of them is deadlines. And I think that frequency of completed work is a big, can be a real, can really set you back. If you don't have a deadline and you don't need to finish anything for a long time, it can cause a lot of problems that you maybe wouldn't anticipate.

One of them just being that you start to put more and more and more on whatever it is that you're making. So if I were, say, writing a song and I had been working on the, this song for years. And it had kind of grown and become bigger and even more ambitious. And soon it's like, this is going to be the greatest song I've ever written. It needs to have so much in it. It needs to go all these different places. And you kind of just keep adding to it. And there's no one saying, yeah, we need a song. Like, just give us a song. You got to publish it. So as a result, it grows and grows and grows. And it's not just that you haven't created anything and like had the sort of positive feedback loop of putting something out there and having people experience it and

check it out and then making more. It's also that you start to put a lot of pressure on whenever it is that you're doing. And that can actually really jam you up creatively to where you start to feel like this has to be everything, as opposed to people I see that I always really admire musicians anyways who can just like crank it out, like just make album after album after album. Actually, a band I mentioned at our live show, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, they're super prolific. It's one of the amazing things about that band is they can put out like multiple albums. I think one year they put out three or four albums in different styles. It's very Stephen King of them.

It is, though I'm assuming probably a little bit less cocaine involved, at least with their very prolific periods. But I suppose I don't know them, so maybe there is cocaine involved. Either way, they're very prolific. And as a result, I think they're able to, I would imagine anyways, you can kind of feel less attached to any one thing and just make a lot more. And your body of work becomes more of the focus, rather than like this one magnum opus that you're working on.

And I would think that in the world of video games specifically, that's a real challenge because games takes so long to make, that you wind up just putting all this pressure on the game because you've been working on it for seven years or whatever. And it can always be better. Let's put a pin on this because we're going to discuss this topic a little bit more, a little bit later. And let's answer a couple more questions.

Because a question a little bit later touches on some of this stuff too. Cool. Next question is from David. This is a quick one. Who makes money when I buy a game from a developer that went out of business. For instance, I bought Shadow Tactics after Me Me, Me closed down. Who makes money from a sale like that? I'll just answer this real quick. I think there are three possibilities here. One is if the developer closed down, but it has a publisher of some sort,

then the publisher will get the money and pay whatever contractually obligated dues to whoever owns the developer before a shutdown. If it's just a developer and there's no publisher and the developer has just kind of wound down its business, ran out of money, whatever, then whoever owned the developer, whether it's one person or a few people, will have had in their contract some sort of like, as part of the winding down process, some sort of arrangement on where whatever future revenue should go. So that's kind of started out that way. Most likely it'll be the former owners or whoever owned the company at some point will get

that money. And then the third option is bankruptcy. So if a company goes through bankruptcy, 38 studios might be the most famous example of this, then it gets a little more complicated than generally there's going to be this bankruptcy, bankruptcy administrator who kind of handles all of the assets and is responsible for paying back debts in some, like determined order based on priority of who gets whatever. I won't get into all the nitty-gritty details. But in short, either it'll go, it'll start, it'll help pay off those debts,

or the asset itself will be sold out. So like, let's say in 38 Studios' case, let's say someone bought the asset of kingdoms of Amalor, they bought that IP, then they will get revenue from that franchise if they bought that IP and bought whatever rights are attached to it. So, yeah, that's the answer. And also bought the debt, right?

I mean, they would have to buy the debt in that situation and pay it back. Well, no, they wouldn't buy the debt. They would buy, so Amelor would be sold off in order to pay the debt. Oh, sure, yeah. In this case, it was Embracer Group that bought Amalore or THQ Nordic or whatever it was that part of that conglomeration. They bought Amlar. So if they pay a million dollars to the estate to buy Amelor, they get Amelor and the $1 million goes towards helping pay off the debt of the bankrupted company 30A studios.

So that's the short of it is that it could go in a few different places. Good, clear answer. Yeah, love it. Maddie, next question. All right. This question is from Ange, who writes, hello, glorious hosts. I'm submitting a Discord comment I made as a question from the triple-click Discord. I can only assume.

And they continue. Jason's quote, if I was a betting man, end quote, comment made me wonder, do games journalists with these kinds of adjacent content platforms ever get annoyed that they know something? So can't talk about it because if they didn't know and had to make an educated guess, they would be right? It's one thing where you learn something totally surprising because you could always, in fairly good faith, say what you would have assumed if you didn't know.

No. But finding out and being like, I knew it, which is an incomplete sentence that Anj ends on, but is nonetheless a sentiment that I understand. Just to be clear, when I was saying, like, when we were doing predictions and I was saying if I was a betting man, that was not based on inside information. Yeah, that was just joking. Well, no, it was literally me saying. It's a joking because you are a betting man. If I was betting. Yeah. It's not a joke. Actually, he is a betting man. We all know this about Jason. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But to answer the question, though, I initially read this and I was like, oh, this doesn't really happen to me. Like, I have co-workers I can talk to if I know something fun ahead of time. It's okay with me that I don't share it.

But then, as I was thinking that, I was immediately thinking about this recent article. We were talking about Aftermath twice on this show. Our former coworker Nathan Grayson wrote an article about Dr. Disrespect getting fired or banned from Twitch and why that happened years ago. because he sent inappropriate messages to a minor on the platform. And according to Nathan, he, Nathan, and some other reporters had an inkling of that. They had some sort of insecure sourcing on it, and they weren't able to report it out enough to publish. But they kind of knew what had happened. And that, I think, is a really, really frustrating position for reporters to be in where you know just enough to know maybe a really powerful person or popular person is a creep of some level of creed. but you can't report on that.

That's very, very frustrating because then you also sometimes have to be in social conversations where it's not appropriate for you to be saying that. And it would be maybe libelous in some way for you to even intimate it. So instead you just have to keep that information to yourself and be like, I wish I could report on this. Like that I think is, I mean, sort of a darker answer to Ange's question, which I think is referring to like fun video game leaks, but was the main example I could think of where, yeah, it is really annoying when

something like that happens where you like know some information but you're like I don't really have enough yet I just have a pretty good idea that this happened you know yeah yeah that's not quite as fun as like oh man I know about the next Eldon ring game but can't talk about it yeah I mean that is annoying I think that like what's annoying to me about that as someone who is in that position every once in a while. It's more annoying to me if I hit a row block and can't move forward on the story. I don't mind it if I'm actively working on a story and I have information that I can't share. Sure. But I will in a month when I finish this story. In the case of Dr. Disrespect, I don't really know anything about how that all went down. That wasn't something I've ever reported on,

but it sounds like people just couldn't get confirmation that they felt comfortable moving forward on for whatever reason. And then there was a lot of, I don't know, I saw a lot of, I saw a lot of kind of social media like, well, I knew about this, which I think is kind of a, like, nothing will build more distrust in readers than kind of the hand-wringing like that. But that's another story. And yeah, it is a little frustrating in that case. Like if you're hit a rowbook. I've had a couple of stories over the years killed that I wish I could share, but cannot for various complicated legal reasons. But they might still arise again someday. Like, that's kind of how reporting works, where maybe you hit a roadblock, and then years later,

you're like, well, now I can report on this. That's true. And then Dr. Disrespect just tweets it out. And you're like, well, shit, now we can talk about it. Yeah. Yeah. And then on the product side, I don't, yeah, I mean, on the product side, it's like fun to share things if you happen to hear about something with your friends or something. And then sometimes you'll report on it. I don't know. It gets in, it's pretty complicated, depending on what the story is or what you've just found out or whatever it is and how much news value there is to it and so on and so forth. Yeah.

Okay. Let's move another next question. Kirk, you're out. All right. This next question comes from John. John writes, long time, first time. Love the show all the way back to the split screen days. I enjoy Jason's books, Kirk's Strong Songs podcast, and enjoy being a Patreon supporter.

Hey. Yay. Shout out to the Strong Songs Patriot. And, thanks, John. And Maddie's articles on polydon.com, and I enjoy polygon.com in general. I always enjoy the bonus episodes. Okay, so John has great taste. John out of time.

Let's get on to John's question. John writes, on one podcast, I think Kirk offhandedly said something like, I enjoy writing more than video games, which makes sense, but I had never thought about that before. Would Triple Click ever consider talking more about writing and each of your approach to writing on the podcast, even if it's a bonus episode. As a person who likes to write as a hobby, I'd really enjoy that, and I would hope other people would as well. Well, we talk about writing.

I know. Oh, please, twist our arm, John. And I would say that I think the context for that quote just to give it is that it's something I've always said about, actually, the advice you mentioned earlier, Jason, is something that we've addressed many times, which is how to you get into games journalism and games criticism. And that was one of my longtime pieces of advice is you have to really like writing. And then I actually have always liked writing more than video games.

You can't get into being a games critic because you want to play a lot of video games. If you like writing, that's kind of the best way to find success as a writer, whatever it is that you're writing about. So anyways, that's sort of what that quote was referring to. But yeah, do we want to talk some about writing? Yeah, I mean, I'm sure one day, I mean, if there's enough interest, we could potentially do a bonus episode or some dedicated episode where we talk about the craft of, writing. But yeah, this is what I was alluding to earlier when I said that we'll put a pin in the creativity discussion, because I do think it's worth. And I actually wanted to respond to what you were saying about being prolific. I think that the best piece of advice that anyone has ever

shared about writing, and this has been shared by lots and lots of people. So I don't think one person can take credit for it. But the biggest one is that, like, you cannot, you can never wait for inspiration. You just have to do the thing in the same way that like, if you're, I don't know. If you're a cook, you're not going to the restaurant and waiting for inspiration. You're just making the meals for dinner that night. If you're a fireman, you're not waiting for inspirations to put out, put out that fire in that house. If you're a writer, you're not waiting for inspiration. You're just writing. You're just sitting your butt in the seat and writing words on your typewriter or notebook or computer or whatever it is you use.

You're, I don't know, papyrus or chisel and stone. Yeah, that's what I use. Thanks for acknowledging that. Papyrus or chisle and stone. Every time. That's right. The virus only. It's the only way I can get it done. No, yeah, I completely agree. I think of writing as a trade as much as I do. Think of it as a craft and romanticize it in my head as often as I also reassure myself. It's a trade. You just have to get it done. And certainly when I'm just writing news posts, I think of it that way where I'm like, I know exactly how to do this and I can do it in my sleep at this point. Some of that is practice. But I also just, I feel like the fun thing that I

would like to know, and I'll share my version of it with you too, is how much time do you spend thinking before you start writing? Because I spend a lot of time thinking. And I'm talking about if I'm writing a longer story, especially if it's a critical thing or something researched where I've done all the research. And then I have this time period that's just thinking. And then I will almost write the entire thing in my head before I even get to the part where I'm actually, you know, sitting at the papyrus, as it were. And then by the time I get to the part where I'm like, okay, now it's time to write, it's very easy because I've actually already thought about it all and I know what I'm going

to say. Whereas I know other writers who aren't that way at all. I don't think there's like a hard and fast way you have to do it. I know people who are like, no, I write and then I just figure it out as I'm writing it. And that just isn't me. I just, I figure it out while I'm thinking and then I write it down. I think it's called Pancers versus Plotters. spectrum. I love it. That's what I've heard it described it and you are very much a platter. Yeah, I'm a platter, I guess.

People are talking about our pantsers. Flying by the sea of their pants. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Or like finding the story as they write, which sounds so stressful to me, frankly, and it's never been how I've done it. But I love many people's work who operate in that way. So it's not like it's inherently wrong. You can get yourself into more trouble that way.

Yeah, I'm a little bit more of a platter. I'm somewhere in the middle. But I, what I like to do is, I'll sketch out. I'll write a lot of TKs as I'm writing and be like, this goes here. As this goes here, I like kind of structure a lot. So I do try to structure a lot as I'm writing. But I don't sit down and think about it. I just kind of start and then outline and plot from there.

Interesting. Yeah, I guess it depends on what I'm writing. And I've written in both ways and have kind of found success writing in both ways. Just to look at strong songs, which is the thing I do the most writing on right now, I write out every episode of that show, and it's a lot of writing. I think when I make a strong outline, it really helps. And then I also do what you describe, Maddie, where not only is there an outline, which is usually just tied to the form of the song, but also there's just a long process where I just listen to the song and I go on walks and I think and I'm doing the dishes and I'm thinking. And that's where I kind of have ideas.

Oh, yeah, I should really talk about that part of it. And like that stuff then makes its way into the writing. And it's usually a smoother process when I do that, though I don't know. writing fiction. I don't know. I just wrote a character description for a role-playing game that was a really fun process because it was just totally fiction. And I just sat down and started writing and was like, I don't know, I'm just going to make up a character. And there was no big pressure. It didn't have to be great writing or I didn't even need to publish it. And as a result, I didn't think ahead of time, okay, this person's going to need a conflict and they're going to need, you know, whatever,

this and that and that and all of these rules. And like, let's structure the thing and then write it. It was just, let's write. Let's have fun. Let's come up with cool sentences. And that was really fun too. So I think that maybe for fiction and more imaginative writing, it can be okay not to have a structure. For fiction, I agree. I do do that where I'm just like, I'm just going to write, see what happens, see what the characters say. But for nonfiction, it's different. And then the actual writing, the last thing I guess that I'll mention now, this would be a, I mean, obviously all the three of us could talk about this for a long time. So this would be a fun bonus episode sometime, just because like we've all written a lot. I mean, a whole lot when I was writing for Kotaku, thousands of articles,

you know. And that, I think that work, like doing that as a job, really gets you in tune or in touch with your tools, with like your writing tools, which the actual things that you use to construct sentences, like your ear, the rhythms, the, the vocabulary and the different types of structure and the different sentence orders that you can work with for a given paragraph and all of that stuff is really cool. And actually, it's usually the kind of writing that people talk about less. two good books that I always recommend to people. One is writing tools by Roy Peter Clark, which is a really fun book about that. Like it's about the actual mechanisms of sentence and paragraph construction that I think is really helpful and he approaches it like tools. I mean, the book is called tools. And the other is Jeff Tweedy's How to Write One Song. I think I've talked about both of these on the show before. We can mention, we can put a link or whatever, put the names in show notes. Jeff Tweedy is the lead songwriter and singer of the band Wilco, a really amazing lyricist.

And he's very lucid when he talks about his writing process. And he is really practical. Like he does all these word exercises and lyric writing exercises. He definitely doesn't just sit down and wait for inspiration to strike. He like builds word ladders and connects different words until he finds phrases he likes and then turns that concept into an image that then turns into a metaphor that then turns into a whole song. And he's really, really good at it.

And it's super cool to watch him talk about how he does it because it reveals how much of writing is just sitting down with your tools and like whittling away at the thing until you turn it into something that, you know, works for you and that sparks something in your mind that allows you to whittle away on the next thing and like turn that into something more. And pretty soon you've got a whole big sculpture that you created. So that's the kind of the micro level of it as well, as thinking about the tools. And I think that that is actually a really important part of writing. All right. Well, maybe we'll talk about this more in a bonus episode someday in the future. Yeah, that'd be fun.

Last question. We have time for one more. This is from Alan. Alan says, hey, triple-click trio. Though they tended to not be very good, I have fond memories of some movie tie-in games. Harry Potter, The Matrix, X-Men, even Narnia. But it seems the movie tie-in trend has gone away. If anything, it's reversed. And now there are more movies and shows based on games. Do you have any movie tie-in games you remember fondly? Or is there a movie that you would want to have a tie-in game? Let's go around. Let's answer the first question first. Movie time games we remember funnly.

Let's each pick one. Kirk, start us off. Okay, mine is the Home Alone game for Game Boy, which I was so excited to get because Game Boy was the only game system that I was allowed to have and the only one that I did have. And I loved Home Alone. I was like the exact rate age when that came out. It was like 92 or something like that.

I was like 12 years old. Bing! Home Alone, the movie actually came out in 1990. And the Game Boy game came out in 1991. So I was just a little bit younger for both of those. I was obsessed with that movie. I wanted to be Kevin McAllister. And so the game gave me the promise of, you know,

that really makes you feel like you are Kevin McAllister. It does not. It is a very bad game. Like a really bad side's color that has nothing to do with Home Alone. There's no preparing traps. That's too bad. So I feel like that would be a good game. Like it's very hit-man-esque.

And I get why you would like it, Kirk. Like it actually feels like a good game for you and like your sensibility. Well, when I was that age, I wasn't into that kind of game. But this is 1991 or 1992. It's like a platformer. It's like every other movie time. It's just a platformer where you're in a house.

But there was something cool about being in a house and having the levels just be like jumping onto shelves and beds. And there was some logic to how the house was laid out. Like it did still give me something a little bit special. I have some strong memories with it. I hadn't played Earthbound or any of the other video games that were kind of set in the real world. I was much more used to video games that were Metroid or whatever set in a sci-fi universe or fantasy. So play a game where you are just jumping around in the house and, you know, in a suburban house.

That was actually kind of cool, even though the game itself was pretty bad. And you do set some traps. You just don't do it in like a clever creative way. Yeah, it's just kind of run into a thing and it stops one of the birds. You don't get the thrill of the movie, which is the kind of gradual prep and the montage. This is my house. I have to defend it all of that. Like it's more just, yeah, sometimes you like drop a chandelier on a guy or something.

Or you have a slingshot that you can use like three times on guys. Yeah. I haven't played it in a long time. I would play it again. And also for some reason, they're like, there are hundreds of burglars. That's a video game. Yeah. That's also the problem is the wet bandits have really been on a recruiting drive.

Yeah. Well, the wet bandits is just like any good publicly traded company need exponential growth. Yeah, that's right. It's the only way to stay ahead. Maddie, what's your, you're going to increase headcount? your movie tie-in game. So I wanted to talk about X-Men, which I know Alan mentions in their message, but I got to say it. So like the X-Men arcade game, technically not based on a movie, it's based on a TV pilot that is not good at all called Pride of the X-Men. And I think

most people think the X-Men arcade game is based on X-Men the animated series, which was way more popular by the time it actually came out. And a lot of the designs are similar because like those costumes are really popular. The X-Men are recognizable. But it's actually based on this completely other pilot that I personally am obsessed with this really bad TV pilot. It's so amazingly bad. It's like a so bad it's good scenario for me. Wolverine has an Australian accent in it for no reason. It's just really dumb and bad.

And I recommend it. It's on YouTube and I don't know who even owns it at this point. No one's asked the person who uploaded it to take it down. But also the X-Men arcade game is so good comparatively because it realizes the dream of working together as a team. Like it's a multiplayer arcade game. It is really short though and I feel like it has a lot of squandered opportunity

in terms of how cool an X-Men game could be. And arguably there have not been that many other X-Men games that have really achieved that except for obviously Marvel's Midnight Suns which isn't even technically an X-Men game but has the spirit of one. But yeah, I just wanted to mention that because it's one of my

favorite fun facts is the fact that that arcade game, which is quite famous, is based on just the weirdest possible tie-in thing. That's so funny. That didn't succeed. Yeah. But there were also,

weren't there also X-Men games based on the movies in like the early 2000s? Oh yeah. There's a Wolverine video game that's like weirdly good considering how terrible that movie is. I mean, that's like more of a classic example of what Alan is talking about of like a

2010 era kind of a bad movie tie-in video game. I don't know. It's like funny when games managed to iterate within that format of being a movie tying game and then including some weirdly fun stuff or like being more interesting than you would expect them to be. Although those are the exception and not the rule. But Jason, what's your example?

So mine is Indiana Jones in the Last Crusade, which is a LucasArts point and click adventure game that is basically a direct translate, like the movie directly translated into a game with kind of like a weird, terrible fighting mini game and then point and click adventure style puzzles, like all the way leading up to you, like, you having to solve those last trials that he does in the movie where you have to, like, find God's name on all these, like, tiles with letters on them and stuff like that. It was really, I really enjoyed it back in the day. Not quite as good as Indiana Jones on The Fate of Atlantis, which is kind of the successor that was a brand new original indie story, but as a movie tie-in game, it was pretty fun to do.

and there were a lot of interesting kind of like expansions on the movie stuff. Like you could explore this Nazi castle and had to do some things involving like Nazi guards and sandwiches. And you had to find ways to take out guards and stuff. It was pretty cool. It was a pretty cool kind of movie adaptation for back in the day. And it was terrible. It was actually, I don't know how well it's aged today, but it was actually to be enjoyable back then. You know, Fate of Atlantis also illustrates a point.

point, a point in reverse, I suppose, but the same point that we made recently about the Fallout TV show, which is that rather than doing a direct adaptation, it really helps to just tell another story in that world. And that's what's very fun about Fate of Atlantis. It's a new story. So you're not just playing through scenes from a movie, you know, which is, it's just inevitably going to be kind of disappointing compared to Indiana Jones on the Last Crusade. But it is still, it still has like the spirit of an Indiana Jones movie. And that, yeah, I have really fond memories of that game, too. And I know there are some aspects of it that are very frustrating or that don't hold up, but a lot of it is pretty charming. Yeah, I mean, a lot of

pointing click adventures, you're always going to find some puzzle that just, you're just like, how could this be, or like some pixel hunting annoyance. But yes, I think Fate of Atlanta, so I played that, again, relatively recently, like five or six years ago and found that it holds up pretty well, actually. So I enjoy that game quite a bit. All right, on that note, why don't we take a break? Thank you again to everybody who sent in questions. And Once again, we're triple click at maximum fun.org if you want to send in some others. All right, let's take a break and we'll be back with one more thing. City Pop to me is like a feeling.

City Pop is beautiful music. It's music that makes me emotional. There's so many different sounds that fall into the city pop category. It just feels very home to me. We're just about wrapped on our inaugural season of Primer. If you didn't know, Primer is a new podcast that explores music from outside the English-speaking world. And Volcher called us one of the best podcasts of the year. Our first season covered Japanese City Pop and you just heard a few of our past guests share what the genre means to them.

Learn more about the world of City Pop and listen to some cool tunes. And if you like what we're doing, you can make a one-time contribution and help us reach our goal to produce a second season about a new genre. Support Primer over at maximum fun.org slash primer. Throughout history, sirens have captured men's attention, enticed men with their feminine wiles and fulfill men's primal needs. The sirens allure persist. They have not. Unless the primal need is I need to be smashed on the rocks.

Yeah. Smash me. Smash me, mommy. Smash me, mommy. The sirens allure. Why do we do this to ourselves? Strand me, baby. Strand me, baby.

So yeah, this is my brother, my brother, me for Maxman Fun on Mondays. It's just like that. It's just like to have more of it. There's more of that. All righty, Kirk, Maddie, it is time for one more thing. Maddie, why don't you go first? Sure. So I've been playing a video game called Selico that I am really, really enjoying,

and I was going to try to sell Kirk on it really hard, but Kirk's already played some of it. I didn't think a lot as I was playing this. I was like, Kirk would love this game. So I'm glad he already knows about it. And Jason, you might like it. We'll see. I'll describe it.

So it is a Doom mod. It's a total conversion mod, which means that it is pretty unrecognizable as a Doom mod. It feels a little bit like Doom. It is a boomer shooter, as the kids say. But like you're zipping around really fast. You're playing as this female character, armored up female character named Dawn. She lives in an underground bunker.

Earth has been destroyed. The bunker is called Selico for some reason. And it's being invaded by these. mysterious, like humanoid wearing power armor beings, but they don't seem entirely human because they blow into purple goo. And it's a mystery in the sense that you don't really understand what happened to these beings or why they're there or why you're having to fight them. But luckily, you are a superpowered cool lady with a gun who collects many more guns as she, you know, runs around the station as fast as possible and collects powerups and so on. And it's really fun.

It feels great to play as any good Doom mod should. It feels really freaking good to play. And the main selling point of Celico, which is actually in early access, but it sure doesn't feel like it to me. It just feels like a really freaking good game. So I'm curious how much better it's going to be when they actually release it. But the selling point is the enemy AI is really powerful. And I would agree with that. Like the enemies really seem like they work together.

They do this thing where they dodge. and it's really creepy. It's almost like they're sliding around and like you feel really confident. You're like, okay, great, headshot and like the enemy dodges out of the way. And since they're not entirely human, it seems realistic that they would be able to literally dodge bullets.

And also I'm just really enjoying the writing. It's pretty minimalist writing. You're pretty much just going around collecting data logs, aka emails, and you can just read the emails about the circumstances of Seleco. There's some weird kind of medical experimentation that was happening in the under, ground base prior to the events of the game. I haven't finished it yet, so I don't know where

that's going to be related to the events of the game. I would guess so. But I really did the story and just generally the game feels really freaking good. So if you like that kind of thing, if you liked playing Doom back in the day, I was describing this game as millennial catnip to somebody. Like, it really just feels like it's scratching the exact itch of like, remember this kind of game? It just feels really, really good in that way. even down to the day logs and the way that they're written just feels like a throwback. And it reminds me of fear and even Half-Life a little bit, all complimentary. But yeah, I really recommend it.

And I'm going to beat it for sure because I want to know the rest of the story. So it's called Salico. That's with an S, by the way. S-E-L-A-C-O. I know that we have a thing about names here, but I think that one's okay, even though it is a fictional word. It kind of, it's spelled like it sounds, and it's fun to say. So I'm going to go with a stamp of approval on Seleco across the board. It's in early access.

That's right. Yeah, I guess it's not done, right? Yeah, I think the story isn't finishable. We'll have to wait until they finish it. But it's really good so far. Yeah. Worth noting, when I think it, when I hear Doom mod, I think of a game that looks like it's from the mid-90s, but this game looks like a modern game that's got

really good. It kind of has a feeling like Octopath Traveler or something where there are elements of the game that look like Doom, but then. And the game world and the lighting are moving at a high frame rate and there's like amazing lighting effects happening. But then enemies and also Don's weapons, they actually move at a different frame rate than the rest of the game, which is a little bit jarring. I'm not totally sure if I love that effect. It's like a little bit that spiderverse, jittery feeling where the game is very smooth. I really like it, but yeah.

And yeah, I've adjusted to it the more I've played. And it's an interesting little trend. It's like a little stylistic graphical trend. that we've seen in a few games. I think it was south of midnight in the demo for that game. Some of the cutscenes were also moving at that, like, whatever it is.

I don't know what frame rate it is. It's not 24. It's like less than that maybe. Anyways, it's something that I know they talked about a lot of the Spider-Verse, and this game does it. But yeah, when you're actually playing it, it's like environmental destruction

out the wazoo. Oh, that too, yeah. The level is exploding around you as your like speed, like vanquished sliding through a level, blowing dudes away. The explosions, the lights, there's debris everywhere.

And yet it's also pixel. and looks like Doom. And so it's a very, very cool visual effect. And just to say, since I've been playing it, I think it's really, really fun. So I'm right there with you. It's super good game. Cool. Kirk, what's your one more thing?

My one more thing is a book that I've been reading and really enjoying called Elantris by Brandon Sanderson. So I've read a couple of Brandon Sanderson books now, or I guess this is my second one. And I'd been thinking about reading some of his stuff lately. And then, as I've mentioned on the show, was reading a bunch of Lois McMaster, Buzold fantasy books after finishing her Vercosgan saga. Bless you. Thank you.

And I was really enjoying reading fantasy novels. I'm just sort of at a place where I want to read enjoyable fantasy novels. And of course, Brandon Sanderson is synonymous with fun to read fantasy novels. And speaking of prolific fantasy authors, this man does not have the problem that some of the other authors that we've gotten into have. He's going to be finishing Game of Thrones one day. Honestly, I mean, he picked up the wheel of time. He basically did that for another big fantasy series. So who knows?

I think based on the stuff of his that I've read, he is stylistically exceptionally exceptionally different from George R.R. Martin, and I'm not sure that he would actually be a good fit for that. I'm sure this has already been fancasted and discussed to death among fantasy fans. So I don't think anyone would actually make the argument that he'd be good for that. But I actually really, really like his writing. and I find his books very, very enjoyable. So I read his book Warbreaker.

That was great. A standalone. And Elantris, the one that I am almost done with now and have been really loving. Like just, I read it like, I read it instead of watching shows or anything last night. I was sitting there getting ready to watch another episode of what was it. Oh, the boys, which is just a dreadful show. I don't know what I'm watching it. But I was like, it was literally, I was watching, you know, butcher the character in that show would be like,

Oh, hey, I'm so. And I was like, I could be reading this book right now and finding out what happens next. And I just turned it off and started reading. So that's my endorsement of Atlantis. It is a fantasy story with three protagonists. And it tells the story of what broadly a city called Atlantis, that at one point was like the city of the gods where everyone who lived there had been chosen by some mysterious power and elevated to immortality, where they have great magical powers. and they provide food and medical care and just magical artifacts for all the kingdoms around them. And they're this amazing city.

And then one day it all just falls to shit. And everybody there like dies and the city just turns almost starts crumbling and like is covered in slime. And all the Atlantrians are cursed. And so suddenly they go from being this amazing, blessed city to being this cursed city. So it's the story of, well, it's like a mystery. kind of like, why did that happen? What's going on? And so there are three main characters. There's a prince who is at the very beginning of the book cursed. He suddenly gets the, he has the, he's, he would have been elevated to be an Atlantrian, but instead he's cursed. So he gets cast into this city where there's

no law and no one, like there's nobody looking out for you. There's no food. You're on your own and he gets thrown in there. There's the princess who was, is from another kingdom and she was betrothed to him as like a political marriage. But they were kind of have, they only ever written letters to one another, but they seem to kind of like each other, and she arrives right as he has been thrown into Elandris, and she thinks he's dead, because everyone says he's dead, so she doesn't actually know that he is alive and in that city. So she just arrives at the, like, neighboring town, which is now just sort of this, like, they've kind of pulled everybody together after the fall of Elandris, and they're kind of

making due. And then the third character is actually the most interesting character. He is a like kind of battle priest, I guess, from this warlike other, this nation that's farther away that's trying to dominate the whole world and like basically spread empire across the world. So he is like a kind of invading force, but he's trying to convert everyone to this religion. And he starts out, you're like, okay, so this is going to be the bad guy. And then we have our two good guys and we're kind of watching them maneuver against one another, which is a lot of the book. A lot of the book is the princess and this priest kind of trying to manipulate people and work against one another and out clever one another, which is very fun to watch because she's a fantastic character and very clever. But over the course of the book, he actually has a really interesting arc because he's much more complex than just being the bad guy.

So anyways, these three characters make for a really great three viewpoints on this story. And I'm just loving it. It's like I'm going to read it in just a couple of days. I'm almost done. I can't wait to find out how it ends. I'm like 75% of the way through or something. So I really recommend it. Anyone looking for a summer read?

It's great. And I really like have been enjoying Brandon Sanderson's writing in general. Not mind-blowing considering I'm a huge nerd and he is like the nerd of all nerd authors. But he's really great. So that's Alantris, a 2005 novel by Brandon Sanderson. Cool. Sounds good. Cool.

I will finish us off. My one more thing is a video game called Final Fantasy 14, which is an online. massively multiplayer online RPG. Long-time listeners will know that I have had kind of fits and starts with this game over the years, and I think that on my main character, I had just gotten into Shadowbringers, the beloved expansion, I believe the third expansion to the game. But actually, I had an urge recently to start a new character because I kind of wanted a fresh start after many years of like on and off playing and especially this most recent like two and a half year

break. I was kind of like, you know, I don't remember anything. I want to start from scratch. And it's interesting. It's interesting starting this game from scratch again. First of all, it's a really good game. I wish there wasn't a monthly subscription attached because otherwise it would be an easier recommendation to be like, you've got to check out this game. But it's hard to justify paying monthly for a game that you're not really, really diving into constantly. But still, it's a very good game even playing on your own. And they've made a lot of changes since I last play that make it a little easier to play on your own.

For example, dungeons, now you can do them with NPCs instead of with other players, which makes it easy to just kind of roll through the whole main story by yourself. The one unfortunate thing is that it is a game whose gameplay is tailored for listening to podcasts, but whose music is tailored for listening to the music because it's so good. Yeah, they made a lot of interesting changes.

It's been really interesting seeing it through again, and it's a reminder that it really rules. I mean, the story is really interesting. The writing is really clever. Even random little NPC side plots have, like, jokes and, like, clever writing and twists on words and just really fun, fun storytelling. Playing it makes me wonder, like, why so much of this is missing from Final Fantasy 16, which is a lot of the same.

same team, but I digress. The downside, as always, is like, MMO combat is just kind of plain and boring and just kind of like something you have to sit through for the majority of the time. But still, there's enough to do, and there's enough of kind of like that.

It appeals to the lizard brain filling out checklist of it all, and it also appeals to the storytelling, kind of enjoying this vibe and music and world and characters, that part of a person. And one more thing I'll say, is that it's interesting kind of revisiting it because they've cut down on some of the quests in the main story.

There were a lot of complaints from players that it took too long to ramp up that a lot of people were bouncing off before getting into the really good stuff because it took so long. So they've done some trimming and streamlining, and it's still very, very long to get through the main story. And there's some grueling parts from what I've seen, but there are a lot of new things. Although one thing they did that is really throwing me off is they skewed it so you get, get a lot more experience a lot more quickly. And so I'm now like level 30 and the story quest that I'm on are like level 17, which makes it pretty boring.

So there's no challenge at all. But yeah, and they also added teleporters to the waking sands, which if anyone who's played Final Fantasy 14, like who maybe did the main story a while ago might hear that and be like, oh my God, I can't believe they did that. This is kind of this. It's this hub that infamously in the original game, you had to keep like traveling back to, but there wasn't an easy way to get to it. You had to like teleport somewhere else like a few minutes away and then like take a chocobo to get there.

It was kind of a real pain. But now they've fixed that. And yeah, I mean, it's still a, still a very good video game, still a very enjoyable video game. I don't know if I'll ever get to Dawn Trail, the new expansion, which is one of the reasons that I'm diving back into this. But if I do, I will talk about it. But for now, it's kind of, it's a fun thing to have on a screen and just kind of like mess around with. while I'm doing work on my laptop or like watching something on my laptop or whatever it is I'm doing. It's kind of a good second screen game. I'm going to check it out on the Steam Deck and see if I can do that also, which would be a good way to spend some time with it.

Yeah, definitely. But yeah, I mean, it is a good video game. I think you two would enjoy a lot of things about it. It's just such a big time sync and such a big money sink that I don't know if I can really tell you guys. I feel like I would like it too, though, but it's tough. It just seems like such a big time sink and such a big money sink that I don't know if I can really tell you guys. I feel like I feel like it's tough. It just seems like such a big. commitment? I don't know. Definitely is. Yeah, I played it. I played through, I don't know, I leveled a character to a certain point way back in the day when I was still like Ataku. It's really just a time thing for me. There's just, there's no way I would have the time. Yeah, it is 100% a time thing. I think if I weren't in a position where I can just kind of like play it on my second screen while doing other stuff, then I probably wouldn't spend that much time in it.

But yeah, it's a cool game. I can see, as always, I mean, I've spent 200. hours in it so I guess I'm pretty hooked but yeah I can see why the people who are obsessed with Final Fantasy 14 are truly obsessed with it including Hiranova Sekiguchi the creator of Final Fantasy who I spoke to a couple weeks ago

and I'll link that interview in the show notes that Bloomberg he was incredibly fun to talk to. He talked about how he has recently reunited with Square Enix after leaving 23 years ago to publish his new game Fantasian. We talked about this after the Nintendo

direct and he told me it was because he got obsessed with Final Fantasy 14 and like wound up talking to Nyoki Yoshida, the director of that game, who's now a top dog at Square. And Yoshida was like, hey, you should publish this game here. And he was like, oh, okay, that would be interesting. So that all happened because the creator of Final Fantasy is obsessed with the new MMO with this recent MMO based on Final Fantasy. All right. Final Fantasy 14 is my one more thing. And that is it for this week's episode. Kirk Maddie, we will not see other next week, but we will see each other in two weeks. So everyone enjoy the summer break, and we'll see you next time.

Yep, see you next time. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes.

Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun podcast network, and if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at maximumfund.org slash join. Find us on Twitter at triple clickpod, send email the triple click at maximum fund.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.