Triple Click - PS5 Pro, Annapurna Exodus, And Concord's Demise

Episode Date: September 19, 2024

It's time for some news! The Triple Click gang gathers to talk about the newly announced PS5 Pro ($700!), the Annapurna Interactive exodus, and the tragic demise of Concord, a game that lasted less than two weeks.One More Thing:Kirk: Rebel Ridge (2024, Netflix)Maddy: Nimona (2023, Netflix)Jason: Fleishman Is In Trouble (Taffy Brodesser-Akner)LINKS:The (really good!) NYT article about Ezra Edelman’s lost Netflix Prince documentary: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/08/magazine/prince-netflix-ezra-edelman-documentary.htmlPreorder 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

Here at Triple Click, we like to take on big philosophical questions, like if a live service game is canceled, but no one actually played it. Did it ever even exist? Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games and the questions to you. This week, we are rounding up some news from recent weeks, including Sony's Deletion of Concord, Mass Resignation at Annapurna Interactive, and the $700 PS5 Pro. I'm Kirk Hamilton. I'm Mattie Myers. And I'm Jason Trier. Hello.

Hello. Hello. It's us. Fall is in the air and we are back. It is. In your ears. Kind of. It feels more like fall here than it has recently.

It's still really hot here. I still have my air conditioners in. But nominally fall is in the air. My neighbors are putting up Halloween decorations. That's how you know. It's crazy. When I went to CVS, like in August, there were already Halloween candy aisles. That says it should be.

I like that. Halloween can take over the rest of the year as far as I'm concerned. That's fine. I agree. Sure. Candy and costume. Yeah. Great holidays.

It is. It's fun when you have kids, I will say. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Oh, boy. Triple click is a listener supported show. No transition.

I got no costume related segue here. Wait, hold on, hold on, hold on. You missed out on the perfect opportunity. Click or treat. Oh, that's good. Oh, trigger treat. More like click or treat to support triple click, there you go, which is a maximum fun podcast that you can support by becoming a member of maximum fun.

If you go to maximum fun. dot org slash join and become a member of our wonderful worker-owned podcast network. You will be supporting the network and also our show. And you will get access to all kinds of triple click bonus episodes from the years gone by. We most recently recorded an MCU Marvel check-in about Deadpool and Wolverine. But we've done all kinds of cool stuff this year. And there are literal dozens of bonus episodes that you can listen to from the past as well. That is maximum fun.

dot org slash join, go become a member, support our show. And while we're talking about membership things, we did a maximum fund drive earlier in the year. It's an annual thing we do at maximum fund to get new people to sign up. There's always a special reward. And this year, the special reward was a really cool pin that said Bing. It was styled like a Phoenix Wright objection, but it said Bing, which of course is a little bit of a triple click inside joke. And I just wanted to note a little thing about the Bing pins. There was a very small number of them, it looks, like have a kind of an issue where the red lettering on the Bing comes off. This happened to me and a couple other people in our Discord, though it seems like most of the pins are fine. I wanted to

mention it on the show because they have made some replacements for anyone who had that happen. So if that happened to you, you can email membership at maximum fund.org and they'll actually send you a replacement pin that has all of the red lettering. And the red lettering is very important. You got to read the big. You need that. So just in case that happened to you, you can get in touch with and they'll send you a replacement. I just wanted to mention that on the show because I feel like there might be a few people out there who had it happen and are just sort of bummed like, oh, my pin wasn't good. But you can get a new one. Maximum Fun is taking care of you. So yeah, just wanted to mention that before we get into this episode's topic,

Jason, what are we talking about today? This week we were talking about the news. We are not typically a weekly gaming news podcast where we like go over everything that happened in the video game world. But every once in a while we like to do a big roundup where we talk about some of the more interesting stories that have happened in recent weeks. And, I mean, there have been a lot of wild ones over the last few weeks. So there's a lot to dig into here. Why don't we go in kind of loose chronological order with some of the kind of the big beats over the last few weeks and months, starting with Concord. We haven't gotten into this because we've been, we've had so many cool games

to talk about. Did either we play Concord? I did not. No. No. Okay. And I ran out of time to play. I was barely aware of Concord. It really snuck up on us. It's interesting, Kirk. It's interesting to say that because I think if you're very online, you have probably seen people talking about it all the time. And in part, at least because there's a gamer gaity aspect to the whole thing. So Concord is a game made by a game studio called Firewalk Studios that was previously owned by kind of an overarching. arching company called Probably Monsters that was started by former bungee president, Harold Ryan. And Firewalk was one of the studios within that umbrella. It was also formed by a bunch of ex-Bungy people. And they were purchased by Sony in 2023 after starting to work on this PlayStation exclusive game for them. And this game is called Concord. It's a shooter. It's like an online hero shooter service game. It has, at least according to a couple of their staff, it has been in

development for eight years, although I think a lot of that time is like paper and kind of idea, brainstorming, whiteboard sort of thing. So it depends what you consider development. But regardless, it was made by a team of led by ex-Bungy staff, Ryan Ellis, the director of the game, was at one point the director of Destiny too, although I believe he was removed and replaced by Luke Smith at one point. And so it's got like that shooter pedigree behind it. And it was released in August. and nobody played it. And by that, that's only like slightly an exaggeration. Oh, yeah, it's really low numbers.

Hilariously bad. And that's why, and Kirk, the reason you haven't heard of it is because it's just another kind of generic-looking, like, hero, shooter game. But here's the thing. There was also the characters in it. They're kind of, I mean, I think a lot of people find them unappealing, but they also are very diverse. There's kind of characters of different races and genderized.

identities and so on and so forth. Sizes. Yeah. Yeah, sizes. And so the Gamergate crowd attached to that and glommed onto that as kind of like, hey, these guys are woke because they have characters that aren't white. And so they're going to fail. And so they all celebrated when it turned out the game. Indeed, did fail. Because, of course, whenever like a live service game, this happened with Suicide Squad 2, whenever a live service game comes out and it's like, hey, nobody's buying it because nobody wants another live service game, the most annoying people on the planet will be there

to blame diversity for that. Yeah, even if it's completely unrelated. They'll take any when they can because they're doing so well. Yeah, right? So what happened was Concord released at the end of August, and the player base was so low that like steam concurrence were like in the three digits. Yeah, yeah. It was like a high of 600, like incredibly.

low, like to the point where I kept looking at the number on SteamDB and being like, this must be wrong. This can't be right. It seemed like a glitch. Yeah, yeah. But it wasn't, I guess. Yeah, which is especially unusual. I don't think that would be unusual for a game that was like released by some random indie studio or something. Yeah, of course. Yeah. For a game published by Sony and PlayStation Studios, it was pretty wild, like a first party game. This is a game that was like announced and showed off at PlayStation Showcases. Yeah. So less than two weeks later, they came out with a blog post saying, hey, this game did not deliver

on people's expectations. Wasn't what we're hoping for. So we're pulling it offline entirely, which is pretty wild. So it is no longer playable. And they gave refunds to everyone who bought it. It was like a $40 game, which I think might have been one of the critical flaws here

that it wasn't free to play, that you had to buy it. But so everyone who bought it got a refund, and it is now just dead. And they've said, I believe last I spoke, I spoke to someone at the studio, not too long ago, and they said they were like,

just kind of like pitching ideas and trying to figure out what's going to be next. I don't, I think there's like, maybe there's some people holding out hope that they could relaunch it as a free to play a game, but that would take so much work that I am skeptical that it'll ever happen, which is just a bonker sequence of events. Imagine spending years of your life on something only for it to disappear after less than two weeks. Pretty mind-boggling. Yeah.

But yeah, wild story. So, Kirk, that's why you haven't heard of Concord because it, it, it, it, like came and went so quickly that at the lake of an eye yeah i should say so i have heard quite a bit about concord lately and i was aware when it before it was coming out that there was a narrative around it and then when it did come out that it was failing and then when it was pulled i of course heard many people talking about it and read a lot about it when i say i was unaware of it it was there was kind of a period between when it was announced which i guess was in 2023 and when it finally came out where it just seemed like it didn't exist i was just wasn't getting

the sense that Sony was excitedly promoting a new online game, this new service game that they really wanted to have be a great success. It just sort of came out and then flopped and went away. And to me, it felt a little bit similar, actually, to Hell Divers 2. And that Hell Divers 2 also didn't have a lot of pomp and circumstance leading up to its launch. There were some trailers. Like, I knew it existed. And because I liked the first game, I was a little more aware of it. But then it came out, and it was just the biggest thing ever. It was kind of the opposite. where it seemed like Sony wasn't ready for that either. And it's been kind of interesting to see Sony taking their much vaunted service game strategy

and then implementing it in a way that implies that they don't really have a sense of what's going to do well and what isn't. Even though you would think they must on some level have some sense of the interest. I mean, Concord had a beta at least. But I don't know, it's been surprising. Those two games strike me as interesting sides of some coin or other. Yeah. And you'd think that beta would have given them some.

clues, like how many people participated in the beta? What were the wait times like? How are the servers experiencing that? Like, that's a really good clue. It's like why you do betas. Normally, it's because you're preparing for a massive influx of players and you're like trying to figure out how you're going to handle that. But also, you know, you're making final polish adjustments to a game if you can. But yeah, I know just from experience that like a lot of my co-workers weren't that excited about it. And so, you know, we got some beta keys. I tried to get people to play it. My cork or Michael McWhorter was like weirdly fascinated by it and was like, I really want to play Concord and wrote multiple stories about it. Yeah, I read his article where he clearly

put in some time. I don't know, drawn to it in that way that sometimes you become fascinated by something where you're like, I can tell this isn't going to go well. And I just need to watch every single beat of this bizarre story play out. And so it was like just his personal experience. of playing the game and then being like, wow, this was weird. I called it and yet I hate the reality in which we live where I knew this wasn't going to do well. But like he was highlighting like early issues with it when he was playing the beta to me. And then I don't know. I'm sure other people were too on the staff.

That's what I also wonder about a game like this is like, did people making it worry about it? I just, I have so many questions. I got to wait for that, Jason. Tryer Expoise. Well, I don't know about that. I mean, it's the same friggin' story over and over again. Yeah, how many times can you write the same article? I guess I can just reread the Suicide Squad one.

Yeah, right? I got on the phone with someone not too long ago who, like, had some knowledge about what happened there. And I was like, so let me guess, like, inadequate tools and a lack of vision. Nobody knew what the game was. Nobody played the game enough. Like, nobody, it turned out that they made a bet on like this genre that is super oversaturated. Like, it's just the list. It's really the same story over.

I don't know if I have the opportunity to do it. You've like reported yourself out of a job. Yeah. You've established the narrative so well that everyone knows what happened. No, it's just that there are better stories. Like I'm doing a story right now about another topic we're going to get into that is bonkers and will be worth the story.

So we'll get into that in a bit. But yeah, the Concord's there. I don't know. Maybe I'll do something one day, but I don't, I'm not planning on it right now because I just don't think it's, it's that much different. Like, it's, that's even more tragic in some ways. Yeah. It is.

It's just fundamentally. It's like a. bunch of people just like made this bet on a genre that just didn't work and made a game that just didn't hit for whatever. There are all sorts of reasons why it didn't hit. And looking at Hell Divers 2, I mean, the kind of the vibe around that game, despite Kirk, and I think that's a really good point about like Sony not putting in the marketing effort for for either game, really. I think it's a good point about Helderivir's 2 hitting out of nowhere. And I think that there are a few reasons for that. One being that it was really hooky. It had a really good.

good hook that Concord just never had. It had a good vision. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's, it's incredibly fun and hilarious and generates meable moments by the minute. That's the other thing I was going to say, the virality of it all. Whereas Concord, like, I couldn't even tell you what that game looks like to play, because I just have never seen anyone sharing anything from it. Yeah, the games themselves are dramatically different. I mean, I've only watched some footage of Concord, but what I saw just could have been any hero shooter. And I do actually think that the character designs are a problem. I mean, I only looked at it very fleetingly and was just like, oh, there's like a big weird robot, there's just some guy. Everyone, like, I think they're kind of going for a 70s

sci-fi look, but it just looks kind of blah. Like, I was really just not struck by any of the character designs. When you compare that to something like Overwatch, where every character just jumps off the screen at you and tells you their whole story, like immediately. It's just like, well, yeah, people want to play as these aspirational, cool-looking, wild, exciting, charismatic characters. They don't want to play as like some weird robot with a rocket launcher and no face or whatever else is in that game. Yeah, I think that's a good

point. Yeah, I don't know if that like good character designs could have saved this game but yes, I do think that's a good point. No, but it was a noticeable problem. Oh yeah, 100% and I think it's proof, I mean despite what the GamerGators believe, this is proof that like a game can be diverse and it can be bad and also it can be diverse and it can be good. Like who would have thought? Who would have thought? So weird. It just

exists. Wow. News at 11. It's a very good point. I think there's this there's this kind of like fantasy image of some like of this like social justice warrior that lives inside a lot of people's heads that's like this blue-haired like non-binary person who's like diversity above all else. Yeah. And I don't think anyone. I don't even care if the game is bad.

Right. I don't care if the game is good as long as it has transgender people. That person doesn't exist. That person does not exist. Like there are people who are fighting for diversity but like not at the expense of like. good stuff. And when a game turns out to be bad, it's not because people wanted it to be bad. It's because things didn't come together for a variety of reasons. Wait, are you telling me no one intentionally makes a bad game? This is a shocking here.

What? Yeah, except for like maybe if there's like a the producers version. Yeah, there's a producer situation, of course. Yeah. As far as we know, that's not what happened here. Or was it? I know. Well, we can continue to frame this in terms of the worst arguments against this game that anyone has made. I think that it is interesting to look at why it actually did fail. Well, it is important for what it's worth. That was a big part of the conversation.

It was. I want to frame this as like, like, I know you're not quite as online as me and Maddie. So I do want to say that like this was like a big, like there were a lot of like annoying people talking about this. But yeah, go on. Well, I do think that it's interesting to think about why people didn't want to play this. Oh, sure. Some of it, sure, as maybe character designs, but there's a lot more there as well. I mean, we've talked in the past about the oversaturation of hero shooters and the fact that games take so long to get, you know, to get finished.

So as a result, they can start chasing a trend eight years ago. And by the time the game finally comes out, it's completely like four trends out of date. I don't know. Like, I think even if you were chasing trends and the game had whatever it is, that spark, that certain things. that makes a game joyful or fun or sticky, it could still get around the fact that it's an older style of game if it had just had that. But it just didn't. That's something that Hell Divers 2 did have.

I mean, that game, I guess it was a type of game that we don't see that many of, like a co-op, PVE extraction shooter, I guess is what you'd call it. But there are other games in that genre. But it just had like, I mean, the character designs are just faceless guys. There aren't even any great characters in Hell Divers. It's just that it had. an aesthetic, it had those voice lines, it had the silly, like, ironic fascism thing that just really caught on and was really sticky. And I can imagine a version of Concord that had the same thing,

that had a world that people just kind of bought into. There's another important comparison point here, which is Deadlock, Valve's new game. And that game actually, so it had been kind of like an open secret, like quietly being played for a while. And it actually coincidentally, or maybe not coincidentally, but it, like Valve, like, let everyone out of the NDA the same day that Concord released. And Deadlock is, it's also, it's like a cross between a hero shooter and a moba, and it's very unique. I haven't played it, but from what I've heard, my colleague, all of our former colleague

and my current colleague, Cecilia, has played a bunch, and she says it's really, really cool because it feels unique. It feels unlike anything out there. It's also got cool characters designs, and it's made by Valve, and it's got strong word of mouth, and it's free to play. So there's a lot going for it. And I think comparing that to Concord is really interesting because one is a game that people are talking about and excitingly sharing. And I think that kind of the closed, like NDA, like friends of friends can get in and play this secretly, that also had a strong viral word of a mouth effect as well.

So I think looking at the two games and their strategies is pretty pivotal. But like really fundamentally it comes down to that like people are finding Deadlock really fun to play and innovative and interesting. and Concord just did not resonate with people. Like if it had been really fun, maybe one of those 500 people would have told somebody else that it was really fun. Brought in another 500 people. Yeah, yeah.

Well, that's the thing. I mean, if it had been fun, like I think that, yes, we have this oversaturation point, but the problem with this and Suicide Squad and some of the other games that haven't hit is that they're also not like A plus games. Like if you're an A plus game, I think even an oversaturated market,

you can still make a little bit of a splash at least, But you can't be like a C plus or B-9us. It's not enough. Even if you have so much financial backing, like, that's really what's wild about the Concord's story is. Although, Maddie, to your point earlier, I mean, you pointed out that like people they should have known from the beta. I think they did. I think Sony and PlayStation, they were prepared. Well, it's not that it was too late.

I think they probably didn't put in the kind of marketing budget that they might have if they thought it was going to be a hit. Like, I think they kind of sent it to die. Interesting. Yeah, which is something you sometimes need to do if you know that like no matter, like what's the point of throwing good money after bad and spending another like $50 million in marketing budget if you know that like people aren't buying your game in the first place. Yeah. Usually that you would just cancel the game before you put it out though. Like it is unusual to actually go to all the trouble of putting it out and then two weeks later kind of retroactively canceling it. Like that is what makes the situation so bizarre and unique is. Like, it's as though it was a line item that somebody missed. And they were like, wait, we put that out? We weren't going to put that out. Because it's a service game canceling it means, or like stopping publishing, it means something very different. Yes.

I mean, it used to be you would release a game to die and it would still exist. Yeah, I would just be out there. I remember people said Titanfall 2 was released to die. But Titanfall 2 is a great game that a lot of people have still been able to play and that you can play today. But because it's a service game, you can actually release a game and then just delete it from the world two weeks after. Which is just kind of an unprecedented thing. Like, I can't really think of anything exactly like that happening. People have mentioned cyberpunk as kind of similar being delisted from the Sony store.

But no, but that's different because that was just one platform. Amazon did it with Crucible. That's the only other time it's happened as far as I can remember. And then the version of Destiny 1 with Peter Dinklage no longer exists. Yeah, that's a different. Yeah, but that's, that wasn't like they were like this sucks for delisting. Well, there are MMOs that have like been taken down. Like that's happened in the past.

But two weeks after it came out, I guess the Amazon game maybe is the only other one. It really, they just didn't give it any time to even build word and mouth. But the thing is, when you have that few players, even like operating server costs, like it just is not worth it. You're losing money every day that it stays online. So, I mean, we kind of have to pull the plug. But yeah, it's all just very sad. Anyway, let's talk about some other stuff because we have a few more news stories to get to. PS5 Pro.

Last week, Sony announced this big thing. There are no iteration of the PlayStation 4. in a Mark Serney presentation and nine-minute video where he showed off some games running at like slightly better graphical qualities than their previous versions. It was a wild video. It was a very wild video.

Man, it was so crazy. You really have to squint. One thing you said that I thought was interesting is that like they're trying to do away with the whole do you have to do performance mode or graphics mode. Instead they want you to just have 60 frames a second with high quality graphics. The real kind of,

takeaway from that event was that it's $700 for this thing, which I think shocked some people. And yeah, I don't know. Are you guys going to buy one? Oh, no. I have a PC. I'm fine. I don't need to buy this. Yeah, it costs $700. It doesn't include the stand. For some reason, that's what just... Or a disc drive. No stand. The distrive is less surprising. But the stand is definitely the one we're like, that can't cost that much. Of course. It's like just include the stand. Like, I guess. This is professional. This is professional.

Because it costs more. It already costs so much. That's an absurd conversation on its own. But like, give me the little piece of plastic that makes the PS5 look even remotely bearable in my living room. I guess I don't use the stand and it never have. Oh, really? You sit it on its side? Yeah, it stands on its end.

Mine does. Oh, no. Well, yeah, it's up. It's up and down. But it just sits on its end. It doesn't need to be on a stand. It just sits vertically on the floor. it seems fine.

Wow. It hasn't complained. Oh, you don't have it on the stand? Oh, interesting. This is a crazy reveal. Kirk is just balancing his PS5 precariously. I feel like that's so precarious.

It's like up against the wall. It's not going to tip over. It's fine. Haunted from Kirk. Just lean it against the wall. It's fine. It's not leaning. It just stands perfectly fine on its end.

I don't know. Interesting. I thought the stand was so that you could like put it on, put it flat and have it sit kind of level. No, the stand is so it can be vertical. No, it's just a little plastic. classic circle that you can screw in on the bottom and that I am now semi-convinced you do have screwed it on the bottom and maybe you've forgotten. Yeah, maybe you just don't remember that it's on there because it seems like it would be tough to keep it standing vertical without the stand.

We shouldn't spend this much time on this. Yeah, let's talk about the fake. I'll take a picture and I'll bring my way in if I'm wrong. Okay. So as the sort of more graphically sensitive of the three of us, maybe, or the guy who chases frame rates a little bit more, at least on PC. Oh, for sure you are. Like, I do understand why this happened, even though it feels kind of out of nowhere and kind of unnecessary. Like, it just seems like they were going to do this at some point. They needed to release a mid-gen refresh the same as they did with the PS4 Pro.

It's just that it's a really weird time because the PS5 has had a really weird lifespan. Yeah. Like it launched at a weird point during COVID. It was extremely hard to get one for the first year. It, everything on it almost runs on PS4 as well. So there's just this feeling that, like, yeah, the PS5 runs every year. game great. So if you then release a mid-gen refresh like this, you're showing Ratchet and Clank, which looks unbelievable on a PS5. And I guess, I mean, maybe it looks more believable if you're

not on YouTube and you're just, you know, you're looking at it on the biggest, most intense screen. But I don't know, like it's pretty, you know, diminishing returns, I think, on a lot of that stuff. At the same time, they can't release it too much later because presumably they're going to be releasing the PS6 at some point. And There's also the question of Grand Theft Auto 6, which to me seems like the only game that will matter, will make any of this matter. I think they, when they planned this out, I think they hoped that GTA 6 would be out this fall home. And that's the thing is, they can't count on Rockstar because they don't know when Rockstar is going to release that game. But that seems like the only game that's big enough and will be graphically intensive enough for it to really matter.

And also not on PC. Yeah, as far as we know, like so far. Probably until like a year later, we'll do what Rockstar usually does. Yeah. So yeah, did you guys see the article, the newsletter I ran last week? I talked a little bit about the diminishing returns here. The thing that really struck me about the presentation itself, I went back and I looked at the PS4 pro presentation where they announced that thing because it was a similar concept. Like here's a, like the PS4 is feeling a little underpower now. Here's a refresh. Except the PS5 does not feel under power now. And the reason that like the big difference is that in the PS4 for a pro reveal, they were showing like games. that were coming out that same fall. Like, it was a new Tomb Raider game. It was Watch Dogs 2 at the time. It was the fall of 2016.

So it was all this stuff that was coming. There was a new DeiSX that had just come out. It was all either stuff that had come out that year or stuff that was about to come out. Whereas this one, it's all stuff that came out like two plus years ago. Except for like Final Fantasy 7. And there was some AC shadows. A couple of exceptions.

And it was all stuff that was also out on the PS4. So it's really, it says a lot about yes to your point, Kirk, this is a weird generation. Not a lot of PS5 exclusives this generation. But also, I think it says a lot about just the lack of technological, like, graphical fidelity improvements that we've seen this generation. Like, games these days, they run a higher frame rates than they did on the PS4. And that's fantastic. I love it. I've been like, I've, I'm all about that 60 FPS. But, like, from a graphical fidelity point of view, we've kind of hit, like, all games are looking incredible now. We don't need them to get much better. Astrobot is like one of the best

looking games I've ever seen. Like yeah, we don't need to go into higher like image quality and all the other stuff that Mark Cernney was talking about. So that's what I think makes it feel so unnecessary unless you're like a, unless you have a ton of disposable income and you're really into like the best gear in which case, why don't you just have a PC? Right. Or you don't have a PlayStation yet. If you're like buying one new, you may just get the faster ones. Sure. You're going to get those $700 one? I have trouble believing that person exists. I mean, I guess a very well-heeled buyer who just never got around to getting a PS5. I think that person exists. I mean, a person who doesn't have a PS5 and is thinking about getting one. And then they're like, well, there's a $500 one and a $700 one and the $700 one has better graphics. Yeah, I may as well. I think there's plenty of people who'd make that decision. Yeah. I mean, Maddie, people do buy the like the high-end iPhones.

Of course. Yeah. So there are a lot of people. I just wonder how significant of a data point that is. But also that's okay, because maybe this is just such a luxury item that Sony is just kind of looking in it that way and is like, okay, this isn't the average buyer, but that's okay because it's going to pay for itself anyway, because enough people will buy it that it'll work out. I don't know, though, because I know the PS5 was losing money on every sale for a bit there. And I never really buy the whole idea that this isn't going to have performance and quality modes. Like, there will just always be a new way that you can push whatever hardware you have. even further, if you're willing to compromise down to 30 FPS, there will always be something you can do. Like, you can do that on PC now if you want to turn on whatever super oversampling where it's running at like 4x, the pixel density. And you have like the most elaborate path tracing and ray tracing turned on these like experimental invidia technologies that totally crater the frame rate, but make it look even better. You can always come up with a way to make it run slower and look quote unquote

better. It's just on PC you learn all the different compromises that you can make to keep it running at whatever frame rate you find acceptable. On console, if they're willing to go to 30 FPS, like as long as that's still something that can happen, it will. I just think that it will. They'll find new things, new envelopes that they can push. And then there will still be a quality mode in a performance mode. I just like don't really, I don't see things moving towards just, oh, it's all 60 FPS at least. You know, soon it'll be like, well, okay, maybe. We can go 120 If you run in quality mode, you can double it up or you can, like, there will always be some variability, I guess, in the settings. And that's not a bad thing.

Like, I think it's kind of cool that consoles offer multiple options. So this is just a more powerful machine that can do more things and look a little bit better, which is fine for anyone who wants it. Sure. I think it is a pretty narrow band of PS5 owners because the PS5 still feels so great. Like it can just do so much and doesn't have that same feeling of, like, beleagueredness. that the PS4 started to have when the pro came out. Because the PS4 was kind of suffering when the pro came out. It was like a jet engine when I would run God of War or whatever.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Game still, yeah, PS5 games still looking good. Although, yeah, I just think if you're like a tech-oficionado, why don't you just get a PC? Like, it's not as convoluted or as complicated as. Yeah, we made a whole episode about it. We did.

We made a whole episode of Triple Click about how building a PC isn't that intimidating. And you should try it. Yeah. Although I will say, I think, I think you probably would have to spend more than $700 to get a PC of this equivalent. Like a GPU costs $700. Hold on, but you will make it up in Steam sales. The amount you save on software you will make up for any extra expenses you have to spend on the hardware. And also time you have to spend building it or whatever.

All right, I think let's get into the next story, which is, of course, Anapurna Interactive. So this is a wild one. This is quite a bonkers story, and I'm still piecing it together. I can't really get, there's some stuff I can't quite talk about because I'm working on a story that will hopefully be published in the next week or two that will outline exactly what happened and fill in some of the blanks here. But I can talk about what's been reported and try to get it a little bit more. So last week, I reported that the entire staff of Annapurna Interactive, Anapurna Interactive is the video game division of Anapurna Pictures, which is a film studio. run by Megan Ellison, the billionaire daughter of mega, like 100 billionaire Larry Ellison.

And Anapurna Enteractive, the entire staff resigned all at once, all 25 people. Anapurter Interactive has published games that we have all played and enjoyed, including Outer Wilds. Yes. And also, like, Stray, which sold a bunch of copies and won a bunch of awards and a ton of other stuff, and including upcoming stuff that we're all excited about. Wanderstop, the new game by Davey Redden of the Stanley Parable, is a brand. Definitely a brand that is synonymous with quality indie games. Incredibly.

Yes. A very potent and valuable brand. And not just that. Originally started by this guy Nathan Gary and Deborah Mars and a few other people who came from Sony, Santa Monica, where they had been in charge of shepherding games. Like, remember that period in like early 2010s when it was like, like Journey and Flower and Edith Finch and Ho-Hocum and all those other indie games from Sony, that was all those same people.

So they've got a decade-long track record of like incredible indie stuff. So they all abruptly quit. And now Anapurna Interactive has two people working there, including this new president who took over, Hector Sanchez, who was like calling developers trying to reassure them that they're not canceled and that they're still going to get their names published. Not a fun job.

The entire stuff is quit. So why did they quit? So what I've reported is that essentially they were negotiations with Megan Ellison to spin out and form their own new company, like an independent company that would handle publishing duties and do the same stuff, but just be independent from Hannah Perna. Those negotiations came to a standstill and Megan Ellison pulled out of them and this led to them abruptly all leaving. I'm trying to fill in more of the blanks in further reporting, but for now, developers are scrambling, trying to figure out what's next, and what happens to them,

what happens to their games, what happens to Annapurna, it is a mess. We've also never seen anything like this before. We've seen kind of like exodus before where like a bunch of people quit to start something new, but never the entirety of a game company. So pretty wild story.

They pulled a dead spin. This is a real thing. Yeah, I know. That's what I'm speaking of. Yes, that is a good parallel. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. The series of events that led to deadspin were pretty public, though, and the staffers were pretty public about the reasons for leaving immediately afterwards.

Whereas that's, as far as I know, not the case here. I can't recall any big public statement from them where they're like, we did it for these reasons. Management told us X. We said we will only do Y or else we walk. We couldn't come to an agreement. So we all walked. It also just says a lot about employee unity.

Like, it's impressive. Deadspin is one of the only places I know of in all of my time as a person working at all, ever, having a job where an entire group of people was like, we all work together and we are all quitting at the same time. And none of us are like, I don't know, guys, I want to keep my job. Like, everyone left. This is like that. It's very impressive on the part of the workers to unite like that. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, it speaks to probably something special about that workplace. Yeah. those people that they would all make the jump together, which then, of course, underlines how sad it is that they've all left and that, you know, all of the game developers who were relying on them who probably enjoyed working with them, given that they were probably a pretty dynamic group. Yeah. Now no longer have them to rely on and are kind of at sea.

And that for me has definitely been the, like I don't know anything about this story. I mostly just, you know, have read what you've written about it, Jason. And that's my first thought is just, wow, that would suck. because, you know, a lot of people have been in, at least people in entertainment have been in situations like that. Maybe your publisher or your agent or just someone who is like representing you and your work, you know, you count on them to be your champion. You count on them to understand what you're trying to do. And you start to take that for granted and then they go away and then suddenly you're left with this project that you've been working on maybe for years and you're not sure what you're going to do with it. I actually just read this great article.

I linked the two of you. I don't know if you've read it in the New York Times about the prints documentary that's finished. It's this nine-hour prints documentary. It's directed by Ezra Edelman, who's a fantastic filmmaker, and he's spent like five years making this incredibly all-accessed, like really detailed prints documentary about one of the most mysterious figures in all the music. And there's a fantastic New York Times, or it might be New York Times Magazine article about this. We'll link it in show notes. But basically, one of the main things that has caused this documentary to hit a snack,

is that the woman at Netflix who was in charge of their documentary division, who was basically a similar role. Like, you're kind of, the person who goes to bad for you, who is like overseeing your project, the one who pitched Ezra on making this documentary in the first place, was laid off when Netflix laid a bunch of people off. And suddenly you're in the middle of this giant, incredible project that you've dedicated so much effort and so much of your life to. And then the person you were counting on to land the ship is gone. I would imagine that's how a lot of the game developers who are working with Anapurna Interactive feel. That's got to just be a terrible feeling. Yeah.

Yeah. And on top of that, as of right now, Anapurna is saying that, like, they're not letting people out of contracts. So, like, people are kind of stuck to this company that no longer has the people that they were, like, wanted to work with for their games. So that kind of sucks. Yeah, it kind of, it happened to me. And a lesser scale. After I finished Blood Sweat and Pixels, I was, like, signing on to do a new project at my old book publishing. and my editor just quit and left for another industry.

And I had to, I had this very stressful, like, week-long process where, like, my agent, like, scrambled to find me a new editor because the editors who got saddled in my book, like, knew nothing about games. And this is for Press Reset, my second book. And I remember one editor, like, read it and was like, this is a little too dark. Can we go something lighter in here? Like, I swear to God, they said this. Why don't you start with Pong and then go through video game history? And I was like, no, I'm going to look for a bad fit. And I heard of Pong, no?

Because I don't know. I had to pay back my advance and wound up switching publishers and found another editor. And then when I finished press reset, that editor quit. So this has happened to me a couple times. Why are you causing it? That's what I have a certain point. It's like I feel like it's me. Jason cancels games.

He gets editors to quit. Actually, after my second editor quit, I like wound up with this incredible. editor who's my current editor. But that's all the sense of the point. That's not a smaller scale because when it's just like a single person doing a project, it's a little easier to just be like, okay, well, I have a manuscript. I can take this somewhere else. And it's not the end of the world. It depends also where you are in the project. If I was much further along, then it would be awful because I would be like, hey, I'm relying on this editor to get me through like a go-to-market plan and like do PR and like sales and all this stuff. And they're no longer there. So I think

it's similar with Anapurna, where it depends where you are in your stage of the game. Sure. And that's how much it might affect you. So if you're just like right now just collecting checks and like working on your game, then you're probably, it's not affecting you right now. But if you're planning on launching within the next few months, you might be totally screwed. So yeah, just a really bad situation. Yeah, it really is.

One thing I'll say is, I'll have more on this in hopefully the next couple of weeks. But like, I think that like, it's, it's. It's got to be a really untenable situation if 25 people all get together and say, we would rather quit than stay here anymore. And Deadspin was the same way, where it was literally untenable. Nobody could work for Jim Spanfeller anymore. It was not possible for like rational human beings to work for, still isn't. People still have to do it.

Yeah. But especially not those rational human beings. Yeah. And like they're often similar themes. and involved with this stuff. And in this case, it was not the type of, I think sometimes people assume that it's going to be like, oh, are these people being stifled creatively by the business end, that sort of story? This is not that sort of story.

But yeah, I'll get into it more down the road. Yeah, I'll definitely read whatever you're able to dig up. Not trying to be elusive. I just can't really talk about a story that's like an ongoing reporting or anything. One more quick thing before we move to one more thing. Xbox laid off another 600 people, which is just like a quarterly occurrence at this point. We kind of knew this was coming.

I actually reported back in May like, hey, more Xbox layoffs are coming later this year. In fact, I wouldn't be shocked if this wasn't the end of it also, because as we've talked about, Xbox is under a lot of pressure from their higher-ups at Microsoft in the wake of the Activision Blizzard deal. It's like, hey, you spent $69 billion. better crank those profits. But it's just a disaster. I mean, working there right now has just got to be bleak.

Especially if like some Blizzard people got laid off, people in like their story development department. And like Warcraft Rumble that team. Do you remember that mobile game? You guys remember Warcraft? No. That team got pretty gutted. Yeah, Kirk.

I mean, you're saying you don't remember. It kind of speaks to that too, the success of that game. Yeah. But yeah, just beat times for Xbox. Yeah. I really don't know what the future of the games industry looks like in light of how many layoffs there have been.

I know we've talked about this a few times on the show, but the more happened, the more I am wondering what the next several years are going to look like in terms of what will come out. I mean, it's easy to just look at 2025 and be like, okay, great. Yeah, probably Switch 2 is going to be there. GTA is going to be there. We got a lot of really big releases we can count on. But to have all of these layoffs now, I don't, I don't know what the next five years are going to look like.

It's going to be fundamentally different in some way. And I don't know if it's going to be good. Yeah, I wonder, I would love to see more of a sense of numbers of the entire video game industry. Because there's an interesting trend where like the numbers of layoffs, we talked about this before, but the numbers of this year has been astronomical. but that's because the hiring during 2020 and 2021 was also astronomical. So I wonder how much of this is a correction and we're now at a point where like, like it feels like there's this just talent gutting and like everybody is just getting like all of the talent of the video game industry is just disappearing.

But I wonder if we're just now at the same, same sorts of numbers as we were a few years ago as opposed to like drastically smaller as a video game industry than it was a few years ago. I think it's more of a correction than like a big, massive disappearance of people for what it's worth. So like the numbers are bigger, but that's because the numbers were higher in the first place. And I'm not saying that because to make any of it like, it's not good. It doesn't make any of it better. But I think it puts some context in what's been going on and why it seems so dire now. And it's also just like an exceptionally bad time to be looking for work because there's so many people on the,

on the job market. And that feels worse than it's ever been, too. Yeah, for sure. I'm guessing it's a lot of people who are changing careers because they have no other option to reenter the workforce where they were. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I wrote about this impress what you said about how people just like are burning, like burn out from. Yeah, of course. The layoffs, the constant layoffs and are just like, I don't want to work in the video game industry anymore. Like I can find, I interviewed a bunch of people who had gone into like different careers that were more stable for them, more, uh, less volatile, better paying and on and on and on. So yeah, definitely a trend. Yeah. That was 20, 21. So I know. That was long before any

of this started. It's probably gotten worse since then. All right. Let's take a break and we'll be back with one more thing. Hello internet. I'm your husband host, Travis McElroy. And I'm your wife host, Teresa McElroy. And this is a promo for Schmanor. It's extraordinary etiquette. For ordinary occasions. Every week, we're going to tell you about a bit of culture, a bit of history, how etiquette still applies in the modern day, all that stuff. We also love to do biographies and histories of and, you know, general procedurals, how to do etiquette in today's society. So come check it out every Friday on maximum fun.org or wherever you find your podcasts. Manners Schmanners. Get it?

My name's Doug Dugay and I'm here to talk about my podcast in the middle of the one you're listening to. It's called Valley Heat and it's about my neighborhood. the Burbank Rancho Equestrian District, the center of the world when it comes to foosball, frisbee golf, and high-speed freeway roller skating. And there's been a jaguar parked outside on my curb for 10 months. I have no idea who owns it. I have a feeling it's related to the drug drop

that was happening in my garbage can a little over a year ago. And if this has been a boring commercial, imagine 45 minutes of it. Okay, Valley Heat, it's on every month on maximum fun.org or wherever you get podcasts. Check it out, but honestly skip it. These are the chronicles of the Rancho All righty.

District in Burbank, California. This is the event's taking place in my house around my house. All righty. We are back. It is time for one more thing. Maddie, you've gotten an Annapurna. I know. I didn't intend to do this.

I didn't intend to do this. For movie night this week, Tina and I watched Nimona, which is an animated movie that's on Netflix, which I've been meaning to watch for a year. It came out last year. And I heard really good things about it. And I just somehow never got around to it. And I really can't recommend it enough.

This movie had a lot, a very troubled history in terms of like how it almost didn't come out. It was a Disney movie for a while. There's a really good long variety article about how Disney didn't like that there's a queer relationship in the movie. And Disney was also just in the middle of COVID when it was in production originally and was hemorrhaging money at the time. But that was definitely a piece of it. And it ended up on Netflix and Anna Perna, I guess. helped with making that happen. I don't know the full story there.

So Megan Allison, who I mentioned earlier, the billionaire, she is gay and she helped save this movie and was like, all this stuff Disney, like, didn't want in there, like, get that stuff in there. It's amazing how many things happened just because a billionaire decided the one. Yeah. Sometimes it's good. Sometimes it's not. But Jeree's still out.

We don't know. Jason's going to report on this. Maybe they shouldn't have as much power. Who's to say? Maybe we shouldn't have billionaires. Anyway, that's not what I'm going to talk about here. So, NEMONA, really good movie, good, like, all ages kind of a movie as well. There is a gay relationship in it.

Obviously, I think that's appropriate for all ages personally, but it's presented in, like, this very mundane normalized way that I really appreciated. But just to kind of like recap the plot, if people have no clue what it's even about. So this is kind of like a fantasy movie that is set in like a far future where medieval nights still exist. they've just continued to exist for hundreds of years because many hundreds of years ago, there's sort of this legend that one night, this female knight named Glorith, fought this huge monster. And so it's kind of like attack on Titan style, this super advanced society now built

these huge walls to protect themselves from this mysterious being that Glorith fought against and all of Glorith's descendants and only her genetic descendants get to become knights as part of this, like ritual that has just remained intact in order to protect the city from like this, this mysterious monster that people still believe exists. And of course, it turns out it does exist, but we'll get to that. You'll get to that if you watch the movie. But Riz Ahmed stars in the movie as a character who's not genetically descended from Glorith, but wants to become a knight anyway. And he like is shown kind of like getting to this point where he's going to be knighted. This is like the first two minutes of the movie, by the way. So I'm going to at least

spoil the premise of the film. And then he is framed by being given a cursed sword basically that kills the queen as soon as he takes it. And he is framed. He obviously didn't intend to kill her. But then suddenly he's seen as a villain and he ends up meeting this mysterious young woman named Namona, who is a shape-shifting being, who is a villain from age old times and is like, you and I are going to collaborate and figure out what's really going on in this kingdom.

And you can sort of guess because this is a kid's movie as to like what Nimon's identity might be. Maybe she's that monster from thousands of years ago. And it's going to turn out that that story wasn't quite what you thought it seemed, who really framed this character. Chloe Grace Moretz plays the monster character. It's so, so good. Riza Med's characters in a gay relationship with another guy named Ambrosius Golden Loin. Like the night names are so freaking great in this. Golden Loins.

It's perfect. It's so good. I don't know. I just, I really liked it. It would also like, you know, it has all these poignant moments

where you like almost cry. I don't know. It's got it all. It's funny. It's sad. It's good. It's a really, really,

really good movie. And it was like legitimately thrilling. Like that beginning part hooks you. And then you're like, well, who did it? Like, what's,

what really happened here? And you legitimately want to figure it out. And it's, it's great. It's great. So it's called Nimona. N-I-M-O-N-A. It's on Netflix.

Really. really recommended. What ages would you recommend? Like, what's the minimum of me? I mean, like, old enough for like Disney stuff with, you know, dragon slaying knights in it. So probably like, you know, eight and up, something like that. Like old enough that you like that kind of thing where there's like some light violence. You get what I'm saying? Your kid has to be able to handle the concept of death. Got it. Yeah, my, we, we, we watched Frozen with my kid. We watched Frozen with the five-year-old, but we skipped, we skipped the intro where like the parents die.

Yeah. Just did the songs because you want to make sure your kids are constantly singing the songs. She loves the songs. Just did, do you want to build a snowman so that your kids can see you ugly cry in the living room in front of them? Oh my God. Yeah. Kirk, what's your one more thing?

My one more thing is also a movie that just premiered on Netflix very recently that I watched and really rocks, man. It whips ass. It's called Rebel Ridge. And it is a good movie. This is a thriller directed by Jeremy Sonier, who directed a movie called Green Room that was actually shot in Portland that I've never seen. That's like a Punks versus Nazis movie. It's supposed to be great, apparently.

Yeah. Yeah, very intense, very violent. Rebel Ridge is another kind of thriller, a pretty gritty movie, but man, it's so good. My first thought watching it was, okay, so this is like if Jack Reacher was a black guy. and then all of the dynamics that would be changed if instead of being a huge buffed white guy who beats people up in search of justice, he came to town as an unknown black guy

who was then targeted by the police, which is what this movie is about. So this movie begins with Aaron Pierre, the star of the movie, who is a freaking movie star. He's so good. He is playing an ex-Marine who is coming to a small town in the south, I think maybe in Alabama,

to bail his cousin out because his cousin is in jail and is sort of in jeopardy as he's being transferred to a new prison where some people who don't like him might target him. So he's trying to go to this town just to deliver the bailout money to get his cousin out and then maybe they can start doing some work together and get a new start and get going. And he gets waylaid by the cops. It's the opening sequence of the movie is this very intense and very like kind of overwhelming and really scary sequence where these cops, they like knock his bike off the road

and then they have him down on the ground with their like guns on him. And he is totally complying with everything that they're asking of him. They search him. It's this kind of long, ratcheting, tent sequence. And you have no idea what's going on. They open his backpack and they find $30,000 in there because he has the money for the bail and also some extra money for them to go start a business. And they take it from him in what's called civil asset forfeiture,

which is a real thing and is actually kind of the central idea of this movie is that it is about this actual horribly unjust thing that police are able to do where if they suspect criminal activity, they can just repossess your shit. And it winds up actually in some cases like funneling into the police department's budget, which in this case, at least in this movie, this winds up being like the central conspiracy of the whole film, is that this crooked police department is thanks in part to lawsuits against them that have left them with no money, they're working this civil asset forfeiture scheme in order to take money from people

and fund the police department and keep themselves in the black and then there's a bunch of other corruption going on as well that's kind of one aspect of this story but really what this movie is this movie is a bad motherfucker comes to town and the wrong guy is push him too far and that's what the movie is and that's how it feels like

does he just go after the cops yes and the thing about it is it's not quite, it's not like a, if anyone who's watched Reacher, which is a fairly appealing show, especially the first season, it's pretty fun. The fun of that show is like, it's really over the top. Like, Jack Reacher is this massive wall of a guy. I'm forgetting his name now, but he's like the largest human being to ever live. And people are always like, oh yeah, I can take that guy. And so they challenge him to a fight and then he just annihilates them. And Reacher kills people left and right. He exists like outside of the law. He's a total vigilantey, like power fantasy. So Aaron Piero's character,

Terry is much more of a real guy. He clearly understands how vulnerable he is as a like black man with, you know, a cousin who's in jail and he's being targeted by this police force. And like he is totally playing by the rules right up until the moment where they push him too far. And like that is the movie. And that's like the ratcheting tension of the movie is watching as they kind of, you're like, I know this guy is able to take these cops apart.

I don't quite know yet how. other than Aaron Pierre is like very big and strong looking. But then it just becomes clear that he is like a military, like he's a marine martial arts expert. And like he starts kind of fighting back. And then it kind of takes a left turn into this conspiratorial investigation mode. He teams up with a woman in town. She's played by Anna Sophia Robb, who is an actress I was not familiar with, but she's great. And it's she's a really interesting character.

And their dynamic is really cool. Bridge to Tarabithia. Oh, okay. So, yeah, she's, I know she must be known because, like, everyone in this is good. The chief of police is Don Johnson, and he's actually fantastic, like, a very good. You hate him, but he's very good.

All the cops are actually very good at playing, like, guys that you really want to see taking down. Oh, man. Don Johnson played the corrupt police chief and watchmen also, so he's like, just got to. Yeah, he's kind of, yeah, this is his, like, the new type guy. Yeah, this is the latest age of his career,

is just playing corrupt police chief. corrupt like assholes and yeah he's he's fantastic in this um so anyways that's the thrill of the movie it's a little bit first blood i've seen a lot of people compare it to that first rambo movie which is a similar idea a veteran you know runs a foul of a corrupt police force and then winds up in the hills like taking them down it's the violence in it and the action sequences are incredibly well done i think it's just a very well-made action movie it's never quite as over the top as you're hoping that it will become it's very grounded there's actually an interesting review on Polygon. If I can find it, I'll link it in the show notes, with Sonnier talking about that,

how they had martial arts sequences that were like really, like, exciting or like some unbelievable stunt that they would do, that he then had to take out because he was constantly pushing back against the stunt crews and being like, this needs to feel more realistic. And I'd say that in the end, that really is what makes the movie feel special, is that you never get like an orgy of violence. There are big, like, explosive moments where he takes on a bunch of cops at once, and it's very exciting. But it never feels like you're watching a superhero. It always feels like you're watching a guy who just really has a plan and is very methodical and moves quickly and it's decisive and, like, you're just rooting for him to win. And then, well,

I won't spoil the ending. But so, yeah, it's a great movie. And really, I will say, this is the second Netflix movie now after Hitman, where this is another movie star performance. I think Aaron Pierre is just incredible on screen. Like, he's so, so good. He was in, in the Underground Railroad, which I've never seen. So I was not familiar with this work before this movie. But my gosh, he is just like, you can't take your eyes off him. Every time he's on screen, his voice, he has this very low, amazing voice. And then the way he plays the character is this, like, controlled guy.

He's, like, absolutely, like, doing what you're asking him. He's calling you, sir. He is, like, following all the police protocol. He understands how to get through the situation. But also, like, you're watching these cops just go further and further and you're like, oh, my God, oh, my God. and that's kind of the joy of the movie. So it's really, really good. It is on Netflix. And yeah, that's Rebel Ridge. Really recommend it. I liked it a lot.

Cool. I will check it out for sure. So, okay, so my one more thing is both a book and a TV show. It's called Fleishman is in trouble. Yeah. So a few months ago or a few weeks ago, I spoke about Long Island Compromise, the great new book by Taffy, Brodasser, Ackner. This is her previous book. She, of course, before that was in New York Times. magazine, a famous profile writer, did really good profiles of a lot of celebrities. And Fleshman was in trouble is her kind of, her debut novel about this divorced dude who has to kind of reckon with the problems in his marriage after his wife just kind of ups and disappears.

And he's left with the kids and the fallout. And he also is like an Upper East Side, very wealthy dude. And it was adapted to a Hulu series, which I also watched, which I thought it would be fun to watch and contrast, because Brutus R. Actor actually was like the showrunner for the Hulu series and wrote all but one of the episodes. So it's really just kind of her authorial voice on the screen. That's cool. Which is really cool. They're both really, really good. I recommend them for a variety of reasons, although they're also, just like Long Island Compromise, quite bleak and quite just kind of like do not make you feel good about marriage and love. But despite that, very interesting. They're both, they're about midlife crises essentially. So Jesse Eisenberg plays Toby Fleischman,

and he is this divorced dad who is kind of like trying to deal with this. A lot of, it's hard to really concisely describe what the book slash show are about because they're about so many different things. But one of the biggest themes is this kind of, this living in this world where there's a great quote where he's like, I make just under $300,000 a year. In any part of America, I would be extremely wealthy, except for the 40 block radius in which you insist that we live. And so he's kind of dealing with like feeling like he's the, like his wife, Rachel, runs this talent agency and is making millions. And so he is kind of like, for lack of a better term, I think he's described within the book and the show as like the wife of the relationship because he, she's spending all over time

working to be able to afford their lifestyle. And he has felt emasculated, but he's like called by like one of the guys like, oh, you're the wife or one of the women. Oh, you're the wife of the relationship. And so there's kind of that gender flip. And watching him struggle to deal with that is really interesting. And then a little bit later in the show, but you get to see other perspectives on things. You spend a bunch of time with Toby and telling his story and then you get to see other perspectives on the marriage as well. And it's really, really cool.

It's really interesting. It's just told really well. The show is really fun. The book is really fun. They're both just very readable. A lot of unlikable characters. So you have to be willing to put up with like a lot of like watching like rich people complain and like fail to be introspective and just like be, do awful things a lot

of the time. But still just like really interesting and like we'll leave you thinking, I think, especially if you're like in your 40s or late 30s and you're like creeping up on your own midlife crisis and thinking about like, hey, what was my life supposed to be and what is it now and what is it going to be and is it like where I want it to be at this point? Because it really tackles a lot of those questions in interesting ways. there's also, it's worth noting, a character who is essentially the author, Taffy Brosser actor, played by Lizzie Kaplan in the show, a character named Libby, who is this, like, magazine writer who decides she's going to write a book about this whole thing. And so there's a whole meta layer as well where you're watching it and you're like, oh, okay, this is a stand-in for the author. And then you're like, oh, oh, oh, my God, is her life really like that? Like,

oh, oh, oh, wow, oh, okay. So, yeah, a lot of interesting, a lot of interesting stuff. And it's a fun look at like the life of people who like live on the Upper East Side, um, stay at home moms to spend all day like getting juice and going to yoga and complaining about their nannies. And then on the weekends, they go to the Hamptons and they talk about wintering at the veil and how they're going to go to Colorado this year because the slopes seem nicer than like wherever,

like the veil or whatever it is like, um, they say. Uh, so yeah, it's, it's, it's fun to watch, um,

although it can be infuriating and bleak and exasperating. It's funny. I've listened a lot to the soundtrack from Fleischman is in trouble. I think a guest on Strong Songs talk about it because it's composed by Carolyn Shaw, who's this amazing, like, classical vocalist, like, she's like a Pulitzer Prize winning contemporary classical musician who does not really do scores for TV shows. And I don't know how they got her, but it's, the music to that show is like amazing. It doesn't sound like any other TV shows. So one more thing to recommend it. I've like listened to it and haven't seen the show. That's interesting. Yeah, fascinating. Fascinating. show and books. So I recommend it. Cool. Sweet. Flishman is in trouble. And oh yeah, the acting is incredible. I mean, it's Jesse Eisenberg and Claire. Yeah, I love Joseph. It's incredible. Lizzie Kaplan and yeah, just incredible class. Yeah. All right. That is it for this week's episode. Kirk Maddie. I'll see you next week and we'll talk about some more video games we're playing. Yeah. See you next week. 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 D.J. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network, and if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at Maximumfund.org slash join. Find us on Twitter at Triple ClickPod. Send email the triple click at maximum fun.org and find a link to our Discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Exxum Fun. A worker-owned network of artists-owned shows.

Supported directly by you.