Triple Click - So Your Friends All Stopped Playing Video Games

Episode Date: August 6, 2020

One more thing:Kirk: Death StrandingMaddy: Marvel’s Avengers betaJason: BillionsSupport Triple Click: https://maximumfun.org/joinMaxFun Drive Info: https://maximumfun.org/news/maxfundrive-2020-has-begun-and-its-full-of-great-gifts/ 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

There's no worse feeling than getting really far in a video game only to realize that you mess something up and have to start over. Well, okay, I mean there are worse feelings, but that one's bad. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. On this episode, we're talking about restarting games, finding friends to talk about games with, and whether it's better to play a game when it first comes out or to wait. Your burning questions will be answered, along with one more thing,

so let's get into it. I'm Kirk Hamilton. I'm Jason Shrier. And I'm Maddie Myers. And we're here. We're back. We are. We know our names.

We said them correctly. Chibbclick, jibbleclip. And you know what? This is the last time that we're going to tell everybody about Max Fun Drive because this is the last week. The last time this year. Yes. Until the next Max Fund Drive.

That's right. I have a hunch it'll be back again. Maybe in a year's time. Around thereabouts, maybe. It's a good hunch. It's a good hunch. It's a good hunch. It's to say when it'll be back.

But hey, if you've been listening this whole time and you've been thinking to yourself, those rewards sound pretty sweet, but I just haven't gotten around to checking out Maximumfund.org slash join. and selecting something, you got to do it. You got to go check out that URL. Click on some stuff. No more procrastinating. Yes, yeah, cut it out.

Get to it. She's been waiting until the last possible minute. And also, we should say that if you're a Mex Fund member, you got our spoilery beanscast. And we right now are going to announce the August Beanscast. Kurt Hamilton, take us away. Okay, so we're doing something a little bit different for our August. Beanscast. This one I think is going to be very fun. It is not going to be for a video game, and in fact, it's going to be not for one movie, but several movies. The theme of these movies

are time loop movies. Now, many of our listeners, I'm guessing, watch the fabulous recent movie Palm Springs. That movie kind of like the recent Netflix series, Russian Doll, is like a commentary on time loop movies, as much as it is also a time loop story of its own. The thinking is we're going to do a breakdown spoiler cast combining all the stories of Groundhog Day, Edge of Tomorrow, Russian doll, and Palm Springs. And we're going to kind of analyze them all in terms of like the rules of their universes, kind of do a little bit of like video game discussion of them since they're very video gamey movies. It's going to be super fun. We're going to put all the characters into one arena and see who reigns supreme.

Right. We're going to see which person. Which video game protagonist of each of these time loops would be the most compelling to play as if only we could. Yeah. We'll get into it. So it will be very fun and that is going to be for members. So if you want to hear that, along with all the beanscasts that we have recorded thus far, maximum fun.org slash join is where you want to go. Do you want to repeat one more time for everyone what they have to watch? Yes, that's true. This is homework. So the movies are Groundhog Day, edge of tomorrow, Russian doll, which is a series, not a movie, it's great, and Palm Springs, which just came out. Palm Springs is on Hulu, Russian Doll is a Netflix show. Edge of Tomorrow

you might just have to rent. I'm going to rent that one. And Groundhog Day, I believe, is on Netflix right now. And this is all at least in North America. Cool. All right. So let's get to it, shall we? This week, we are doing a burning questions,

which means we answer your questions about whatever. Just a reminder you can send us. Usually video games. Usually anything, really. But yeah, it could be anything. All bets are off. You can send us questions at triple click at maximum fun.org. And yeah, let's get to it.

We picked a few good ones this week. Maddie, why don't you read us this first one? Sure. So this is from Alok, who writes, I'm Alok, a 23-year-old from Mumbai, who's also lived in Boston and near Shanghai for significant periods of time. I was an occasional listener of Split Screen and have been enjoying Triple Click since you guys started. Thanks so much for being a really fun part of my week. You're welcome. As someone on the border of millennial and Gen Z, I've noticed in recent years how my number of

gamer friends has really dropped. There's also a lot of friends who just play casual. now and think it's a weird conversation topic. I've been trying moderately hard to rekindle the gamer chat aspect of my middle school Facebook group with not so great results. I'm worried it's making me look a little clownish in their eyes. Why is dropping gaming as a hobby slash interest seen as such a natural part of growing up by so many people? Is this drop-off in gaming among social circles as years go by, something that matches with your experiences? And would you be interested in discussing it? It would be cool to hear your theory.

and takes on it. I guess we're interested. So I have a lot of thoughts on this. We are interested. I have a lot of thoughts on this. But here's my first one. My first one is so the three of us are all much older than Alak, who's 23. Yeah. Maddie and I are both, well, I'm 33, Maddie or 34, and Kirk is like 58 or something like that. I think so, yeah. Somewhere up there. Closing in on 40 and would say that if Alok is on the border of millennial and Gen Z, I am actually on the border of millennial and Gen X. Oh, nice. You're on the other side of the border. Whereas Jason and I are millennials.

You two are solidly millennial. I'm going to make a reference that's going to be obscure to both of you. But you and a locker basically Karim Abdul Jabbar's MVP's, which he won. Okay. His career was like 22. I follow it. I follow it. So that's where we're each at in terms of answering this question.

Yeah. So I have a lot of thoughts on this. First and foremost being that I think a lot of people, when they hit that point, especially like the college age people, you're going to college, you want to kind of like put your childish pursuits aside. You hit that point where you give up gaming for a little while. And what I've noticed as a pattern among a lot of people I know is that they always had those gap years and then they came back to gaming later on. So a lot, I think that you might start to notice that in like three, four, five years when you and your friends all are in your late 20s, more people might have

like come back, boomeranged back to gaming after the phase where it's like, oh, gaming is childish. I'm not into that stuff anymore. At least in my experience, that was the case. What about you guys? That's interesting. I did just to buttress that, I did this, I actually did that myself. Like when I graduated from school, I sold my gaming PC and like just... Put away childish things.

Well, it was more, I was like, I just have to do, like, I was like learning all these new instruments and stuff. I was like, if I'm going to do this, I need the time to do it and I just didn't have time. And then I did come back to gaming when I was like toward the end of my 20s. So that supports your theory, Jason. Yeah. And I think it's just, yeah, when you go to college, you kind of want to, like, throw out everything you got rid of in your, uh, in your, like, high school days. Like, you just want to get rid of it.

None of this is my experience at all. It's not? So what's your experience, Maddie? No. I can't relate to this email at all, to be honest, because I feel like college was prime time gaming years for me. Like, I was playing Counterstrike with other people. People on my floor would play games together. Everybody had gaming consoles that I knew.

I was friends with a lot of people who were kind of broy, and I was playing a lot of games at MIT frat houses and so on and so forth. But that's a little different than like the gaming chat, like single player, like what I think a lot of lock is talking about. Because like I played, yeah, I played a lot of guitar hero in college and stuff like that, but I wouldn't even consider that. Like you wouldn't talk about guitar hero in your gaming chat. You would be like, oh, did you play The Last of Us too?

And I can't see a lot of college people like getting together. for like a round of Red Dead too. And like were games that were having discourse about them. Like social media didn't exist in the same way when I was in college. So I'm sure that's a factor as well that changes my experience. But also I started interning at the Phoenix for my last two years of college and I was writing about games while I was there. And then after that I worked there full time for several years.

And I was frequently in situations at the Phoenix at least where I was surrounded by people who didn't play games. But I had to repeatedly explain to them why games were interesting and what was compelling about them. So not to shoot my own horn, but I feel like I got pretty good at it because I kept having to explain weird gaming stories in these like high pressure pitch meetings with people who were decades older than I was and had no clue what I was talking about. And that probably gave me an advantage that a lock doesn't have, which is that I feel like now I'm pretty good at talking to normies about video games in a way that might help them understand what's cool about them. But it's not easy. It's definitely

a skill set that you have to hone. And I do think that there are lots of things that happen in games that people can understand, even if all they've ever played is like phone games or Tetris or like Mario when they were a child. There are still really cool stories about games and the game industry that people want to hear about. And I think sometimes this show offers some perspective, or at least we try to, about how one might go about having those conversations, even with people who aren't super embedded in the gaming world. Yeah, no, I totally know. So this resonates with me in a few different ways, I guess. For starters, just having, living in kind of two worlds, spending a lot of time with musicians who don't play video games or talk about video games in the way that I do and especially did back in my 20s. That was always challenging because it was just this thing that I knew a lot about and I would read blogs and, you know, before that read gaming magazines and I was really into knowing what the new technology was and what the new thing was. And they're just, most your average, like, jazz bass player on a gig during a set break,

like just doesn't give a shit. And you're not going to talk about that. Like you're going to... Well, because to them, it's all about the games you don't play. Exactly. It's because it's all about the games you don't play. So that was always a challenge where I just felt like there was this whole thing that I didn't have anyone to talk to, you know, like to talk about it with.

And I think that that's a little bit of what Alak is just talking about. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, definitely. Like, I wish that my friends just wanted to talk to me about, yeah, like, Jason, like you were saying, like, had just were excited about the new, big video game and that I could just talk to them about what I think of it and have that social thing. Well, but it's even sadder because it's like friends who were into that, but have

all just dropped off. Right, and now they're not anymore. So it's like your chat that you used to use. Especially like because when you're in your 20s and then your 30s, that's when you actually start, at least most people I know, like you start wanting to have the more serious conversations and to like engage with things in a more, in a deeper way. That's really rewarding. And you can want to try to find those people. I found those people by becoming a professional games critics. So, like, I do think that, like, there my perspective, and I think all three of our perspectives, is a little skewed only because, well, each week we get to get together, and I get to talk to, like, two of the smartest people in video games about video games every week.

Well, but that's, the answer is to listen to triple click. That's where you get your, I guess it's kind of one side of it. Where are your friends a lock? I'm not going to say the answer is to start a gaming podcast, which is not a terrible idea. I think that, yeah, I think it's possible to make new friends who are. specifically into video games. I know that can be sort of difficult, but there are a lot of places where you can find people. That can, that's like kind of crappy advice only because I know

that that can feel sort of, you know, okay, great, easy for you to say, but like when I go on Reddit, it's just a thousand people yelling about a thousand different things and I can't make friends there. But it's possible, like if there's a thing you really like or a community you can find. Yeah, before I actually

got into these spheres of people who play games for a living, I used to talk to some people who I just like played online games with way back in the day. And I just kept in touch with them because they were big gamers. And so we could just talk, I could use that as my geek outlet, my nerdy outlet. I think finding a group of people to play something like an MMO or Warframe or Destiny or that kind of a game, or like I also have a tabletop group and I'm the most hardcore video game gamer of those three, but they all play it to different extents. And it's really fun where one of my friends in that group is like playing

through Fire Emblem and he'll be like, oh man, I'm like really into the game and we kind of nerd out about Fire Emblem a little bit. Or one of them is into VR. And other guy is kind of like, oh, I really want to kind of get a VR headset, so we'll talk about VR some. And it's nice to have that recurring thing. And then, like, Jason, we had that Destiny Group for a long time. And that's a good group of friends.

And it's a kind of a place where, of course, everyone's going to want to talk about video games because you're playing a video game together. Yeah. Yeah. That's a little bit of a cheat because those were also mostly professional. Yeah. But people do that who aren't, you know. Yeah.

And I mean, there's plenty of places to find. advice about how to find a good gaming group for something you're into. And I think that can be a good jumping off point for finding a group of internet friends at least who are really into games. And that might be the only way to go. It might be that your friends don't ever get that into games again. Yeah, like meeting new people. Keep your antenna out. I always find I'll be at a, you know, I'll be at dinner with something or I'll be meeting a new friend or maybe like, you know, the husband of one of Emily's friends or something. And then he'll just make some reference to an Overwatch character and I'll be like, hmm.

You know, I'm like, this guy wants to talk about video games. Fellow gamer. That's just sad because it makes me miss meeting new people. Right. That's really what this question made me think of is, like, how often do I organically meet people? Or like, the times I've invited people to my house and they've, like, seen all of my embarrassing video game action figures and, like, free shit I've gotten over the years as a reporter that I don't even want.

And they're like, oh, what the, what is this? I have to be like, oh, yeah. You recognize this. You too are. gamer and maybe we can talk about this because I've been talking to my my co-workers and my editors at bloomberg which I started I think it was mid-May that I started about getting drinks with them welcome drinks um which we might do like on my one year anniversary next next year maybe if we're lucky maybe next yeah next may we'll be able to do welcome drinks and then you can find out who among them

are the true gamers yes yeah you just wear a gamers rise up t-shirt and like see who says anything about it and what they think. Yeah, we have a gaming channel in our Slack, but it's very different. It's not quite as active as Kotaku talking about games as an example. It's interesting. It's interesting being in an outlet where games are not the focus. Let's move on to the next question. Kirk, you want to take this one? Sure. This comes from Nick. Nick writes, I have a question. So there I was, 101 hours into Persona 5 Royal, having the gaming time of my life when I decided to look up some info about what would happen if I did not rank up certain confidence by a certain date. This was a mistake. Without going into spoilers and being as vague as possible, I decided I would not have time to rank up this confident and that failing to do so would have implications for my game.

Oh my God. Okay. Hold on. I'm going to interrupt you there for a second. I'm going to explain this. Basically, Persona 5 Royal is, of course, a remake or not a remake. It's like an enhanced version of Persona 5. It comes with a new semester. In order to unlock that new semester, you have to get a certain confidence. on. He's named Maruki up to like level 8 or level 10 or something by a certain point in the game. And the game like hints at that a few times. But if you don't do it, you can't access the new semester at all and you can't see the new stuff at all. So Nick really screwed himself over and now you can keep reading. So there really was a repercussion of this. Giant. Okay, cool. So Nick continues. Not having any prior saves that could undo my situation. I tried to go on but kept hearing this little voice in my head saying you have to start over. You need to doing right, to do it right. Abandoning all common sense and all reasonable thinking, I listened

to that voice and restarted my playthrough. I did this even though I was probably halfway through the game already, but I didn't want to spend the next 70 hours with that nagging failing. As an alleged grown up with a big boy job, I am crazy to do this, right? In any case, my question is, have any of you triple clickers ever restarted a game, despite already devoting a significant amount of time to it after learning you did something or failed to do something that will lock off a chunk of content or affect the game's outcome. Oh, man. Did you have to do this with persona, Jason?

No, no, no, no. I actually looked it up. I played persona 5 twice once when it came out and then once when the Royal came out. But that was for fun, not because you're a totally normal person. Okay, so I have restarted games. In fact, I just restarted Crosscode when I played them a bunch on one platform and then they come to like the Switch and I want to replay them on Switch. So I've done that a few times.

and I actually just got past the part in Crosscode that I had gotten to on PC, which was very freeing feeling. It was like 30 hours into the game. Anyway, but as far as like learning, you didn't do something, you failed to do something, I can't think of any times I've restarted a game. I think when it was like all JRPs, like the sweet coding games back in the day, I would play through once blind, then realize I had like miscarctors or like lock myself off to have content and then just play it again because I had the time to do that back when I was

much younger. But I can't think of any times I've restarted a game just like in the middle and just been like, you know what? Gotta start over. What about you guys? Have other of you done that? Yeah, the only example I can think of, I talked about maybe on split screen where I went back several saves in Disco Elysium because I didn't understand that there are actually ways to move forward in that game without doing that. And I replayed all of day two, I believe, because I thought that I had screwed myself out of an interaction. I think with that guy on the bridge, the racist guy, and there's a few different ways to get past him. And none of them worked for me. And I just kept being like, I must be missing something. I'm just going to restart all of day two. And it,

it was several hours of progress that I had to redo. Like, it was like, I don't know how many, six maybe. But it was enough that I was like, I, this is kind of annoying. Nick is like six. Come on. I know. I know. It's nothing compared to Nick situation. If I were Nick, I'm not sure I would have restarted the game. I don't know. Well, so here's the thing. if you're just playing persona five royal for that. Nick didn't say if he had played the original. Right. But if you play the original and you're coming to persona five royal just for the new stuff,

then you totally fucked yourself if you haven't gotten to that point. But here's the thing. The other part of this is that you actually have a lot of, like, the game is very lenient with giving you time to rank up Maruki. So like, even if you haven't done it a ways in, you still can wind up doing it. So before, if you are Nick or anyone else is in the situation, I recommend, first of all, I recommend having multiple saves because come on. Yeah.

Second of all, Save more. Second of all, look up a guide. There are like some good guides that are spoiler-free, but it'll show you like which days in the future a confidant will become available. So you can actually literally see, like, okay, I have to rank him up 10 times. He'll be available eight more days, so I'm good. Yeah, but Kirk, have you had to do this?

Not for this reason. I think that at this point, anytime there's something that's going to really lock off content, which that's a pretty wild example. I can't actually think of the last time I played a game. It doesn't happen often. Modern games, because modern games are all about, we want the player to be able to do anything and feel in power. And they really signpost it. And then there are times where I'm thinking back to playing The Witcher 2, which has a second act that completely is in different places and is totally different. But the whole idea is you're supposed to just organically choose what you choose and you get a cool second act. That's just a branch. Right. It's a branch. Right. It's not a, you just don't see this thing. I'm thinking about why I do restart games, like what the reasons for restarting games are. I have restarted games because I have restarted games because I have.

I lost a save. Like I restart, I had to restart Dark Souls 3. And I never did finish it. I started a new game and played a fair amount. And then I was like, I can't do this. This is like I had put 60 hours into it or something. And then deleted my PC save on accident because I didn't realize it didn't back up.

So I've had that happen. The main reason that I restart games is because you two are going to laugh. It's because I don't like the way that my protagonist looks in like a wire game. Of course. So because it matters, right? I know that two of you are not as. aesthetically driven gamers according to... I kind of get it with BioWare, though,

because you have to look at your character quite a bit in those games. All those awkward sex scenes. You got to see that face that you created. Weirdly mashing like a doll against another thing. Two rag dolls limping, like slapping together. It was, I think it was Dragon Age Inquisition, which I reviewed, and I spent forever trying to make my Inquisitor look right,

because I really, like, had a look. Like, it was a look that looked good, But it just, it kept being weird. Like, it would be a weird thing. It was like the lip gloss in that game, if I recall correctly. It was very shiny, yeah. It was very shiny. And so she's like, she's a great character.

And I, like, really liked my Inquisitor. And she, then in, like, one of those early scenes where, like, Cassandra, like, they have her in the dungeon. I probably, I remember this, even though I don't remember most things about that game. Just because I played the beginning of that game, like, 30 times. So I remember that one scene. And yeah, and then she looks up and it was like, oh, like, that's a lot of lip gloss. Like, we've got to do this again. And, like, starting over and over again.

Yeah. And then I feel like, it's also weird that if I, I've always kind of wanted to play that game again on PC, but it would just feel weird to do it with a different protagonist, but I can't recreate my same protagonist just because you can never quite get it right. So you're looking at this weird clone with like a slightly bigger nose or whatever. That'd be a good beans cast in the future, by the way, Dragon Age. Oh, Dragon Age. It would be except that it's like a 7,000 hour-long game.

That's true. That would be fun, though. Yeah, so anyways, that's the main reason that I restart games. when it's something where it's like you need to do this one thing to see this one thing or get this one thing, I just, I go ahead and look it up just because I'm like, I need to be here on this one day. I'm really going to stress about it unless I just know exactly what it is that I need to do. And then I still stress about it. And then when I like get to the one day and make it happen, I'm like, okay, I did it. It's fine.

I made it through. I don't like games like that. It's like passing the SAT. It's like you're taking a massive test and you have to get through it. Except in persona, it's literal. It's like, oh man, it's like in the Witcher 3, there's like a set of armor in the DLC that you can only get in a dream sequence. There's definitely stuff where you have to grab it at this one moment. But usually it's very rare for it to be like such a massive piece of content like it is in persona.

But persona, I mean, the game has a good reason for that. Like a narrative reason? Yeah, it makes sense that you would have to do this thing. But yeah, it sucks if you don't know it going in. I'm lucky that I like Googled it in advance just to be sure. But also, you would think that like, if you would think that like, if you're playing persona five role and you haven't played the first game, you would want to just, like, do the new confidants anyway, and he's one of the new ones. For sure.

Anyway, all right, let's get through one last question. This is from Lewis. I'll read this. Lewis says, do you enjoy playing through a game more when you play it during its release time? Part of the fun for me is the entire discourse of a game near its release window. My entire experience of playing through a game includes the podcast discussions, theory, videos, debates, reviews, opinions of the game. It adds to my enjoyment, whether I actually like the game. itself or not. I'm just curious about how the content created around the title adds to the

experience of playing the game. Death Stranding is a good example of this idea where I actually enjoyed listening to people disgusteth Stranding more than I enjoyed playing it. But in the end, the content helped me to better appreciate the game. Oh man. Hmm. Yeah, this is a big one. So this is the thing that every single video game publisher wants you to believe that you have to buy a game. I'll watch. Yeah, you've got to get it when it's full price. You have to pre-order. Gotta be part of the discourse. And also it helps, like, the media, and it helps the critical spheres for their stuff to get listens and views on release.

So it's kind of this ecosystem where, like, everything, all these forces are conspiring to get you to buy games as soon as they come out. And I succumb to this all the time, buy games that, like, I didn't intend on buying just because I see them being talked about on my Twitter feed. And I'm like, oh, man. Ghost of Sashima, for example. Exactly. Although I actually am glad I bought that because I'm really enjoying it.

I know, I know. But yeah, no, it's happened to me before. And yeah, I'm curious, what do you guys think? Do you find that you enjoy games more on release or later when nobody's talking about them anymore? I think it depends because I think that this cuts both ways, I think that depending on the discourse and depending on the, you know, the experience of, like, the meta experience outside of the game, it can be great, but it can also not be great. And it can feel really cool and it can also feel stressful like you're kind of under the gun or you need to finish it. you really want to understand what people are talking about. And the last of us, too, obviously, comes to mind. That game was fairly exhausting. And even by the time we got to our beans cast on it, it was like, Jesus. Like, it just felt very pressure cookery. And the online discourse for that game also was, like, kind of exhausting.

And so that's one way that it goes. With Death Stranding, I actually understand that, for sure, that you just, you're watching everyone talk about this totally original, weird, bizarre game. And to really get what they're talking about, you kind of, you need to play it. at least a little bit. And then you can kind of really experience all these podcasts, all these differing opinions, and you can have your own opinions and talk with your friends. And it's kind of an exciting thing.

Even though, as I'll talk about it my one more thing, I am playing Death Stranding again now and finding it to be a very pleasant, high-quality experience. It's actually I'm enjoying in a lot of ways more than when I played it for the first time last fall. Yeah, I don't know what my answer is to this question, because I feel like all I can remember are times I've been burned by it, where I've, like, gotten a game. because everybody was talking about it. And then I've been like, I don't like this. Why was I tricked by thinking that I would like this?

And like this actually, this is blasphemy to say to the two of you, but this kind of happened to me with the first destiny where I'm not a... That's definitely not blasphemy to us. I completely believe that. We spend all of our time playing the first destiny complaining about how much we hated the first destiny. Especially for those first eight months or so. I got it at launch and I did not like it at all.

And I was also like, I feel stupid that I bought this because I know myself really well. Like, I like Halo. I like shooting aliens in a video game. That's fun. That's great. But I don't like MMOs and I don't like the grind of a game like Destiny or at least not the way that Destiny 1 was at launch. It really didn't work for me.

God, it was so bad. It was bad, but... The only way to enjoy that game was to have a group of friends who you could complain about the game with while playing. That's right. But also that other crappy thing happened to me where I fell off the game. game for a week and all my friends had outpaced me instantly. So it was like I bought it in order to play with some friends. I like went out of town or something. And then I came back and I was like,

why did I buy this game? Everything's bad. I'm so angry. And after that I really re-evaluated this line of thinking. And I was like, I can't just buy something because everyone's talking about it. And even because I think I'm going to play it with my friends because it might, it needs to be a game where I'm going to play it on my own or I'm going to be willing to find other people to play it with in order for me to justify it because I don't, it can't be the only reason why I buy a game. Like, that's not going to work for me. That's a little different than something like Death Stranding, though, where the story and also the mechanics of that game are so compelling and inspired so much discussion that being a part

of the zeitgeist was something kind of special, even if it didn't seem that way to you, Kirk. I'm sure you're still getting something out of it even though you're playing it significantly later than everybody else. Yeah, definitely. And I guess I can all save most of my death stranding takes for one more thing. But yeah, I think that there's a thing also with just the timing and the way that it can feel like, you know, a lot of games tend to come out at the same time in the fall in particular. And there's a great freedom that I find when I'm like, I'm just not going to play this thing right now.

I'm going to play it in six months in the spring or in the summer or whatever when I have time and I have the band with. And then when I'm playing the game, and this is true of Death's Training, but it's been true of other games in the past. It's just a much better experience. What was it like one of the best memories of this is dishonored death of the outsider, which I played, I guess last year, maybe, a year ago, two years ago. Anyway, I played that game, like way after launch. And I remember playing it when it came out. Like, I had a press copy, so I bought it and felt like I wasted my money. But I, like, started it.

And then I was like, I don't have time for this and playing something else. and I kind of just left it, let it be. And then coming back to it when I just didn't have anything going on, it was just, I was like, I'm going to play this whole game. It's so good. It was like this great game. No one was talking about it. And then actually, I was on Twitter, like, tweeting about it,

and it was really fun because I was the only person talking about it. And then all these people who had already played it were, like, down to talk with me about it. So actually, I guess that's my last thought, is that there are times where the discourse around the game, it's not as exciting. Like, everyone isn't playing it and tweeting screenshots and having forms. conversations and stuff. But everyone's played it so you can relax a little bit about what you're talking about. You can just sort of share your experience and it'll resonate with a bunch of people that maybe it wouldn't have when everyone was in the thick of it playing it. So the discourse can

be better for you if you wait a lot of the time. So that does have that going for it. Yeah, but that's different having a conversation with like a couple of friends who follow you on Twitter is a very different world than like, oh my God, my favorite podcast, typically is talking about Breath of the Wild every week and I have to play this game so I can understand why they're raving about it. And I've like fallen into that hype. I was trying to think I was just like browsing through lists of games because I'm trying to remember like which games that I have bought because of the discourse surrounding it. And I think one game as an example was Overwatch, which is a game that, uh, I love baby. That's a good example. Overwatch, which is a game

that like I didn't really expect to care about that much. But like everybody was talking about it. I was like, all right, I might as well just see what all the fuss is about. And I just like played it for an hour or two, maybe a few more. And then it's just like, okay, I'm done with this. Why did I get this again? And sometimes like games, the power of social media and discourse can just have that effect on you. And it's something to watch out for when you're making your purchasing decisions, I suppose. Right. If you find yourself thinking, I mean, I could be a counterstrike person, right? Then maybe like, maybe you don't have to be a counterstrike person. I just wanted to understand what everyone was talking about when they were like, oh my God, Hanzo is the best or whatever.

Or like, oh, Genji got Nerf today. Yeah, I think it's a different conversation when it's about like a competitive game or even like an MMO like Destiny though, because something like a story game that everyone's talking about where the spoilers matter, I feel like I'm most susceptible to, but because of my line of work, I'm less likely to feel like I wasted my time. if I make myself play all the way through a story game just so that I know what happened. Like I can justify that as like a work reason and be like, even if I didn't care for this game, I'm glad I played it because I can help people out with their stories and read spoiler casts and listen to spoiler casts, read spoiler posts, et cetera, et cetera.

But if I didn't work in the industry, I might be more annoyed about it. Like there might, I might run into more situations where I was also playing story games and being like, why did I do this? I don't like this. It's not even worth it. I was not interested in the story to begin with. Just everyone was talking about it. Yeah, for sure. Okay, so on that note, why don't we take a break and then come back with some more of our own discourse about video games. Okay, we're back. But before we get to one more thing, I want to tell everybody a little more about Max Fund Drive. So, you've probably heard about it already in the past few weeks, but just to go over it again really quick. This is a way that you can support the show. You can become a member of

Maximum Fun and in so doing, you get access to all this really cool bonus material that we make for you. We make the bonus cast. But also if you join and become a member during Max Fun Drive, you have the option to qualify for other really cool rewards. Like if you go to maximumfund.org slash join, you can see what those rewards are. Like for example, if you join at the $10 level, you can pick out a pin. You might like the triple click pin. If you join it $20, get the game pack. Yeah, it's pretty sweet.

And if you join at 35, you get a mug and $50, you get a custom membership card. And if you join at the highest level, you get all the previous rewards. Classic, classic structure in terms of joining up and having tears for membership. But we just want to really emphasize to you that we're super grateful for the people who've already joined and especially people who join joining. Big thanks to everyone who's supporting us. Yeah, and people who joined during Max Fund Drive and are joining at those higher levels are getting the special rewards and knowing that they were a part of this right along with us. Yeah. That is super cool.

What's cool about Triple Click is that we own it and there's no corporation who's above us. Nobody is telling us what to do. Nobody is forcing us to do anything, anything that we don't want to do. We own this show. It's a very good feeling, isn't it? It's just us and listeners. And the listeners are like keep the lights on and let us do the show. show. So it's really just us and all of you.

Heck yeah. Amazing. Yeah. So we very much appreciate the support. It's not like we're some big like media conglomerate being like, hey, subscribe to our show. This is literally like. This is our only form of income is your support right now. And that's really, really cool. And it's a way that we can continue to own the show and loving what we're doing. So we just want to say thanks. Huge thanks to everybody who's already joined up and become a member. And if you can't afford to, that's completely fine. Just keep sharing the show and writing into the show and enjoying life as best you can. And we are back, Kirk. Maddie, it is time for one more thing. And Kirk, since you already kind of

spoiled what your one more thing is, when it gave it to us. I gave mine away already. So yeah, I have been replaying Death Stranding. I've been playing it on PC because it just came out on PC and really, really liking it a lot. So I talked about this game in the Kotaku split-screen days. Maddie and I talked about it quite a bit. Jason only played a little bit and didn't like it. Maddie, you played more than me but did not finish. And I played, yeah. I played probably like five or six hours. So I got past the lake, which is kind of into the third act, which is where the game really opens up and sort of becomes what it is. And I got there and I remember thinking, oh, this is cool. Like, I'm into this. And I tried to get there as fast as possible because that had

been the advice I've been given. And then getting there, I was like, this is cool. I don't have time right now because I know this game is super long. I really want to see what this is about, but I know it's coming to PC next year, and like maybe by then I'll have more time. And as it so happens, that is exactly what happened. It came out on PC. I kind of have more time. And I just was, I was tooling around looking for something to play and had this game installed, press copy, fired it up, and started playing it, and then just realized how totally different it seems now in the COVID times than it did before last fall.

Like to a really weird and striking degree, I'm not the first person to make this observation. This is like a fairly common thing to say. I was talking about this on Twitter and people were being like, oh yeah, I wrote an article about this or I said the same thing. It's a pretty clear-cut thing. When you start this game post-COVID, there's so many things about it.

I mean, this is a game about a, you know, a nation that has been ravaged by, not a disease, but a bizarre supernatural apocalypse. but at the same time. Which you could argue COVID is a bizarre supernatural apocalypse. It's true. And also there are aspects of the death stranding and of all of it that feel very disease-like almost.

Like there's like dooms. There are afflictions that you come down with. Your main character, Sam won't shake anyone's hand. Everybody keeps a distance. There are quarantine zones. There's a lot of discussion of quarantine. You make deliveries and people show up as holograms because they don't come to the door because you have to keep your space.

So you're a delivery person in a pandemic ravaged America, let's say. You're basically working for Amazon and you're bringing, connecting people. And so much of it just resonates really differently after three, four months of isolation and of like fear and anxiety around the state of the world. And I'm really finding it resonant. Like I can joke about like the stuff about America falling apart and bringing it back together again and how relevant that is. And the show or the game is still operating on this really outtray level because it's a Hideo Kajima game and it's kind of self-aware and ridiculous in this way. but it really does resonate. And the feeling of walking across this lonesome landscape

and seeing, you know, the structures built by other people and making deliveries and connecting people to the Internet, I don't know, it just really does feel different. I think about, like, what would it be like if we were all in this world and then the Internet went out? And then a guy came around like a year later and was like, hey, I'm here, I'm going to connect you to the Internet. We'd be like, yes, like, we've been waiting so long.

And that's how people react. Or we would be like, oh my God, no. Oh, no. Right, I have to get back on Twitter. I've been loving this. So I like that part of it. And another thing that I've noticed, so I've played up to where I was. I just got to the lake.

I went way faster just because I knew how to do things. But I also went faster because I am playing the game now in a totally populated world where people have been playing this for, it's been out what a week, a couple weeks. So there's like a lot of stuff in the world. It's really happening. I played it before, it was like a press copy that Sony sent me. It was a pre-release copy that didn't have almost anything in it. They were trying to get people to play online, and it's a real challenge for reviewing that game, because the world feels really empty

when there's nothing in it. It looks like Iceland. You know, you're just like walking through these weird, empty fields. But when I play now, once you reconnect to the ghost internet, the whole place that you were just in becomes populated with all kinds of stuff, like notes and emotes and like little statues that people leave and funny messages. There are bridges and like ladders and ropes everywhere and it makes the game way easier. They really help you out. You're constantly upvoting things and like, you know, there's like this whole weird like system that's kind of social media-ish.

It all just holds together and makes a lot more sense because it's so much more of a part of the experience. Like it's so much more prevalent in the game now than it ever was when I was playing it originally. So that too. It just feels like I'm getting a more complete version of. what they envisioned when they put this game out. And so that's really cool as well.

I'm really into it. Like, I just really like it. So it's interesting. This kind of fits with our conversation about the discourse, which is fitting because he mentioned Death Stranding. But the idea, the one thing that we didn't discuss is the pre-discourse playing a game. And with Death Stranding, it was particularly strange because of all the stuff you just mentioned to play a game before it actually came out.

And I think all three of us played it before it actually came out. So that was kind of like, a weird thing where you're like really not seeing a game the way that you're meant to be seeing it because you're in this weird world where only only a few people have actually played it. Yeah, although I played it longer than you two did and I did get to see some of that and I know I described that on split screen. The reason why I fell off of it is because, and I'll be curious, Kirk, if you make it all the way through. I think you might like the core mechanic of that game more than I did. I just got really tired of how challenging it is and the specific

ways in which that game is challenging. And it's not to say that I couldn't go back and beat it someday if I wanted to, but it's a type of challenge that I just wasn't feeling at that time. But I wonder if I played it now, if I would feel differently about it emotionally. I kind of do too. I might start kind of working on you to go back and play it more, only because I don't know. Like, we'll see. I did like the mechanics. I like the sort of traversal stuff of it, just the way that it feels. And I was like, the story just seemed kind of weird and I didn't know where it was going. But now that the narrative and the setting, I mean, yeah, I don't think it's getting less weird now, I guess.

But now that the setting and the kind of framework of it, it just feels more resonant to me. And I'm also just paying closer attention. I had read some, not like major spoiler guys, but just explanations of the world. So I just know more of what's going on. And from the beginning, like, knowing what the beach is and like knowing some of these terms that they, because they drop you in the deep end in this game on purpose. But it was nice just knowing, okay, I kind of understand what a lot of this stuff is, so it doesn't feel like, at the being where they're like, you're a repatriate and you have dooms and you're going to the beach to see the BTs because of the death training. You're like, what's happening? I'm trying to, I'm just trying to play a video game here. And that is challenging. So I guess playing it the second time, that is not an issue. And that is, that's a nice part of playing the game too. Can you, are there mods of the game to like turn the baby into like, I don't know, a gremlin or?

or something. I don't know if there are mods. I haven't seen much of the mod world of this game, though it's weird enough. It's on PC now. I feel like there must be a mod that turns the baby to Thomas the Tent Kitchen. You know, one thing that's funny, that I remembered you mentioning Jason because you had just had your baby and you were playing the game and that the crying was an issue. And I had never really noticed it.

And now I'm playing it on PC without a dual shock. And I realized that the way that game worked when I was playing on. PS4 is the crying comes out of your dual shock speed. That's what I was saying then, too. And the headphones, yeah, which I guess it's like, now I'm aware of how constantly the baby does cry. Like, any time BTs are around you, BB starts crying. And I was like, oh, what is that sound?

Is it like editing triple click? It's, uh, yeah. Sort of like our podcast. So anyways, yeah, I like it a lot. I think it's like sort of a weird, interesting game. And I'm just, I'm struck by just how original. is. It's wild to play a game where every single idea in it is a completely original idea. Like, it's just so like, whoa, everything about this world, the mechanics, the systems, the way

things look, the names for things, the lore, the whole concept behind it is just not, it's just different. Like, it's its own thing, and that is just really striking. It's a funny contrast to like every other Sony published PS4 game. Right, right, exactly. You got your skill tree, your open world, you're like crafting. Yes, I've been thinking about Horizon Zero Dawn, which is coming out soon. and I'm excited to replay that on PC, but I'm like, that game is very, you know, familiar things

put together into a wonderful package a game I really like. But this, it's like the two being out on PC close to one another is really funny because they couldn't be more different in that one way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm very excited to replay Horizon, which we might get into next week. We shall see. We might. Maddie, what is your one more thing?

Okay, so I was in the early press version of the Marvel's Avengers beta, which is going to be a... beta that's available to people this week if you pre-ordered it in the following week if you're just some Joe Schmo who didn't even bother to pre-order it. Some scrub who doesn't pre-order games, aka a smart person. Just some total noob. Yeah, possibly a very smart person because this game did not look good. I saw it first at E3. I saw the very first mission that appears in this beta, although I didn't get to play it. I just saw it. And it looked really bad to me. It looked really linear.

And it starts out with, I believe you start as Thor and then you play as Iron Man and then Captain America and then Black Widow. Oh, and the Hulk is in the mix somewhere too. And you go in a row and you plays each of these characters. And it wasn't really clear what kind of game it was. They had sort of described it as being somewhat similar to something like Destiny. But at the time, I was like, I don't get what kind of game this is going to be or who it's even for or why anyone would play this.

But having played this beta, I think. think I know what kind of game it is, and I think it might be good. It might actually be kind of good. That's very cool to hear. That's exciting. So what kind of game is it? I would say it is a little like destiny, but it's a little bit like Borderlands in the sense that it is like a co-op, loot, grind, pickup, cool stuff, put on your new armor and then keep on truckin. And in the way that Borderlands has skill trees, this game has skill trees as well for each character that you happen to select. and you're on a team of people. Like, the Borderlands games, I would say, are significantly more fun if you're playing with multiple other people on your squad. And you're all playing. Just like that. I mean, Destiny is also.

Absolutely. Yeah, it's similar to that. But they are different. Yeah, but it's kind of like Destiny in the sense that the game, as told in the beta at least, eventually opens up and there's this map, kind of like the director in Destiny, where you can select these sort of replayable missions that are kind of story-related, but kind of not. Is it like a helicarrier?

Are you on a helic carrier? I'm assuming. So Maddie, isn't it true that like a bunch of the missions are single player only and then there are only some of them that are co-op? It's not clear to me from the beta how many missions are going to be single player versus not. And I don't think that's going to be clear until the game's out. But it seems like a ton of it is cooperative multiplayer, which is an interesting choice

for them to make, although it's a team-based game about the Avengers. So I'll talk about what's good about it before I talk about the things about it that I do think are bad, which there are a couple. So the good stuff is I feel like they really focused on making each hero feel different in a good way. There are a lot of different kinds of superheroes

on the Avengers. And this beta, you could play as the Hulk. Kamala Khan, who's Miss Marvel, and for folks who don't know, she has the ability to, like, enhance the size of different body parts so she can, like, make a really huge fist and then, like, punch somebody with her huge fist.

and then Black Widow and Iron Man. You get to play as Thor and Captain America, but only in that very first super linear mission that I described, which I actually hated, and I was like, God, this beta's going to suck. I hate this linear mission. I hate how everyone feels. I would say, ignore all of that, just get through it.

And then eventually you'll get to a mission where you get to play as Kamala and the Hulk, who I really enjoyed playing as. My coworker Ryan, who is going to be covering it for Polygon, really didn't like playing as the Hulk. he really, really liked Iron Man who feels totally different in a good way. I didn't love Iron Man,

but I think Iron Man would maybe be easier to play on PC honestly because you have to control his flight path and then also like different first person shooter mechanics with him where he's firing repulsive beams, but then you also have to like zip in somewhere and punch somebody or like do melee attacks and then zip back out again.

And I can see how if you're super good at that kind of thing or most of you like kind of like a flight sim style of a game somehow, you would really like Iron Man, whereas I used to play in Porterlands Brick, the first game of character, which is the Hulk, basically. Playing as the Hulk really took me back to how much I loved the first Borderlands and playing as Brick. And I was like, man, I have not had a feeling of how good that felt since I played the first Borderlands. And I played that game for like hundreds and hundreds of hours. And it was like a real dopamine rush for me. So I loved that Hulk mission. I love jumping around as the Hulk and just destroying everything in sight. It felt really, really good to me.

And then also playing as Kamala Khan was a similar vibe because she's also such a heavy hitter, a lot of melee moves. So yeah, I really dug it. Black Widow's cool too. I didn't get as much time with her, but she's a similar, like, she has a lot of different mechanics, like swinging around and shooting people and then also getting in the mix and punching people as well, which is fun. She's really fast. Does she do, here's a question. Does she do, here's a question. Does Does she do the leg move where she like jumps up and grabs a person with her legs? They're like, I don't know, probably. There's so many different melee moves and you can unlock more in the skill tree.

So like the game felt very good to me to play once I got past that initial hurdle of it feeling very awkward for the first few hours. So I would say stick with it if you're playing the beta and give it a chance and try to really learn the characters. However, the story of this game is very boring to me personally. and the one-liners were not super funny to me, and I think it's super hard to follow up on an Avengers movie that is very tightly edited, has a huge writer's room, has years of punch-up, just obsessive punch-up by the most experienced screenwriters ever,

and is so, like, tightly made to then have this game that feels like it's got video game dialogue, but kind of sucks. And, like, that is the direct comparison that I can't help but make in my head. The voice actors are great. They're really bringing it. Like, I really loved all of their performances.

But the lines they have to say are so generic that it was, like, cringy to me at points. I was, like, first draft dialogue to me. And I don't think that's going to change. I think that's just how the game is. And they probably really, really focused on making it feel good to play, which I don't think was a mistake on their part. They probably rebooted the story like four times before they got into this draft.

And it doesn't really seem like the story. the focus, which makes it a little bit more like a destiny in some ways. But I think it might be good. The problem is that they've announced all this like PlayStation exclusivity stuff. Like Spider-Man is going to be PlayStation exclusive, which sucks. Yeah, that sucks. The Spider-Man, yeah, that really stinks. And like I'm like genuinely disappointed by that because I really enjoyed playing the beta over the weekend. And I'm like, Spider-Man's going to feel completely different than all the other characters too. Like that's how this game is designed. Why would they lock a whole other character they've designed into PlayStation only.

Because Sony paid them. And also Spider-Man has like complicated ownership. Like doesn't Sony own part of Spider-Man or similar time? I just disappointed by it because I'm like, this game might be kind of fun and cool and it may shoot itself on the foot because of the way that brand ownership works. So yeah, we'll see. We'll see what happens. I'll be curious to see if other people like the beta when it's actually out and very

curious if the game's actually good. Yeah. Well, I'm excited for the real thing. The real thing comes out in September. Like, I don't need the beta, but I'm excited to, like, like, the three of us could do some co-op. Oh, yeah. I think that would be very, very fun. Yeah.

Yeah, that's, well, so, I mean, I'm very curious to see what they, what their, like, long-term loop slash plan is. Because in Destiny, Destiny always had trouble and, like, it had good and bad when it came to, like, hooking you to keep playing and the chase forever increasing numbers and better loop. And to tie it to this specific conversation. I remember the Destiny Beta was pretty fun. I remember playing the beta and being like, oh, it was the first. First time, actually. Well, because the game was fun to play.

It's just you didn't realize the problems until you really, like, put through the final game. I suspect this will be similar. And I'm very aware that, like, the Anthem beta was also pretty fun to play, or at least that's how I remember people describing it. So I'm like, this could be a fun beta and not a good game. Yeah, that's 100% very, like, because Anthem was the type of game where it's like, oh, man, like you play for a couple hours and you're like, this is a blast, like, flying around,

and it looks beautiful. And then you start to realize, like, yeah, being Iron Man. and then you're like, wait a minute, I don't get to see my loot until the end of a mission. Wait a minute. I have to wait 40 seconds before I can actually go anywhere. Wait a minute. This is all messed up and all sorts of ways. Yes, yes.

We all remember the Anthem had problems. Okay. I don't have to keep going. So, yeah, I hope that doesn't happen to this game. But we'll see. Yeah, we'll see. Yeah. All right.

My one more thing. I'll keep this pretty short. My one more thing is Billions, which is a show that Maddie and I both like a lot. Maddie. Did you watch the most recent season of millions? I haven't yet. on my to-do list. Tell me about it. Okay. So let me tell you my story. So I'm not actually going to talk about the season because it's good. But here's what happened. I wait. My wife and I were waiting to watch

it because we wanted to wait until the season was completely done so we could just watch it as a whole. Just like we did the first first seasons. Yeah. It's a good way to do it. It's a good way to do it. So I thought it was over. I saw the final episode it aired. So we started watching it. Around episode four or five, I noticed that there were only seven episodes and I was like, wait a minute, that seems shorter. Like previous seasons had had 10 episodes. So maybe they just chose to do, like HBO does that sometimes. Game of Thrones notably.

Like sometimes you just do a shorter season, right? So it was like, okay. And then I think it was episode six we got to. And it started off with a trailer that said, Billions will return. And I was like, wait a minute, what? And then it was like a trailer of like everything we had seen in this season. And it was just like coming back.

And I was like, oh my God. this season got interrupted because of coronavirus. And then episode seven, one of the characters actually mentions coronavirus. And then episode seven just ends. And the season is just like not complete. And so I looked it up online. And they literally, they had to stop shooting in the middle of production because of coronavirus. And so they have like five more episodes planned that just didn't happen.

And who knows when they'll ever happen. They're going to have to rewrite them probably because that show is so up to the minute in terms of things that happen. I mean, I can totally envision why. a character would mention COVID. Yeah, well, there's like, there's a story that, like, it has all these, these story threads that are in place

that they can continue. So, like, I doubt they'll have to change their plan too much as far as, like, what the story was. But one of the characters, it was so weird, one of the characters being,

like, it was a throwaway mention of coronavirus. Like, it felt like it was shot in, like, January when we all kind of knew what coronavirus was. Probably it was. But, like,

their investor characters, so, of course, that would infect their investments and, like, the choice of, that they're making. Sure, sure. Like, this will be a fun reference to throw in.

So it got me thinking, like, obviously, this is very low on the list of, like, coronavirus problems. and a lot of people have faced, like, death and poverty and all sorts of real issues. But it kind of, it's kind of crazy to think about the fact that, like, TV shows and everything you love just is going to be delayed for years and years. Like, all your favorite shows that you're waiting to come back, like, might not come back for a very long time. All the shows that they've started shooting already are not going to be.

finished. Right. And most of the things that we watched or experienced now were done before this. Exactly. They have to. But they're going to run out of stuff. It's kind of like, it's like bungee and destiny to tie it back. At the point they're going to run out of old stuff to reuse. And then we're going to just be screwed and there won't be anything new. It's exactly the same. Yeah, but it's just wild to think about the ways that like, in addition to like ruining a lot of people's lives and devastating a lot of people in different ways. And also, and putting a lot of people's lives on pause. It also has put all of like our media that we consume. like culture.

Especially the TV stuff that gets shot in real life on just like a giant pause and it could be years and years before we really like see some of our favorite stuff come back. And I think one of the nice things about TV is that it provides that like familiar rhythm in your life where it's like, okay, like now it's time for this show. Like the show always comes back at this time. And like cool, it's the summer, time for succession. Like whatever it is, whatever your touchstone is. And it's really like awful that that's not going to be there for people anymore.

and really, especially since they have nothing else. Like a lot of people are really interacting with media because everything is so terrible. Yeah, exactly. And fortunately, there's a lot of stuff, there's a lot of time to catch up on like old shows you miss,

like the Sopranos. Yeah, you can finally watch what we do in the shadows. You watch the wire. Yeah, watch the wire. We all, yep, we did. We talked about that before. But yeah, at least sports are like semi coming back.

The NBA is doing well. They're playing in a bubble. Baseball is like all sorts of fucked because all they're not doing a bubble. They're just traveling around the country. But yeah, that's it. Should we do one more Max Fun plug before we say goodbye? Oh, yeah, let's do it.

So this is your final reminder. Final week. Final chance. Yeah, this is the last week to do it. So go on to Maximumfund.org slash join. Check out all those cool member upgrades that you could qualify for if you'd like to. Or heck, even if you just want to join at the $5 level, you can do that any all time. And you can still get that sweet, sweet bonus content from us.

But just remember, if you want to join those other tears, this is the last week that you can get a reward for doing so. Last chance at that pin. Yeah, got to get a pin. You got to. You got to. You'll regret it forever if you don't. Cool. All right.

Kirk, Monty. That is it. For this week's episode, we will see you next week. All right. See you both next week. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreyer, 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. Triple Click is a proud member. of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network. And if you like our show, we hope you'll head over to Maximumfund.org slash join and consider becoming a member. Doing so helps support us and gets you access

to an exclusive triple-click episode each month. Find us online at triple-clickpodcast.com on Twitter at triple-clickpod and send email to triple-click at maximum fun.org. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximum fun.org. Comedy and culture.

Artist-owned. Audience-supported.