Triple Click - Summer Game Fest vs. E3

Episode Date: June 15, 2023

It's June, which means it's time for... *checks notes*... Summer Game Fest? What the heck is that? The gang breaks down all of the big news and commercials, and Jason reports live from Not E3 in Los Angeles, where he's played the new Cyberpunk DLC and one of his best games of the show is... Crash Team Rumble?Note: Triple Click is off next week!One More Thing: Kirk: Diablo IVMaddy: Diablo IV (as a Rogue)Jason: Writers StrikeLINKS:Kirk’s Arc Lash Sorcerer Build: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STHHBCPnywcSupport 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

It's summertime, and the gaming is easy. Trailers are jumping, expectations are high, so hush game babies, and don't you start to cry. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week we're talking about all the video game news of the past week with announcements from Summer Game Fest, Xbox's big press conference, and much more. So many trailers, so little time, let's get into it. I'm Kirk Hamilton. I'm Maddie Myers. And I'm Jason Shire.

Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello, my friend. Here we are. Yes. It is very early in the morning for me and Jason.

It is coming at you from a hotel room in Los Angeles. Yes. That's right. J.W. Marriott's in downtown Los Angeles, which is hilariously, also the place where all of Xbox is staying. So, like, every time you go in the elevator, you just see people on Xbox jackets, just watching. They have matching jackets. Uh-huh. They all have Xbox jackets.

They got Xbox shirts. They got Xbox shirts. Wow. Well, and increasingly, that is a larger and larger percentage of the whole games industry. So soon it's like two hotels and then three hotels and then it's just the entire thing. It's just Xbox. It's funny you say that, Kirk, because at one point I was at the bar talking to like a group of Xbox people, mostly comms, people, PR marketing, etc. And the boss of them was like, oh, you know, these are all externalists.

We're going to get you too, Jason. I was like, oh, my God. No, I don't think so. Never going to happen. You wish, you said, charging off like a teenager. If journalism dies, my backup plane is to, I don't know, go become a monk or something. I think. If journalism dies just as a world where all of journalism.

I just, yeah, all of journalism dies. It's okay. I'll never get me, even, Jason. I know, I've got a long list of things that I would do. No offense. Yeah, no, it's just, it's all, like, all these are lovely people, including our old palatina and me who I spent a much of the time with this week, who have gone to the other side,

but it's just not for me. Yeah. I actually just got to the part of the Psychonauts documentary where Microsoft buys them, and it's interesting watching this fiercely independent studio suddenly realize that they are all Microsoft employees. Uh-huh. Weird.

Yeah. Yeah. Comes for us all eventually. Well, anyways, it's very early in the morning, but we're going to stay on target. I'm going to stay on track here. I'm going to explain to you all that Triple Click is a listener-supported.

podcast. And that means that we're totally supported by listeners like you. We don't have to run ads. We don't have to sell our show to Microsoft or any other giant corporation. We just get to make the show that we like totally independently for all of you. And that is because of your support and because of the Maximum Fun podcast network, which we are a member of. And so if you want to become a member of Maximum Fun, you support our show. You also get access to a bunch of bonus episodes from all of the maximum fun shows. There's a ton of great shows in the network. And we post a bonus episode every single month. We've been posting one since we started the show. So become a member and you get access to a whole lot of them. And this month we're going to

be doing a bonus episode about succession with spoilers for the full series of succession, a show that all three of us really like that had a really incredible final season, an incredible final episode. And there's going to be a lot to talk about. We haven't talked about that on the show at all. like all the stuff that happened on the finale. So that's very exciting. And so go to maximum fun.org slash join to become a member. That's maximum fund.org slash join. And one programming note before we get started, we are going to be off next week.

We're taking a week off. So we'll be running something in the feed, not sure what. But then we'll be back the week after that. Okay. So this week we are talking about not E3. I can't believe it's not E3, live from Los Angeles. So I just flew out here for this thing. E3 is dead.

It is no more, at least for this year. They say they'll come back. Who knows, we can talk about that in a little bit. But in lieu of that, a new event has arisen, has kind of come from the ashes like a phoenix. And it is called Summer Game Fest, which is a terrible name because everybody I've spoken to calls it Summer Games Fest. So this is like Barnes and Noble, Barnes and Nobles?

Exactly. Kirk, that's, oh man, my wife Amanda does that. She calls it Prince of Nobles, and every single time I correct her, and she's like, no, as far as the nobles. No, it's just a... Yes, it is like that. And on top of that, it's also not summer for half of the world, so that's another interesting part of the name.

Right, I'm about to go to Australia where it is definitely not summer. It's the Winter Games' Festival. Is it even a festival? Like, there's more than one game, so games is inaccurate? Summer's inaccurate. Is it a festival? We got to get into it. Jason is going to tell us.

It did feel a little bit like a festival. And as we talk a little bit more about like what summer games fest, actually, see, I'm doing it. Summer Game Fest. Actually, actually, I've never known that until you told me right now that it was game singly. Yeah, I had to delete the S from our little show outline. Like, it should be games.

I know. What it should be. So we're festive-fizing games. We can talk a little bit more later about. about the campus experience and how that differs from E3. But first, let me just do a quick overview to ground people to make sure everybody knows exactly what happened. So the events really started on Thursday,

which is when Jeff Keely, as known as the host of the Game Awards, gaming's biggest night, he did a live show at the YouTube Theater in Inglewood, Los Angeles, in Englewood, California, and just like did one of his Keely shows where it's like, look at all these world premieres.

Yeah, trailers. Trailers on trailers on trailers on trailers for video games. Except the Witcher, I think, was there. I was in the theater. It was full of people, but not quite, not that crowded. It was like a decent showing, I would say. Then on Friday and Saturday, media and influencers were able to go to this little campus in downtown Los Angeles that was essentially like kind of like a constrained

version of E3. Basically, it's this, I think there were like 300 attendees as opposed to the thousands and thousands of attendees who go to E3 every year. It was this kind of there were a bunch of buildings on this little

campus and a couple of like food trucks and food stands and you go around and like you see all the signs for the big publishers and they have their little booths, their little demo stations and so Square Enix is over there and you get to go play Foamstans in that room and then you get to go check out a behind closed doors demo of armor core or whatever. Okay, so kind of like E3.

Very E3, except the big differences are that it was very chill, it was a lot more chill because of the lack of crowds. And so, and it was also, it was just more, it felt more professional than E3 did. Not a lot of, like, people weren't capes in the press room or like. This is Jason's bug there. No capes in the press room. over a decade. If you are wearing any form of cosplay, but especially a cape around Jason

Trier in a press event, he is, he is so upset. Because journalists don't wear capes. Guys, journalists don't wear capes. They don't. They're secret heroes. They're heroes. But they're not that kind of game. Heroes, journalists don't wear games. And journalists are heroes. So there you go.

Exactly. But no, I mean, you could tell it's like every, I mean, it was all familiar faces for me. Of course. You can walk from one booth to another without having 10 conversations of people you knew on the way. So that was cool. But what you mean, like, not just developers, but other journalists, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Journalists, developers, press, PR people that you know, very much like a lot of familiar faces. So that was Friday and Saturday. And there was enough there that you could really, you could fit it into two days. And then on Sunday, there was an Xbox show that you guys probably watch her caught pieces of where they did their whole trailers thing. it was an hour of Xbox and then another hour or so of Starfield. Just showing off Starfield, we'll get into that. And then what Xbox did that wasn't streamed was they had like a little panel, a little behind closed doors panel called What's Next for Gaming?

And they had Phil Spencer, Xbox's boss and a couple of other executives and Todd Howard, director of Starfield. They all got on this little stage and did this kind of moderated conversation where this Xbox employee asked them a bunch of questions. And there was no press Q&A or anything, so it was pretty canned. And then Sunday evening, I went to a Final Fantasy 16 event, which we won't really talk about because there was no news there or anything other than the demo coming. But that was just a fun thing to be at. And in fact, a bunch of people came up to me and were like, oh, I'm a fan of the show.

So that was cool to see. Was that Final Fantasy event more of a kind of fan thing? I feel like I've been to those before. Yeah, okay. I think I know it to picture there. A lot of capes. were there. A lot of

Caves, yes. There weren't, no, not a lot of Caves actually, but there were a lot of Final Fantasy T-shirts

in Kingdom Hearts I guess they're more crystals than capes. Right, yeah. And like cloaks to kind of match

the Game of Thrones vibe maybe, some pins on the cloak. No cloaks that I could see. Wow, okay. Really falling down Final Fantasy fans. A lot of cool people.

A lot of fans. They all got to play the game and then there was like a signing for all the top developers, Naoki Yoshioshi the producer and all the other folks were there, which was pretty cool. It was cool to be there

and be part of that segment. I was actually, I was shocked, so it's the opener of the event, and this will be the last we talk about this part of the show. But the opener of the event, Squarianix's CEO, got on stage to address everybody, and he spoke in English, which I was so impressed by, because usually Japanese developers and executives are speaking through translators and everybody else did.

But, like, that was pretty cool to see this kind of young guy, I young knew Square Unix CEO. He's like just started or is just about to start and spoken English. I joke. He probably chose to do that. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, that he was able to do that. It's really cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was standing next to a Square inx PR person. And I was like, so when's he going to mention NFTs? And the PR person was not having. So let's talk about that stuff in order.

We'll talk about Thursday and what you guys saw. Then we could talk about Friday and Saturday. And I can tell you guys a little bit about what I played and what the vibe was like. And then we'll talk about Sunday and Xbox. how they came off. We're recording this before the Ubisoft thing and the Capcom thing today, so we won't be able to talk about that stuff, but Ubisoft happened to announce a couple of their big games anyway over the older shows.

So yeah, let's start with Thursday. Did you guys both watch the Keeley event? What did you make of it? Matt, do you want to start? Sure. So I did watch it and we covered it at Polygon in much the same way that y'all would remember we covered E3 back at Kotaku together, But this is a very different vibe than E3.

And I think that's reflected not just in terms of like the hype levels and traffic being lower. And just also the vibe is more chill even from a live stream perspective. It feels slower and a little more meandering. We can get into some of the specifics. It's not to say there weren't trailers that I thought looks really cool and exciting, but kind of like the Game Awards, there'd be some trailers that felt a little bit more like an advertising. than a trailer, which I know is a fine line, but there's kind of like a waxing and waning of that sensation in the STF stream that I didn't feel quite as much in Xbox.

I think there were commercials. There were ads, for sure, yeah. Yeah, okay. Yeah, some of it is just the tone and pace. But yeah, I mean, I watched it all and felt exhausted by the end of it. And we could get into some of the specifics of what was shown as we go along. Yeah, it did feel different. Kirk, I'm curious how you felt as somebody watching it and not being hot on those screenshots, posting the news. What's your sense of it?

I was just sort of following along with what everybody was talking about. It seemed like Summer Game Fest, there was like a little bit more there than maybe that previous Sony event, but it wasn't, you know, extremely exciting. I watched a few things. I didn't watch everything. I am excited for Alan Wake, too. Do you too watch the Man, Alan Way 2 is going to be great But I guess we knew that Because Remedy makes good games

Did you watch this Will Arnette Twisted Metal? What did the two of me think of The theater was dead silent So they played this clip They played this clip from the show The New Twisted Metal show And they made this

Joking thing like Anthony Mackey And Will Arnette sing the thong song And it was meant to be funny and silly But it was dead silent And that's how awful it was That is fascinating because our coverage of that has done really well. I feel like I get into traffic on this show, which is always kind of weird. Well, no, that is an interesting little bit about that.

And we included it in... Well, maybe were people like hate watching it or did well, like people reacted while? Well, I don't know. We don't have thousands of angry comments on it. I think people are curious about it. I know I was curious about it because when I heard about the adaptation just from their PR, I was like Twisted Metal. Like, it's been 20-some years since anyone said those words to me.

And in this age of video game, live action adaptations, I wouldn't have thought Twisted Metal starring Anthony Macky, pretty solid star power on that guy. He's Captain America now. Will Arnett, famous comedic actor, wouldn't have thought Twisted Metal would be the project. But if people are curious about that, I recommend just checking out the Polygon article

because it includes a letter from the showrunner, who is obsessed with twisted metal. Like not just a cash in situation for this guy. He has been trying to make this happen for the past 20 years, has a pretty successful career in TV writing. And this one guy is just really into the game, twisted metal and really want to make this show. So regardless of what you think about the trailer,

this show is a labor of love. And it's somebody who really loves twisted metal. I don't know. So, yeah. That does explain it, right? It does, doesn't it? We start asking this question of like, okay, the last of us, I get that. Assassin's creature.

Okay, that kind of makes sense. Mario, okay, yeah, they've always wanted to make a Mario thing. Then it's like, twisted metal. But when you hear that the guy making it is like it's been his dream his whole life, so that it starts to make sense. Yeah, I think it's going to be a bit of a cult hit. I'll say that because I've gotten some promo for it that makes it seem like it's going to be really weird. And I love a weird adaptation.

I thought it was a card game and it wasn't a single car in the show. in the show clip they show They're not sure there will be cars in the show They didn't want to show cars Driving around in the trailer That makes sense They wanted to show people that's going to be funny I guess

But did they succeed at that? Anyway, yeah, let's get into the video game An open question The highlights of the show So the big I guess announcements Where there was a new Prince of Persia game That's like a 2D Metroidvania Thing that has a lot of positive buzz

People who played it Say it's kind of cool there was the new Sonic game which I'll talk about it in a bit because I play that I mean there isn't much to say it's more Sonic I don't know it just felt like Sonic you don't have to talk about it but it's 2D Sonic Jason it's 2D there's a Spider-Man 2 release date it's come in in October

there was Liza P that game looks pretty cool got a release date there was a new game and has a demo as well I've seen people playing the demo and talking about it I haven't yet played it but I do have it downloaded this is Liza P is a Pinocke Tokyo Blood-Born game, I suppose, is how I would describe it. And it looks dope as hell. There's a new announcement for a game called Sandland, which is a new anime. This looks very cool.

The Dragon Balls. Imagine by Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama. Looks really cool art-wise. I thought this trailer was very exciting to me. And there was this amazing moment, truly, truly well done by Jeff Keeley, where he was like, they showed some Final Fantasy mobile thing. And then the camera cuts to Keeley. And Keeley was like, speaking of Final Fantasy,

and the crowd starts going crazy. And he's like, and he turns it. He's like, no, no, no, no. And then he starts saying, DoorDash has got you covered with the Final Fantasy 16 promo. And everyone's like, ah. And it was by far the funniest part of the show. It was so funny.

Accidentally punking us all by everybody. I think it wasn't accidental because then the real twist was that later he did have Final Fantasy 7 rebirth, the trailer for that, the second version of Final Fantasy 7 remake series to close the show. So I don't think it was an accident, Maddie.

I don't know. So is it the Final Fantasy 7 remake series or is it the Final Fantasy 7 re-series? Is it Final Fantasy re-7? Whatever you would call it. I don't know. That trailer was pretty cool.

It was. Although I was actually really confused. I don't know how much you guys followed, but everybody thought that they were teasing Tifa dying in 2009-7-R-R-R-G. Oh, yeah, there's a whole, Patty, didn't you write this article? I wrote an article about this, Jason. You can read my explanation of why people think that.

So I'm sure, Jason, what you're going to say is that in the original game, Tifa doesn't die, but she does have an altercation with Sephiroth that is similar to the one shown in the trailer. So, of course, you and I might be like, well, why would it? anyone think Tifa's going to die there? We already know she's not going to die. Well, in the Japanese version of the trailer, it's much more clear what Saffroth is saying in that scene. He's saying he killed Tifa during that altercation and that he doesn't know who this current Tifa is who's been hanging out with Cloud. Yeah, I know. I just interpreted that as him just saying, like, them adding a

line. Well, there's the interpretation that Sephroth's lying and that he's messing with Cloud and that Tifa didn't really die that day versus she did. Well, or the third one, which I thought was, at least was clear to me, which is that for this remake, they've added a lot of extra dialogue to kind of

fill out scenes, and this is just him saying, oh, I slosh you down, I thought you died. Like, I killed you. And they're just adding a little bit of color. You think that, and they just included that in the trailer just for fun? Yeah. But why does he say who is she and also include a

monologue leading in suggesting that Genova is impersonating Tifa. I mean, given that we're playing a game where the biggest question is, is the character who dies not going to die? It definitely seems fair to me that... That's true. That's true. But they

also, in the first game, they added a whole segment where it seems like Barrett dies and then the whisper is bringing back to life. I don't know. Anyway, I didn't interpret it that way. But yes, I had conversations like that one afterwards and people were like, yeah, this is why. But anyway, yeah, so that was Summer Games Fest, the keynote.

Game Fest. Generally, I left, yeah, Game Fest. I left pretty underwhelmed by that whole show and the feeling of it. Mani, I think you were spot on before. This, more than anything else, feels just like the blend between commercials and, like, I mean, even just the DoorDash thing. It's like, at least when you watch at E3, previously at A3, there were no Keeley shows. It was like publisher shows. And at least when you watch an EA show.

show. You know you're watching the commercial for EA shows, but they don't see actual commercial for EA games. There was purity in the commercials back in our day. It wasn't all deluded. I mean, look, when I watch E3, I don't want fucking DoorDash commercial. Yeah, I get you. I get you. I just think it's funny, but I get you. Like, I want the game companies to advertise to me. That's how

Keeley pays for the show, Jason. It has to be brought to us by Samsung and DoorDash. It's pretty silly. Yeah, it's pretty silly. Like when you watch the Xbox show, you're like, yes, this is all Xbox marketing, Xbox commercials, but that's what you're tuning in for. You're not tuning in for the other stuff. Well, soon Microsoft will just own everything. And all of the ads and all of the companies advertising will be in some way owned by Microsoft.

So it'll come full circle. That's true. All of these events are always from the YouTube theater, the Microsoft Theater. So, yeah. Okay, let's talk about the next part of the show, which was the Play Days event. So like I mentioned before, it's this little camp. You go around. It's pretty chill. I really like that you don't have to wait online for anything.

You can get food. Like any food, you can't get food because the line is an hour long. No, there is no. You bring your own granola bar or you starve. Exactly. It only takes you like 30 seconds to walk from an appointment to another appointment. So that was cool because you don't have to be late for things. I'll talk about a couple of things that I played. A couple of things that impressed me. And you guys can say if you saw anything that impressed you.

So the thing that blew me away the most was, wait for it, crash team rumble. Okay. Yeah, same more. Crash team rumble. Me neither. I sent it for the apartment and I was like, whatever. It was super fun.

It's like this kind of like Destiny's Gambit. It's this 4B4 multiplayer mode where you have to go around collecting fruit and bringing it back to your little deposit bank. And then along the way, you can also attack other players like on the other team and like block them and use special abilities. Is this first person, third person? It's third person. It's all multiplayer. It's like one of those budget.

I think it's like 40 bucks multiplayer games. They also sell costumes and hats and stuff. Yeah, incredibly fun. I was playing with like a bunch of the dev team and like other people who were there. It was super fun. I really enjoyed that experience. Also played Remnant 2. You guys, Kirk, you were a fan of the first game, right?

Yeah, I love the first game. It's very good. Remnant is like, it's like souls with guns. It's like Gears of War, soul. I'd say, Gears of Souls. A lot of people describe it. A third person cover shooting with like gear Z kind of

combat, but a Dark Souls structure and kind of world. Yeah, well, so I played Remnant 2. I played through like one stage with a boss. They told me that there's some procedurally generated elements to it so it doesn't have like the careful design, level design of a

Souls game. But it feels pretty good. The shooting is really good. They're bonfires and estes blasts and all the stuff you want, all the good stuff you want from the Souls game. I was playing on like either easy or medium. One of the low, there are difficulty settings in this one. I was playing on one of the lower ones and still got my ass kicked. So yeah, a fun, fun challenge to play the game for sure.

Unlike the first game, the biggest difference in Remnant 2 is they have these archetypes. So you can pick from the beginning of the game, like I want to be a sniper type archetype. I want to be a burly tank, quite archetype. And then there's a lot more like character customization they were telling me. It felt really good. I really enjoyed it. A lot of fun monsters to shoot. And a big part of the fun of that game is playing multiplayer.

It is a multiplayer game. So I would say having more of a class system would be really cool for it because you can specialize. Yeah, yeah, I didn't try multiplayer, but the designer I was talking to. One of the lead designers, this lady named Cindy, who was telling me that when you play in multiplayer, they ramp up the difficulty. They throw in more monsters to kill. That was fun. I thought a boss at the end of the stage. That was really cool.

just this teleporting kind of like Father Gaskeone looking dude Just based on the first game It seems like a team that had a lot of success with their first game But it's a kind of a simple game And that now they've probably got the kind of resources in time To really explore a lot of ideas It has the feel of that game that's going to have a really killer sequel So that's cool to hear

Yeah, yeah yeah um played some Sonic whatever it's more Sonic I checked out Armour Core Armor Core 6 I got to see I didn't need to play it But there was like a little stage demo That game That series is not for me

I was kind of I came into it open-minded Because I was like oh New From soft game Maybe they'll add some solsy stuff But no it's just Just Armour core Which I'm just not into X or anything So I can't really come on that one

Played some Mortal Kombat Gross game Disgusting Just like spine cracking The discourse talking about How Mortal Kombat Was so prominently featured in summer games Game Fest and how if somebody were to watch that show, they'd be like, really, this is what

video games are doing these days? And not only that, when you were there, you heard people going crazy over the spine ripping because they were a bunch of fans in the theater. People love that shit. Yeah, man, some people were into it. It was not for me. I was sitting in this theater presentation, the developers are getting really excited about all the spine ripping fatalities.

Mortal Kombat, though, it's like, speaking of twisted metal, I mean, to look at another 90s brand, Mortal Kombat. but as one of the most enduring brands in all of video games. I mean, I guess there was kind of a fallow period for a minute, but they've always been around and they've always been popular. So that doesn't surprise me at all. People love Mortal Kombat. It is true.

People love Mortal Kombat. And then I played the cyberpunk expansion. Oh, man. I'm so excited for this. That trailer was totally sick. And I've been playing a ton of cyberpunk this year, and that game has become very good. And I'm extremely excited about that DLC.

Maybe more than almost anything else. Maybe more than anything. Yeah. So, okay, so yeah, I played some of that. It was really cool. I really enjoyed it. I'm excited. I told them, hey, I'm excited to revisit the game. Everyone loves the redemption story. Here's a fun fact. The director of cyberpunk Phantom Liberty. And also he told me now the director of like the next cyberpunk game, which they're going to work on after this, is a man named Gabe Amantangelo, who might sound familiar to old listeners of split screen because he was on the show in 2018, I believe, or 2019, the GDC. He was running a studio called QC Games. I mean, a game called Breach. And Maddie and I talked to him at GDC. And I was like, hey, do you remember me? He's like, oh, yeah, we did that podcast. And now he is running cyberpunk. That's pretty cool. She's having them back on the show. He took over, or he came on in like 2020 towards the end of development and then took over a year later as director of Phantom Liberty, the DLC, and then went on from there.

and it seems very much like they want this DLC to be like a big meaty expansion. It looks like is it, I was looking at it and it's like the president has crash landed in part of the city. I was like, is this just escape from New York? Like are they basically doing escape from New York in cyberpunk? Which, if that's the case, hell yes. I'm on board with that. Yeah.

Doesn't the president have the same last name as me? That was very decided. Myers. She spells it the same way too. I was like, am I some distant relative of mine president? in the star one future? All right.

Shout it to Maddie. Yeah, it was cool. I wanted to take screen shots of all of the moments of the characters are like, everybody's after Myers. Who knows why? There's a thousand reasons to take Myers down. I was like, damn, all right. Myers has so many enemies.

Yeah, yeah. It felt very much like you're trying to, they're trying to make it more of an RPG. They're trying to make it more of like the linear experience. I mean, when I interviewed Gabe you was telling you that like they also have systemic stuff and trying to add that too. but I kind of got the vibe that they're focusing a little more on what matters the deus X part of it.

I'm really, I'm excited for you, because I know Maddie you played a fair amount of, or maybe all of Cyberpunk, but Jason, I'm excited for you to play it because having played through... Oh, I never beat it. But I would like to beat it.

Yeah. Oh, okay, yeah. I played through most of it. I'm near the end, but really like the story stuff of that game is very, very strong. And it's exciting to like go and play more of it, like the fact that they're going to do expansions, especially because those Witcher 3 expansions were the best stuff

in the game. They were incredibly good. And this one, well, so this one is $30, so it's like meant to be the big one. They also told me, this is the only one they're doing. This will be. And then moving on to the next game. Yeah, that's the plan. It's set, just like the witcher ones, it's set in the middle of the story. So you can do it like any time. You can also start

a new game and skip right to the deal. Yeah, I think I'm going to download it in the middle. And it looks like, from the trailer, it's going to deal with your character V's brain implant and Johnny and the whole thing. Like, it looks like they're going to try to find a way that you can get out of it. which was kind of always a tension in the game,

is that you're playing this open world game. You want to just relax and live your cyberpunk life in Night City, but there's this ticking time bomb in your brain, and it's a constant plot pressure. So those two things are in conflict. The fact that they are now adding a way that you can maybe, some other ways you can deal with it totally makes sense, and then you can maybe kind of relax and just live your cyber life.

Yes, and Keanu is just as big a part of the DSC as he was of the main game. I did play a fair amount. Like I got part of all this stuff with. with Jackie and got into some of the Giano stuff. Did you run into Idriselba's character? No, I had to stop my demo just before I met him. I was like about to meet him and didn't get to you. So it's okay.

September is, it's coming on in September. So not too far away. Yeah, that was cool. It was a fun atmosphere. So one thing I'll talk about and then we'll get into Sunday is there was a lot of gossip around the show because I was at the J.W. bar every night and you always see like thoughts of people. You meet new people.

people came up to me a lot like hey I'm a fan I love triple click etc etc cool okay great great story a lot of gossip Jason Jason's popular no everyone loves about how cool Jason is

everyone loves triple click the gossip the gossip was about E3 and like is E3 coming back most people I talk to believe that it is dead that SGF is going to replace it that next year more big publishers

are going to go to SDF because what SGF was really missing were a couple of things. One, like a really stronger lineup of games. It's like you have EA there, but all they have is like their Immortals, whatever game. Immortals of Avium? Yeah. Yeah.

Some soccer or golf game. I don't know. I don't even remember. And like Nintendo isn't there. Microsoft is doing their own thing separately. A lot of the heavy hitters were kind of missing. And then also there were very few opportunities for interviews, the way that E3 would often give you time. to go to a booth somewhere,

go to a closed room somewhere and talk to people. So those are things that we're missing. But the general consensus I got from talking to people is that next year it'll probably be more people coming to SGF rather than E3 opening up again. So we'll see what happens, but I got that vibe. I don't think that's a bad thing. I think this thing was a good replacement for E3.

Maybe there could also be like a fan show that exists alongside it, but having that campus for press, you can really get a lot more done than you can in the craziness of crowds at E3. That said, there was a vibe missing. There was an energy missing that was always at E3. You can walk down the hall and then be like, oh, Shigaramiamoto's over there, like playing PlayStation games. Well, that's weird.

So there was something missing. Maybe it'll be like that as it gets bigger, though. I personally just find it odd that Jeff Keeley ends up being the guy who's in charge of this event. I don't feel like there's any one person who has a comparable. role in any other industry. And I've said this about the Game Awards as well, like just how unusual his role is and how much responsibility he has as a curator. I just find it unusual. It's not to say I don't think he's up for it or something. It's just, it's just odd that it's just this guy. Yeah. But yeah, I guess I'm not against SGF replacing E3, but we'll see, I guess.

Yeah. More DoorDash ads. I agree. It is weird. It's not, it's not exactly comfortable. comfortable, that's for sure. Yeah, and he clearly works with a lot of sponsors as opposed to what E3 does, which is work with an event that probably has unionized setup as opposed to like Samsung TV is sponsoring the event, Razor headsets sponsoring the event. Like that is a, that's a difference that I'd love to see somebody dig into. Yeah, it's funny you mention that and one of the conversations I had with people was that buying a space that SGF was cheaper than it was at E3 years ago. I bet because of you don't have to pay for. Yep. No. Teamsters.

Yeah. No, you're a new nice labor. You're 100% right. Yep. It's interesting. Definitely something to keep in mind. So, and then Sunday was the Xbox show.

Definitely the strongest of the week's shows, at least so far. Again, we're recording this pre-Ubosoft and Copcom. But Xbox was much stronger than the Kili show. Did you guys watch it? Any highlights? Anything you guys enjoyed from that show? I think it's funny that Ubisoft showed their big game at Xbox, which is very E3.

Yeah. Star Wars. One of the most E3 things. Yeah. Well, but UNAs always did that, right? That's what I'm saying. It's very E3.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's very E3 of them. To show the cinematic trailer and then do the gameplay reveal later. I thought that looks okay. You know, I still haven't gone back to finish Jedi Survivor. So I'm still in the midst of one big third-person open world Star Wars game. But, you know, another one with a lady protagonist.

That looks kind of neat, kind of a fun trailer. She seems like a home solo gun, gun, Gun-totin type. Yeah, Kirk, I'm surprised you're not a little higher on that because it looked like if anything's going to be close to an Andor show, it's going to be that time. It does. Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, it's, I mean, the only real reason that I don't have a strong take on it is that I haven't seen gameplay because we haven't watched the Ubisoft thing. So it was a pre-rendered trailer.

I don't know. But yeah, cool in concept. I love Fable, so I'm excited that there's going to be more Fable. That was a cute little trailer. Yeah. Yeah, and Richard Iiotis was in that trailer being funny. A little bit uncanny valleyish, I have to say. Not all video game renderings of humans actually do that anymore.

A lot of times they just look like people. Yeah, like real pretty famous actors that you super know what their face looks like. A little bit thrown by that in the trailer. Yeah, it's a little weird. There's also a Vouch. There was that new game from In Exile that looked like Bioshock Infinite. You guys see that? It was like straight out of Bioshock Infinite.

That was weirdly, very weirdly, Bioshock Infinite. Yeah, a little too much. That was odd to me. I didn't know what to make of it. I wouldn't have expected a game to like straight up just the aesthetic. There's just something, the lighting that it was very odd how much that looked like Bioshack Infinite. Yeah, yeah.

That was the main reaction I saw to that, like to the point that people seemed distracted from the actual trailer itself just to be like, what's that Bioshack Infinite 2? Why? How's that possible? How's that being made? I almost don't know how I feel. It's just I feel weird. Like it made you feel weird.

I was like, this is weird. And the risk to have a game be that similar to another extremely famous game with a studio that notably, disbanded is a weird word to describe what happened to irash. Right. And also, I guess it speaks to how iconic Bioshock Infinite is. You know, I know we all have very mixed feelings about that game and about its development. At least story-wise, but it has a very solid aesthetic for sure. Like, it's very usually recognizable.

Right. It's so strong that if you do copy it, it, like, is a me. Immediately clear what you're copying. It's like, oh, yeah, this is what you're doing. Like, there's this one game that looks and sounds like this. Yeah, I will say, I don't think that like just a CG trailer or whatever it was, not CD in-game, whatever it was, doesn't really do justice because it's a game from in exile, the makers of like Wasteland, Brian Fargo's team.

He was originally, I mean, he ran Interplay back in the day and Wasteland Fallout, etc. It's kind of interesting to see it, to see in exile making this kind of a game. Well, that's the thing. It's, they said afterwards, like, this is an RPG. with like RPG systems in it. It just seemed more like an infinite type game from the aesthetic of it. But I don't think it's going to be like a first-person shooter the way that Bioshock Infinite was.

Oh, okay. That's good to know. I think it was definitely like immediately assumed that just seeing it. I'm like, oh yeah, this is going to be a Bioshock style, you know, run around, shoot things that do magic. Yeah, I think that was the nature of the trailer. Interesting. Yeah, there was a vowed. I saw a headline afterwards.

I was talking about how Obsidian had set out to make their own version of SkyR with A Voud and then to scale it down. So it's a little bit more like outer worlds approach where it's like depth rather than breath is their goal for that. So is A Vaud, did you get the sense that it's also a kind of dialogue-y go around and do stuff? It looked to me more like an action combat game. That's what I was trying to get into sense. It looks like Skyrim, it's obsidian, but I don't see a lot of like dialogue and sort of world interactivity the way that Skowd-Row. I mean, that was just the nature of the trailer.

I suspect it'll feel like an obsidian. RPG. It'll have all the dialogue trees and stat checks and stuff. That sounds cool. Do they say when that's coming out? That's next year. Yeah, because Starfield is really the big thing. Yeah, well, let's talk about that. Yeah. So, yeah, what did the two of you think of that, of that extensive demo that they gave? I thought it was really cool. I also was like how much of this is actually going to be delivered upon in the game.

These promises are actually going to live up to what they're what they're, what they're, what they're, what they're, what they're, being up here. But I was impressed. So I felt that, that whole in game, uh, that whole gameplay presentation afterwards, I didn't watch all of it. Um, it had to go take a shower, like towards the end. But what I saw was really cool.

I liked, I liked the lady who was like, I'm going to hoard sandwiches. I love hoarding sandwiches. I think that was everybody's favorite moment, a real and actual moment of humanity in one of those trailers are like, this is how we actually play these kinds of games. Yeah. It's just already a weird thing. Yeah, it looked cool. At this point, I have hit.

I just want to play it. I don't want to keep watching stuff about it, but I don't know if that's an unusual take or not. It's just when we're close enough to release on something, I'm almost like, the more I learn about this, you don't want to know anymore. You know what I mean? But I do enjoy watching it nonetheless.

The No Man Sky comparisons abound, and they have since it was announced, but even more so after that reveal. Yeah, especially the first. first parts of that trailer, the sort of demo, not really trailer, I suppose, that direct the demo. Yeah, it made me think of No Man Sky for a while, and I've just now segued back to Zelda after kind of rapping with Diablo for, and there's so much Zelda left for me that I still have a little bit of that feeling of overwhelm, looking at another gigantic open world game, hearing Todd Howard

say, there will be 1,000 planets like this. I'm like, one planet would be fine, man. But when they started getting into settlements and walking around and talking to people, and it started to look more like Mass Effect and less like No Man Sky. I was much more on board and excited. I thought that that stuff looked really cool. Like the aesthetic of the game does look very nice. I think they have a really nice art style, this sort of clean, shiny. I don't know how to describe it exactly, but the cities that they should look really nice. And I was like, okay, okay, cool. All right, I'm going to play this. And then Maddie, I did start to feel like you. I was just like, okay, fine, put it on my computer.

I'm seated enough. Give me the game, Todd. Yeah. I'm curious. And mostly just with regard to the no man sky comparison of it all, people are like sort of now looking at it and being like, well, no man sky has all these procedurally generated planets and that's why it's so much better. And I'm just like, well, it wasn't better at launch. How soon we forget. And also to have like really specific crafted spaces and crafted NPC quests is really what I'm looking forward to with something like Starfield. And it's not to say that, No Man Sky isn't cool in its own way, but that's the specific thing that I'm excited about that it supposedly will offer. With actually making things like on purpose, the way that this being seems to up, you can just build the things that are a little more climactic. Like one issue that No Man Sky has always had is that when you do find a huge monster, like a space monster, which you can do now and you couldn't really do at launch, they're always a little deflating because it's just this big, dumb thing wandering around.

And it's bigger and it's maybe cool looking, but that's sort of it. where you can imagine at least, and I have no idea if this will be true of Starfield, but if there is some sweet space Leviathan, it's actually a whole set piece that somebody made, and so it actually feels much more, you know, climactic and exciting to find this huge, crazy space dinosaur. That impacts the rest of the world and other people react to it along with you, and those reactions are composed by a person. And it actually has gameplay that means something, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. One thing that's struck me about that showcase is that it felt like there trying to show like, hey, you can do other things aside from shoot. You can talk your way ahead of situations. You can sneak around, which I think a lot of people felt like was missing from Fallout 4. And so it's good to see them putting emphasis on that. It does. I have to say, it does always reduce the game whenever they cut to like sick first person headshotting.

Like I'm always just like, this is lame. Like even though I'm sure it'll be fun and stuff, it is such a video games thing that you have to show this like beautiful, evocative space world in these conversations. should then be like also like sick gun play like low gravity you like headshots and I'm like you know which I'm sure we'll be doing a lot of in the game and it'll probably hopefully be fun but it is it is always there the biggest problem with Starfield is that it comes out um on September 6 and you can buy early access and get in September 1st while while Baldersgate 3 comes on August 31st that is a problem yeah and then cyberpunk comes out later in September right I mean we're it's never going to let up this year it is never going to let up

Yeah, and then Spider-Man in October. It's a lot this year. One more thing that we didn't mention from the Xbox show is the new game from the persona trilogy, the trilogy of, like, the designer and artists and stuff who helmed persona 5.

And Shogi Meguro as the composer. Yes, of course, the composer. It was called metaphor or something or another, and it's like a fantasy take on persona. They had announced us ages ago as Project RE Fantasy. Now it's finally here. And it looks, well, I thought it looked tremendous.

It looked like persona fantasy game. I don't know. Which I play the hell out of, especially in lieu of a new persona game. Hell yeah, I'll play that. Right. Well, and then along with the persona 3 remake and Persona 5 tactics, like there's a lot of persona. The persona aesthetic is really just around a lot, which is cool.

So I'm kind of like sated for the moment after finishing Persona 5 Royal, like the second time to do that game. I really don't want to play it again? I will definitely. play more persona things and I'll replay that persona three remake. And yeah, I'm sure metaphor is going to be going to be cool just based on who's working on it. So yeah, man, I mean, I'll play all those games. Well, that's why I was excited about Benefort because it was something new. It wasn't like more persona.

It wasn't, it was totally new. Even though it looked like persona, it still is going to be a brand new thing. It has fantasy in it. It's like I noticed that. So it's like more persona, but it's not more persona. Exactly. Exactly. It looks like persona.

It's very stylish. It's got the whole The menus look persona-ish. They're all over the place. Well, the character designs. I caught in the bottom right entering one of the combat sequences, which looks like persona.

It was like, night, like I saw. It looked like it was like fantasy archetypes for each character. So maybe instead of saying like, Joker, go do this. It'll be like, Knight, go do this. Which is so different.

Yeah, so different. Okay, before we take a break and do one more, Any final thoughts? Anything? Maddie, you watched some of the indie shows. Did you see anything that really stood out to you? Anything else that we haven't mentioned from either of you? Sure.

I'll just say really quickly. We also cover Dave the Devs, which is always fun to watch. It has a lot of indies in it. And I thought the game viewfinder looked really cool. It's like a game where you're walking around a world with a bunch of suspended platforms in first person. And you find pictures of other platforms and architecture

that you can then hold up the picture and that structure will appear if you're holding up the picture in the right spot. It looks... It's been around for a while this game. Yeah, yeah. The trailer helps explain it better than I just did. You have to see it.

You do have to see it. Beautiful. And it looks like a cool puzzle game to me. But yeah, just in general, had a really good time watching some trailers all weekend long. Mm-hmm. Yeah. All right, why don't we take a break

and then we'll be back with one more thing. My fellow graduates for 500 episodes MyPod. The JV Club with Janet Barney has gathered story after story of all the scandalous things we've done throughout our childhoods. Stories like how Jamila Jamil survived a horrific house party and she was on crutches. Or how Hal Lublin learned a Shakespearean monologue in his pajamas. This is not the speech we approve. Without your love and life tragedies, there would be no podcast.

In fact, I'll have an exclusive look at how Maggie Lawson's mom confronted her after a sneaky basement meetup with her crush. The T, JV. Security. Listen to the JV club with Janet Barney. Thursday's on Maximum Fun. Class of forever! Parenting, it's hard, but don't worry. You're not alone.

Belly up to the low bar with one bad mother and let us remind you that fine is good enough. They want to climb on different things. And how am I supposed to keep them both from dying? There is a right way to do this. And if I can figure out that right way, I'm going to be a good parent. So that is not a thing.

So join us each week and let us tell you that you are doing a good job. You can listen to One Bad Mother on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, so we are back for one more thing. Kirk Maddie, how do you want to do this? You want to both go at once? You want to talk at the same time. Yeah, let's both talk at the same time. And I'll pan myself right and Maddie left.

Okay, people can choose what you're going to focus on. It'll be like you can experience being at the JW bar. During each week, during SGF week. So we're both talking about Diablo 4, which I finished on my Sorcerer. I finished the story and an end game. And Maddie, you started over as a rogue and you're enjoying it more. Is that right? I did.

So I've not finished it. But, Kirk, why don't you give us your big picture thoughts and then I can talk more technically about Roan? Yeah, what did you think? You finished it all. How's the story? I think the story is really fun. It's really cool. It has a lot of really cool moments.

It's totally worth playing through. I mean, if you have the game, of course, I'm sure people will. but I'd say it's even worth focusing on only because you'll probably be around level 50 when you finish it, which then you can enter the world tier three, which you kind of start getting the endgame loot and entering that whole world. It feels a little bit like Monster Hunter to me in that Monster Hunter has high rank and low rank, where when you finish the low rank run of all the monsters, you just do it again on high rank. And then high rank gear that you start grinding for is so much better than your low rank gear that you immediately get rid of all the stuff that you maybe spent a long time accumulating in low rank.

And that's happening to me as well, where I really kind of built a pretty sick build for a sorcerer toward the end of the game. And now, like, the basic stuff that I'm getting in world tier three is better than my best thing that I was carrying around that I spent forever kind of customizing in world tier two, which I had played the sort of easier world tier. So that's a little bit deflating. So now that I've kind of beaten it and entered this higher world. world here. I'm a little like, oh man, I can't do this all again. And the stories over, so I've sort of, I'm like, okay, back to Zelda. Like, it was a good sort of point to stop playing.

But I did have a very good time. And I'll say, um, just for anyone out there playing as a sorcerer, I changed my sorcerer build again, because I know I got kind of detailed last time about my build. This time I respect to be a totally, um, a sort of one trick pony, um, a sorcerer that just does arc lash, which is just a sort of melee. like lightning whip, I guess, attack. And then everything else that I do is built around passives and stunning. So this is a build that I found online. I'll share a link for that in the show notes.

I wouldn't have figured this out just because there are all these different nodes in the build tree. And you'd have to really sit down and study them. But I think if you did that, you would immediately see this, where basically there's a way to set it up so that every time you trigger something with a cool down, you get certain perks activated. Every time you stun an enemy, you get certain things activated. There's a couple of items that give you bonus damage to stunned enemies. So then the cool downs and the stuns start to work together.

And pretty soon, your whole ability bar is just cool downs. So things that have a cool down rather than things that use mana. I have no mana abilities. So I just don't use my mana at all. And then every time I trigger a cool down, it makes me kind of armored and invincible. So I'm basically a tank sorcerer who just stands there in the middle of everybody with a shield, just absolutely wrecking shop. And I just like marched through the final maybe third.

of the story with this build. It felt broken. It was very fun to just like absolutely annihilate everything. Oh, man. Yeah, and it kind of goes to show, I think, just how varied your builds can be. Since I've been playing this, you know, very much more mobile, sorcerer who couldn't take much damage and I was, like, doing a lot of range attacks. And then I just respect my character and suddenly I'm a tank that just, like, destroys things.

So that was a lot of fun and made me, you know, I think it would be really fun to try a different character and different kinds of builds in the future. It's a very flexible game and very, very, very fun. fun overall with a good story, I will say. Definitely worth playing through the story. It's very cool. Very cool. So you don't think you're going to stick with endgame content at all. You think you're just doing it. No, if anything, I would maybe, if I'm bored later, play it again as a rogue or something. But I want to hear more about what Maddie thinks of the rogue of the rogue. Yeah, Maddie, how far are you? I'm on act too. So I did, I did start over completely as a different

character. And I'm so glad I did. And I just wanted to go into a little more detail about how much fun it is because I really recommend it. I played as a barbarian for all of D3 and D2 and I just am such a slow, heavy, methodical player and pretty much every class-based game that that exists in, that it was really hard for me to even imagine playing a different kind of character. But just for whatever reason, I don't think the barbarian feels that great in this game. I'm sure they're going to change it. But right now, a lot of the moves felt very similar to me and it almost felt like, kind of button mashing just in the sense that I was like every every move feels like a different version of a melee attack that has just slightly different timing and that isn't very exciting to me

um but the rogue as i'm playing it has a lot of different kinds of attacks which is really cool because i truly feel like it's the opposite of button mashing where every single button i'm hitting is completely tactical very swissarly knife kind of yeah and that is so cool like i there's the the the knife stab like aria stark style like i'm getting in really close and shiving people and the caltrops is like you leap back and you're throwing a billion razor blades on the ground and i have these like swirling shadows that flip around me and attack people and stuff i don't know it's really cool so there's like mid range far range up close everything really feeling like it's tactical feeling like it's super fun both multiplayer and also completely on my own and like

playing against bosses isn't as hard as it was or as boring as it was, just all around having a way, way better time with the game and definitely going to beat it with the rogue. Could you even see myself trying the sorceress at some point because of how much one I'm having and how much I've heard about just how creative you can be with builds. I don't know that end game is going to be for me either, but that's okay because I'm enjoying it a lot in this current form. Yeah, who needs a forever game? just play a campaign and end it.

It's cool that this game allows both options, so you can make it a forever game or not. And the story does set up, like, there's more to the story, and there's going to be, they've said there's going to be expansions. So, like, I'll definitely come back for those. And seasons. And seasonal content also.

Yeah, that I'm probably going to miss, but I'll come back for the, like, story expansion stuff. Well, I mean, I think seasons have story in them, too, is what I mean. I think I've seen, though, that they've said that they're not going to do as strong of a seasonal narrative, the way that Destiny does, where if you come in late, you miss a bunch of the story.

I think they're focusing the big story beats more on DLC. Not totally sure about that, but I saw that somewhere, which would make sense. I think it's a better approach. That tracks. Everyone in L.A. is talking about Diablo. I saw a bunch of people who were all obsessed with it. I was talking to our buddy Billy about it.

I was talking to everybody Tom, Tom about Diablo. It was fun to see. Everyone's just like, you know. I'm excited to get home and hopefully fix my crashing issues. Yeah, I hope it starts working. Yeah. We will see. My one more thing is not a game.

It is the writer's strike. And the reason that my one more more thing is the rate of strike is, first of all, the games I'm playing I can't really talk about other than Zelda. But also, it's just an interesting conversation topic here in L.A. I actually went to the picket line on Tuesday, last Tuesday, and visited and was chatting with some of the folks there. And it was really interesting. It was outside of Netflix HQ, and cars kept coming by and honking in solidarity. And our buddy, our friend of the show, Adam Conover, who is kind of one of the leaders of the line. Yeah.

He told me that word is, word on the scene is that the honking is very irritating for Netflix executives, which is part of the point. Keep doing it. It's really interesting just having conversations with people about, like, what they think of the strike, when they think it's going to end. A lot of people think it'll go through the summer, unless the actors strike too, which might expedite things. But one thing I thought was really interesting is that one of the big sticking points is over residuals involving the streaming networks. And one of the big kind of obstacles is that these streaming networks, Netflix's, Disney Pluses of the world, won't share their data. And so there's no point of like there isn't even anything that people can negotiate from. You can't say like, well, my show made X hours, so I should make Y and then this show made that and that.

make that. Nobody has the data, unlike the movie business or even standard TV TV networks where you have Nielsen Raining's, you have box office, you know what people should be making as a result of that. And there are kind of a couple of theories about that. And this is really interesting. I was actually talking to someone like who works in Hollywood, a manager of writers and stuff, and I was talking to him a little bit about this. One theory is that the numbers are incredibly high and the Netflix's of the world don't want to share the money that they're making with anybody. Another theory, and this is one I'm kind of leaning towards just in my own, like, this makes sense, is that the numbers are incredibly low, and they don't want to reveal that it's all

a house of cards, and that, like, this is all, they've been, they've been pursuing this, like, darn Keote, like, quest of just, like, making streaming a thing, and it's not actually a thing. So if that is the case, one belief that a lot of people in the Hollywood chair, I think, is that streaming is just going to die and that it's just going to be like okay this golden age of streaming is over we're returning to network television it's kind of like we're going back to the old way of doing things because these uh 30 million dollar an episode productions of shows that like make for these fantastic looking and really cool shows are just not sustainable and the streaming model never worked and all these companies all these uh tv companies and film companies were just trying to act like tech companies and

show growth even if it didn't actually equate to profit. And that's the one I believe. And so I can see that being the future where it's like, hey, this is all just nonsense. Let's go back to the way things used to be. But yeah, it's really interesting. Being in Hollywood and just seeing it, seeing it all in the air, talking to people about it, it's really fascinating to me. And I'm curious to see what happens next. That's for sure. Yeah, same. And definitely curious to see how they'll work it out, or if they'll work it out or when they'll work it out. Yeah. How this thing is going to be resolved? Yeah. I mean, everybody thinks after the summer is when it'll be resolved,

like around Labor Days is generally what people think is going to happen, and then the question is, what are the writers get and what do the studios agree to give up? There are a lot of different sticking points. I mean, the streaming residuals are a big one. Writers' room sizes are a big one. Artificial Intelligence,

right, is a big part of the... AI is another big one, yes, yes, yes, yes. AI, like the studios won't even discuss. They'll just be like their counterproposal. Like, the writers asked for a band on use of AI to write scripts and stuff. And the counterproposal from the studios was like, we will agree to meet yearly to discuss future technologies.

Right. Right. And everyone knows so little about how AI is even going to work. Yeah. Yeah. It's a big one. Yeah. It's a big one. Yeah. All right. Cool. That is it for this week's show. Hope everybody enjoyed Summer Games Fest. Slash not E3 slash E3 replacement. Summer Games Fest, which I mean, I think is going to happen. And by the way, I'm doing it again, Summer Games Fest.

Summer Games Fest. They should just change that. That's my note for next year. They should. It's so clunky. Summer Game Fest, like it feels weird to say. You could just change it and no one would notice because they would think that's what's called anyway. It should.

They should just change it to Electronic Entertainment Expo. Maybe for short. Yeah, that's got a ring to it. E3. 3E, E3, actually. easier to say. Yeah, it's easier to say E3. That is a nice drink to it.

And in fact, maybe they should move from that campus to the L.A. Convention Center, which is all right. You have just some ideas. Just some ideas that you want. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, cool. Well, yeah, I will see you both not next week because we'll be off next week. We'll put up something for fans, for listeners, and then we will be back in a couple of weeks to talk about more videos.

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

Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network, and if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at Maximumfund.org slash join. Find us on Twitter at triple clickpods. 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. Maximumfund.org.

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