Triple Click - The Rise and Fall of Blizzard Entertainment

Episode Date: October 3, 2024

How did Blizzard transform from one of the most beloved game companies on the planet into a shell of itself? This week, Maddy and Kirk probe Jason about his new book — PLAY NICE: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment (out October 8) — which chronicles the 33-year history of the company behind Warcraft, StarCraft, Overwatch, and Diablo. They talk about Blizzard's string of corporate parent companies, the development struggles of Overwatch 2, the wild story of Blizzard North, and much more.One More Thing:Kirk: Dead Rising Deluxe RemasterMaddy: XBPlayJason: The Afterparty season 2LINKS:Preorder Jason’s Book! https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/jason-schreier/play-nice/9781538725429/Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinBuy Triple Click Merch: https://maxfunstore.com/search?q=triple+click&options%5Bprefix%5D=lastJoin the Triple Click Discord: http://discord.gg/tripleclickpodTriple Click Ethics Policy: https://maximumfun.org/triple-click-ethics-policy/ Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointripleclick 🚀  SUPPORT TRIPLE CLICK:Join Maximum Fun | Buy TC Merch💬 JOIN THE TRIPLE CLICK DISCORD🎮 Triple Click Ethics Policy📱 SOCIALS | @tripleclickpodInstagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitch

This week we are talking about my new book about the rise and fall of jazz. It's called It's All About the Notes You Don't Play Nice. Welcome to Triple Click where we bring the games to you. Today we are talking about Blizzard, a company with all sorts of interesting history that I heard someone might have written a new book about. I'm Jason Shrier. I'm Kirk Hamilton. And I'm Maddie Myers. Hello.

We're back. Hello. for another episode. And by now, everybody's had an opportunity, if you are a member of Maximum Fun, to listen to Triple Quest Act 1. Yeah, to set out on our adventure with us. To listen to us role playing.

Yes, which is very exciting. I think we'll do kind of like a behind-the-scenes thing a little bit later in the year where we talk a little bit more about the process. And D&D in general, we'll definitely do something like that. Just the hours we spent getting into character, just like. Putting out our big method.

Maddie was method the whole time. I was. I was. She insisted that we called her key. We got used to it. Yeah. If you don't know what we're talking about, you should, of course, sign up and become a maximum fund member so you can get early access to Triple Quest, our three-part D&D campaign,

which we will be running in the bonus feed early for, like, we'll be doing every episode in the bonus feed, and it'll be exclusive to members for a month, and then it'll go live on the main feed. So if you remember, you get the whole thing early, one episode at a time, and we're very excited about it. Our DM Matthew Mercer is just the best in the world. It's nice to do something with someone who's like one of the best people in the world

at something. It's just pretty cool. It is. He really elevated the whole thing. It is. Yeah, it's just really cool. Yeah, we're there. Because we don't really know what we're doing, but he does. Exactly. Exactly. It's kind of like getting a podcast edited by Kirk Hamilton. You're like, oh man. So true. Go on. Go on. Go on.

Anyway, go to maximum one.org Join. Become a member. You also get access to all sorts of other bonus stuff and you help us make the show possible. And just to reiterate for this D&D thing, like literally, it is only possible because of maximum members because we hired Matthew Mercer. He did not do this for free. So we use the money that we get in from all of you fine listeners. And we were able to do that to do really cool things, which we would love to keep doing. And they keep coming up with wild ideas in the future.

So, yeah, we are very thankful to all of you who support us. One more thing before we get to the episode is that we sent out those Bing pins to people who supported us during the maximum fund drive. For some of them, there was like a technical issue where the glitter fell off of them. If you had an issue... The red color. Yeah, the red stuff fell off. If you had an issue, send an email to membership at maximum fund.org. And they will send you a new pin because it was a factory issue and they printed more of them.

So if yours has any issues at all, is it defective in any way? Just send an email. If it's haunted or any issues at all. Yeah. Yeah. If it's haunted, if they're going... It has bad vibes. Yeah.

If it says bombs. bong. If it is suss, as the kids might say, then just send an email to membership. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely send those emails if it has any issues at all. All right, Kirk, what are we talking about today? Today we're talking about a book. We're doing a triple read on a new book called Play Nice, the Rise Fall and Future of Blizzard Entertainment by Leon Goldpedal, an up-and-coming author that we're all big fans of. I haven't read this one. I'm not going to be able to talk about it too much. That's fine. We can We can spoil it for you. That's okay, right?

We can summarize it for you. Yeah. It's not a really, it's a pretty easy one to just summarize in a couple of sentences. Yeah, I think so. No, of course, I'm kidding. This is Jason's new book, which comes out next week on my birthday, on October 8th. It's a birthday present to me. Jason planned it that way. I can't believe, wow, it comes out on your 60th birthday. That's so exciting. Yeah, I know. It's a retirement gift for me. You're the same age of wizard.

I'm very excited to spend my retirement learning all about Blizzard Entertainment. This book is. of course a exhaustive history of Blizzard Entertainment. I would not say it's exhausting. I actually think that it's a pretty energizing and fun. I think is what he meant. That's awesome. I see. Yes. Jason, you're probably exhausted. Well, and you've now gone on, I think, every video game podcast that exists to show this book. So we have to figure out what we're going to talk about. Yeah. Okay. So here's the thing. You guys have an advantage. Because like when I go another podcast. It's kind of like

when you go out to dinner with like your friend's parents and you just say like on your best behavior. Yeah, you have to kind of answer their questions. You're on your best behavior. But like talking about it on triple click, it's like being at home having a family dinner. You can be real

with us. Right. You guys get the real. I would actually think you don't really have to convince that many of our listeners to buy it only because I would imagine a lot of them already. I have. And so I think, yeah, I think we could a little less just kind of me selling and a little more talking about some of the themes, which I think are like themes we talk about a lot on this show and are really interesting, I think.

Yeah, I think so. So let me at least give my sort of quick synopsis or just sort of nutshell of the book for anyone. You were one of the first people to read it. You read an early draft of it. And have you read the final version to see how they compare or parts of it? I've read, I've skinned through it and I reread the whole ending, which was very different. We can maybe talk about that in a little because I think that's sort of an interesting anecdote. Yeah, because the version you got had the initial ending. Because you had to change the ending. So, but we'll get into that. So to give a kind of summary of it, even though I have talked about it on the show before, and of course, Jason, you've talked about it. It is the story of Blizzard Entertainment beginning in what, 1994? 1994.

1991 is when the company started, although the story begins earlier than that with Alan Atham's kind of end Mike Moreheim's personal history and like meeting a college and stuff like that. But the company started in 1991. So it's very much like the origin story and then the just long saga of Blizzard Entertainment. It's many corporate owners, the arrival and departure of so many different people who influence its culture and its games, its various successes, the challenges that came from those successes, its failures and the challenges that arose in the aftermath of those failures. It's a really ambitious book. I think it is fantastic. I've said as much on the show. I really, really loved it. I just think you should be very proud of it. I think it's well written and just

really a fun read. I mean, I found it to be, as much as there are horrifying and challenging and, you know, revealing. It is still like a really breezy read and I really enjoyed reading it. And I think that listeners of the show are going to love it. Like, I think anybody who's interested in video games will like it. So it's a great book. Good job. Congratulations. And that's the end of the episode. Oh, thank you. See you. We'll see you next time. Is this what it's like on the other shows? Like they just talk about how great the book does. I've definitely noticed when I've listened to you on a few other podcasts when you go on. And you're right that it's just fun to hear you guesting on other people's shows.

It's a different energy, right? It is slightly different and you're kind of, you're a guest in their house and you're not quite the Jason that you are on our show. But you're still, Jason and I just enjoy hearing you and your cadences mixing with other people. But yeah, I mean, I think typically you'll go on a show and then someone will say, okay, so for me, the big. theme was that Activision ruined everything or whatever. Like they'll throw out some huge generalization and then you'll have to say, well, no, it's actually really complicated. And it seems as though your job as the person who wrote the book is to constantly complicate the simplified binaries and narratives that people attempt to attach to this like incredibly complicated

company that has had an incredibly complicated and multifaceted existence over the past, you know, 30 years. So I almost don't want to ask you what the theme of the book is. I'd rather instead start with a quote. I think that there is a quote that Sean Carnes gives in this book, which is when millions turn into billions, everything changes. He's talking about World of Warcraft and the moment when World of Warcraft became the phenomenon that it kind of still is and changed Blizzard forever. And I think that that's a good place to start. It is basically the moment when your company achieves a level of success that's so far beyond the scope of your existence that you almost, you almost never recover from it. So I guess I'd love to hear a little bit about that and about that quote and just

sort of what you think about that, having written the book and seen the whole story. Yeah, so first of all, to your point about simplifying these complex narratives, there was an article by someone who read the book this week. I won't name the person who wrote it or anything like that because I don't want to throw them in a bus. But basically it was just like, Yeah, it was all Maddie. It was a total fuck up here. And it was like, it was just like, here are all the lessons you can learn about blizzards,

fucked up workplace culture. And I was just thinking, like reading this article, I was just like, wow, did this guy read a different book? Because like there's so much more complexity and nuance. And so many people loved blizzards culture and different parts of it. And like, this is just kind of a messy article, simplifying like a complex story. And that's very first to me.

So yes, I appreciate you bringing that up, Kirk. Yeah, let me, I'll tell a quick anecdote that I have told on another podcast, but I think it's worth noting, which is that like, so you, Kirk, you were one of my quote-unquote beta readers, which is I sent it out early to a couple of people just get a little feedback as I'm like editing and going through drafts of the book. And I sent it a couple of people gave me this feedback of like, hey, your acts are in the wrong place. The fall is a little too early because like the way it's structured is it's three acts, rise, fall, and future. And Rise pretty much ends with like Wow coming out and the company just kind of starting to reckon with it becoming a cultural phenomenon. And some people who read the book, a couple of different people were like, shouldn't the fall be much later? Like Blizzard had a lot of good years after Wow came out, including Wow peaking and like Rathalichking, which is widely considered to be the best wow expansion. And I was like, no, this is exactly how it should be.

Because yes, it's like the company's fall can be traced back to them releasing this case. game that was way too big, way bigger than they thought it would ever be, becomes one of the most lucrative things on the planet, and then turns into this like almost albatross for them, because once you make something like, wow, it's very hard to ever be the same again. You turn from a company, or in Bush's case, they turn from a company of hundreds of people to a company of thousands of people. They have this game that is so lucrative that it almost seems like a waste of time to be working on other things because, like, why would you work on something else?

wow is making you hundreds of millions of dollars. Like, why would you waste your time with this StarCraft Ghost thing or this Diablo 3 thing when you could be working on Wow? And it really transformed the company in so many ways, not to mention the cultural stuff, people getting fame and fortune and that getting to people's heads and that causing problems. Like, everything is summed up by that quote. When millions turn into billions, everything changes. That is the story of Blizzard, like in a nutshell. And I think that like even saying that is is capturing how complex it is because that quote cannot be like simplified or reduced into any sort of easy story. It's just kind of like saying that the complexities of success are both good and bad.

And here is the story that kind of unravels that. And yeah, growth is such an interesting phenomenon. It almost feels like in capitalism you're punished for making a mega hit like that because you're expected to either like you're expected to grow from there, right? Like you hit a home ride and you have to watch it grow. You have to keep going. Right. And it defines you, right? It's the thing that's in the first line of your obituary.

First line you're in your obituary. Yes, exactly. Yep. You know, it's interesting also the fact that they had to shift to become kind of the World of Warcraft Studio, even while they clearly, they, I should say, many people at Blizzard didn't want to do that because there were people at Blizzard who had expertise in making all different kinds of games. And while an MMO, like World of Warcraft, is one type of games.

and they did a really good job of making one that was fun. As someone who personally didn't ever play World of Warcraft and has never found that part of Blizzard to be the most engaging part of the company to me, where I, you know, by comparison, I really like Diablo, and I really like StarCraft, and I really like Warcraft, and I liked Overwatch for a long time. Like, I actually like a lot of their other games

more than World of Warcraft. Yeah. It's interesting that a kind of side effect of the success of World of Warcraft is also that there's this conflict between art and commerce that is a broader conflict throughout the entire book. Like the most obvious conflict in the book, right, is between Activision and Bobby Codick and the creatives at Blizzard. And that is the kind of dichotomy that so many people are familiar with and is kind of always oversimplified. But at the same time was a really relevant conflict throughout the period of Activision's ownership and, like, Codic stewardship of Blizzard or of the broader. corporate structure. At the same time, like, even just looking within Blizzard, you kind of can see

the same thing. Like what you said, you know, that argument that you kind of put forth of, well, why would we make anything other than this game that was really successful? Like, why, you know, the answer to that is, well, there are a lot of different answers to that, but one answer to that is, like, because I don't want to make an MMO. Like, I don't want to just do this. I want to do Starcraft again. Like, that's something that really struck me about it, was the people that want to do something different or just wanted to make. the same the real-time strategy games that they had started off with or any number of other projects and then just got pulled into the vortex yeah blizzard in the 90s was very much a place

of like hey we want to make these games that we love playing and like do our own spins on them hey this game do tool is cool let's uh let's make our own version of that hey there's a lot of let's take it which is a cool recurring theme like let's take this idea of this game we liked and let's make it better let's make it better right and make it more approachable and making it more polished. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and that kind of, that ethos was still around after World of Warcraft, but it was so much different because World of Warcraft became like, I mean, Vortex is a good word. It was a magnet. It just sucked in everybody because the reality was that World of Warcraft from its get-go, they all kind of knew like, oh, man, this is going to have to be a game that lasts forever.

Like usually it's, you put out a game and then you move on to the next thing. And that had been Blizzard's 13-year history before that was they released something. They do patches and updates for sure and all those games like Diablo 2 got patches for years after it came out all these games got updates but like they weren't having dev teams like full dev teams on them making new stuff

for them other than like an expansion for each of the games. But with World of Warcraft it was kind of like oh we not only have to do an expansion we also have to be releasing new content every few months we have to be doing new expansions after that we have to be thinking of this game as something that'll last I mean, we're approaching the 20-year anniversary, and it's still going strong right now.

Like, it turns 20 in November of this year. So that alone, I mean, we talk about games as a service a lot these days, but that was one of the first examples of a game as a service, just absorbing everybody into the machine and really just taking everybody. And then the reason it became, or one of the reasons it became a big conflict and a big pressure point with Activision was that Activision wanted all of the most. talented people in the wow machine to get wow expansions out more quickly because that's a blizzard it always also wanted to do and like pitched and like tried very hard to release wow expansions on a

quicker cadence they were released pretty much every two years and blizzard really wanted to get them out once a year um because it leads to more growth and players makes players happy players want it players want a ton of content in that game and uh the pressure from bobby was like hey why aren't you guys bringing in more people to do this? Why are you wasting your time with these other projects, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this is this, this is, this Heroes of the Storm thing, the Starcraft thing. Like, why aren't those people just working on World of Warcraft? Or why aren't you hiring hundreds more people to work on World of Warcraft? And that was the way Bobby saw things. It's just like, this is a product. This is a machine.

This is a factory, like Call of Duty. It should be just, you should be finding the, the formula for releasing it. In fact, his kind of lieutenant, Thomas Tipple, would talk about the man-month formula and literally be like, well, with our man-month formula, it takes thousands of people, and here's how many people you should have for this. Like, they saw, Bobby liked to hire consumer products, goods people, like from Procter & Gamble and Nestle, and stuff, which is all, like, people who just see games as, like, soap and detergent, and it's just another product to be shipping. And that was a big conflict, because, like, it led to all sorts of issues. I mean, for one, Bobby would be thrilled when Blizzard came out with a hit like Overwatch,

but he didn't seem to understand that to make a hit like that, you can't have everybody on World of Warcraft. You need to give people the time to innovate and incubate. And then the reason it's complex is because on the flip side of that, Blizzard really took advantage of that philosophy, that when it's ready philosophy and spent a lot of time incubating and innovating and working on things that never came to fruition or just like floundered for a long time. Yeah, that was a really fascinating.

part of the book. And I'm kind of curious about how you dealt with just collating so many different people's experiences, because just as a reader, it was really cool to see multiple perspectives about projects that ended up going way better than expected or projects that went absolutely nowhere and how frustrating that could be. And I just thought it was cool to see how often you were balancing those perspectives. But I know as a reporter, you were probably like, well, which person do I want to lean on the most? Like, there is no true, or, well, we can't really know what's actually true. Like, what's the platonic ideal of the truth of what really happened?

But you'll have, like, Jeff Kaplan's version of what happened and what led to him quitting the Overwatch team is very different than Bobby Codach's, but probably every single person who worked on Overwatch and just the lead-up to Overwatch too, Bobby Codick wanting to put way more people on it, wanting to make it a call of duty that came out constantly. like there were people in that story who did want that and were like, I kind of wish that we did have more people on this team. I just thought that it was fascinating how often you had to balance those different employee perspectives in the book. Yeah, I think Overwatch is a great example.

I mean, that seemed like what you were talking about at first and then you started using examples from it. Because I do think that that example is it's a perfect crystallization of everything you're talking about, partly because it arose from a failure. Yes. So it starts with the failure of Titan. and then they find the success, not by accident, but in this kind of organic way. And then it leads to this sort of misunderstanding of how it was made, coupled with as sort of bullish desire to keep control over the team that made this sort of miracle happen, you know, that caused Overwatch to rise from the Ashes of Titan in the first place.

And so that's kind of the conflict between Kaplan and his small kind of core group and Kotick. And then the fact that like Overwatch 2 as a result totally suffers, was Overwatch 1 eventually suffers, the whole thing kind of falls apart. It's not really clear that in retrospect, like Cotic was right. Right, of course not. Yeah. Massively bulked up the staff and whatever. It's not right.

It definitely resists that simple, like a simplistic analysis. But it definitely captures that kind of broader theme that that happens over and over and over again throughout the book. Yeah, it's interesting. I think that something I heard from quite a few people was this idea that this notion that like even when a good idea came from someone like Bobby or like the Activision side of things there would be resistance to it because it came from them which is so was heartbreaking the worst person you know just made a great point yeah and who among us cannot relate

to that but in this case I think that Jeff Kaplan for very good reasons had like a strong belief that a team size should be small and by small I mean by the time he left I think it was close to 200 people. It wasn't like tiny. Yeah. But it wasn't duty size. College duty at that point was in the hundreds, maybe even more than a thousand at that point. Certainly now it's more than a thousand people working on college duty. And so

I think that like he had very good reasons for that. One was that he had been through Titan having too many people on it at different points and like wanting to avoid repeating those mistakes. And same with World of Warcraft. Like I think that on the World of Warcraft team even though they blew up quite a bit,

they still were not able to achieve their desired goal of releasing an expansion every year. And I think it led to some problems for certain people, or at least not everybody wants to work on a team like that. Like a team with 500 people means you have to have an army of producers like managing everybody and communicating and it just can make things really less efficient. Totally different creative process, right?

I mean, that's another an interesting lesson of this book. We see the results of teams of such, vastly different sizes and get a sense of the inner workings of those teams. And it's just like you're almost talking about a completely different kind of like creative work making something like certainly a call of duty or something like like what World of Warcraft is now versus making hearthstone and like Ben Brod's story of making heartstone, which is almost just like an indie band forming within, you know, Google or something and then just like putting out a great album.

Like a little hackathon. Yeah. Yeah. And then the flip side of that is that I spoke to people who were on me overwatch Tutsi. who were like, yeah, I mean, it was a little silly that like this one guy was responsible for this, this and this. And it was a little, like, it was out of control. And then a lot of people, I think there was certainly skepticism about Jeff Kaplan's vision.

It's interesting. Jeff Kaplan is really interesting kind of figure because he's very charismatic and people like really believe in him as a leader and would like. He's a great spokesman to the public as well. Fantastic to the public. His Overwatch videos were a big part of why people give him so much, you know. They really give him a lot of credit for the game and really, and trust him. And also internally, like, he could people run through walls for him. Like, he was very charismatic.

And I think that, like, people internally, even if they were a little skeptical of his vision of, like, infinitely replayable PVE and what that might look like, I think they really wanted to make it work. But some come, a lot of different factors contributed to it never really working. And I think that Blizzard people might blame Activision, and Activision people might blame Blizzard. And I don't, I won't say the truth lies somewhere in the middle. I think the truth is all the above. I think there are just problems on both sides. And I think anyone who, I think, I've seen a lot of sentiment that is like

Activision bad, Blizzard good. And I think every single person who reads this book in its entirety will come away thinking, oh, that's not the case. like Blizzard had plenty of self-inflicted problems, both culturally and business-wise. But yeah, the Overwatch story is fascinating because it has all these like complexities. And the other thing, here's another thing, is that one of the reasons they needed to expand is because they had to manage simultaneously updating Overwatch 1 and like doing heroes and maps and modes for that and microtransactions, making Overwatch 2, which Jeff had this

ambitious vision for, and doing Overwatch League, which just kept growing. and the pressure Right, Overwatch League The amount of work that fell upon the Overwatch 2 team, or the Overwatch team in general, team in general, as a result of that was pretty hefty. Like, they had to be doing a lot of stuff.

And they wanted to, because, like, Jeff Kaplan and his circle, they wanted to own the brand. And here's another kind of divide where Activision and Blizzard are just completely philosophically different companies. At Activision, the commercial organization

owns the Call of Duty brand. Like the developers and the games are not making decisions about like how Call of Duty is marketed and like whether Dwight Howard is in a Call of Duty commercial or whatever, like which celebrities are in the latest Call of Duty commercials. Like that is handled by the marketing or the marketing and the commercial organization supervises everything. They have the most power. They are the central team. They control the budgets and everything. They have power. Whereas at Blizzard, all of the power belonged to the developers and the marketing was kind of under that and all of the marketing decisions. I mean, like, the

Overwatch team could have control over that. To the point, they could even, they even had supervision over like the Overwatch Legos and, like, consumer good stuff. Like, they wanted to be in control of the entire brand. They saw it as their baby. They wanted it to be perfect. They didn't want anyone else to take control of it. Again, for better or for

worse. And so that plays into why they felt the need to do all this stuff, and they also didn't want to grow super huge because they thought it would ruin their culture and make it even slower to get stuff done, because, like, it would be months of training and they'd all develop this chemistry with each other. Yet they had so much work,

some of which was kind of given to them by Bobby and his team because Overwatch League blew up so much that it was just unsustainable. And even when the Overwatch team grew and grew and grew, it still couldn't handle doing PVE and PVP to the point where now it's just a PVP game. Like they've given up on all those PVE visions, which again makes sense.

I mean, Destiny 2, as a team of like, at least when it was like at its peak, it had a team of what, 800, 900 people working on just that game. Like it's a substantial amount. And so it would have been impossible, I think, for Overwatch to hit its vision with a team of less than 200 people. But you can also see why they wouldn't want to expand because they don't want to ruin their culture. They don't want to like, it also creates all these hiccups for them.

So I think the takeaway here is that game development is impossible and nobody should ever try to do it. Yeah, I think, yeah, to put a bow on the Overwatch thing, I think that them recovering from the trauma or whatever you want to call it, the disappointment of Titans failure, like the hangover from that failure just seemed as though it was a unique wrinkle to that situation that just caused a lot of trouble down the road because it was so understandably difficult for them to let go of the idea of this PVE, like, thing, we were going to make the next world of work. if we were going to make something so cool. We had this idea. And like, even if they were never even close to really pulling it off, you can understand why they would want to keep coming back and like to want to have that redemption. The same as any other video game redemption story.

Like CD Project Red being like, we can't let Cyberpunk go. We have to come back and make it into the thing that we had the vision for. They were able to do that. Not everyone's able to do that. And clearly Kaplan and his team weren't for a variety of reasons. Yeah. It really speaks to how many moments there are in the book. Not that I'm saying this is a theme.

There are no themes. Read the book. There are so many moments. There are a lot of themes all going down. There are so many moments in the book where somebody, somebody very charismatic is like a character for a while and like the entire gravitational pole of Blizzard changes to kind of revolve around them or some pocket of it changes to revolve around them. And that isn't always someone who's a great manager or even has a truly great idea.

per se. I mean, I'm not going to cast this version. I, again, making a game as impossible. I could never do it myself. But like, in reading the book, you kind of see how many stories Jason heard of someone who was simply so good at convincing other people to do something that magic would just happen around them. I mean, like, to give like a complimentary example, I feel like that's a lot of what Ben Brod's story is. I also think he, Barthone's a really fun game. I have a great time playing it. So like that's kind of like an example where you understand like, okay, yeah, and he was also really charismatic. So naturally people were drawn to him and that helped the project and helped him be the public face of the game. But there's so many other examples

of people at Blizzard, mostly guys who just like, people would just flock to them and be like, this must be a great idea because I like this person or I think I do. And like, it was just fascinating to me how that push and pull just kept happening. And I'm sure that's true of other major companies too, but it's very cool to read how much access you got here and how many anecdotes you had to just describe what that feels like in a massive company on a massive scale. And I get the sense that a big part of why it was so pronounced that Blizzard was because the company had been around for so long had started so small and had grown so large. In that way, it's actually pretty unusual for a company to start as small as Blizzard was

and to grow to become this world-dominating, you know, Activision Blizzard that then gets bought in the largest corporate acquisition of all time for whatever it was, $70 billion or something. And like that growth caused a lot of really interesting, unfortunate, sometimes just sort of neutral effects culturally within the company. Right. Like that's just such a big part of it is that these people who, most all guys who were in charge at the beginning just had to grow into levels of responsibility and creative roles and, you know, management roles that like they never would have anticipated when they started in their defense. And also they just were some of them just very not. paired for or suited to, and then that led to a lot of negative outcomes. And then, right, people following them around being like, oh, this guy is the leader.

He must know what he's doing. You know, like, he seems great because he was here 10 years ago when we had like 20 employees. Well, that's the thing, right? The tenure gives you the status at Blizzard and that can cause problems too. Yeah, it's funny. I interviewed Mike Moreheim a few weeks ago, the co-founder and former CEO of Blizzard about Dreamhaven. He's like doing the rounds, talking about his new company.

And I'm actually talking to him live on stage at a Bloomberg event next week in L. which should be fun. Oh, nice. And he told me, quote, we had no idea of what we were doing. Yeah. And it shows. I mean, like they didn't have HR for years.

Like, that's what 90s gaming industry was like. And Blizzard, when you trace Blizzard's path, a lot of it, in some ways it looks like other gaming companies, its software comes to mind as like a 90s,

another 90s kind of rock band mentality. But then it explodes and turns into an empire in a way that like, its software never did, that other companies at the time never did. Nobody else became a company. of thousands of people. And that is wild, other than like the big publishers, but those didn't even start as like a little garage band type game studios. And then you had all sorts

of, yeah, good pros and cons that came with that. I mean, when you're tracing, I guess the kind of the rise and fall of Blizzard is really this company that like grew too big, had, and then remained successful for a while, but you could just feel that those pressures were going to get to it and then it all kind of it culminated with titan i would say and if you're really pointing to the point where like uh the downhill i mean i i did describe the fall as like when world of warcraft came out but the real the the blizzard's kind of negative turnaround i would say really more realistically started with titan or the bad things started to happen after titan was canceled because titan was set up as this um the next big thing for blizzard the next wow this is going to be our big

lucrative next project. And when that fell apart, it gave Bobby Kodick the kind of excuse he needed to come in and be like, hey, like, we need to get some adults in the room. Right, right. I was just talking to the defector guys about how similar it was to our situation in a former company. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, 100%. And so then after like all of this, after Activision starts coming in, it isn't the

only problem, but then all these problems start to happen. Sure, they have hits here and there, but they also start feeling financial pressures. They have this new CFO come in, and he brings all sorts of, like, finance people to the table who start changing the culture of the company. And then Mike Moreheim leaves, and then it's just a string of disasters. It's just, like, Diablo and Mortal and Blitzchung and Warcraft 3 reforged, and then the California lawsuit. And it's just hit after hit for Blizzard. It's hit in the bad way. It's debacle after debacle for Blizzard.

And that really, it brings us to where we are now, where maybe the company can turn around. But, like, people always ask, can it recreate the old magic? And I'm always like, no, because the old magic that people remember and them just becoming this like Pixar video games that comes up with hit after hit, that was before World of Warcraft. Like, World of Warcraft was so successful. It prevented them from doing that again. And they were able to capture lightning in a bottle with hearthstone and Overwatch. But like, that's more the exception than the rule in the post-wow world. And even now, you look at their big games, they're all-service games.

Like that's what Blizzard has become. It's a service game company because of wow. Yeah, that also exists in the service of Xbox's bottom line, which is also going to be a very different, like that'll be a very different setup. A whole other story. Yes. And it'll just completely change everything about what it means for Blizzard to be Blizzard. Rewinding quite a bit, I actually found the story of Blizzard North and the creation of Diablo

to be very interesting because it kind of exists outside of this narrative, which makes sense. because it involves essentially a totally different studio that was acquired by Blizzard. But that whole story plays out before World of Warcraft comes out and in kind of the midst of several of the early ownership transfers of the company where Blizzard, you know, acquires this other company, what are they called? They're called Condor. And it's a whole other group of creative people who are also very good at what they do. I mean, they made Diablo a Diablo too, but they work very differently.

And I think that section of the book, it's just a good example, I think, to speak about the book a little bit more of how the book manages to show a lot of different angles on Blizzard, because it really does exist outside of this broader narrative. You can really just picture like, okay, Blizzard was founded, they made a bunch of good games, they got bought, they got bought, they got bought by someone else, then the ownership transferred. Eventually they were owned by Activision, they made World Workoff, they got big, et cetera, et cetera. We've kind of laid that timeline out. Diablo, which is considered, at least by me, as like one of the primary Blizzard brands, was like made by this totally other group of people in a different studio that was brought in under the umbrella of Blizzard way, way back in the 90s, like before most of this stuff happened. And then there was a whole series of like conflicts and creative struggles between these two teams that worked very differently,

that eventually led to like a mass management exodus at Blizzard North, which kind of makes me think of defector too of like a group of people being, like, you know what? F this, we're out of here. And they all leave, leaving kind of all their employees being like, oh, shit. And eventually, like, pretty quickly, no, in that way, right. It was, there wasn't quite as much solidarity. But a sort of similar story of, well, they didn't mean to leave. It was an unintentional. That's true. Right. That's right. They were all, that's right. They were fired where they basically, it tried to play hardball. Is that right? They were bluffing. Yeah. Yes. And their bluff was called. Yes. Right. Which is pretty tough, especially given that they did make, like two smash hit games.

Yeah. But anyways, I just thought that story was really interesting. I'm curious if you have any additional thoughts on it. Oh, yeah. It's fascinating. It's like in some ways a microcosm of the Blizzard story, and it's in some ways its own just kind of narrative entirely. And yeah, the parallels are interesting.

The culture clash stuff is interesting. I don't know. There's a lot of details in there that people should just read the book to find out about. But yeah, in short, I mean, the Blizzard North, Blizzard North just had its own kind of rise and fall that unlike Blizzard, because they never had their own version of Wow, they collapsed at the end of it and were ultimately absorbed into Blizzard because of Wow. Right. And like because they couldn't totally own the success of Diablo 2 because they were

already owned by another company. Like they kind of didn't have the ability to say, well, we made Diablo 2. Let's keep going and make Diablo 3, which in a different world where that studio was just independent and just had made, like, imagining that they had made Diablo and Diablo 2, which obviously, I'm sure Blizzard, in some ways, contributed to them making that game. Well, they were pretty independent. No, they, so what happened was after Diablo 2, they just were so burnt out that they didn't do anything for two years. Like, they split into two groups. One of them started working on what they called Project X, which was like a billion different things. Another group started working on Diablo 3,

but it was so early. And they had two different engine teams, like two teams of engineers making two different engines at the same time, which was insane. This is where Starblow was happening too right, which was like outer space, Diablo. That was the final version of the Project X thing. Right. It was just a mess. I mean, one of the reasons that Bluff didn't work is because Blizzard North was such a chaotic, like, toxic atmosphere at the time that Blizzard was like, all right, like, you guys need

to be, like, put in shape here anyway. So it's okay if the founders leave and we just are like, no, it's time to focus on Diablo 3 instead. So, no, I think they had a lot of independence at that point. It's just that they didn't use it. it well. It just kind of fell apart. I think that that chapter will be helpful for some people. It was helpful for me in just really internalizing that there was a whole different studio that made Diablo and that the Blizzard North is not just sort of like a different like offshoot of Blizzard,

that it was a whole other company with a whole other culture that just happened to have Blizzard in the name, which has happened in the game in game development from time to time. And it's a good reminder that like 2K Marin versus like 2K Boston or whatever. Like it's the same thing where You're like, no, these are just totally different cultures, totally different studios. They're just owned by the same corporation, so they have the same branding slapped on them. Can I throw out, here's my hot take from this conversation. So you say that the fall started with World of Warcraft. Could I throw out the theory that the fall started like two years after Blizzard started

when they were first acquired by Davidson and Associates? And that the fall began there. And it's really all fall, baby. Wow. Okay. So something else, when I spoke to Moreheim about Dreamave, a couple of weeks ago, something I told him was like, hey, you've had Dreamhaven for four years now. That means you've now owned Dreamhaven for longer than you ever own.

Wow. He was like, he was like, oh my God, I've never thought about it. Really, I'm so surprised he hadn't thought about that. Yeah, how is he not counting down the days? Right. I feel like if I had, if I could look back at a 30-year legacy of a company that I had only owned for two years and had sold and had seen so many negative outcomes from being owned and shuffled around from owner to owner, all I would be thinking about is,

is how I can maintain my independence of my next company for the entire lifespan of that company. That's really interesting that he hadn't thought about it. That might not be their takeaway, though. Who knows? I don't know. But then you look back and it's like, would they have survived if they're a right, exactly.

I don't even know the answer. Sure. Sure. It's an interesting counterfactual. Because the point where they sold, like, Alan Hym and Michael Orheim, the founders, they were like putting debt on credit cards. Yeah. Like that's not one off.

Right. Certainly, I certainly don't mean to suggest that they made some huge mistake. more than just the inevitability of it or like they did what they had to do, but that was the moment. I mean, it's totally wild that they basically never owned the company. Like that almost never happens. That initial acquisition was such a bit of happenstance. And those first few owners are so random. They're just these random corporate companies.

I think about Halt and Catch Fire or some of these like sort of fictionalized accounts of that era of the 80s and 90s in computing and how there were just these kind of random companies just out there being like, yeah, I don't know, you make motherboards, I guess we'll just buy you. And the next thing you know, like, that parent company becomes Intel or whatever, like, becomes a like monster thing. The way that Vivendi eventually became and merged with Activision, it became this massive entertainment conglomerate. When it started out as like a French water company, right? Well, Vivendi, it's a Vivendi games that kind of spun out. But yeah, it's really, it's quite wild. And people don't realize that. A lot of people think like, oh, Blizzard should have never sold to

Activision without realizing that. Oh, no, Blizzard sold in 1994, baby. It was like four owners before that. Yeah. Yeah. Blizzard, well, I think an interesting bit of alternate history is that, like, Blizzard, I think if they didn't sell the Davidson, they might have wound up absorbed or like merging at some point or being absorbed into Interplay at some point,

which was their earliest partner, Brian Fargo and Alan Adham were kind of childhood friends. And if that had happened, maybe Interplay would still be around today. Maybe they would look very different. I have no idea. It's a fun little bit of alternate. history there. But yes, it's like, I mean, the fact a little juicy

nugget in this book is that they were briefly owned by a company called Sendit that like was investigated by the SEC for massive accounting fraud. So many fun and a bad way. We have to wrap up soon, but I want to ask you to a question before we do. And I know I did you want to talk about the book writing

process? Yeah, can I hear about what the alternate ending was of the book? Yeah, let's talk about that a little bit. Oh, sure. Okay. Oh, let me tell you because I read it and I can tell this story. It was very funny. I had read it and a mutual friend of ours had also read it and we were all kind of talking about it a little bit giving Jason some feedback and the final chapter was very was pretty positive and my feedback was like this final chapter like just doesn't quite feel right. Well talk about the timing here. This is like December or January of this year, right? Early January of this year. Yes, of this year. Early

January. So post-acquisition going through pre-massive, massive rounds of layoffs. So basically, we're looking at it being like, I don't know about this. Because it kind of ended with a little bit of ambiguity because, you know, it just wasn't clear what was going to happen. And there was plenty of cause for pessimism. But at the same time, like, how are you going to end it? Right. So Jason was kind of ending the book on a note of like, hey, maybe things are going to get better. Who knows? Like, you know, it's been a rough ride. But here we are. We got bought by someone new. I don't know. And it was just a little bit of a like, the ending didn't quite match with the book, which is, I think, typical of early drafts in general. And so we're both kind of, we're kind of talking this through and giving that feedback.

And then there's this just like massive development, this really unfortunate development, but also one that now, of course, looking back on it, just feels inevitable. That totally like, it makes so much sense with the overall story of Blizzard. And I got to watch as Jason was like, oh, I can now work this into the book. and I can completely rework the ending of this book because now there is like some, a major event that happened post Xbox acquisition that gives us a sense of what it really means for this company to have bought by Xbox,

to have been bought by Xbox. And like totally lines up in it, again, very unfortunate way, but with the story of Blizzard this whole time, like this one more acquisition, one more corporate owner, and one more set of unfortunate circumstances. So yeah, I'm curious how that was for you, just going through that in real time.

Well, for me, I don't want to spoil the ending ending because I really like the way it narratively comes full circle. But for me, it wasn't like, yeah, obviously the layoffs I felt like I had to get that in there. And I'm glad I did because it would have felt so totally off if like it ended with this note of optimism without being going to include that. I think I would have delayed the book if I had to, which fortunately I did not have to. But the thing that was, I think, narratively, most satisfying for me was ending it with Alan adham and coming completely full circle. That to me was a special moment. And I'll leave it to readers to figure, to learn. how it properly ends, but that to me was a really good place to end this particular story.

Because it starts with Al-Anatham and it ends with Al-Anand-Ham. Yeah. I remember, I think I talked about this on the show, seeing a headline that was basically Mike Yubara departs Blizzard. It was like, Al-Anham also left. It was the article. And I was like, wait a minute. You got that backwards.

Yeah, people don't realize. That kind of started the company. No one even knows who he is now. This is something that I know this book will do, especially for people who are into Blizzard games, is just kind of, yeah, put a lot more weight on him as the guy who essentially started Blizzard. Like it was his notion to start the company. And like his force of will. Like really, it was his leadership.

He was a huge part of defining what it was in. Yeah, those early games, Starcraft and Warcraft especially were him. So let me ask you guys a question. What book should I write next? Oh, my God. I need to figure this out. What should I write about? You know.

What story should I tell? It's tough because the story, the only other company that comes to mind is Nintendo. And I know that would just be very difficult for reasons you've said many times, the language barrier, the cultural barrier, just the fact that it all took place in another country. But like, it's hard to think of other companies that are quite like Blizzard. It doesn't have to be a company. It could be a story that is just another interesting story. Or maybe I'll...

I'm only companies. I'm only interested in companies. No, no, I have a suggestion. Jason, I know this is your dream. Oh, Maddie's got one. It should be something fictional, and it could still be in the world of games, perhaps. And I know how much you like a well-told tale, a mystery, a thriller. And this book has a lot of that. So I feel like you have a lot of stories that you've heard from people that could build into something. It's time for the fiction pivot.

I don't know. I love it. No, I love the idea. And tomorrow and tomorrow is the perfect comp. It's a great book. That is a fun book. Like, what if tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow was a murder mystery? That actually sounds really cool.

Yeah, that sounds like you're nice. It slabs. I think you should do that. Maddie, yeah, it's funny you say that because that's what every bone of my body is telling me I should do next. It's fiction after like three nonfiction. You should listen to those bones, baby. Yeah, do it. But also part of me feels like there are probably stories that still should be told that are interesting.

And you'll find one when you're not looking. Yeah, that's true. As those things go. There will always be stories. You got to at some point rely on the little journalist that you're inspiring. who are hopefully following in your footsteps to tell some of those stories. We can't rely on Jason to tell all of them. And then you pivot to being a best-selling novelist.

Yeah, right. Hopefully the journalism inspiring are able to actually make a living instead of having to pivot to PR because they can't actually find a career in journalism. Yeah, hopefully. Yeah, you can write a book about that. Yeah, right. Well, for now, everybody, go and pre-order play nice Jason's book. You still have a little bit of time to pre-order it because it doesn't out for a few days.

Or just go buy it at your local bookseller. Yeah, I'm also coming out. If you're in New York, I'm coming. Although, actually, we have this event in Brooklyn, but I think it's like already sold out. So sorry if you don't already have a ticket. But I'm doing a talk at Book Soup in Los Angeles pretty soon on October 11th. And then I'm going to be a book passage in San Francisco.

And so a couple fun little things if you want to come see me and say hi. Then you're coming to Powell's in Portland. We're so excited to stop. Stop it. You got everyone his hopes up for a second. Sorry. I wish I could. I wish I could.

No, I hope those are, I hope those events go really well and that people go and go and check it out. That you get some triple-quick listeners. Yeah, I'm sure. I'm talking to our old boss, Stephen at the lofty pigeon bookstore. A good interviewer. So there you go. He is a good interview.

He'll ask me some questions. He probably will. He always comes up with a few questions. You're not ready for. Yeah, right? He'll definitely, yeah. He'll ask me something I haven't been asked on the 40 podcasts of it on, which will be He probably will actually.

That is his talent. Yeah, one more thing is that I think next week I am going to put, for people who are curious, a clip from like a chapter from the audiobook in the triple click feed so people can get, only triple click listeners can get like a sample of the book, of the audiobook especially, which is read by Ray Chase and it is awesome. So I think people really like his narration of it. And yeah, thanks guys. This is, I appreciate the support and I hope people really like it. I hope it resonates with people. It is a great book. And yeah, I think people will really enjoy it.

I certainly did. All right, let's take a break. And then we will come back for one more thing. Hi, I'm Alexis. And I'm Ella. And we're the host of comfort creatures. We could spend the next 28 seconds telling you why you should listen. But instead, here's what our listeners have said about our show,

because really, they do know best. The show is filled with stories and poems and science and friendship and laughter and tears sometimes, but tears that are from your heart being so filled up with laugh. A cozy show about enthusiasm for animals of all kinds, real and unreal. If you greet the dog before the dog before the, person walking them or wander around the party looking for the host's cat, this podcast is for you. So come for the comfort and stay for Alexis's wild story about waking up to her cats giving birth on top of her. So if that sounds like your cup of tea. Or coffee, Ella, we're not all brits.

Then join us every Thursday at maximum fun.org. Hey, this is Mike Cablon. Ifiwadi way. And Sierra Cato. The hosts of TV Chef Fantasy League. Where we are currently using fantasy sports rules to watch Great British Bakeoff. Or the Great British Baking Show as a series. known here in America. We've drafted the bakers onto our teams, and now those bakers are earning us points

based on how they're doing on the show. And at the end of the season, one of us will win the prestigious TV Chef Fantasy League trophy crown. What is the... Yeah, I don't know. I keep forgetting to order something. Probably just dinner. Anyway, subscribe to TV Chef Fantasy League and play along with us at home.

Or just listen in as we cry over our baker's soggy bombs. On maximum fun.org or wherever you get your podcast. And we're back for one more thing. You have a nice little trilogy of topics here. Maddie, why don't you go first? Sure. So my one more thing is a tool I've been using that I'm a huge fan of. And I just want to share it.

Love this kind of one more thing. Just in case other people are having the same problem that I am. So right now, I've been playing a game on my Xbox. Can't talk about it. It's under embargo. Place your bets, listeners. What could it be? And I am enjoying playing it also on my Steam deck.

How am I pulling that off? Well, probably couldn't have done it a few weeks ago. have never been able to get the Xbox Series S, the baby Xbox, as I call it, to do remote play particularly well. I'm not sure why. It just doesn't, it doesn't work very well for me. It's too much of a baby. It's a tiny baby and it can't do it.

I don't have a, I don't have a series X, so I don't know if that's the issue. I don't know if it's something wrong with just Xbox's on base itself. I don't know. I don't care. I don't have to troubleshoot anymore because after some Googling, around, I discover that there is an app on Steam that costs $7, and it just works. It's called XB Play. You can just put it on your Steam deck, and you can just play games from your Xbox.

And I know we talk about it a lot on here. We're talking about PS5 Remote Play. I'm constantly using PS5 Remote Play on my Steam deck. That was a pain to set up. Like on a scale of 1 to 10, where setting up PS5 Remote Play is a 10, XB Play is like maybe a two, and only because it costs $7. It's like, again, I said it once, I'll say it again, it just works. Folks, we simply love to install an app that works perfectly and it doesn't have any problems.

It's great. I'm having no issues and I'm loving my life. And now maybe I'll actually play more games on GamePass. Like, am I going to start using my Xbox more? It could happen. I don't know. So XB play, it's spelled like capital XBP and then lowercase L-A-Y. It's on Steam.

Is this just a third party that has made this set? I don't know who made it. Just some developer out there was like, hey, Xbox is bad at this. I'm going to make an app and I'm going to sell it for $7 and it's going to work way better. Not sure of the circumstances of this app. But hey, I appreciate it. There's a subreddit for XP Play. There's like a group of people who are really into this app.

This is like if Chiaki, the PlayStation Remote app, like if that were just on Steam. Precisely. And you could, if I could pay $7 for that to just have it be installed, I totally would. Like, yeah, that'd be worth seven bucks to me anyway. This is like that. Yeah, I've, right, I set it up, but it was a pain. But that's very cool. I didn't know that was possible.

Me either. I don't have an Xbox or really use one, but I could imagine. Yeah, but I'm sure some listeners do. And I'm sure listeners are going through it. And maybe they were willing to pay $7 to have something that simply works. For sure. Yeah. So there you go.

Nice. XP play. All right, cool. Well, I'll go next. I've been playing a game that I just wanted to talk about a little bit because I really like it. It's reminded me how much I liked the original. That is Dead Rising Deluxe remaster. aka DRDR, which is what Capcom is calling it. This is a second remaster of Dead Rising,

which originally came out in what, like 2008, 2009. I remember it was one of those first Xbox 360 exclusives. So 2006, yeah, that sounds like, right after the Xbox 360 came out. Yeah. And I played this game. This was very shortly after I got it back into video games in 2007. I bought an Xbox 360.

I've told the story many times. I got an Xbox 360. I got a copy of, of Oblivion, the Elder Scrolls, Oblivion, and a copy of Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. And I was like, I'm good on video games for the next year. And I just played like, whatever, 200 hours of those games. And I was like, wow, video games are pretty cool. And then it was 2007.

So like the Orange Box came out. Oh, my God. Then GTA 4 came out a little after that and whatever. Like Far Cry 2 and all these just amazing games. It's a great time to get into gaming. But among those games, I also played 2006's Dead Rising, which I loved. I played the hell out of it. I played it all the way through multiple times.

And what I find remarkable about this game is that there's never really been another one like it is a unique game. And now it has been remastered and redone in the RE engine, the Resident Evil engine, so it looks a whole lot better. They've changed some things that, like, aesthetically are a little weird, but they've also, like, they've removed some of the, like, really rank sexism from the game, like, the fact that you can get bonus points for, like, taking upskirts of female. characters, photos of...

It's gone. No more achievements for that. There are things that are changed. No, thank goodness. And still there are some aspects of the game that are actually, in some ways, sort of enjoyably seedy. Like, it does feel like 2006 games in some ways, like just in the way the female characters are portrayed and stuff where I'm like, oh, this is like not my thing.

But in some way, it almost doesn't make me nostalgic, but I'm just like, man, remember 2006? It does not grievously offend me or anything. And the game itself is really fun. really cool. So I've been really enjoying playing through it again. To explain what it is, so this is a game where you play a guy named Frank West, who is a

photojournalist, and it is kind of a photojournalism game. I'd kind of forgotten how much the first one is about taking pictures. You get dropped off in a mall that is basically... Pokemon Snap except with zombies. Yeah, there's a mall that is like the mall from Dawn of the Dead.

Like, it's like, we're in the middle of a sort of contained zombie outbreak in this small town. Frank West goes in because he's an independent journalist and he wants to find out what's going on and get the scoop, gets dropped in onto this mall, and then the rest of the game is him in the mall with a group of survivors trying to survive an onslaught of zombies. And the big technological breakthrough for the game in 06 was that the Xbox 360 could render dozens and dozens of zombies in this fairly open mall.

So you're kind of like running through, you know, hallways that are just jammed with zombies and you're kind of crowd surfing over them or sometimes you get in a vehicle and you're like plowing through just dozens of zombies, and at the time, that felt pretty groundbreaking. It's actually still pretty fun, though, of course, we've had a lot of games like that since. But there have been sequels to this game. I think I maybe reviewed Dead Rising 3. I think that was a launch title for the Xbox 1, and each one has just moved further and further away from the conceit of the beginning of the first game in the series,

which was that there's a time limit. So there's always a kind of clock running, and you have 72 hours to do what you can, and then get to the helicopter exfiltration and like get out. And there's a true ending that's very, very difficult to get. And the idea of the game that's kind of not signposted to you is that you're supposed to kind of fail a few times. Because each time you restart, you start with all of your level ups and upgrades and like cool things you've unlocked and shortcuts and like all kinds of things that make the game way, way faster than next time through. But you do start it over. So it's almost like rogue inspired a little bit.

It isn't at all, and I would never call it a rogue like a roguelike, but it has a little bit of that re-playability and like returning with like a more powered up character. You're almost doing a new game plus, but it's built into the game. And that time constraint and just the kind of the like tactical and logistical limitations that you're under the whole game are just really cool. Getting back into playing it, I'm remembering pulling up the map and being like, okay, right, crap. I have to get to this wing of the mall, but the only way through is like to go across this big courtyard, but there's this stupid. truck with these guys on it, this Jeep that these guys are on in the courtyard, so I'm going to have to sneak around them, and you're constantly having to kind of keep moving because the zombies are slow, but they're always kind of a threat. And then throughout the game, you're always grabbing

new things. You're in a mall, so there's like an endless amount of weapons, an improvised weaponry you can grab, sledgehammers, baseball bat, anything from a sporting goods store, weights, but then also furniture and eventually like funny hats and all kinds of things, you like put funny hats on the zombies, or you take a golf club and you're hitting them with balls, or of course there are all kinds of guns. And like there's a billion different ways that you can kill zombies. And it's a very arcadey game in that way. And then, of course, you're also playing a Pokemon snap game where you're trying to take

pictures of, you know, unique little things on the walls or as many zombies as you can get into a shot or pictures of brutality. And it's kind of scoring each picture and giving you XP based on how you're doing. All of these things, the time limits, the logistical limits, the photo mini-game, the weird looping structure of it, the weird tone that's kind of seedy and. off-putting in some ways. It just doesn't feel like any other game. And playing it, I'm reminded of just how cool this game is and how it's kind of singular it is. And I'm really digging it. I really like, I overall really enjoy the experience of playing it. So I just wanted

mentioned it on the show because it's reminded me how much I liked that game and how, I don't know, I kind of wish there were more games that were just totally different in this way. It's just a reminder that like, oh yeah, 2006, someone at Capcom like just took a flyer and made a very weird game that still kind of holds up. That turned into a franchise with two sequels. Yeah, they turned into a franchise that really just diluted what made the original game great. I don't know. We'll see.

I'll be curious if it's successful or if that means they're going to make another one or maybe remaster the old ones. Personally, I think instead of removing the upskirts, they should have just added a male version where you have to like take a photo of someone's balls. Easier said than done. You know. It's a great idea. It's just somehow the gender swap doesn't work quite as well.

This is full of very serious ideas over here. All right. So, Jason, what is your one more thing? My one more thing is the after-party season two, which you watched a year ago, Kirk, and I finally gotten around to watch it. I still haven't, and I saw this, and I was like, oh, yeah, the after-party season two.

Right, it's a good reminder that, oh, yes, that was a thing, and it was good. And I remember seeing, like, kind of, like, week reviews, and then they canceled it after this. They canceled it after this. But I remember you enjoyed it for the most part. At least... Yeah, I thought it was pretty good.

I liked it more than initially I was a little slow on it. Right. I thought it was a little slow. And then as it got going, I quite enjoyed it. Yeah. Yeah, I thought it was awesome. I thought it was really good. And I'm even saddered now after we're finishing it that they canceled it because I would

have totally watched like more seasons of this show. It's such a cool conceit. So for people who aren't familiar, the show is, it's a murder mystery told from a bunch of different perspectives, kind of Roshamon style where you're recreating the same event and after party. In the first season, it's like after party of, what was it like his show or something it's some like

singer who has an after party and he's murdered and then the second season it's a wedding after party or it's a wedding and it's a wedding and it's after party and the groom is murdered and they're trying to figure out who did it and why and many of the same characters returning yes and then the gimmick is that well no it's just a protagonist who are returning like the three

protagonists return okay but the gimmick is that like each person their kind of version of the story is told in a different movie genre, which is a very fun way to play around with the storytelling. Like, there's one that's like a noir, and there's another one that's like a dirty dancing style. There's a Wes Anderson. There's like an epic kind of like global adventure.

The global, well, the global adventure one is the dirty dancing one, which I did not expect it to be. Oh, right. Right. It's like a torrid romance. Yeah, yeah. I expected it to be like Indiana Jones, but then it was like a romantic thing. Anyway, so it's really cool. A melodrama.

But the point is that like all of these, it's like, exploring different genres and it's very fun and it's a very fun way to tell this story and it's a very good mystery. I was surprised by how it ended. Yeah. I think that's why I wound up liking it is that I think the mystery was the reveal like it was actually pretty cool. I was like, oh, nice.

Not only is it surprising, I was completely caught off guard, it's also, it's one of those that it's like, oh, this makes perfect sense. It's not like out of nowhere to earn it. I'm gonna watch this. You'll really enjoy it, I think Maddie. I think everyone should watch this show. It's just such a shame that they've ended it because

both of these seasons, I guess they were too good to keep going, but I really enjoyed them. Well, it feels like Apple is realizing that they're not making much money off the streaming and they're starting to cancel some things. And I could see that show being pretty expensive, considering how it gets made. I mean, like that John Cho sweeping international melodrama episode, I was like, this is probably pretty expensive. I mean, it's Apple. And most of it takes place at the same house.

So it's like they do save on location budgets. But yeah, it's a big cast. So I'm sure that's expensive. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. After Party, season two on Apple TV, not to be confused with Kirk's one more thing for last week, Apple TV. With the Apple TV. Or TVOS, which is their operating system.

Yeah, right. I've also been catching up on Mythic Quest, like, while I still have this Apple TV plus description. And I'll talk about that more in the future, I'm sure, like, in a few weeks. You know what you should watch is slow horses. That's the best show on Apple TV. Remind me what that is real quick? I think I've made, it's like a spy show with Gary Oldman.

It's based on some books that I've been reading. I'll actually make that my one more thing again, I think you did a while back, but it's, let's just start repeating them. No, I should, I was, when I would make my one more thing now. What I'm saying is, yeah, I started reading the books, which are the show is very closely based on, and the books are fantastic as well. But maybe I already said my piece and I don't have to make it my one more thing. Maybe, we'll see. We're all just cheating here at the end.

I mean, I don't think you did. I, for what it's worth, I don't think you did. I don't think you talked about the books yet. So you still can. No, no, I haven't. I'm just saying I just did. And so like, now I basically got a second more thing. Anyways, Apple has some good stuff, Jason.

I'm glad you're getting to watch it. Yeah. Okay, cool. Well, that is it for this week's episode. It sure is. Everybody go and buy, play nice, the rise-fallen future of Elizabeth Entertainment. Or get it from the library. I'm okay with that too.

Or get it from the library. Support your local library. That's also cool. And yeah, we will see all of you in a week. See you next week. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme.

music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network, and if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us

by becoming a member at Maximumfund.org slash join. Find us on Twitter at triple clickpod. Send email the triple click at maximum fun.org and find a link to our Discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network of artist-owned shows.

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