Triple Click - The Video Game Shame Awards

Episode Date: December 10, 2020

Maddy, Kirk, and Jason open up the mailbag to answer some of YOUR questions. Should there be a Game Award for the best studio culture? How do we honestly criticize games while knowing how many blood, sweat, and pixels they take to develop? And just how necessary is Twitter Discourse?One More Thing:Kirk: Warner Bros. / HBO MaxMaddy: HadesJason: 13 Sentinels: Aegis RimLinks:Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinJoin the Triple Click Discord: http://discord.gg/tripleclickpodTriple Click Ethics Policy: https://maximumfun.org/triple-click-ethics-policy/The Hollywood Reporter on Nolan/Warner: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/christopher-nolan-rips-hbo-max-as-worst-streaming-service-denounces-warner-bros-planTwitter thread about Souls games: https://twitter.com/silent0siris/status/1334570752021049345?s=21 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

And the award goes to you. Oh my gosh, you don't have a speech prepared. Well, we got you covered. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we open up the listener mailbag to answer questions about the game awards, criticizing games when you know how hard they are to make, and how to know when to log off. I'm Maddie Myers. I'm Jason Shire.

And I'm Kirk Hamilton, and you know what? I love video games. Do you? What? I love them. This is the first time hearing of it. I thought you were social justice where you hated video games. Yeah, and aren't you trying to destroy them? Actually, is that not you? That is not me. I love them and I love playing them. And I love talking about them on this podcast. So there. Great. Great. Kirk loves them so much that he was just saying he wants to buy a PlayStation 5. I'm thinking about it. It's true. He was saying that we're betraying the G-chat confidence by revealing that on the show.

I'll talk about it on the show, I'm sure. Yeah, I'm thinking about it. It seems like, just because I can play all my PS4 games. And I will say, yeah, I've been. using it. I was pretty lukewarm on it when it first on launch day, but I've come around to it more over time. It's pretty cool. Not easy to get. Not easy to get. But you know what is easy to get? What? If you have $5 a month or more, I guess. If you have disposable income, you can become a maximum fun member and you can get access to our beanscast. You should go to maximum fund.org slash join and check that out. And we are going to have a beans cast for December, by the way, our beans cast are when we talk about a video game we all played or a show or a movie we all watched, we analyze it, we spoil it, et cetera. We spill the beans. We spill the beans. We spill the beans.

We spill the beans about whatever it is. And this month, we're going to talk about Gone Home, which is a video game that came out like a decade ago and was really good and cool and influenced. I would argue we don't have the Last of Us Part 2 without Gone Home. Like there's a lot of video games where you can really see the webbing of this game influencing all of them. So I'm pretty excited to go back and play it again and talk about it with you too because it's been a while. Yeah. So that's what we're going to do. It's going to be fun. So that'll be at the end of December for all you subscribers, members out there. So let's get to it. Shall we? Let's do it. We shall. This week we are doing an episode on burning questions where we open up the listener

our mailbag and answer your burning questions about all sorts of things. Not someone else is. Not specifically triple click listeners. Just as a reminder that if you would like to send in a question, you can reach us a triple click at maximum fun.org. So let's get to it, shall we? Kirk, you want to read this first one? Sure.

This first question, this burning question, comes from Garrett, who writes with flaming fingers. I wrote you guys a while back about my frustrations with CD Project Red and the whole crunch plague in the video game industry. I thought of an idea that might help, at least in theory. Considering the game awards that are on the horizon, what if there were an award that recognized the studio for making improvements in the game industry? So it would be for doing things such as making a healthy work environment and reducing crunch, creating opportunities for creativity, hiring more developers who aren't women, minorities, that kind of thing. It would have to be more than just congrats. You weren't as shitty businesses last year, but for actively

making the industry better. I can also see a lot of problems with such an award. It could be hard to quantify these changes. It would require studios and publishers to be more transparent. Also, there's a possibility that publishers just wouldn't care about it. So it may be, in fact, be a terrible idea in practice. I just think that in addition to exposing bad businesses for their practices, we need to be talking about good examples, too. At least the award would spark more discussions about what needs to change. What do you think? Am I a genius? Or is this hypothetical award just a deluded fantasy that would make no real impact? So is Garrett a genius or is he deluded? There's only two options. Garrett's one or the

other and now we have to decide it. I think that there's some genius here, but I actually think it should be the opposite way around where it's like the worst studio. The shame award. Is that an award at that point? Or is it like shame, shame, and like everyone chants it while they're walking up onto the stage? Yeah. Well, and then

every game publisher is trying to avoid getting the worst award, the worst studio. Avoid the shame award? This is a very punitive, like negative reinforcement style version. I'm going to say I don't see Jeff Keely doing that anytime soon. It's very against like Jeff Keely's like feel good, like never make anyone feel bad vibe, which the game awards have arguably. I don't know if that's good, but it's definitely like the hokey vibe that Keely tries to put off, I would say. Yeah, it's very much like video games only. I could see him

doing an award like this though. I actually feel like this does fit the vibe of what he wants that awards show to be, which is like pro the industry in a certain way, but maybe it's not corporate friendly enough. I don't know. I would, I would kind of like it if it existed. So the problem there is, like Garrett pointed out, it would require so much transparency. And also there's so much that happens behind the scenes. Like one person's best studio ever could be another person's like hell place. Like workplaces are complicated and work environments can be toxic for some people and super healthy for other people. I've certainly heard about studios where like I thought they were great places to work and then they turned like UBasov, for example, I thought was a pretty great place to work until suddenly this cascade of like sexual harassment and abuse and misconduct scandals started coming out this summer. So the problem with this idea of an award for best studio is that like you just don't know unless you have someone surveying every single employee of the studio. And even then like what's the threshold, right? Yeah. Well, right. If it's a vote, then you don't really have to quantify.

You just have to kind of like present the results. I feel like it couldn't be a vote though because then what are you voting on? Like how much crunch is too much crunch? How bad of a boss are the majority of the bosses there? I mean, that's fundamentally what are you voting for with Game of the Year? Right. That's a good point. So that's less of an issue, I think, then the fact that you could be voting for contenders

that have these like dark sides that you don't even know about. And that I think is a fundamental problem. And I think there must be tangible ways to reward companies for good practices and punish companies that don't have good practices. But I don't think putting it in the awards show is necessarily going to be effective. So my thoughts on this are I do think this is the kind of thing that maybe would work as a just one-off award each year instead of a thing with nominees and categories. I'm thinking kind of of the way the GDC Awards work where they do this kind of thing where it'll just be like each year there's like a trailbla. Lacer Award for one game developer or like a lifetime achievement thing. I could see them doing something where it's just like each year one studio just gets recognized

for something great, like the way that Super Giant has really gotten a lot of credit this year. And they have that category, Games for Impact in the Games Awards, in the Game Awards, which is a kind of nebulous thing. It's just like the description I'm looking at the website is a thought-provoking game with a pro-social meaning or message, which could mean anything even though it's kind of clear. You get what it means when you look at the nominees. Yeah, and it's about the content of the game. It's about the artistic and critical reception to the game.

So you're sort of envisioning a version of it that's industry focused. I like this idea, by the way. Where it's like a social impact award, but it's for social impact on the games industry. Right. Maybe a similar vibe. I could kind of see it. It would be nice just as a symbolic thing to see the industry. The way that at the GDC, they do this a lot.

We're just to see the industry kind of reinforcing that kind of thing, even in a just purely symbolic positive way. So it's not a... terrible idea. I don't think it's to leave it. So here's the problem. A studio, first of all, crunch can mean different things to different people. Second of all, like a studio could be trying really hard to avoid crunch and then still fail at that. Other people, like some departments might have to crunch harder than others. There are all sorts of reasons why this might happen. And therefore, like, you can't really know. It's so hard to be able to tell. Like,

does the studio secretly have people doing such and such? Another example is, like, a few years ago, I tweeted once in response to someone that, like, from what I had heard, from people at Insomniac, they didn't really have to crunch super hard on Spider-Man. And then I kind of regretting that, I regretted tweeting that because it became, even though it was just like a reply to someone, it became part of the discourse to the point where people bring it up all the time. Right. Even though, like, I then later on heard from someone who was like, oh, yeah, I crunched really badly on that project. Oh, yeah, that project was really tough for me for other reasons. And it just becomes such a binary thing. And that is, you know, I'm a,

really the rub here, which is like we tend to, we as human beings, tend to categorize studios and narratives as like the good studio or the bad studio. And every single studio is somewhere in between on the spectrum. And just creating an award really just like encourages the binary approach more. Isn't that going to happen no matter what though? Because we already have the Game of the Year awards and the every other award below them. And people already interpret them in a certain way in that binary way where like you already see getting the award as a reward for that studio's behavior and condoning it in much the same way that you would with sales being really high for a game or critical reviews being really high for a game like all of those things are

condoning that studios practices whether we like it or not so even if there were just one award that was in theory condoning a studio's practices for being less bad than other studios like yeah i'm sure there would be people out there in every case who would be like it's so ironic that my studio won this award because actually my boss is a piece of shit. Like that will happen at any company that's big enough, I think, just statistically. But even having the award, I think, matters or would help because it would signify that someone somewhere cares and that person is in a position of power to like dole out this sort of hokey award because all awards are kind of hokey.

Like they're all kind of meaningless and like based on an institutional power and a mainstream recognition of a thing. but they also push the needle forward or signal that the needle is being pushed forward because it's trickled up far enough, but now an institution is like, we should give a shit about this issue and have an award to recognize that now suddenly people care about crunch or, you know, diversity and inclusion efforts at companies. And so since people care about that now, I guess we should recognize it. Like it's corporate and stayed. But like that's, to me, would almost be a good sign because I'd be like, well, I guess it's cool enough now to care about these things that's. there's an award at the game awards, you know?

Like, that might be... Yeah, I agree with that. I think there's great power in the symbolism, even if it isn't, you know, perfect. Basically, just what you just said. It can't be perfect. You said it very well. Like, it already can't be. I mean, yeah, I mean, to your point earlier, like, people are crunching out there

to win game of the year at the Game Awards. So it's kind of like... Yes, exactly. And Oroboros here, even if it rewarded, even if people were rewarded for, yeah, for good cultures. Speaking of the Game Awards, before we move on to the next question, And do you guys, did you guys, I mean, we haven't really talked about it. The Game Awards are happening. Tonight, this episode is airing on Thursday.

Can't wait. Gaming's biggest night. Love those red carpet looks. I can't wait to see everybody's blazers. The thing that is always exciting for people is not like the awards themselves, but like the trailers for new games, which is another hilarious thing. Like I wonder how many people out there are crunching to get their trailer out for the Key Awards. But, but yeah, it's always been that kind of.

of weird. And we've had Jeff Keeley on the show a couple times before to talk about it. It's always that weird dynamic, that weird dichotomy of like, this is supposed to be an awards ceremony to celebrate what we played this year. But everybody's tuning in to see the announcements of what's coming in the future. That's kind of just how it is, though. It's not, it's not really that similar to the Oscars. I just think it's funny to compare them. I don't know. I think I have a soft spot for the Game Awards, even though they're very silly. I find it very fun to watch them every year. It's fun to have, it's very rare that the entire video game community has like a live sharing communal experience and that's one of the things about it. But every time we do, it's fun. Right. That's what I'm saying. It's the same reason I like all the E3 events is because everybody live tweets Joseph Ferris saying a thing.

We didn't have a lot of that this year because E3 was canceled. And so, so this is like the one big, big event that I guess the PS5 thing, but still this is the one big uniform. Are you going to watch it, Kirk? You're not in the industry anymore. You don't have to watch it. the Game Awards? Yeah, I guess so. If I'm, I don't think I'm really doing anything. Yeah, I'll probably watch it. It'll be fun. I like seeing who won's.

I always like complaining. There's always a game I feel like got shut out. Of course. Why isn't Half Life Alex the Game of the Year nominee? You got to complain about Hades not winning Game of the Year unless it does. Hades is definitely going to win game of the year. I think it's going to win. I suspect it'll win.

Yeah, I think it's a fun. I think it's a, like, for the reasons that you all just said. And also I hope there's an Eldon Ring trailer. So like, I'm part of the problem. Oh, right. That game. technically exists. Sure.

No, that game does. That game, I think, is closer to release than people expect. I haven't heard anything. I have no idea if it'll be there. I've heard a couple other things that'll be there. I think we'll see at least one, like Xbox exclusive and stuff like that, like Microsoft First Party published games. They could use one.

They could use one. I think usually Nintendo is there with something or another, so we'll probably see something from them. It should be fun. It should be a couple of fun things, even if there's a, even if there's a something like bombshell. Or maybe there will be a bombshell. I don't know.

Anyway, let's move on. Maddie, you want to take this next question? Sure. This question's from Charlie, who says, this is mostly for Jason, but I'm sure it touches on what all of you do. That's good, Charlie. We're all going to answer it. Yes. But I just read Blood, Sweat and Pixels.

And after finishing it, I thought it is going to be very hard to simply criticize a game again. I might find a particular platforming section annoying. But now I know these jumps that are holding up my progress. bit took someone three months to make and it feels petty to get mad at them. How do you balance your desire to honestly report your feelings on a game with the knowledge of how much damn work they take? Kirk, what do you think? Why don't you go first? Um, uh, I think that like, we all have to do this all the time. Yeah, this question is definitely not just for me. For all. No, of course not. Um, yeah, I think that this is a, I don't know if it's a challenge. I think it's an important thing to

keep in mind when you're giving criticism for a game, especially if you're doing so on a public platform. Like I think you do have a slightly different responsibility if you like write for a gaming publication or host a video game podcast. Like if you're someone who's opinion people go out of their way to listen to, it's a little bit different than if you're just sort of sounding off with your friends or talking shit at a bar and just being like, oh my God, it's so broken. I'm so mad and I hate it. Like that's less of a thing where, you know, both because I know how hard the games are to make and because I know that the people who made it, there actually is a non-zero chance that those people will listen to me talking about it.

Like, I also take that into account. So that's like an additional layer to this when you're someone who does it in public. And I think it's probably a good thing overall. Like, I would definitely not say that now that I know more about how video games are made after spending whatever nine years working in the, as a video game journalist, like that doesn't make me not want to criticize them. It just changes the way that I criticize. them and hopefully just makes it better in every respect. Like you can say that something doesn't work

without being a dick about it and you can do it without being like cruel or dismissive of the work that it took. But you can also point out when something doesn't work without, you know, even if it was really hard to make it not work. You know, like that doesn't mean it suddenly works now and it's immune from criticisms. So I think it just is something you have to keep in mind and that you learn to keep in mind. And my, I basically, at the at this point I basically don't say anything that I that I wouldn't say to a developer to their face. And if we had like the designer of every show

that we do a triple play on on the show, it would probably change the way that we all talked about the game. But generally speaking, like if I say, oh my, I just can't get into this. I don't like it. I don't think it's fun. If I can imagine the person who made the thing listening to it and be like, well, that guy didn't like my game and not being like, wow, that guy's really going out of his way

to just like be a complete asshole to me. And that's probably more true now than it used to be. Like when I was first starting out, I'm sure I like said more to sort of tossed off stuff. But that's always kind of how I've thought of it and definitely how I think of it now. I think that's a really healthy way of looking at not just reviewing, but reporting in general, is to never write something that you wouldn't feel comfortable saying to somebody's face, the subject's face or anybody's face, really. It's like if you wouldn't say something while standing face to face with somebody,

then why would you say it to the entire world? Like, why would you say it to the public? Yeah, including them. That person is also capable of. of reading it or hearing it. Right, who certainly will read this. And I think there's an important distinction between like not like being too fluffy about what you say and like going full like, I won't trash other outlets here, but like going full like video game like puff piece, which everybody out there has read like one of those, the piece that is just way too soft. Enthusiast

press. Yeah, yeah. I think there's a big difference between that and being adult. about the way that you talk about video games and not like saying, oh man, like this platforming section fucking sucks. Like this is bullshit. Like those developers are lazy and dumbasses. Like they can have,

right. Like personal attacks. There's a difference between that. I mean, like, man, this sucks. Like, I'm not having fun with this.

Here's why. Here's what's interesting about it. And here's why I'm not going to play this game anymore. So, yeah, I think it's actually really important for any reviewer, reporter to be honest about that criticism, despite like,

like, and you kind of have to, you can't really justify, you can't say like, oh, this platforming section sucks, but it's okay because the developers work their asses off trying to make it, because that just like inhibits your ability to be honest about a game and critical about a game and criticism is really important. But as long as you are approaching it with that mentality that

Kirk mentioned of like, imagine you were saying this to the person who made it, then I think you can be brutally honest without being disrespectful about it. Yeah, I agree. I also think it can be really valuable to always remember that a piece of art is made by a person, or in a case of video games, hundreds and hundreds of people. And just thinking about that every time you play anything, I think has really strengthened me. And like you, Kirk, I feel like I didn't use to think about it that way as much, maybe when I didn't know as much about how games are made. But now that I do know, I think it's made me a better critic because I'm more likely to think about a game that has poor pacing in terms of what led to that part being included in the game. And then when I criticize it,

I think of it in those terms. And I'm like, they clearly spent a lot of time on X, but Y was really interesting and they could have included more of that. And that's how I would consider the game succeeding or failing is by looking at what it does well and thinking about how that could have worked in its favor or looking at what it does poorly and why and being like, why did they spend so much time on this thing and why didn't they do this other thing? Because people made it. It's not like this game is just this mystical object that was found in a field somewhere. Like people chose to have it be the thing that you're playing. And if it sucks or if it rules, then that's because those people made those decisions. And why did they? And what about it made it work? Yeah, which actually,

which makes games more interesting and enjoyable to play, I think. I mean, so just thinking of like a bad example, a bad game example, I'll always remember Anthem. the point that I quit is the point that I quit that game is the point where it asks you to go around to the tombs and like start doing all this checklist of like busy work um it's this part of the middle of the game and I looked at that and immediately I was like wow this is very much the developer saying uh oh our campaign's too short we need a couple hours of filler in the middle and that kind of helps you like knowing that was likely the case kind of helps you approach it from a more empathetic angle because you can understand why the developers would be in that situation but it doesn't make you have to like the game or say it's a good game or anything and you can just be like you know what i'm not playing anymore which is which is certainly what i did yeah i think that understanding that relationship between the people who make art and art is it's like the thing that makes art so exciting it's the reason that video game criticism has become better it's one of the primary reasons over the last 20 years is that they're no longer viewed you know as this isolated

thing that just exists there's more of a relationship between the creator and the game even though it's much harder to tease that out with a big AAA game since some sections of the game were made by completely different people than other sections. It's still there. And it's like the thing of, I don't know, I've been thinking a lot about Fleetwood Mac just because like Dreams was the song of 2020 in so many ways. And like that song was written by Stevie Nix about the end of her relationship with Lindsay Buckingham. He's playing guitar on it in this amazing way. They're like playing together. And it's a great song and you can just love it. But then once you know that, it makes it so much richer and so much more interesting. And like that's just, you know, like it's like every piece of art is that way and games are the same way. So if you force yourself

to think about it, you'll wind up having a much stronger appreciation, even if it is for something that you don't like. So yeah, I think it's like a win across the board to just be more aware of the creative process. Yeah, to be more empathetic in general. And by the way, to your point earlier, Kirk, about us having a public platform, I think people, what people don't even realize these days is that if you're posting on Reddit or Twitter or anything, there's a very good chance you could have a very public platform too. Like if you are on Reddit and you're on the cyberpunk Reddit and your post happens to get to the top of a thread because it gets a bunch of outfotes, then chances are the developers are going to see it. Chances are a lot of people are

going to see it. So this is sort of like everybody has a loudspeaker now, which makes it even more important for people to be empathetic and to not call game developers lazy or like do any of the kind of lazy criticism of games that we have seen so often. Yeah. Okay, next question. Max asks, my question for you guys is around social media, mental health, and gaming. For context, I'm a male in my mid-30s. I work as a psychotherapist and I've been playing video games my entire life. I recently heard triple clicks and other gaming's coverage on gaming journalism's coverage on The Last of Us part two, in part to help me process my thoughts and feelings of my playthrough of the game. This is an older email. In the past, I've been cautious about interacting with social media and gaming to do how toxic and unaccountable people on the internet can be with their actions and what they say. However, gaming journalism, mentioned significant controversy surrounding The Last of Us 2 and social media that could be relevant to my understanding of the game and gaming and culture in general. What are your thoughts around the reading of or interacting of Twitter with Twitter and other social media around gaming? Do you feel it's a necessary or useful part of enjoying a particular game? And if so, how do you

know when your gaming social media consumption is transition from being productive into something more toxic and self-harming? This is easy. No, you'd never need to look at Twitter. You never need to send any tweets, keep playing the game, ignore it, done. Question answered. We solved it. Also, delete Twitter. Delete all of it. Yeah, I think, so I think that I have a lot of thoughts on this, obviously. So I think Twitter is not great, right? I think it's pretty much known to people who listen to this show that like I'm not a huge fan. And I do think that just my initial reaction to all the mentions of the controversy around The Last of Us 2 on Twitter could be relevant to Max's understanding of the game and of gaming culture in general.

I think that's like the trap, right? That's how Twitter gets you. That's my thought reading that as I'm like, it's a trap, right? I'm Admiral Akbar yelling and no one's listening to me. Because I don't think that it gives you the kind of understanding of gaming culture that anyone needs to have. I don't think that the insight that you'll get, if that's your main motivation for going on Twitter is like a great reason for it but I do think that there's fun to be had with gaming and social media like it's not all the toxic hell's pit that we talk about

like it can be a great place to just goof around and riff with people it's fun like I feel like Demon Souls has been fun on Twitter just because people I follow will just tweet funny videos of themselves getting owned or sharing strategies yeah I just tweeted a good video you saw my video yeah that was a good video yeah And I think that's fun to like watch people get owned. Especially if it's Jason.

And like there's a good reason to go on Twitter. There's a sense of community there. I think that's pretty fun. And it can be fun to at least follow gaming personalities. But then I just sort of, I mean my own experience of Twitter is just so different than the average person just because I'm like a video game person who's followed by a lot of people. And so like, you know, I don't know, I recently tweeted a thing where I was sort of glib about yakuza. And most people just thought it was cool because it was about this amazing looking bread. But then some people got really mad because it kind of didn't know me or like didn't know I was just kind of being glib and kidding.

And then got really upset. And I wound up like being like it just stressed me out. And it was sort of this just bummer experience. And I just deleted the tweet. And it's like, okay, whatever. Like I don't care. Like if people don't get it. This is spreading too quickly.

Been there. Been there many times. Yeah. Same. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. As soon as GamerGaters get a hold of your tweets. Or even just people who don't know you. Like it gets out. don't understand it or like willfully misunderstanding it. It gets five or six social circles away from you. And soon it's just like people are like, well, who the fuck is this guy? And then, and so that sucks.

But that's also like unique to me maybe or like to someone who has a lot of followers. I don't know. Because I feel like maybe your tweets get surfaced more because once you pass a certain follower threshold, like Twitter just becomes a completely different website than what it is when you're in the early stages of it. Yeah. To your point about DarkSills, by the way, I saw a really interesting thread. and I'll link this in the show notes by Stephen Lumpkin,

who's a game designer at Gorilla Games, and he was talking about Dark Souls and the way, like, why it's such a different genre than we're used to, and he was dissecting the genre from a game designer's perspective. And one of the things he mentioned was that it's, it's very much a multiplayer game,

and that series is very much a multiplayer series, not in the sense that you're playing with other people because there's like a limited multiplayer component in it, but in the sense that you're playing, like, single player, and you are talking about it in such global conversation that that's really what makes the game special is like this communal language and talking about bosses and sharing clips

and reading about it on message boards, reading about the secrets that other people have found, all that sort of thing. And yeah, for that sort of thing, I feel like social media is actually a pretty pivotal component. And I would argue that like Souls games are really not the same if you're not talking about them and complaining about them

and reading other experiences about them on the Internet. somewhere. It doesn't have to be Twitter, but like somewhere on the internet. Right. I think Twitter isn't as good for that as somewhere like Discord, for example. Right. I read it. Yeah, or Discord. Come on the triple click Discord and like talk about Demon Souls. Like that will probably be fun because there's like other nice people there and you can get a little conversation going. Where on Twitter you can either feel like you're kind of shouting into the void or you're like replying to some big Twitter person's, you know, tweets and like not really having a conversation. And like certain topics kind of circulate on Twitter like among games Twitter as people call it, which is

sort of like the circle of games critics, which is fairly wide. And like, I feel like that's kind of what happened with The Lassoas part two, which Max, I think, is alluding to whether, whether he realizes it or not, which is like a certain game will be a really big deal. A lot of people will be paid because they have to review it. They'll all be playing it at the same time. They'll all disagree about it or have certain thoughts about it around the same time. And that's part of the hype cycle. And then, like, certain controversies unfold, like, as people are debating it together on Twitter and that can feel like an event and be kind of tantalizing and even perhaps convince people to play it whether or not that was ever the intention of the people

setting those tweets. And I feel like as the years have worn on, I've become increasingly aware of that and how it works and I personally really dislike it. And I actually resisted tweeting a lot. I mean, I tweet way less now than I did even five years ago. I barely do anymore. and especially about games like that, like hype cycle games, even if I'm reviewing them. I'm like, I'm going to really try to limit this because I don't, I don't know how else to put this, but it's like I don't want to advertise the game. That isn't quite what I mean, but it sometimes feels that way to me where I'm like, if I'm tweeting constantly about this game, what does that say for me as a journalist and a critic and

like, what am I contributing to? And what does this mean at this point? And it just, it can make me feel really weird. this to say, I don't really think you're missing that much, Max. I feel like by reading articles about a game, you're probably getting the best version of what it originates as frustrated Twitter threads among critics. And then they just ideally put that into articles. And like, that's, that's the good shit. And Twitter is just like the weird zone where things could be articles, but they're not and they're just like weird disagreements. Yeah, I mean, if you want to follow personalities

or if you want to get things as fast as humanly possible, so if you want to be the first Or if you want to like see what people are going to blog about in six weeks. See the takes that will turn into blogs. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But Twitter is more for that. From a reader's perspective, from your average reader's perspective, it's more of like, this is where you come to follow your favorite personalities to keep up on gaming news.

And I can be valuable for that. Yeah, I mean, it depends. You have to kind of like cultivate your Twitter feed to make sure it's not a place where like you have messages that you're suddenly realizing, hey, I don't want to see all this shit. Like, I don't want to see the stuff in here. And that can be tough. And it can be tough from the journalist's perspective to make sure that you're staying on track and not succumbing to your worst urges, which is very easy to do on Twitter. I feel like Twitter encourages that stuff too. Like just encourages you to waste time on the platform. Like that's precisely what it was designed to do. And I'd rather write an article or like edit an article or do something else. To Max's last question, which is how do you know if your social media consumption has been?

become toxic or self-harming. There are some ways to tell. Like you, Maddie, I cut way back on Twitter, and especially video game Twitter, I just don't tweet that much anymore. I have, like, restrictions when I check in. I don't have it on my phone anymore, just because, like you said, it's very much designed to get you on there all the time and to be this infinite scroll and to be very engaging. I think that if you, I think it's good to just check in with how you feel after you get on there.

And this could be, this goes for Instagram or even like Reddit or Discord or whatever, like anywhere where you kind of go and spend some time. Once you're done, just sort of check in with yourself and be like, do I feel better now or worse? Like, do I feel energized and connected? Like, I had some nice conversations. Or do I feel like either jittery because I just got more likes on a thing than I was expecting and it's sort of, I'm kind of amped? But then like, do I also just feel disappointed because I feel ignored? Do I feel stressed out or just like I know about a bunch of bad things I didn't need to know about or want to know about? Like, kind of take your own temperature on that. And if you start feeling like you don't feel good after using one of these services,

just like let yourself just not use it. It's fine. Like I think we don't give ourselves enough permission to not use some of these apps and services, even though they're not actually essential. And a lot of times they make your day worse. And that's, it's like an important thing to really be real with yourself about. Well, so, but you're talking about it on a micro level. And on a macro level, I think the the friendships that I personally at least have made on Twitter are more rewarding. No, no, I know. I'm just trying to. answer the question of how do you know if it's become toxic or self-harming? And you have to ask yourself that question. Right. Yeah, but even if it feels bad, like, on a daily basis, I think in the long run,

it could wind up being helpful for you. Like, I found that. Like, I don't think that Twitter is necessarily, like, making me, I mean, I'm always kind of just neutral and zoned out when I'm on Twitter, but like, I don't think I'm, it's certainly made me have worse days and it's made me have better days. But overall, just because of that networking aspect, that is where I've really benefit the long run in that I've met so many people that I wouldn't have otherwise met via Twitter. Yeah, I'm not saying you should quit. It's that it has to be this like all or nothing thing. You're saying quit on a day to day basis. No, or like put some limits on yourself or get it off your phone. Just like pay attention to how much you're using it and how it makes you feel an aggregate.

Yeah, that's good advice. I'm saying quit. I think it's evil. Maddie's like, no, funny. Burn it down. I think it's going to destroy us all someday and there's nothing we can do about it. But yeah, other than that, Twitter? It's Facebook that's going to destroy us. I mean, social media in general. That's fair. Yeah. But there's nothing we can do. So, yeah, I don't know. Enter the sandpit.

Enjoy the ride. Enjoy the ride. And enjoy it while you're in there, you know? Yep. All right. On that note, why don't we take a break? And then we will be back with one more thing. Well, hello.

I'm Renee Colvert. Hi. I'm Alexis Preston. And we are the host of Can I Put Your Dog. And we got breaking news. We got an expisay. All the beans have been spilled via an Apple podcast. review that said this show isn't well researched.

Well, yeah, no, duh. Of course, it's not. Not since the day we started has it been well researched. Guessing an anthropomorphizing dogs is what we do. The can I pet your dog promise is that we will never do more than 10 seconds of research before telling you excitedly about any dog we see. I'm going to come at you with top 10 enthusiasm, minimal facts. We're here for a good time, not an educated time.

So if you love dogs and you don't love research, well, you know what? Come on in to Can I Pet Your Dog podcast every Tuesday on Maximum Fun Network. Hey, I'm Jared Hill, co-host of the brand new Maximum Fun podcast, Fan Time. And I'm Travel Anderson. I'm the other more fabulous co-host. And the reason you really should be tuning in. I feel the nausea rising. To be Fantai is to be a big fan of something, but also have some challenging or anti-feeling

towards it. Kind of like Kanye. We're all fans of Kanye. He's a musical genius, but like, you know. He thinks slavery is a choice. Or like the real. housewives of Atlanta. Like, I love the drama, but do I want to see black women fighting each other on screen?

Ew, to the nah, to da nah, nah, nah. We're tackling all of those complex and complicated conversations about the people, places, and things that we love. Even though they may not love us back. Fan time, maximum fun, podcast. And we are back, Kirk. Maddie, it is time for one more thing. Maddie, I see you have a familiar name listed as your one more thing.

What is it? I just wanted to follow up on Hades. It's been a while since we did the triple play. And I know I hadn't beaten it when we did the triple play. I had not even made it past the Minotaur Enthesias back then. And I just wanted to say, I haven't beaten Hades 10 times, but I have beaten it several times. And I enjoyed it a lot. I was wondering, actually, I was thinking the other day about this.

Yeah, I'm wondering if I'd beaten it or not what I thought about Hades. I really enjoyed Hades, but I did never really get to a point where I loved the combat. And I'm going to talk about this because I know a lot of people feel this way, and I just want to reach out and validate them. I want to validate the listeners out there who just didn't love it that much. Eventually, after a certain point, I was like, I'm just going to go God mode. I just want to see the story. Loved it. Highly recommend it. Frankly wish I'd done it sooner. Plenty challenging still. Plenty fun. Many twitchy games in my life that I have really enjoyed playing, many competitive games. Isometric visual noise, as it turns out, not really my thing. If there's too much visual noise on the screen, I shut down. And this is like a fun fact I've learned about myself. And there are like a lot of enemies in this game, but I never really felt like I got that good at. Like the butterfly sphere guys, I hate those guys.

Yeah, they're tough in particular. There are just some enemies that I was just like, this isn't fun. I don't like it. Elisium is the hardest enemy, I think. My least favorite one is they're the ones that shoot the three laser beams. They're in the final level. I just don't know what to do about them. I actually don't mind those.

guys. Well, you can get behind them pretty good. Yeah, you can get behind those guys. The, the big diamond guy who shoots out lasers everywhere, like that guy. No, no, the mini boss and like Tartarus, who only shows up like sometimes. And like Tartarus is so freaking easy. But like that one guy, I was always like, this guy sucks. I'm like, I hate him. I don't know. So anyway, my point is, I still love this game. It's still absolutely one of my top games of the year. I think it's so well designed across the board, even though there are things about it that I just hate. But part of it is because they have God mode in there. And like when you are getting annoyed at playing the game over and over and over and over to see the story, like you have to play the game over and over and over

again. And if certain enemies annoy you, it doesn't matter. You still have to play against them a billion times. So I just wanted to say I think it's worth it. I think it's worth doing that. I think it's also worth turning on God mode if you're like me and you get tired of it. Yeah, I liked God mode too. Were you playing on Switch? I'm curious. I am, yeah. And I tried a bunch of different things. I tried using docked mode and playing with the pro controller, which feels very different, by the way. I don't know if you tried that, but it's like, it is a much more, like, competitive way to play. But playing in handheld mode was usually how I played because this game, like, I just bring my switch to my girlfriend's apartment, you know, the only other location I go to, and then I

would like get on some Hades runs over there, and then, you know, come home, play a run, before bed. It's like 40 minutes to play a run in this game usually so you can kind of log in time that way. And having it handheld does make it easier to beat in that sense because you can just carry it with you around the house. But yeah, it is easier on the switch pro controller. I will say that. I found, and I'm going to, I really want to do all the end game stuff, but I went and just played some on PC because I also have this game on PC. Right. Yeah. And at a even... Is there cross-save? They haven't added it yet, but they're going to. They're a little behind on it, but they're going to add it at some point. And when that game is running at a high frame rate consistently at 1440p, or I'm sure

it runs in 4K, it is actually, I find it a lot easier to scan. And I'm with you that like, because there's some frame rate stuff on the switch version, there are times where I'm like, my skill is almost not a factor here. Like, I can't keep up with all this. I'm just kind of getting hit some and it's okay. And yeah, I think the PC version can help with that. And I'm looking forward to doing some, that really tough, like, you know, whatever it's called where you make it harder for yourself. Yeah, the bounties or whatever at the end where you can just turn on a bunch of stuff. And yeah, I mean, there's, there's parts of it that I think can be really fun. And I mean, there's, there's certain weapons that I like way more than others. I really don't like the gun.

I like, but, but once you kind of get the hang of it and you're like, okay, like, I really like the shield. So I'm just kind of gave myself permission after a while to be like, I'm going to ignore the darkness upgrades. I'm just going to use the weapons I like. Like stuff like that. I didn't do that either. I just did the spear. I wish I had like given myself permission sooner to just let the game be fun for me. I don't know. Yeah, no, I totally get you. Anyway, that's me.

That's what I've been doing. Nice. Cool. So let me tell you guys about a game that I have just finished. It is called... Oh, you finished it. I finished it. It's called 13 Sentinels Aegis Rim.

So my enjoyment of this game is kind of, it's like a bell curve. So when I first started it, when I first started it, I didn't really get into it and put it aside for a while. Then I revisited it a couple of weeks ago, started playing it again and giving it. it another try and then got really into it for a while like as the story unfolded and as I started like learning the characters learning who they were like trying to unravel the mysteries and then the ending came along and I was just like what what is going on here um so 13 7th let me zoom out for a second all right you haven't done that this whole episode this is game by

vanillaware it is on the PlayStation 4 is vanillaware's first game in like six or seven years since Dragon's Crown. And unlike Vanilla Ware's previous games, which were kind of 2D side-scrolling brawlers, this is a hybrid between a visual novel and a real-time strategy game. Real-time strategy game portion, I barely paid attention to you because I didn't find it very fun. So I just set it on casual and just kind of like automatically went through. The visual novel is really where the game is at.

It's very much a story game. It is like a sci-fi game about 13 people, mostly kids, who have to get in robots and fight kaiju and save the world. And the story is like, it's a hodgepodge of every single sci-fi story you have ever seen. It's like smashed together in this game. There's everything from time travel to

androids to memory implants to clones to like every single trope that you have seen in a sci-fi game is smashed into here. And the characters are fun. There are a lot of interesting characters in it. Some really out there sexualization

of one of the characters. There's only one character who is like extremely sexualized for some reason and she wears this skin tight leather outfit while everyone else is just wearing normal eyes clothing it is pretty funny very very vanilla wear um but uh but yeah then you get to the point where you're like okay is this character a clone or a clone of a clone or is their memory wiped and like it gets to the point where you're watching all these scenes and the way the story unfolds is you pick one of the 13 characters and you go through all of their scenes in order and each of their scenes is like this like 10, 20 minute little vignette.

So it's very digestible. It's very easy to play. It's a very fun game to play because each of these are like little short stories or like episodes of a TV show. It's very, very well structured. But so much of it is so confusing and deliberately confusing where you don't know why people are doing things. You don't know what their motives are.

You don't know who's who, who's supposed to be who, who's when, who knows about all the secrets at which point. And you're just like left in this constant state of confusion. and there are parts that are explained, but so much of it is just so overwhelming at all times that it's like it's enjoyable for a while, but in the end, at least for me, felt really unsatisfying. And so I left, I walked away from it feeling pretty disappointed. And I just like wasn't happy with the way it ended. I was just hoping for more, I guess.

I was hoping for less just like convolution for the sake of convoluting. Like it all felt like it was trying way too hard to, one too many sci-fi tropes, one too many mysteries, one too many, like, complicated plot twists that, like, don't really make sense, but you're not really sure what's going on. The problem with stories like this with, like, big convoluted and mysterious stories is that at a certain point, when you don't know why people are doing things,

then you just kind of lose interest. Even the game is, like, deliberately mysterious, and it's like, you don't know why this person is plotting this or why this person just shot someone. But when you don't know, and at a certain level, that can be good, like it can be tantalizing. But when it's the entire game, you just don't know why anyone's doing anything. You're just left in the state of, like, confusion.

And it's unpleasant. So, yeah, I was overall kind of disappointed by this game, unfortunately. I thought I would really like it because I'm so into, like, Dangan Rampa and Virtue's Last Award and 999 and all these visual novels. And for a while, I was really into it. And I was really just, like, following every story and really into, like, wondering what was going to happen next. But it really lost me after a certain point, sadly.

So yeah, bell curve experience. Now I don't know if I should play it. Well, I have a code for this game. This is so hard for me. I'm going to check it out for sure, at least for a while and see what I think of it. Because I'm curious. I know just even that you and I had very different takes on like Westworld season one. So I'm curious what my take will be.

I'll probably play it at some point here. Yeah, I don't not recommend it. Like, it's a fun experience to have. It's like a fun story to play through and it's, the characters are good. Yeah, yeah. I wonder if it would help me that I know the ending too. Like if that would make it less confusing or more confusing. I should play it just to find out the answer to that question.

Let's DM each other later and I'll find out what you know exactly because then we can talk about it. No, I think you should just play it without Jason coloring your opinion anymore. I should just play it. No, I think I've convinced myself. I'll just play it. Yeah, just play it. You guys should both play it and then we can talk about it more because I'm curious to hear your takes on it. Everybody, like a lot of other smart people, were just totally raving about it.

Oh yeah. My boss, Chris Plan, is obsessed with that video. Yeah, he loves it. it's all he ever talks about I wish I liked it more just I just did not like it was just wound up feeling so unsatisfying for me in ways that like

yeah we're just frustrating anyway Kirk what's your one more thing well my one more thing is a little bit of entertainment industry news though I'm going to cheat and just say really quick that everyone should watch Ted Lassow which is a show on Apple TV Plus and is totally great and it's just like wonderful and I'm just going to say

that because I'm talking about streaming and it counts that it's just one more thing the game is or that show was so good. I'm so happy I watch that you both have to watch it. So you have two more things. It's wonderful. No, no, no, that didn't count. Because streaming, you see, just like Ted Lassau, which is a streaming show. So I'm sure you both seen this news. I know I linked you both this Hollywood Reporter article about this Warner Media thing. The movie landscape has been changed forever. Yeah, so there's this Warner Media thing that happened that I'm not sure if it's as big of quite as huge a deal as it seems initially, but it's pretty big. And we'll link to the story in the

show notes for anyone who doesn't know the particulars. But basically what happened is WarnerMedia had announced that the new Wonder Woman movie is going to be released in theaters and on HBO Max for a month on Christmas, which is a pretty big deal. And Disney's doing the same thing with Soul, the new Pixar movie. That's also coming out on Christmas. And these are both just like anyone who subscribes gets these movies. And they had to do some whole complicated dealing with like theaters where they're giving them a better revenue share because they have to make it them on board with the fact that this is also going to be on streaming when it's in theaters. It's all the thing. But then Warner announced, like, whatever,

a few days ago that they're releasing all of their 2021 movies for a month on HBO Macs. So the same deal for every movie. And this is like the new Matrix movie, Dune, the In the Heights adaptation that I'm super excited about. The Mortal Kombat adaptation. So many movies. The Sopranos prequel, which comes out in March and which will give us a good excuse to talk about the Spranos. And so I don't know what to make of this. there's this wild THR article that's wild to me. Maybe it's the most wild thing about this

is just that the talent side of this, the directors and the agents are so pissed off about this, understandably, and they're able to articulate it in this article with these just absolutely fire quotes. The one is Christopher Nolan, who's like made all of his movies for Warner at the beginning. Here's his quote. I'm just going to read it.

Warner Brothers had an incredible machine for getting a filmmaker's workout everywhere, both in theaters and in the home, and they're dismantling it as we speak. They don't even understand what they're losing. And then he says, some of our industry's biggest filmmakers and most important movie stars went to bed the night before thinking they were working for the greatest movie studio and they woke up to find out they were working for the worst streaming service. Just a burn. Just an unbelievable quote.

Just a wild bird. I don't know what I want to talk about. Partly it's that I almost wish there were more quotes like that in the video game industry, but like everything is so buttoned down and no one would ever say something like that. But that's pretty amazing. But that article is worth reading. We'll link it in show notes just because there's so much anger. being expressed so plainly with Warner for making this decision for not telling people. Yeah, because probably so much of their money is on the back end, so it would have been based on theatrical

revenue. But they're already screwed. I mean, that's the part, I don't know what I'm talking about, but I feel like what else were they going to do? Like, there's no way this is going to work. Well, so if we're thinking, I assume they're all hoping that stuff will get to push back to the second half of next year when maybe people will be able to go to movie theaters again. That's the goal, I guess. And there'll be a vaccine and so on. Right. There's also the fact that like if a thing is released on streaming, piracy will be like way higher because the minute it's on HBO Max,

it's going to be pirated because it's like a streaming version of it. There's a fascinating part of this whole thing is that the reason this is happening is because what happened was Time Warner wound up getting bought by AT&T, the two companies merged and HBO became part of this whole deal. And there's like, there's a lot of complicated executive maneuvering. But long story short, they launched HBO Max. it didn't turn out the way they hoped it would because it was super confusing for a variety of reasons. No, apparently it's doing badly. Well, they should put it on Roku. I'm just saying. Put it on Roku.

They should. They keep saying they're developing that. Like, we can't even watch it. I have to watch it on my PS4 and it's so annoying. Anyways, continue. And they're looking around and like Netflix is kicking ass and Disney Plus is kicking ass with like original content and like all this other shit. And all these other streaming services are eating their lunch. And so they come out and they're like, how do we get HBO Max subscribers? Okay, let's try this. So really, it's just them like. going all in on streaming, forgetting, like, putting aside all the other issues that come with it, it's fascinating to watch. I hope Christopher Nolan says something spicy about it on the Game Awards, because he's going to be at the Game Awards.

Yes, that was announced today, and I can only imagine it's because he's so angry at Warner that he just will go on any platform to talk about. I have no idea why Nolan's going to be at the Game Awards. What if he talks about game streaming? What if he's like, fuck Xbox Game Pass. Yeah, that would be hilarious. if he was like, come on, get on Xbox. Like, I'm against the PS5.

Like, if Nolan, like, came out really hard in the console wars, I'd love to see that. There's so much we can talk about, and we're not, like, movie industry experts. But I do want to hear, if anybody out there is, like, works in the movie industry, and you want to write us and explain some of the ins and outs of this, I would love to hear from you. Triple Click at MaximumFun.org. Yeah, maybe we could have you on the show for a few minutes. Yeah, do maybe one of those little expert interviews. And also just, there's so many aspects of this that are super wild,

that seem like they'll have huge downstream implications for like the whole entertainment industry. Yeah. It's cool that I'll get to watch these movies on HBO Max, but I don't know. Like reading the reaction to this, I wouldn't want to be a director who had this happen. Yeah. I don't know. So anyways, it's a huge topic that I know I just kind of threw in here at the end, but I do think it's interesting and people should read that article.

They're all rich anyway. Christopher Nolan is super rich anyway. Yeah, he doesn't even have a phone. Doesn't even use email or whatever. What a weird guy. All right. It is time for us to say goodbye. All right, Kirk Maddie, I will see you both next week when we will talk about cyberpont. We sure will. We'll live in a cyber world by then. I'll see you both 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-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. Maximumfund.org. Comedy and culture. Artist-owned, audience supported.