Triple Click - Triple Play: Hitman 3

Episode Date: January 28, 2021

This week the gang jumps into Hitman 3, a game that's far less bleak that it sounds. Kirk, Maddy, and Jason talk about the latest entry in the longrunning stealth-puzzle series. Maddy shares the story of how she learned how to play, Jason talks about the Knives Out-inspired murder mystery, and Kirk raves about how amazing Hitman games truly are. Plus: the GameStop phenomenon explained!One More Thing:Kirk: The Expanse S3Maddy: Ted LassoJason: GameStopLinks:Hitman Speedrun: https://kotaku.com/speedrunners-are-beating-hitman-3s-dubai-level-in-under-1846121772Shoreh Agdashloo talks us to sleep: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4j8gznDVa1M Bloomberg GamesStop explainer: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-25/the-game-never-stopsShort Selling and Options explainers: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/shortselling.asphttps://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/option.aspSupport Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinJoin 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

Dress for the job you want, by which we mean knock out the person doing the job that you want and take their outfit. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we all played Hitman 3, a game about intricately planning assassinations, or throwing out the plans and just hitting your target in the face with a fish. Whatever works. I'm Maddie Myers. I'm Jason Shrier. And I'm Kirk Hamilton.

And I love being a bald guy who murders people. That's my whole deal. That's what you need to know about me. That is what we are going to talk about this episode is Kirk's obsession with being a bald man who murders people in various disguises. It's just the best kind of man to be. But before we get to that, it's funny that nobody notices he has a barcode on the back of his head.

Yeah, it's so noticeable. Oh, is it the first person to ever point that out, Jason? Yeah, yeah. And it's very interesting that no one can tell him. apart from all of his various disguises. But anyway, we're not talking about Hitman 3 yet, because I want to talk about our listener supporters for a quick second. We have some listeners who have gone to maximum fund.org slash join, and those listeners

have signed up to be members and to receive extra special bonus episodes from us. And they pay us money to do that. And it supports the show. And I just think those listeners are really cool for doing that. And if you're someone who hasn't done that, then you could. You could actually do this at any time. You'd be a part of this elite club.

But if you can't afford it, that's cool. We get it. But like if you can and you want to, then that's pretty sweet. That's my thoughts. We appreciate all of our listeners nonetheless. Yes. I just want to say our January bonus episode is one of my favorites that we've done.

The Beans Talk, where we talked about our lives. It's very cool. Very fun. Very, very cool. We got to find out about one another's lives. Before a split screen, before a triple click, I learned some fun facts about both of you. So yeah, that was pretty cool. But anyway, enough of that.

Let's talk about Hitman 3. Kirk Hamilton's favorite video game. Take it away, Kirk. Okay, I do like this video game, and I do think it's kind of funny that I like this video game, considering that it is about a bald man who kills people. And that's so similar to you. That's what's funny about it. Yes, because that's my whole deal.

I, a bald man who kills people. There was actually, did I show you guys this is a picture that someone drew of me forever ago where they thought I was a bald guy forever? Yes, yes. It was really funny. And it was this sort of what you think a podcast host looks like. And then it was this actual picture of me. And he's thinking, oh, my, what? Such a relatable thing.

I wonder if people have images in their minds of what we look like that don't match up. I'm sure they do. I'm sure they do. A bald guy with a saxophone. Hmm. Hey, you could do worse. All right. So, yes, we are doing a triple play on this episode.

We're talking about Hitman 3, which recently came out. for consoles and PC. It's made by I.O. Interactive. It's the latest in a long line of Hitman games dating all the way back to the year 2000 when Hitman codename 47 came out. I have played, I think, every single one of these games. I admit, I didn't play contracts.

I played them all back when I was a wee little PC gamer. I played the very first one. And these games have remained pretty unchanged over the years. There have been sort of digressions off of the path. The series kind of peaked with Blood Money. That was in 2006. Then they made Absolution, which was more story-driven and not as good. I think I reviewed that one for Kitaku.

It was okay. It was still technically a Hitman game, but not really. And then there was this clear reorienting where the people that I realized, okay, blood money was the one, that was the game. This open, kind of playful sandbox puzzle thing. And so then they released what they now are calling the World of Assassination Trilogy. which I think is a very funny name and that started with Hitman 2016. Pretty epic.

It's a whole world where you just assassinate people. The world is there for you to assassinate. Well, I guess because it takes you all around the world to a lot of different cities. It does. It does. It's just for, we'll get into it. Okay, so that came out in 2016 and then from then until now they've released two more Hitman 2 and Hitman 3. Each one actually collects the levels from the previous games. And now Hitman 3 is kind of an omnibus game.

that has every level, a lot of the escalations, every story, the entire story of this trilogy is now collected in one work, which is pretty incredible. And if you've never played any of these games, obviously, it is clear that I love these games. If you never played them and you get this whole thing, man, that's a lot of fun stuff for you to mess around with. So the three of us have been playing it.

I should say up front how much we've played. All three of us are playing press copies that we got from the publisher. I think we're all playing on PC. and I've actually finished the story and I've played through the first few levels a bunch of times because that's a fun way to play this game. I've done escalations. We'll talk about all of that.

Maddie, we're going to talk a lot about you, how you played, but just Jason really quick, how much they have you played? Or like, what levels have you mainly been focused on? Just the first two levels, but I played them both a couple times. Got it, cool. So, Maddie, this is your first time playing Hitman, and I know that you spent a while learning how this works,

and I think that might be a good way in, both to explain to listeners how these games work, and then also to just hear some about your experience. So tell us about it. Sure. So this game is very linear compared to other hitman games or so I hear. And that is what I expected it to be like when I started the game because this is my first hitman. And I was like, great, this game is going to hold my hand. I'm going to learn how to play hitman for the first time. It's going to rule. And you start off, you're climbing into a building from the outside. You're wearing a flight suit. And that's all very, very linear. You get to,

like this outdoor window washing station and then you climb into the building and so on and so forth. But for whatever stupid reason, I missed a queue in the lineup in terms of the mission prompts here and I didn't realize like when you're supposed to enter the building and how and just got super off track and ended up inside the building still, but like didn't have any of the mission prompts to help me. So like the early initial way that you're quote unquote supposed to beat this mission as you're supposed to like set up a meeting between the two guys you're supposed to assassinate. And it's very easy if you actually play the mission according to the linear way, which I did many, many hours later. But the first time I entered the game,

I basically just got in the building and I was like, I have no idea where I am or what I'm supposed to be doing at all. And so I was just walking around and finding stuff. And I slowly figured out how to kill those two guys, but I had to do it completely detective style because I had no guide at all. And also, again, had never played a hitman game. So I was like, this game is really freaking hard. Like, it's giving me nothing. Like, I don't know what disguises I can't, I should be using. Like, I don't know how the stealth works in this game. Like, it took me a while to be like, okay, see is crouch. I guess I can crouch. I guess that's good. Like, I had nothing at all. And I, like, to defeat the level.

And that in of itself, I'm like, it's pretty amazing. So I can break down, like, the order of, like, how I found clues if you guys care at all? I would love to hear at least, how did you kill your two targets? This is in Dubai. This is the opening levels and a skyscraper in Dubai. Incredible skyscraper. It's beautiful. It's very mission impossible

ghost protocol. You fly it. I mean, each level in this game is kind of a recreation of a movie. This one is definitely ghost protocol. And you're in this big swanky party up in the clouds, and then you have to kill these two jerks. They call it and it's an inauguration, by the way, which is hilarious because the game came out on inauguration day in the United States. Yeah, it's a very, it's not the inauguration of a

president. So how did you kill your two targets? You started in a suit. I did not realize that the whole point of this game is that you need to kill people and put on their clothes and then people don't recognize you anymore once you're wearing outfits. It took me a very long time to figure out that I needed to disguise myself. So I like had to figure out how to defeat the first guy without being in disguise for a long time. So I was like going through the kitchen, avoiding people a lot because I wasn't in disguise. And so I was like timing my stealth through the kitchens and like the staff areas. Playing like a stealth game.

You basically created like a challenge for yourself. Yes. That is like a normal challenge that would be an hitman game. Which someone could do. And so eventually I find like there's a locker room off the kitchens, which you can barely get into if you're not disguised by the way. But I did. And I was like carefully hiding in there.

And there's a guy in there who has a. some papers and he's the security guard, as it turns out, or supposed to be the security guard for one of the guys who are supposed to kill. And I truly... There's a mission story involving him. Right, exactly, which I played much later. But this was my totally green version of it, was that I just happened to stumble across this. And I was like, thank God, like, okay, maybe I can use this. But at that time, I didn't actually know that it would help me. I just was like, I'm just going to take this guy's papers. Like, I don't know. Like, maybe it'll help me if I take this guy's papers. So I just like sneakily took them and then snuck out of there because I realized that,

that like I couldn't take anything else in that room because I like didn't want to kill anyone for some stupid reason. So then eventually, eventually I found the guard tower. There's like a control room with other guards where they were talking about the fact that they were waiting for a security guard to show up. And I was like, oh my God, is that the papers that I have? And of course it is. And so I was like, okay, this is so lucky. And I like, then I managed to like find someone. I was like, all right, so I have to kill somebody in disguise myself as a guard. This is my first kill. So I do that. Disguise myself as a guard. And from then it was like a little easy. because there's a mission story that I did by accident where like as you become, I think it's

Marcus Duyvesant's guard is what I'm describing. He sort of leads you up to this weird rooftop and he's like, do some knife tricks for me and like I'll see if you really want to be my guard or not. And then if you do them correctly, he sends away his other guard because he trusts you because he's an idiot. And then you can just push him off the ledge. And so I did that and I was like, great. I can't believe I figured that out. But then I had to figure out how to kill the second guy. And the second guy I don't know. This is like more of a long meandering story where like I just slowly figured out where he even was and like watched his patterns of walking around and eventually just figured out that he drank

a lot of whiskey. And I was like, okay, I need to figure out how to poison a drink. And like that just took forever. Like I just eventually found out that you have to kill a certain guy who has poison. And there's like no clue that that would even work. But like, I don't know, it took hours and hours for me to figure that out. I don't recommend doing any of this, but that was how I did it. And then after the fact, I was like, that seemed wrong.

And then I, like, looked up a walkthrough because I was like, I feel like I somehow did that mission wrong. And then I was like, oh, there's like a completely other way to do that mission, which is hacking into the calendar system and setting up a meeting between those two guys, which is way easier. It's a thousand times easier to do that. It takes like 20 minutes because you just set up the calendar meeting. and then they're both in a room together and then you just kill them both and you walk out of the building and you're donezo. But I did it the sandbox way the first time around because I was like, I don't know how else to play this video game. Is this what I'm supposed to be doing? I love this.

You basically were thrown into the deep end and you did well. You played two mission stories. So there is one mission story you take over for an assassin who the one guy is hiring and then you have to go take out this journalist. Also, just a note, you don't have to kill anybody but your targets. You can just knock people out. Well, but you do need their outfits, but you don't have to kill them. You're right. You have to knock them out.

You knock them out and take their outfit. But you only, you get a special award and you always get a penalty if you kill people that aren't your target. So you never want to kill people unless they're your target. Right. Though it happens sometimes in escalations when you don't have, when you can't save the game. But so, yeah, there's one where you like do an assassination mission for this guy as a different assassin. You're pretending to be this guy. He's the guy who has the poison.

And then you can go poison his drink. And then, yeah, the other guy, you just become a security guard. It's funny that it didn't start giving you prompts because you can turn on those mission story prompts where the UI tells you where to go. And that's the sort of linear guide. I feel like I broke it somehow. Well, because the game didn't think, because the game was stuck on the first mission where you're supposed to be going in. So that's why Mattie didn't get any prompts. So I didn't get anything.

When you first go in, though, there's just that when you naturally go up the stairs, there's a little map and what's his name your friend? tells you to go over to the map and that starts that mission story that gets them both in the same room. That's right. And there were some prompts that did happen like the key card prompt to get into the kitchen area did still happen. But I did at one point go into the room that has the terminals that you can hack. And I didn't get any of the voiceover that I got like many hours later when I played the mission like the more straightforward way. Like when I entered that server room, I was like, I don't understand what this is for. And like my guy in my ear has stopped talking to me for like hours now so I have no idea what the purpose of this room is so I'm just going to ignore it.

But yeah, I think I broke the game. But that's okay. That's okay because I feel like in so doing I learned how the game can work. And also over the course of those hours of me figuring it out, I realized like, oh, you know, the game's a lot easier if you disguise yourself and there's certain ways to hide and you can hide if you're disguised as certain things. And like you can also, you know, hit people in the face with Apple or whatever. I mean, there's all these funny things in this video game that you can do, but it took me a while to figure that out. Yeah, and I mean, you didn't break the game. It's just that you need to, well, you need to hack, the guy needs to hack into the system beforehand,

before he can tell you, oh, the calendar is here, you need to go do this. It's more than just like, I skipped a step. You were out of order. But that's kind of the cool thing about the game, is that each of these levels is this full running simulation where all kinds of little sub-narratives are happening. And you can walk into the middle of them, and some of them, I don't even know, You just start to notice the more you play these games, you'll kind of get a sense for when someone sticks out or when they're having a conversation that is maybe going to be important later, either in an escalation or in a different mission story. There's one part of this. One of the guys is estranged from his daughter and he's trying to reconnect with her. And she's meeting with the artist who's putting on the art gallery show.

And there's this whole long conversation they have where they're both in the bar and the one woman who is like the daughter of the powerful guy. she's trying to get out of this and the artist is just going on and on and on and she's super self-absorbed and kind of wearing this hilarious outfit and this total visual artist and I don't even know why that exists yet. I'm not sure where that's going to factor

but then the more you play the level and I've now played the Dubai level a bunch of times you just get a feel for where everything is where everyone is I now know there's this maintenance woman who was going to use an exploding golf ball that kill someone because she has rage issues and now I know that that exploding golf ball

I can get and I've seen that there's a challenge to kill the one guy who golfs off the top of the building so you can blow up. And also exploding golf ball is an old hitman trick that's been in the past games too. So anyways, I love that you discovered it this way because this game I find runs the gamut all the way from the mission stories, which especially if you leave that UI bug on and you start them, they just walk you straight up to the person you're supposed to kill. I mean, you almost have to do nothing. And then you wind up in a situation where, yeah, they turn their back on you and they're looking out over a railing. and then you just kill them and no one's watching and you just get a free kill.

Two, you know, an escalation on the third difficulty level where you can't change outfits and you have to kill everyone with one specific way of doing it and everyone, you know, you're out of bounds everywhere you go so you have to be hiding and it's super, super difficult. So it's like this gradient of all of those experiences. And because it's the third game, if you start at the beginning, there is a tutorial. And the tutorial missions actually walk you through how this works. and there's a really simple one that's actually stage. It's cool.

It's this ship that's sort of on a set, like on a stage that they used to train operatives at the very beginning. And worth doing. I mean, they're all fun because every level in this game is fun. So that is really cool, actually, even though it may have been annoying. The more you play and get a feel for it, you'll have found your way in, and then you'll be able to find all these different gradients for how to play the levels. It wasn't annoying. It just made me think that the game was a lot harder than it actually was.

I was just like, damn, this game is really giving me nothing. and like I really have to be a detective and use my brain and just like walk around this real space, real feeling space and notice tiny clues and figure out how they all connect because I have nothing and it turns out the game doesn't actually have to be that hard unless you want it to be for some reason. Because it's awesome that way. I like it that hard, but not at first. I don't know. I never start levels that hard. Jason, I'm curious. What do you think of this game so far? Yeah, I'm really into it. I mean, but it's identical to the first two games, which is interesting. It's like a very interesting series because, There's really no other series where every single game is exactly the same, like from single to single. I'm not exactly the same. I can tell you a few differences. Well, I mean, essentially the same. Like, like the way the gameplay I'm playing in Hitman 3 is not any different than what I was doing in Himman 2 a couple of years ago. But that's not a problem. That's not a complaint. No, no, yeah, I know. I've loved the second level, which is inspired by Knives Out. And it's set in

a mansion in England. And it is basically a murder mystery. And like the game very much signposts, like the first thing you see is a private investigator and then the game tells you to go steal his clothes and then pretend to be a private investigator and go around investigating. And it's super cool and really well done, even if the mystery itself is a little bit easy to figure out. But I have a fun story, which is that. So, okay, so I completed this mission in a number of different ways. There's one fun one where you can go pretend to be a photographer and you get the family together and then you expose the wires and then get water on the wires. and you electrocute the matron of the family who is your target,

and then you take a picture, and the picture is her, like, in death pose. It's incredible. But here's another way I went about it, is I was sending out to solve the mystery. And for this mystery, in addition to picking up clues all throughout the house in various rooms and sections of the house, you also have to use your camera and take pictures of different things. But there's no prompt to tell you when to take pictures or when not to, so I kept missing things on my first go about.

And that was fine. I figured I was getting enough info anyway, and I eventually deduced who it was because it's pretty easy to figure out who's actually the killer. But I couldn't actually accuse them because you need a certain level of evidence to accuse them. So I knew who this was, couldn't accuse them. So I decided, okay, I'm going to go around and just do other stuff for now. And so I had them all come, the whole family, this wealthy, well-to-do English family that the murder mystery centers on.

I had them all come out for the family photo and then just decided to follow them afterwards. And the murderer, I won't spoil it, but the actual murderer, after this, sneaks off to the greenhouse, which is where there's a whole poison assembly kit. Have you guys seen this? Did you guys watch the murderer, follow the murder? So you follow her. No, but I've, I'm into, I know how this plays out, but I actually didn't see this. I have seen this, but continue. Okay. So you, so you follow the murderer and you can actually see them go and make some poison, and they make a poison bottle. But I still couldn't accuse them. Like, I went back in the house and talk to the butler and tried to talk to the matron and tried to accuse this person

and couldn't. So I was like, wait a minute, how do I not have enough evidence now? And so I'm just sitting there in Alexa Carlisle is the target and the matron of the family. And so I'm sitting there in her office and she leaves because I haven't, she's just bored of waiting for me. And so she goes downstairs apparently to just like meet up with the rest of her family. And so I'm exploring her office, like looking for clues. I eventually figure out there's a safe in her office that you can open and there's a whole little number puzzle to open the safe. So that was pretty fun. So I started playing around with that. And suddenly I get a message saying my target was killed. And it's just like, what? You know what? My target was killed? This happened to me too in a

different way. Yeah. Like if you wait too long, the murderer will just kill the target for you because they're already trying to do it. Yeah. So the murderer is trying to kill your target so you don't have to do anything. And then I just grabbed the stuff out of the safe that I needed to get. And I was like, all right, peace out and just got out of there. It was quite fun. It's cool. There's a few different ways that that can play out. I didn't know about that possibility until I was talking to a friend of mine who got that outcome. I think because he just couldn't make progress fast enough. And then she was killed that way. You can also tell her, you can tell her who the killer is and actually do it in exchange for the information you need. And she'll even realize who you are. And then she walks out to her balcony and she's like, you know what, I'll just stand in my balcony facing, facing away. With no guards here. Well, you know, they got to give it to you somehow.

People are always standing on balconies. And you can also, you can frame the butler. Yes. You can frame the butler as well. I have done that. She's very skeptical of it when you do. It's a fun set of dialogues where even she is like, this doesn't really seem like it adds up.

I was like, listen, I'm just doing this to see what you say, okay? I know it's not that guy. Anyway. The Dartmoor level is cool. They've never done anything like that before, something that scripted. There's always little stories. And that's one of the delights of this game is there's always a whole bunch of little funny, petty dramas playing out between all these different people.

You can learn all about their affairs and jealousies and this target is cheating on that target. With this one, there's always some kind of thing. And you can usually find a way to play those against the different targets and get them to kill one another or open themselves up. And with this one, though, the fact that you can then be the detective and go and talk to everybody and there's all this stuff for clue gathering and interviewing people. They've never done anything like that before. You can tell this was just the delight of whoever was in charge of this scenario. Just loved the fact that they were finally able to do something like this. Yeah.

And I really like that. Even though the level... Just watch Knives Out or like Reds Magna because Agatha Christie and was like... So this whole game. The first level is Ghost Protocol. Second is Knives Out. The third is totally John Wick. There's this rave and you're going through like just killing guys.

And then each level kind of has the feeling of being from a movie. Yeah, I did the escalation in. Dartmoor and the escalations in this game are kind of... Yeah, I did it too. It's pretty fun. It's fun. They're kind of specific rules, specific parameters that then get more and more difficult as you go. I'm in the middle of the Dubai one, which is wild. It has a ton of targets and you have to take them each out in really specific ways, like one with explosives and one by pushing them off a thing and one by shooting them. The Darmore one is a little bit more gimmicky, but that's also because the Darmore level

is cool, but it is more of a schick. It's kind of limited. It's just this house. Where most hitman levels have two phases, and that's true here too, where there will be, what's the one place? Oh, Chongqing in China. That's a great example of this where there's this kind of beautiful neon lit, rain-drenched kind of street city area with a high-rise and all these rooftops. And then there's a secret underground facility with all of this closed-down security and different layers of security. and bio labs and a big core that you need to get to. Like they usually have two levels like that. I think Sapienza, I think it was the second level of the first game was the first really big example of that.

And then they've always stuck with that ever since. So the escalation in Dartmoor was cool, but it was a little gimmicky. It's a little sillier in this hunting jacket, and eventually you just have to get a shotgun and go shoot these guys. It's pretty easy. Where the later, it's more fun, I think, when the levels are really dense and they force you to super have the level down cold because you have to know, okay, I need to find explosives somewhere.

I'm going to start with nothing, so I really need to procure everything as I go. And it can just get so rewarding the more you play the levels and you really just get to know them and also learn all these little funny narratives and these little stories and the way that these characters work together. Yeah, it's funny how much of a point-and-click adventure these games are because it's very much like, okay, I have to go find this object and use it on this object in order to make this thing happen.

and it's very much a puzzle game. Yeah. Especially when you're able to save, because I was playing an escalation in Dubai that went wrong. I never kill non-targets. I always try to get silent assassin. And it's not hard. You can save the game, and you can figure it out.

You have a ton of advantages in this game. You have the ability to see through walls. You can really, it's hard to mess up once you know all the rules and parameters. But in escalations, you can't save the game. So suddenly I'm like two, you know, gets in, I'm near the end, and I walk into the wrong room and this guy starts coming after me, and I just shoot him, and then his friend hears the gunshot and comes around the corner, and I shoot him too. And it kind of really quickly turns into a shooter for a second. It's not a great

shooter, but even having to react to something like that feels really novel when you've spent 10 hours playing the game as essentially a point-and-click adventure game, like you said. Yeah, it's a pretty fun thing, yes. And I'm excited for it to bring in elusive targets, because I remember really enjoying the list of targets and hitman too. That is Maddie in case you haven't you haven't you aren't familiar with this. It's like an escalation and that there's a specific task and you have to kill someone who shows up only for this mission but you only have one shot to do it ever. So literally one chance to do this mission then it goes away forever and it's like limited time also. So it's only available for a couple weeks or someone like that. There will be a whole thing where

there's a briefing and everyone says okay your lucid target is and they don't tell you who they are. So you go into the level and you have to know the level. It's like. like a final exam. Everything you've learned doing escalations and playing through all the different story missions, you go in and it's just, we know this person is a hacker. They're going to be, they're off the grid somewhere in the building, and they're hacking into this computer, and you need to go kill them. And that's it. And that's all you know. So you think, okay, well, first of all, I know this building really well. So where would a hacker hide? You know, it's always somewhere logical. And then you have to figure out where you're going to get the thing to go kill them and

how to get out. And you only get one chance. So once you kill them, you have to get out. And if you get killed, you just fail and you don't get to do it again. So those are really cool. Speaking of the online part of this, we should talk briefly about the online fiasco. It bums me out just because I love this game and it sucks to see the narrative be marred by this online thing, but it really is a drag for people. It sounds to me like the console versions, in particular, our buddy Russ Frustick of the besties and Polygon has been playing on PS5 and he just tells me, at least as long as we were talking, his version was just a disaster. On PC, it was okay for me.

I would occasionally just get these annoying disconnected from servers because the game checks in with the servers every time it saves. So that's also for auto saves. So there will just be times where you're in the middle of a kind of fraught activity. And then the game just freezes and says disconnected. And if you just go into offline mode, you have a different track of progress in offline mode. So you kind of lose your progress and it screws you up so you don't want to do that, which is a drag.

So I would imagine it sounds like on console it's happening constantly, you're just getting booted, it's really hard to make progress or get enough flow. And it sucks because it's a really good game. And I feel like I've seen so much of the discussion around, like people rightly feeling frustrated that this game that feels mostly like a single player game is constantly having this server issue. Yeah, it feels so weird. It happened to me pretty frequently. And I do not have any internet problems. And I'm plugged in. It's not you.

So I'm just like, why does the game keep telling me that I am disconnected when I am not? It felt like such an old school problem for an always online game to have. It's been a long time. Yeah, it's reminiscent of the conversation. Yes, very much so. I saw some threads about how totally complicated what I.O.I is dealing with, partly because they've had multiple publishers. They've had this game on a bunch of different systems.

They're keeping them all running at the same time. They now need to merge them all under one game. multiple servers. Yeah, they've now on Epic from Steam. So it's like with all of those complications, it was sort of saying it is understandable at least that this might be happening. But it's still very regrettable and it's still really frustrating. And I totally get why people would think, but this is just, does it really need to be this online even? You know, like this is basically a single player game. Yeah. And it's a game that's very much about flow and being in the zone. And so like getting interrupted by an error screen every, I don't know, hour, 45 minutes, whatever, it's

very weird and annoying and you're like in the moment like totally focused on whatever bizarre arcane task at hand and you're just like oh right this is a video game at least that's my experience um so kirk so getting back to the game itself so one of the things people are talking about a lot this time around is that there's an ongoing story and it seems to put a lot more focus on that ongoing story i don't agree with that really i gotta say haven't played all these games yeah i finished it i mean there's some story stuff toward the end but it's never more than just, I don't know, the constant blah, blah, blah, Diana, blah, blah, Asian 47, who remembers what is killed, who.

And then you're just, it's always kind of silly in the background stuff. The real narratives of this game always take place in the missions. And then there are some points toward the end where the mission story more clearly dovetails with the story in the cutscenes. And you're kind of, it's cool. They do some really fun stuff that you can tell they've wanted to do. The final mission, like the final sort of run. toward the end is really neat

and it has some just really nice moments. I, of course, won't spoil, but I really enjoyed. And it's cool, but it's not like a narrative game, especially not in the misguided way that Absolution was. It's still totally a hitman game. And I'm curious, I kind of want to play it again from the beginning just to, not exactly for the story, but just to see how everything fits together

because there's some cool callbacks. There's a lot of callbacks in the series because the same people have been making it this all time, where the trilogy does feel, complete and people will reference, oh, he was a bodyguard for this guy and you know, oh, that's right, that was that guy I killed way back, you know, three years ago in Hitman 1. And especially because the first game was released episodically and now is a kind of complete game. And now, of course, the whole thing is complete.

You can just go play them all back to back. I think that would be really fun to do. Even if you just did some, like, those same sort of mission stories that just guide you through it, to go through each level and get a feel for all of the things that 47 did over the course. with the saga because it really was a saga. I feel like that turned into a grind. It would feel a little repetitive. I don't think that it would, but it all depends on how much you like this kind of game.

Yeah, I guess how much. Yeah, I like to dabble and I like to get to know one level, but then I find that I burn out on these games more quickly than other games. Interesting. Why do you think that is? Yeah, I'm not sure. I think maybe just because so much of it is about like coming up with your own story and your own finding the fun yourself,

which can be enjoyable. Yeah, which can be enjoyable for a little while, but it isn't like my favorite type of game as opposed to a game that tells you a story. And one of the reasons I enjoyed the Dartmoor mission so much is because it has that kind of beginning to end like actual narrative of this family, and the family is fascinating

and getting to know them and their mystery is really interesting. Yeah, I think part of what's cool about the Hitman story, and this is probably true of all the other Hitman game, but whatever. I don't know. I can only talk about Hit Man 3. Is the fact that it's as though multiple realities are existing at the same time. So you can never really tell a concrete story in that environment.

Like, for example, it's as though Agent 47 remembers everything that ever happened to him. Like, he has a video game character essentially because he's you. And so, like, if you're replaying a level multiple times, like there's the fact that you can kick down a ladder and then the ladder's there for you again later if you replay the level. It's a new feature in this. as though the world itself bends to your will and like you're really just a video game character like experiencing this world. But then there's also the way that achievements work or not achievements, but like unlocking

things in the game where like you play a mission story and once you've beaten it, it's like checked off and it's as though you've experienced that. And at first I was like anxious about my saves and I was like, do I need to maintain just one save file where I've like completed all of these things? And then I was like, oh no, the game just remembers everything I've ever. done. And if I've achieved something, it doesn't matter if I overwrite that save later, like the game remembers everything. Do you get what I'm saying? So it's like as though the story itself is something meta and outside of the idea of the game. It's ground highs day, Maddie.

Yeah, kind of. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And man just keeps remembering. He does, yeah. In Dubai, I was doing an escalation and the daughter of the character that I had killed in the story was talking about how her father had died. So I was back in Dubai at that point, which then does make sense because you unlock more places and costumes. Well, I thought the escalations were always set after whatever happens, no? Yeah, I mean, I think that I never realized that there were more lines of dial. It was actually narratively set after the events of the game.

That's interesting. In a very subtle way. It's basically the same level. But there were some differences, which I'm assuming at least that that's what I saw. I might be wrong or the levels might not all be like that. But I noticed that and thought that was actually kind of cool. at least during the Dubai escalation than I did. Yeah, I wasn't sure also if, like, if you play certain mission stories,

if that would matter later in the game. But it doesn't sound like it's that kind of game where I'm like, well, if I do or don't do a certain mission story, then is that kind of matter? But that's just not how the game works. It's like individual little puzzles that you can fit together yourself and tell your own story. It's very classic Kirk Hamilton game in that way.

Yeah, the stuff that carries over is just you unlock more gear or starting locations in specific levels, but it's mostly level. level specific and i just think it's interesting and you also get points and but one of the one one thing that people find enjoyable about it is to compete for the most points for a given level right or like a high rating yeah did you see the speed run of dubai where the person just walks in and shoots the two guys and walks out it's a seven second speed run or something you can barely right in well they're they're both visible from when you walk in that's so funny he just takes his pistol out and

merks the two guys and then walks out that that's amazing it's incredible it's on kataku i think someone personally. It's too bad I didn't do that. I feel like I could have done that right on the game. Why didn't I figure that one out? I don't know. I don't know. I took hours. I don't know. Nice. All right. Well, I'm definitely be playing this game some more and it's a fun game. Why don't we take a break and then we'll be back with one more thing. Hi, I'm Jackie Cation. Hi, I'm Lori Kilmartin. And we have a podcast called The Jackie and Laurie Show. Who are you, Lori Gilmartin? Oh my God. So much pressure. A stand-up of a new stand-up since 1987. I'm a writer for Conan. I've written a couple books, have a couple CDs out, have a special out. Who are you, Jackie? Well, I, too, am a stand-up comic since 1984. And I do The Road, like a maniac, and don't have a cool writing job, but I have four albums out, working on a new album. We talk about stand-up.

We talk about all the different parts of stand-up comedy. So that's the Jackie and Laurie Show, and you should subscribe on Maximum Fun if you want to hear that. And I would encourage you not to. Hey, you like movies? What about coming up with movie ideas over the course of an hour? Because that's what we do every week on Story Break, a writer's room podcast where three Hollywood professionals have an hour to come up with a pitch for a movie or TV show based off of totally zany prompts. Like that time we reimagine Star Wars based on our phones auto-complete. Luke Skywalker is a family man and it's Star Wars, but it's a good idea. How about that time we broke the story of a bunch of Disney Channel original movies based solely on the title and the poster?

Okay, Sarah Highland is a 50-foot woman. Let's just go with it, guys. Or the time we finally cracked the Adobe Photoshop feature film. Stamptool is your Woody and then the auto film is the new Buzz Lighty. Join this as we have a good time of matching. All the movies Hollywood is too cowardly to make. Story break comes out every Thursday on maximum fun. I don't know why I'm using this voice now. And we are back in time for one more thing.

Maddie, you got to go first because I'm excited to talk about your one more thing. Great. So I want to talk about Ted Lasso, which is a television show on Apple TV Plus. Is that what that services calls? I should have looked into this. Whatever Netflix competitor Apple's put together where they're funding television shows. I love this show. And I think people should get an Apple subscription so that they can watch it because it rules.

It is a comedy, 30-minute episodes. I think there's eight of them. Really feel-good show where you watch it and you can watch it right before bed and have a great night's sleep kind of a TV show. because you just feel good about the world. It's Jason Sudec is playing a like Midwestern American student football coach, I guess college ball. Jason, I feel like you would remember what his backstory is and I don't.

And he ends up getting tapped to run a football club in the UK, which would never happen in real life. Well, the other football. Yes, the other football. The other kind of football, soccer. But it's actually called football there. And it is a completely absurd practice. which is based on a series of commercials apparently that Jason Sudecas did that I watched.

And I was like, huh, it's pretty funny commercials. And they made it into a television show. And I don't know, it rules. And based on that description, you wouldn't think that this would be a television show that has some of the best written female characters that I've seen in recent memory. But it also is that. And I don't know, I was really impressed, especially with the character Keeley, who's like dating one of the footballers.

And that sounds like such a reductive role, but she really rises above it and becomes like a key fixture in the show and like the moral center of it in an interesting way. So yeah, I love this show and I think people should watch it. And Beard. Beer is my favorite character. Yes. There's so many great characters on the show. It's really hard to pick a favorite. I go, I watch this show twice now.

And we watch it again with Em's folks. And it holds up the second viewing. It actually, it's such a rich show. There's so much good foreshadowing. character work happening early on when in the first two or three episodes we were laughing and really liking it but it wasn't clear just how faithfully they were going to honor every character that they'd created by the end in the beginning so you don't really like we didn't realize that even the bit players the people who seem like they're going to be comic relief yeah keely who seems

like she's going to be the girlfriend you don't realize that all of these characters are going to become beloved wonderful fleshed out people even what's his face like her is assistant, the owner's assistant, what's his name, Higgins? Yeah, yeah, the assistant Higgins. Higgins is amazing. He gets his own storyline. He's playing, one of my favorite things. And even Jamie Tart, who is such a prick.

And I really, like, he's just meant to be this really annoying character. But in the second viewing, I was much more, he's very funny. The actor who plays him is really good at playing him as this sort of vinglorious jerk. But he's also a really sympathetic character. And you see these little flashes of, like, all the things that he's struggling with. I have a whole take on this show. Maddie, I've joked about writing an article about this, too, even though I'm never going to do it. But an article about a take about how this show, I think, portrays every major masculine archetype.

Each guy in this show is kind of a different type of masculinity. And then they all meet around this fulcrum point that is Ted Lassow. Who is like Mr. Rogers, if that's a type of masculinity. He's his own type. And I haven't fleshed it out enough to even get into it here. But I think that's a fascinating thing about the show, even though, as you said, Maddie, It also has fantastically written female characters. And it's just a great show about people doing their best and trying to be good.

But not in the smurphy, cheesy way that that sounds. It's such a good show. People should get an Apple TV Plus demo even. I think you can do the trial for a week. Yeah, you can get a free month or whatever. That's funny. Go watch it. It's so good.

Yeah, one of the co-creators of the show, it should be noted, is Bill Lawrence best known for Scrubs. And Scrubs is, like, the definition of the show that you don't think is going to be, like, anything special. and then it's like unbelievably heartwarming and hilarious and awesome. Yeah, it has major Scrubs energy. When I saw that after we'd watched a couple episodes, a lot of things kind of made more sense to me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm excited for it to get a second season.

I don't even know if it's going to. I just want it to. Yeah, so it's got, it's already been renewed for a second and a third and a third. Yes. Yes. I think it's because it's kind of Apple TV Plus's first real hit. They haven't had a show, a critical hit at least. They haven't had a show that people like us go on podcasts to be like,

No, no, no, this is really good and you should watch it. Well, we liked Mythic Quest. Mythic Quest is pretty good. Yeah, but I don't think that was... I didn't see people talking about Mythic Quest the way I see people talk about Ted Lasso. Yeah, no, I think Ted Lasso was a stronger... No, not... We're a video game podcast.

Of course, we're going to talk about Mythic... But, like, I've seen TV critics, especially because given... Remember the Caveman TV show? This is a sitcom based on an ad. It should have been terrible. And yet, somehow, it's one of the best shows I've seen in a really long time. Which also just feels unbelievable. It does.

Yeah, it's so good. I love it so much. All right. I'll go next. Mine is also a TV show. And it is a show that I talked about forever ago in the split screen days and then stopped watching and then recently started watching again. And I'm really liking.

And that is The Expans. This is a sci-fi show that is now an Amazon show. I believe Amazon bought this from I want to say sci-fi network or maybe FX after two seasons. and is now just a long-running FX show. They just had their fifth season. Have other ever you seen this show? Nope. No.

No. So it's based on a series of books that I haven't read. It feels very booky. It's very political. Very the machinations of three governments, really two governments and one sort of city-state government. And that is Earth, Mars, and the Belt. That's where it starts. And we're in the future where Mars has been colonized.

There's definitely some sort of Mars trilogy, you know, sci-fi. feelings there with Mars trying to establish their own identity and having their own whole culture because they've had to live on Mars and make it work on Mars, which is very different than on Earth. So they have their own really intense sort of almost a cold war going at the beginning of this between Mars and the Earth. The belt, meanwhile, is just sort of out in the asteroid belts, the people who live in space. And there are whole colonies of people who just live in space. And they have their own whole culture and their own whole world and their own challenges and they're sort of shunted off to the side by the other two civilizations. So that's the kind of

basic three-way political conflict, that then all this stuff gets introduced to. There's, of course, just the long-running political tensions. There's this alien proto-molecule that turns up that is it's not clear where it came from, who's developing it, who wants to use it as a weapon. That's kind of the catalyst for this ongoing conflict that winds up, it's kind of revolving around the ship, the Rosanate, and its crew, who are these different people from all over the place, and they wind up kind of in the thick of it over and over again. This show also has major mass effect energy, the farther you go into.

it, the more really, really, really starts to feel like Mass Effect visualized from a narrative point of view. Of course, Mass Effect owes a lot to previous sci-fi and was also kind of a grab bag of sci-fi tropes, but it really does have some Mass-Effect feeling anyone who likes Mass Effect would like this show. And it's really dense and very plot-heavy. The characters aren't great. I don't think, like, it's kind of partly the actors and the characters. It's not really, it's not a show where I go to it because I'm like, oh, I can't wait to see that character. It's kind of the opposite of Ted Lassau. I don't think, oh, I can't wait to find out what's happening. to hold him. The main guy, I'm kind of like, whatever. It does have

Shoray Al-Aadashlu, who is the voice of, she's like the voice of a bunch of video game characters. She's an amazing voice. Also, in season 4 of 24, as the mother of a family. Yes, that's right. She's in 24. She's in, I think, House and Sand and Fog. She's in an X-Men. She's in one of the X-Men. She's the voice of the future Warcult vendor in Destiny. She has this incredible purring voice. Hello, my name

is Shorre. And I'm going to make you fall asleep using only the power of my voice. Yeah, she's a great actor. So there are some great actors playing roles, but most of the main cast, they're fine, but that's not the point. It's always that every episode is like, pedal to the metal, what is going to happen? You know, I don't know, if you've, if you watch the Battlestar Galactica remake, if you remember like Pegasus and Resurrection ship, that whole run where they're the two ships and they're kind of at each other's throats and you don't know who's going to betray who, and they're under attack by the Sylons, and there's a plan to throw, like,

throw the bridge of each ship and you're like... I remember watching that live, man. Yeah, me too. And like falling out of my chair. So season three, which we just came back to, we kind of fell off it because it got too complicated and we weren't that invested in the characters. Season three is really entertaining.

I mean, it's nothing but every episode is just like a nonstop thrill ride of sort of tension. And they do a good job of just killing people a lot, especially at the beginning. They just kill people. And so you get in a kind of anyone can die vibe. And because the show is so much more about the bigger plot, Then about the characters, you do care about the characters. A lot of the actors are really charming.

And you're like, well, I don't want you to die. I don't want to watch the people that I've followed this whole way, have bad things happen to them. But you're always worried. And it's kind of convincing, you know, when you're like, how are they going to get out of this one? Or maybe they aren't going to get out of this one. And it just keeps escalating. And they come up with these really creative scenarios to put everyone in, especially in season three. The second half has just got a really great kind of ongoing scenario that's just an eight episode or like six episode run.

And it's a great show. I'm really excited to be back watching it. It's been a cool thing. There's two more seasons to watch. It's really good for, you know, being stuck inside during COVID. So, yeah, I'm psyched to be back on it. A lot of people over the years have been like, you should get back to the expanse. It's good.

I know you stopped watching it, but watch it. And they were right. It is good. I'm enjoying it. And now I'm sure they'll all tell me, oh, well, now it turns to dog shit in season four is terrible. Isn't that always the way? Don't tell me that, even if it's true. We're going to watch it anyways.

So anyways, that's the expanse. It's an Amazon show, and you can watch it on Amazon. on TV. All right, Jason, what is your one more thing? Cool. So before my one more thing, I'm going to cheat a little bit because I just finished a book. Sorry, everyone does it. I just finished a book called Pyrrana Nisi by Susanna Clark. That's really, really good, and I recommend it. And I know people always appreciate book recommendations. Also, there's a lot of NFL drama going on, but I'm going to save it. I'm going to save NFL talk for after the Super Bowl,

and then we'll get into some real NFL juice, some dirt, some Super Bowl talk. So that'll be in a couple weeks. But my one more thing this week is GameStop. One of the craziest stories ever, ever, ever. Why wasn't this my prediction? Why did I just predict the GameStop would get absorbed by another company? Why didn't I predict? Well, it might because this might cause it to implode. So what's happened is GameStop's stock was at trading at like $10 a couple of months ago. Now, last I checked, it's Tuesday night. It was trading at over $200 in after hours trading. The story behind this is insane and absurd and I still don't understand half of it. Terrifying. Terrifying. But basically, the short version is a lot of people were shorting the stock

and shorting in investor terms basically means betting against it. You make money if the stock does poorly. Like the big short that movie was Steve Krell based on the Michael Lewis book. So a lot of like hedge funds and like big name financial people were doing it. And somehow, Now, at some point, a bunch of Redditors on a subreddit called Wall Street Betts, which is just an insane place. Like, they all call each other like autistic retards. Like, they all just use these words. Very Chan energy there. It is very Chan.

It's very meme, full of memes. And they all decided that, like, hey, we're going to pump up GameStop. We're going to buy tons of GameStop. There's this one guy who boasts on there every day, and his handle is deep fucking value. and he has turned about $40,000 or $50,000 into $22 million in GameStop Stop. He's still sitting on it, by the way. He hasn't sold, so who knows, maybe this will all come crashing back to Earth, but they all believe that they're going to keep driving it up.

I don't know why they're doing this. I don't know if they think they're going to make a bunch of money, or if a lot of them talk about this one company called Melvin Capital, which is the one of the huge hedge funds that has shorted a ton of GameStop. So they got totally screwed by this. Like they're losing literally billions of dollars because the stock is going up. And the way it works is if you short a stock and then it goes up, you have to like buy some of it and cut your losses. And there's a thing called a short squeeze where because you're getting squeezed, you have to buy it.

And that drives the stock up even more. And you can just get totally fucked. And that's what's happening in this hedge fund. Like it might actually go under because of this. Like they might lose so many billions. Yeah, which is kind of a cool like Occupy Wall Street. like sort of like... I guess, but that's not their motivation in it at all.

It's more just of a chaotic. Well, they do talk about that a lot on the subreder. They do talk about Melvin a lot of them like going after. A lot of them believe they're part of this like Robin Hood scheme to like take money from the rich. And that's, I think that's what's driving based on my own, my reading of the subreda. That seems to be what a lot of people are talking about. But yeah, this stock just keeps going through the roof and it's just like it's such

a strange thing and such a bizarre proof of like how meaningless our economy is how it's all just built on ticky-tacking. Well, the economy isn't the stock market, to be clear. The stock market is weird. The economy is a very different thing. Sure, but the stock market drives much of our, I mean, anyone who has a retirement account or like a mutual fund or savings is like tied up in the stock market, even if it's not quote unquote, the economy.

Yeah, that's the stock market, though. The economy is a separate thing. Yeah, but it is real money. I mean, that's the part of it that's kind of scary to me, like, you know, if somebody seems to have won $22 million from playing the stock, so like that is people's money. Like, it's not as though it's just like a cool cash payout that someone is magically getting. Like it's, it's money that exists somewhere and is taken away from someone else. And there've already been like some stories of people like as the game stock has gone up and down all week where

people have been investing in it and then losing money as it goes down again. And like there are many stories of people online that are not the 22 million one and are just people putting money into this thinking like, oh, I guess we're all putting stock and game stop now or buying stock and game stop. And like those stories are depressing to me and make me feel like, I don't know, like gamers getting into stock market stuff is, uh, it's a real chaos timeline that we're in. You know what I mean? Like we, I know we're already in a chaos timeline, but this is like some real, real shit here. So this is, this is very much like day. Like people have Robin Hood accounts and they're like buying individual stocks.

Buying individual stocks is gambling. It is 100% gambling as opposed to investing in the broader stock market and saying, I'm going to put all my money in a Vanguard mutual fund and it'll rise and fall with the S&P. And that's a little bit more of like, like I'm not really worried about that because the volatility of like an individual stock isn't really affecting the overall market. And like unless you're, I mean, if you're someone who's going and buying GameStop stock because you saw a headline about it, then you're just essentially throwing your money.

Like, you're gambling. It's the same as when I bet on the chiefs to cover, which they did, by the way. But it's just as risky. But it's just as risky, right? It's just as stupid. So that's like a whole different thing. The thing that worries me is more

that this company's, this GameStop itself, might just explode as a result of this. Because eventually this is all going to come crashing back to Earth. Maybe the GameStop board is going to offload, shares, try to get out. Maybe someone will come in, try to take over. Who knows, maybe a hedge fund will try to buy them.

Anything can happen. And the people who are going to get really fucked at the end of the day are GameStop employees. And that's what kind of worries me about this whole thing, is that like it could go really badly for GameSup employees because of this Reddit meme stock craziness. But it is wild. I mean, I just can't believe it. It's happening. I've never seen anything like this. It's sort of like a good comparison, I think, is like, have you guys seen Wolf of Wall Street? No. I never wanted to.

It just seemed like a movie full of assholes. It is. It is. It's an enjoyable movie. But I'm more of a Scorsese fan than you guys are. So Wolf of Wall Street, so the whole premise of that is that like the way they made money and the way that a lot of one of the big stock no-nows is it's called a pump and dump.

And basically you get a bunch of people to buy, you buy a stock when it's really low, like a penny stock or something like that. You get a bunch of unwitting people to buy in and then you sell when it's at its highest. And that is essentially what is happening here with a Reddit. Except the stock market has never anticipated that people would do this on Reddit. And they're like SEC regulations for when this happens. They're not really well enforced. But there exists for when this happens when like a hedge fund does it or like a proper gaming banking company does it.

But like when a subreddit does it, when a Reddit is like collectively saying let's all pump up this stuff. The SEC is going to take away their flare. What do you do? Like the stock market was just not meant for this. And it is so bizarre. They're going to have to figure it out, though. Because watching this, I'm like, this could just start happening all the time. Like, what's to stop anyone from doing this?

Like, we already see, like, K-pop stands, like, influencing all kinds of things on the internet by sheer volume. Like, why not? Why not? If all the K-pop stands decide they want to, like, buy a stock, should get really crazy. You know what I mean? Like, it's just, like, there's a lot of groups of people on the internet who decide to do strange things and can influence real world events.

So that's fine. that's all fine. Elon Musk tweeted the other day, get signal. And he was talking about the phone app signal, like the messaging app, but a bunch of people bought in an entirely different company called Signal. And its stock went up like 100%, 200%, something like that, even though nobody had actually, like, he had not actually said that. He just said the word signal. Sometimes I think about what, like, the history books are going to say about Elon Musk's Twitter feed. And I just, I just scratched my head and I can't really figure out what it's going to look like. It will not shock you. It will not shock you to hear that he was involved with the GameStop stuff too because when he tweeted

about that it went up like another 60% or something like that. Man, that's wild. So yeah, wild, wild world. This sounds like a wild story. I've been following a little bit. I'll say that I've just over the last few weeks completely unrelated to this, just been going and reading an explanation of what shorting is and what options are because I want to get the two, like, really want to get my head around it. I don't do a lot of investing, but I've seen people talking about Robin Hood and how terrible an idea it is to be getting into options or shorting if you're just a casual person and wanting to learn what they are. A lot of people, I know people

who have lost a lot of, like, really ruin themselves with day trading. Like, that shit is scary. Yeah, it is just gambling. But it's been interesting to just try to understand what some of that stuff is because some of it is so weird, like, options trading is just totally weird. So maybe I'll link to a couple of things. I recommend doing that to anyone listening if you're just sort of

curious about this. And maybe we can also link to something like explaining exactly how this pump and dump Reddit thing works with GameStum. Yeah, yeah. There's some good articles. Get it, but I would love to read an authoritative breakdown. Yeah, I read some good Bloomberg articles to promote the month. But yeah, I will say that, like, I highly, highly recommend not downloading Robin Hood

because I know a lot of people were tempted to be like, I want to get in on this game something. And, man, that can still ruin your life. Get a mutual fund. Mutual fun, like, you get into the stock market. It's going up, especially if you're in it for the long haul. It's like an average of, like, 8% a year or something like that. And, like, you'll gain steadily. Stay conservative.

Don't. say this is a gambler, but like this is another level of gambling. Not like that... Gambling with that much money is never a good idea. Yeah, when you're talking about like this, like it can be super scary. Like nobody, you do not want to get into day trading if you are not a pro. Even if it seems fun to be part of a Reddit meme, I highly recommend not doing fast. Yeah, don't do it.

Don't do it. Good advice to wrap up on. All right, well, that's our show. Don't go and gamble away all of your money, everybody. And stay safe out there. I will see the two of you next week. See you next time. 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 maximum fun.org slash join. Find us on Twitter at triple clickpods and 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.