Triple Click - Triple Play: Horizon Zero Dawn

Episode Date: August 13, 2020

One More Thing:Jason: Blizzard staff take collective actionMaddy: Destiny 2 Kirk: Doom PatrolSupport Triple Click: https://maximumfun.org/joinKirk’s old article ranking video game bows: https://kotaku.com/video-games-have-become-obsessed-with-bows-and-arrows-5991211Noah Caldwell-Gervais on Horizon Zero Dawn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yt7c8yXiuJkBloomberg article on Blizzard organization: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-05/blizzard-workers-organize-on-company-slack-seeking-pay-increasesCool Atlantic article about Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol run: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/04/doom-patrol/360616/Layoffs at DC: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/dc-comics-dc-universe-hit-by-major-layoffs-1306743 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

You know what they say? A bad video game is bad forever, but a delayed game can eventually be good, which is why nobody should ever release video games. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we are talking about Horizon Zero Dawn, a fantastic game about robot dinosaurs that just came to PC. So let's discuss, shall we? I'm Jason Trier. I'm Maddie Myers. And I'm Kirk Hamilton. And here we are for another episode of Triple Click. Everybody's favorite gaming podcast. Everybody's. You know, I think it's everybody's. That's what I heard. Everybody called me up earlier this morning.

It's my babies. My baby just said, ah? Of course. Definitely, definitely her favorite show. And speaking of favorites, my favorite people in the world are all the people who signed up to support us during Max Fun Drive. It is now over. You no longer have to hear us talking about Max Fund Drive. But thanks for signing up.

Everybody who signed up, we had a whole lot of people become members to support us, which is an amazing feeling and very exciting. It's so cool. It's really cool that we get to do this show and have all of your support and just be like a totally listener-supported show that rules. But really, I just wanted to say thanks to everybody. We all wanted to say thank you to all of you who signed up to be members. And just thank you.

You don't have to hear about Max Fund Drive for a whole other year. Even though going by my NPR, like my Public Radio experience, it'll feel like it's Max Fund Drive immediately. Like if you were annoyed by those ads, you will be annoyed by them. Yeah, time is weird anyway now. I'm pretty sure a year is happening tomorrow, I think. I think that's how it works now. Right.

Yes, but save that talk for the time loop beans gas. That's true. That's true. Yeah, that's true. When we all begin to escape our time loop. The COVID time loop. So, speaking of time loops, we are going to be talking about a video game from 2017 on this episode. And it's like it's a brand new video game because it just came out on PC.

That game, of course, is Gorilla Games' Horizon Zero Dawn, which was a PS4 exclusive released in 2017 and has just now come to PC as well. So a lot more people can be playing it. And one of us is playing it for the first time, that one of us being Maddie Myers. So we thought we would do a triple play and talk some about Horizon Zero Dawn. Real quick, when you say Gorilla Games, Horizon Zero Dawn, here's a funny story. The other day I mentioned on Twitter, I was like, Horizon is so impressive and it's particularly really impressive because it's a studio that was only making first-person shooters, and they pivoted into this open-world RPG. And someone responded to me being like, actually, there was the great underrated open world game, Red Faction, Gorilla.

And I was like, what? I realized, oh, you must think because it has guerrilla title. That's how it works. You know, guerrilla games. Games about guerrilla fighters? Is that what we're talking about? Yeah, they're all games about guerrilla fighters. Yes, you put your game studio in the title of like how Bungy is made by Halo Studios, etc.

So we're going to be talking about Horizon Zero Dawn. Jason, you and I have been playing the game again from the beginning. I think we're both playing on PC. Yes. And Maddie, you're playing it for the first time and you're playing on PS4. So I want to start with you. I've just gone fully back in time.

Yes. Still playing it on a PS4. Don't even have a PlayStation 4 Pro, honestly. So I really could have had this identical experience in 2017. And I just chose not to. There were plenty of reasons not to because a lot of really good games came out in 2017. And it just never got around to this one.

It was like five days before Breath of the Wild. It was like five days before Breath of Wild. I know, which I remember playing. But there were a bunch of other cool games that year. Don't make me less them all. People can Google them. You definitely don't have to. I never got around to it.

So it's really cool to play it now in a time-displaced version of it, where I'm completely separated from the discourse about the game, but I have this distant memory of the kinds of things people talked about, but I can also form my own conclusions about it. So I am super enjoying this game so far. It is an open-world game. You play as a woman. who is voiced by Ashley Birch, who is a wonderful actress and does a great job with this character.

So it takes place in the future. I may as well summarize what the story is about, because why not. It takes place in the future. There's a bunch of robots walking around, but it's a dilapidated version of our world. And certain segments of society have popped up again in a sort of, how do I describe this? So the game posits that humanity will regress. I don't know what other word to use here, but this is probably the part of the game

that I find the most questionable is because I'm like, would humans really do this? Would they react to this situation in this way? Reminds me of our last of us conversation. Yeah, yeah, right? Yeah, I always have a lot of thoughts about apocalypse and what I think would and wouldn't happen,

but I'll try to go easy on that while I start describing this game. We can get into it later. So she, the main character, voiced by Ashley Birch is named Alloy, and she is an outcast of this tribe of people. You don't know why she's an outcast, and she has to become a part of the tribe again, or she's decided that she's going to become a part of the tribe again, by undergoing this Hunger Games-esque battle with these other characters who are part of the tribe.

And it's like a, I don't know, I'm probably doing a terrible job describing this game, But it's very moody to me, and there's a lot of mysterious aspects to it because there's all this futuristic technology that's still lying around in this world, but there's also this whole universe of the tribes that's been invented for the game. And so you're learning about the old technology that's still lying around and that alloy finds, but you're also learning about this version of the world and questioning that as well. Like the tribe is matriarchal, for example, and they have their whole religion that revolves around the technology that they find. And that, I don't know. So I'm really enjoying piecing together the mystery of the game. And yeah, I've talked for long enough. What do you guys think of it the second time around? You already know the whole mystery of the game. So you're less overwhelmed, perhaps, by piecing it together. I'm finding the narrative part of it really interesting the second time because the game gives very specific and clear explanations for almost everything that you may have a question. about, which is a cool thing to then know when you go back to the beginning. And this game, when you start playing it, it seems very clumsy in a lot of ways and sort of, you know, the game

itself is also just as a gameplay thing. It's like an amalgamation of a whole lot of different types of games. And I think there's kind of a school of thought out there that I'll see people saying that I understand, which is sort of, this game didn't grab me. I started playing it and it was just another open world game. And I could totally see feeling that in the first few hours. and I played this entire game and I loved this game. Like by the end of it, I actually thought the story was really brilliant. And it's because it does this parallel narrative thing that I've never quite seen done in the way that this game does it. A lot of what it's doing is familiar, but it's in the execution, I think, that it really works well.

And it's particularly these two stories. And you're kind of already getting it right in what you've played. And it's that there's the story of the ago, which is essentially the story of the apocalypse, of what happened to end the world. And then there's Aloys' story and the story of her quest to discover what happened and who she is and who the people are. And they're intertwined because she's learning about the past and the story of the past explains why things are the way that they are. And each aspect of the civilization, the technology, the knowledge, and the lack of knowledge that people have, it's all explained. Like, very clearly and purposefully. It's worth noting through like audio logs and video logs that you find out of the game.

And there's a lot more story in this game than I thought. thought there was going to be. I just want to throw that in. Like, I thought this was like an open world action game that had just a little sprinkling of a, you know, techno apocalypse in the past and whatever. That's just cool scene setting. This is like Mass Effect dialogue choices. You're deciding what kind of person Alois going to be and what her choices will be. And it's way more story heavy and cutscene heavy than I was expecting. So it's also that kind of game. The narrative director, I believe that was the set on the game where one of the main writers is this guy named John Gonzalez, who used to, who was also a lead writer on Fallout New Vegas. So you can see a lot of the influences there.

Yeah, I remember they brought in, didn't Meg J. Anthe do some writing, the writer of 80 days? I think we interviewed her at GDC. She said she just did some sort of, like, they had a lot of writers come in and just write some of the text logs. And a lot of like smart writers on there. And she did some of that. So they had really, she's an amazing writer. I think there were probably a lot of writers who were great. Because just to finish the thought about this parallel narratives thing, the story of the apocalypse, the text log story, the story that you learn through these text logs is great, I think. It's one of the most gripping tales of the apocalypse that I've encountered. It just is like a really good kind of airport read, but I mean that in a really good way.

I found it just so engrossing. The performances are so good. The text logs and the little personal stories you learn about, you'll go into a bunker and it's full of all these people who died and it's like their stories as they dealt with the fact that they were about to die, that the world is ending. And like, some of that stuff is so great. And it does tie in with Aloi's story, even though her story is on its own. I think that that is the weaker part of the narrative for me. It's fine. Like, it's a cool chosen one, whatever, like, quest.

And it's cool. And, like, the choices you make and the narrative decisions just don't really have that much bearing on the story. At certain points, they do. Like, that's fine. But the real meat of that is just fighting huge robots, dinosaurs and, like, that rules. But the story, I was just so surprised to have a, like, you know, go collect and listen to all of these audio logs story be great. Especially because, man, at the very beginning, the first thing you do as a kid is you're dropped into this cave and then there's just audio logs everywhere. And you spend all this time listening to audio logs.

And I remember the first time I played it being like, this is so dire. Like, I'm so not into this. Why am I listening to audio logs? And the second time through, because I was like, I knew that it was going to be a good story. I was paying attention. I was like, oh, this is good stuff. Like, I can't wait for more. Oh, man.

I don't know if either of you played Sal Park, the Stick of Truth, but there's a... I did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You did, right. The alien ship. You go to an alien ship. Oh, man. And you get to the alien ship, and the entire thing is, like, you keep finding audio logs.

And it's a guy who's dying talking about, like, why am I recording all these audio logs? Oh, my God, there's so many audio logs here. He just keeps talking about audio logs. There's a thing at the very beginning of Horizon where there's a guy who he says, oh, they asked me to record this for posterity. And then he's like, Jesus Christ. He's like, think of all the things I've done for posterity. and in the context of the story that's actually like there's a lot of stuff like that

that's really neat once you're sort of you've put it all together I have some thoughts that I'll give in a second but Maddie first of all have you met the character Silas yet Lance Reddick's character I don't think so oh Lance Reddick's in this game oh yes he is great can't wait to meet him so Lance Reddick plays a major role

in this game and once you start meeting him then the mysteries become even more like oh man you'll want to know even more what's going to happen which is really cool So yeah, so I actually, you guys talked a lot about the story. I want to talk about the gameplay because I've been playing, the last game I played right before this was Ghost of Tsushima, which I've played a bunch of, probably will go and play some more of. Although it's kind of a bummer playing PS4 games after you have the smooth like 60 frames a second on PC. But I'm playing Horizon on PC.

And one of the things that's notably different is that just the core kind of verbs of what you do in Horizon are so much more fun than what you do. Ghost of Tsushima. Ghost of Tsushima is a fun game. It's a good game overall. But there's only so many times you can just like sneak around and stab dudes in the same ways before you're just like, okay, like this is, I've had enough of this Assassin's Creed Outpost gameplay. Whereas Horizon, you encounter so many different types of dinosaurs, of robot dinosaurs.

They all have different weaknesses. You have a ton of different weapons that you can use and you gain more and more over the course of the game, from slings to like trap caster things that you can, that to like sharpshooting bows, which are sniper rifles essentially and regular bows. And also it feels so good. Like they've really mastered the bow shooting thing, which by the way, unrelated note, Kirk, I know you're obsessed with bow shooting. Something I was thinking about recently as I was playing this was like, what was the first

game to like really nail the bow and arrow? And that would make for a good Kataku article if any of us still worked at Kataku. I think it's a lot to do it for Polygon. Well, I did an article ranking bows. I did. But there was one game, it might have been the original or the Tomb Raider reboot that like really started nailing the Well, Far Cry 3, I believe was the first one to like make a bow a really major part of the game

and it was the first person shooter and a little bit different. But there were probably games before that. I think that was the oldest game in that ranking that I did. And Tomb Raider 20, what was that 2013? That was also a very good bow. And that one is designed really well better than the Far Cry one. Yeah. Well, now all bows kind of feel the same.

They feel like they have the same like L2 pull back like twang like it's all the same kind of mechanic and I think it was mastered like this decade which is cool to see it's cool to see game designers like really mastered the mechanic but Horizon I think does it best of all for a number of reasons and it's so satisfying to like knock a weak point plate off of a robot dinosaur and just like there's so many cool things that you can do like you can slow down time as many bow and arrow games let you do you can just kind of like have a loa in slow motion like running back. and like firing an arrow into like a dude's eye and just watching this robot dinosaur explode. It is so cool and cinematic and fun to play that I am just, I might be enjoying it even more the second time around because one of the problems of the PS4 version is the text is so small and you're like, you're squinting at your TV. It's actually not that bad. I wonder if they updated it since you two played it because I am finding the text to be very bearable. So let me just go ahead and say that. Kirk and I both played it like either before launch or right around.

launch. Sure, yeah. I think they, I think they ambigened it because the text, it's good. And I always play games on a computer monitor, so I never noticed text. Also, an important piece of context here is that when Kirk and I first played this, and if you go back and listen to like really old split screen episodes, we were both playing Breath of the Wild at the same time or had just finished Breath of the Wild. And so it was impossible not to make the comparisons. And when you're playing Breath of the Wild and you can climb on everything and glide down every possible cliff and you don't have to worry about fall damage or whatever. And then you go to this more restrictive open world, it's really hard to make that leap without thinking too hard and

getting a little frustrated by the constraints of Horizon. But playing it on its own, now I'm just super enjoying it and like ready to play through the entire game again, which I didn't think I would do. But like I knew I really like this game, but I'm fine that I am loving it and like would highly recommend it to everyone out there. Yeah. I'm very relieved that I'm playing this game in the era after I got super into Assassin's Creed origins, because that is a weird comparison to make, perhaps, but that was the game where I really trained myself to like stealth and be like, I'm going to just enjoy hiding in the tall grasses for an extremely long time, which before that game, I truly didn't have the patience for it. I just had never sat down and forced myself to

enjoy that and be like, gaming can be about patience, and it can just be about watching a walk animation and that's all part of the game and it's a puzzle to be solved and that is a huge part of horizon in a way that can be very satisfying. I suppose you don't have to level up the stealth tree, although that's what I've been doing and really enjoying, is playing it like a puzzle game where I'm figuring out the most effective way to approach each situation without anyone seeing me at any point. And that is super, super satisfying. I like the combat anyway. Like if you want to get in the mix with a robot dinosaur, that's fine, and you can still survive if you want to do that. But the puzzle aspect of it and the patience aspect is also super satisfying to me. And I'm, I don't know, I'm just glad

that now I can enjoy this kind of game. It feels like I've unlocked a different part of my brain that is capable of being patient and enjoying this genre, which previously I hadn't. So that's lucky, too. Have you run into any of the actual puzzles yet? Yes, I haven't. You know, how long long as this game, man. Well, it's super long. So the part you start off, it sounds like you're still in the opening, like, area. So once you get out of there, you get into the open world, and then you can, like, explore wherever and, like, get, they're like these big dinosaurs that are the towers of this game,

and you unlock those and unlock regions, sort of like Eversup game. But so one of the highlights of the game, and Kirk and I both loved this part of the game, is there are a few different, like, vaults that are, like, these optional little robotic puzzles that you have to solve, and you go under, and they're, like, little dungeons essentially. Like Lara Croft's optional tombs and Tomb Raider 2013. Exactly. That's exactly what they are. Yeah, no, it's very clearly like inspired by the tombs because yeah, you go and you solve a ton of puzzles and then you get something cool at the end. Yeah, that rules. Yeah, these are the caldrons, right? And they're really cool looking too.

Yeah, that's what they're called. Oh, yeah. I did just talk to someone who told me about it. Yeah, I think you have to do one and then maybe a couple of them are optional. Yeah, and then other ones open up. Yeah, so I want to like rave about the gameplay because I have all these specific thoughts too. So, you know, the stealth stuff, like the Assassin's Creed style stuff, is actually, to me, one of the weaker elements of the game only because I don't think it's as good at stealth as like a Far Cry or as like a Ubisoft game that it's clearly borrowing so much for. Like when you go to an enemy like banded outpost and there's a, you know, there's an alarm in the middle that you have to get to and there's like centuries around. It feels so like an Assassin's Creed game, but then it's the AI is nowhere close to, I think, at least where it needs to be. And then there's a mission pretty early on. It's like the Revenge of the Nora mission where you have to go into this like kind of patrolled base and you have to blow up a big thing of gasoline basically in the middle of the base.

And then a big fight breaks out. And the whole time up to then you've been taking outposts full of dudes and a couple of those watchers like the little robots. And then what's it called? It's like the fire spitting thing. The huge ass like it's one of the first times you fight a huge friggin robot dinosaur. And it totally changes the dynamics of the fight because it can kill you almost instantly. It's gigantic and like just storming around.

It shoots fire at you. So you have to be on, you have to like have it in the back of your mind at all times. It killed me when I was playing. And like not alert it until it's time to do that boss fight because if you alert it, you are screwed in that moment. And even in the fight, it's like there's a bigger fight unfolding. There's AI fighting AI.

And then this huge thing is just rampaging around. And that to me is really cool playing it the second time because I was like, ah, this is where the game says, okay, here's the kind of game this is. Because really, for me at least, when it comes down to it, this game is an amalgamation of a lot of different things. It's got a lot of the different Ubisoft things, Far Cry. It's got the sort of Witcher-style side quests that branch and go in interesting places

and always have a narrative twist. It's got the Mass Effect, like, Witcher dialogue system. But it's Monster Hunter, and it's the fact that they borrowed from Monster Hunter that I think is what, like, kicks this game over the top for me. Because the fights against the dinosaurs in this game are outrageously good. I can't believe how good they are. The fact that each enemy has its own, like, you know, distinct weak spots, they give you the slowdown time ability very early on, which is super crucial so you can start to target those

spots with like your terror blast heroes. Now that I know how all the things really work, which it took a long time playing the game, I don't think it explains everything that well, actually. It doesn't. I didn't really feel to me like I had the hang of it until six hours in or so, because I was just like, I don't really know. And it might even be at the end of it. the game. You might even look back and be like, oh, wow, there's whole systems I didn't understand. I don't have

the hang of it as it happens. I'm going to run into six more dinosaurs. I don't know how to be. Here's an example of a thing. The rope launcher, which is really, really useful, absolutely crucial for tethering a dinosaur down. I didn't even understand. There's a U.X thing where if you shoot one rope, it sticks into the thing and then she sticks it into the ground. And a circle starts to fill up, or the rope like icon over the dinosaur starts to slightly fill. and then you hit it with another rope and it fills a little bit more and a little bit more. And then when you finally get it to the top, a little ring appears around it and the robot is staggered. So there's a whole system there where you have to shoot a bunch of ropes into it.

And it's the same with fire. When you're shooting with fire arrows, it slowly fills up and then it catches on fire and a white ring appears around the circle. Wait, I don't understand why you're talking about shooting ropes into it. The ropes are like setting traps. You set ropes on the ground. No, no, the rope caster I'm talking about. Not the trip caster. The rope caster is like a, it's like a spear harpoon gun. Like it shoots a harpoon into thing.

So that is like you can slow them down with one rope, but if you shoot like seven ropes into one, you can really like stick it and then it gets stuck. And then you can go do a critical hit. There's all this stuff that like it doesn't fully explain. And I remember getting wrecked when I was playing it for a while. And it just took a long time to learn that stuff. And now that I know it all, the game is much more, you know, approachable.

Like it's a lot easier. But it's just those fights like are, they're so good. Every dinosaur is different. When you start fighting like the T-Rexes, there's these flying, dudes that you'll run into later. These huge, like, taradactals are super cool. Sweet. There are a lot of big optional fights, too.

Oh, yeah. Those are the best ones. There's a great optional T-Rex fight that you can do. But the Frozen Wilds or Frozen North, what's it called? Frozen Wilds, maybe. Yeah, it's like the DLC stuff. The DLC, which I reviewed for Kataku, and then started a new game plus after that because I was like, God, I really love this game, like, playing the DLC.

There is an enemy in that. It's this huge bear that you fight. That's the most wild, like, robot monster that you fight. It's like a giant bear. It's so aggressive. It's like constantly on you. You're just like running around trying to get away even on easy difficulty or a normal difficulty. And it's just the alchemy that they hit, like the balance of you getting pushed around by these huge dinosaurs, having to like constantly react.

You're always on the defensive because they do so much damage. You have to be creative. You can slow down time. The controls, the slide. I think this game is like the best slide of any game ever. You can slide for like 500 yards like down the mountain and that it slows time when you're sliding in. There's just so much in the feel of it that's just unbelievably good. Yeah, well, that's really where it, like, rises above the sum of all its parts.

It's in that kind of that chemistry that you described. Maddie, by the way, I was going to say before, a tip, a pro tip is that if you shoot fire arrows like a canister on a robot, you can make it explode. But sometimes you have to shoot, like, two or three fire arrows into the canister. And, like, you have to pay attention to that gauge that Kirk was talking about where it just fills up. But you'll know it when it happens because literally it'll explode. Yeah, no, it took me a while to figure out that fire arrow gauge, which is just a good tip in general. Like, for a while, I was like, I feel like the fire arrows suck and I don't even understand what the point of them is.

And then I started noticing how enemy behavior changes if you've hit them several times in a row with a fire arrow. And I was like, wait a minute, there's something else going on here. Like, they will actually be on fire and then burn for a while and that'll continue to deplete health, which is like super helpful if you're fighting a bunch of human enemies. but it's also good to know how they affect the robots that are weak to fire, which is not all of them, and it's important to pay attention. Yeah, you have to, so when you're, yeah, when you're like focusing, you can see their weaknesses in addition to their weak points that will show you, like on the bottom it'll be like lightning bulge, like fire or whatever.

I do think that that scanning interface is a little bit of a weak point because you can't, you have to scan the individual parts. It slows you way down to. It's more like in the heat of the moment. You're trying to scan and like that little reticle just, doesn't always go where it's supposed to go. Like tagging enemies is also kind of hard. They're working out some kinks.

Yeah, tagging enemies is dumb. But yeah, I mean, it's kind of irritating. And in the heat of the moment, that's the last thing that you care about. You're just like, ah, I'm just going to throw everything. Right, I'm just going to start shooting things at it, which is works a lot of the time. One of my favorite enemies is the crab. Have you fought a crab robot yet, Maddie? I don't think so.

Apparently all the good stuff happens after the first 10 hours in this game. So I guess I'll have to keep playing it. Well, so I wanted to mention also that even though it's, seems like you've been in the opening area forever. One of the things that's actually really refreshing about this game is that it doesn't wear out its welcome. It's not like one of those 70-hour quests. It's actually like a neat like 30 hours, the entire thing, the entire main quest.

Right. You can take, you can spend longer or less time on it if you want. But actually, so some of the side quests are like really good and they've gotten that whole like Witcher style, like complicated sign quests down where it's like this healthy mixture of like fighting and investigating and tracking and talking to people. And a lot of them have like endings where you can choose your, your decisions like have an influence on what actually happens. So it's really got this combination of like all the, like tons of RPG mechanics,

plus like this, this combat system that I think beats a lot of like other RPGs. It's really just like, like, like you said, Kirk, it's like this amalgam of like all these different awesome parts from other games. And to me it just works so much better than like a lot of other games that try to do the old magomation thing. such as Ghost of Tsushima, which again is fun, but doesn't really hold up to Horizon. Can I say here's a spicy take? Maybe this isn't that spicy, but...

Okay, hit us. Having played a lot of Monster Hunter World, at least, like 100-something hours of that game. A hundred-something something? You played 100-something hours in the game? Wow. Having played 100-something hours for the game, yeah, that game begets a lot of gameplay. I think Horizon Zero Dawn is more fun. I have a better time playing it. I think the combat is just... It's a very different kind of game. It's not designed to, be this super intense RPG the way that Monster Hunter is. The monsters and Monster Hunter are more varied and there's a lot of, you know, there's more

going on in that game. It's bigger and crunchier. But man, the actual control, like there's a stamina, it's more like Dark Souls. Playing a game that's sort of like that, you're fighting huge monsters, it is very dangerous. You have to do your homework and be careful. But there isn't all of the quite as chewy JRP stuff with like a stamina meter and the Dark Souls style like animation lock combat. You're much more fluid.

you can slide for 500 yards while shooting in slow motion. Like that, you can never do that in Monster Hunter. And playing a game like that is just so cool. It's not like the one should be the other. They actually are complimentary and work well together. But it's cool that they took the Monster Hunter idea and then streamlined it into this really fun package. I think that's really impressive

because that couldn't have been easy to do. We should talk for a second about PC performance because a lot of people have been talking about that. What am I missing out on? So the game, I mean, there's been a lot of controversy over this port. For me, the game has run pretty well. I've been getting a pretty steady, good frame rate, and it looks gorgeous. What's your system like just to give people a sense of it?

I'm at a 1080, so a pretty good graphics card. So yeah, it's running pretty well for me, although it has crashed like three times. It's been kind of good for me, actually, because sometimes I'll be like way into it, and I'll be like, I should go do some work instead of playing this game, and then it'll crash, and it'll be like, okay, now I have to go at work because the game crashed. The universe is telling you? But it should not be crash. as much as it is, which I know a lot of, like the developers said they're aware of that and

have run into that and, like, are trying to fix things. But, yeah, the performance has been pretty good for me other than, like, some weird graphical glitches. Like, I saw in one cutscene, like, A. Loy's teeth were all crazy, which was funny to watch, but very distracting. What about you, Kirk? Has I been running okay for you? Yeah, so I'm playing on a 2080, which is pretty darn fast GPU, like not absolute top of the line, but pretty fast on a pretty good PC. And, yeah, it's fine. I'm in 1440p. It's like largely above 60 frames per second. Sometimes it dips. It does feel a little like it's maybe a couple patches shy of where it needs to be for me. Largely, there are just times where it dips into the 50s and 40s, and I'm like, I don't feel like a three-year-old PS4 game would normally necessarily be doing this just because it's so demanding. I think it's just maybe they need to even out some kinks and make it work on more different systems. I have out a couple crashes. When you texted me about that it crashed for you, I hadn't, but then I was playing yesterday and it crashed a couple times. another day. Yeah.

Yeah, it just seems like it. It needs a little love. I like it on PC. I thought it ran, I thought it looked and ran great on PS4. Like, I thought this game is actually really smooth and good at 30 FPS. It looks,

it's such a gorgeous game. I haven't had a single crash. So let's make your own decision about what you want to do here. It hasn't, hasn't dropped any single time. But it's gorgeous. It is like gorgeous, gorgeous.

It looks great. And I, there have been some moments when I've seen like a beautiful vista or an overlook or something in the game. And I've been like, this is probably really good on my PC. But I am really enjoying lying on my couch while playing the game. So, let's clutch. There is a clarity that I find in the combat. It might just be that I'm better at it. But that high frame rate clarity of just really seeing the thing jumping at me and like rolling out of its way.

I am better at it just because. That probably helps and like being in a chair and a little closer to the screen. I mean, I also like maybe using a mouse and keyboard helps with some of the precision of like. I play with the controller. So. Oh, okay. Well, for someone, it might help. I'm sure that it makes you more precise. Yeah, yeah. Oh, I saw, like, Ben Cuchera wrote that article, right? I feel like I've seen people say that about playing with a mouse and keyboard. For me, like third-person games with a mouse and keyboard is just weird.

Yeah, it feels like it's designed to play on the controller, and so that's what I'm doing that. They give you slow-mo. That's like why they give you the slow-mo ability. Pressing a button to roll. Isn't that? Isn't that the point of playing the controller? It just feels good, man. Using the trigger to pull your bow.

The other thing that I keep thinking about this is, A, how excited I am for Horizon 2, which was announced at the PS5 event in June. But B, how much I want to play it on PC instead of having to get a PS5. Yeah. I guess. I guess so. I am excited only because there's a lot of,

this game has such good raw materials and then there's all this stuff at the margins that just there's room for improvement, like the U.X stuff we were talking about, the kind of clarity. Such as the raw materials, of which there are way too many things you have to run around picking up.

Oh my God, yeah, collecting. I have a clip. I keep me to tweet this clip. I have this amazing clip where, The first thing I did, oh, this is like such a pet peeve is when a game makes your like materials bag really tiny. So then you just can't pick up all the shit you need and you're in the middle of a quest. Yeah, you have to keep upgrading it.

So I like knew and I remembered and I went and I was like, okay, I'm going to just like go after this thing and I fully upgraded my resources bag, it's called. But then when it was fully upgraded, I could just pick up everything. So I walked into this field and it was just like icons everywhere. And then I just spent like five minutes going from thing to thing, holding down why and just picking up items. And it was just very like, I love, no, I know, and that was the joke because I was like, I really love doing this. Like, what is wrong with me? Yeah, like, I was just walking around pressing triangle and I'm like, wow, this is so enjoyable.

Like, what is wrong with me? Like, I'm just walking around a field pressing one button and yet it is the most pleasurable thing I've done all day. Yeah, yeah, I know. It was a very, it was a very funny, very video games experience. It feels good. It feels good to collect items and press another button to combine them. into a cooler item. It just feels good.

And sometimes you see green or blue or purple items and you're like, oh man, got to get some of that legendary gear. It's usually something disappointing. It isn't like you get a cool new bow and arrow. It's always like a weird piece of glass, like a watch that you can sell. But because of the setting of the world, sometimes I like that stuff, because it'll be like you find some artifact, but it's like a mug or whatever or like a pocket watch or something.

And you're like, oh, yeah, humans lived here. That's a thing. Also, like, you know, they still live there, but there's a... Noah Caldwell Jervais did a cool video about this, and he's done a lot of traveling through the sort of southwest central lake with the Rocky Mountain area of America, which is where this game is set. And I liked his video because it, like, there are a lot of places I don't know there. And if you know the area, there's landmarks all over the place.

And it's totally clear where you are at various points. It's like Utah, right? It's like Nevada, Utah. Yeah, it's kind of, yep, yeah, Utah. And I think maybe parts... Well, you're going to California in the sequel, I guess. But it's kind of that part of the... the country. And there is, like, you'll come to a

what famous building that's totally dilapidated, but there will be a statue in front of it that you can identify. And I think if you know what that stuff is, it's kind of cooler. Yeah, that is cool. Yeah, and it's fun. I mean, you mentioned you, like, snarked about, like, finding an old watch or something, but it is pretty cool to see, like, the game's descriptions

of these objects, and there's a funny, a funny, there's, like, a good sense of humor to at all that the game is kind of, like, hoping that you'll laugh with it. And, yeah, I mean, the, the one thing that I don't, like about this story, I guess, if I'm trying to find things that I don't like about the game, is that the voice acting is pretty inconsistent.

Aloy, Ashley Birch is incredible and Lance Reddick is incredible, but other than that, it's pretty hit or miss across the board. The baby Aloy at the beginning of the game, young Aloy is, oh man. The character model is just very strange-looking. I don't really know what to say about it even. It's just every time they show that kid, I'm like, what is, what's going on here? Yeah, good thing that's over fast. Yeah, she looks like a porcelain doll, but like not in a good way.

Yeah, it's spooky, spooky child. But also, like, some of the, some of the, during the proving, so that section where it's, like, basse and, like, all these other, these ridiculous characters who are just, like, parodies of, like, 80s teen movies. Yeah, you like me and all the other. I do like, though, that in the proving, I was like, this is going to be, like, a young adult novel. Okay, I'm here for this. And then instead, at the end of the proving, they all just get murdered.

And I was like, oh, okay, never mind. Bye, you're not going to get to see any of these characters again. Don't worry about it. I thought that was kind of, I thought that was kind of cool. extremely good. I thought that was good. And I actually, the entire game, I spent, like, waiting for one of them to come back and, like, to secretly be alive or something like that. You go hang out with what's her name's mom. It's much more about, it's like, where the adults are going to go do something real now that these, those kids are dead. Sorry. The real game starts now. And yeah, Maddie,

I'm excited for you to get to Meridian because that, that's like the main city of the game. And it's like, that's my next thing. So I guess it's a real game. I'm going to highly get to it. Well, it's also like a gorgeous city. Like, some of the visuals in this game are really spectacular. It's cool game. It's exciting that a lot of people are playing it on PC for the first time. So anyways, yeah. That is our triple play on Horizon Zero Dawn. Great game. Anybody playing it, if you have any thoughts on it? Of course you can write us at triple click at maximum fun.org and share your thoughts on the game. All right, why don't we take a break? And then we'll be back with one more thing. Hi, I'm Ali Gertz. And I'm Julia Prescott and we host Round Springfield.

Round Springfield is a Simpsons adjacent podcast where we talk to your favorite Simpsons writers, voice actors, and everyone has worked on the show to talk about shows that aren't the Simpsons. So we're going to be talking to people like David X. Cohen, Eardley Smith, Tim Long, about other projects they've worked on. Sometimes projects that didn't go well. Some failures. Some failures. Some rejection. Some failed pilot. Some failed life events. Yeah. We just talked to all the failures of the Simpsons. Yeah. So if you really love your Simpsons trivia and want to get to know with the people who have worked on the Simpsons a little bit better, come by Round Springfield. Every other week on maximum fun.org or wherever you get your podcast.

Listen, I'm a hot shot Hollywood movie producer. You have until I finish my glass of kombucha to pitch me your idea. Go. All right, it's called Who Shot You? A movie podcast that isn't just a bunch of straight white dudes. I'm Ify Wideaway, the new host of the show, and a certified BBN. BBN. Buff Black Nerd.

I'm Alonzo Duraldi, an elderly gay and legit film critic who wrote a book on Christmas movies. I'm Drea Clark, a loud white lady from Minnesota. Each week we talk about a new movie in theaters and all the important issues going on in the film industry. It's like guess who's coming to dinner meets cruising. And if it helps seal the deal, I can flex my muscles while we record each episode. I'm sorry, this is a podcast. I'm a movie producer. How did you get in here?

Iffy, quick, start flexing. Bicep, lats, chess. Who shot you? Dropping every Friday on maximum fun.org or wherever you listen to podcasts. And we're back just in time for one more thing, where we each talk about one more thing. for the episode. Jason, what's your one thing? My one more thing is Blizzard. I want to talk about Blizzard. This is some news that happened last week, and it got me pretty fascinated and excited, and so I want to talk about it. So last week, Bloomberg News, a great video game website,

reported that the staff of Blizzard were starting to share salary info by creating this spreadsheet and anonymously sharing their salaries A and also their raises B. And now, so, some context here is that for a long time now there have been rumors and whispers and rumblings and blizzard has had a reputation for underpaying employees because it has kind of the blizzard appeal the blizzard effect where you go over there because you love blizzard games warcraft and diablo and starcraft and this is like one of the most beloved companies ever so of course people want to go work that right um and it's been known that like if especially if you're in departments like qa or like customer service that are pretty renowned for underpaying people regardless but also

on non-dev teams, which I think are kind of not treated quite as well as the dev teams at Blizzard. And so people have talked about this for a while, complained about it for a while. Last year there was a company-wide survey, and one of the kind of takeaways from that survey was that a lot of people were unhappy with their salaries. And so the company said, okay, here's what we're going to do. We're not going to give out our standard raises in January of 2020 because we're going to do a company-wide, not just Blizzard, but all of Activision, compensation survey where we kind of take this whole scale look at everybody and try to figure

out what they should be making based on market research and blah, blah, blah, blah. And so they took seven months. And the promise was that any pay raises they got that were supposed to be in January, they would be backrated. So you get them whenever they come out, but you have to wait, right? And so they have people waiting. People were expecting, like, healthy raises based on the messaging around this. A lot of it was like, we're going to make you guys right.

We're going to make you whole. We're going to make you guys treat you guys fairly. And then it comes, and this was right now two weeks ago, so mid-July, the results are revealed, and people get their raises. And a lot of people get terrible raises, like 1%, 2%, some people got nothing. Some people got decent raises, especially if they were accompanied by promotions, but most people did not get what they were hoping for or expecting. And sometimes even when the percentage is high, they were making such a low base salary that it doesn't even matter, because like 10%, if you're making $18 an hour is only a $1.80 raise. So it was a problem, right? And so that led to like this revolt essentially where people were in Slack just like like angrily tagging

people. I heard that the people tagged the president of the company and some of their Slack messages and like it felt like it sounded like Geo Media Slack for a while there. Like soccer slack for a while there. Where people were just like angry and really like that sort of thing.

I have not heard of that sort of thing happening at a game company before which is so it was that itself was interesting. And then this salary spreadsheet happened. And then Bloomberg News reported that, does that sound ridiculous? And then we reported that Blizzard, within one of the Slack channels, one of the official Slack channels, where like some 870-something people were, they started compiling this list. And I read through the list, and it's like a list of requests or demands of management. And it's like fairer pay and transparency and promotion.

transparency and better treatment for blah blah blah and like it's a giant itemized list and it sure looks a lot like a union contract like it looked to me exactly like union contract or like some demands a union might make for example if they existed exactly it looked like the basis of a union contract essentially it was like a lot of the same stuff that i have seen in our own union contracts back in the cocker gizumoto days and so that was pretty wild to see because we've never seen any sort of like labor organizing like this at a game company before so what i've heard is that they've talked about union it's like come up but got kind of dismissed for all the reasons you would expect this sort of thing to be dismissed. Also, they're kind of playing with fire here and that they're doing it on a company Slack channel. But so while I was reporting this, I contacted Blizzard. Blizzard said we're ready to listen to them. Like we look forward to hearing them from them directly, blah, blah, blah. So it remains to be seen as of right now. Last I heard today, earlier today, they were still discussing like what the like finalizing their list. And so they still had an officially gone to management or anything like that. But it will be very curious to see

what happens. And I wanted to hear your guys' thoughts, first of all, but also, like, this feels to me, like, the finally, like the first big collective labor action, although the thing that is kind of the reluctance here is that if there isn't any, if there's no teeth behind it, like there's no potential for a strike behind it, then will it actually go anywhere? So yeah, Maddie, what are your thoughts on this whole thing? I think it's very exciting. Anytime. salary transparency is happening anywhere. I think it's incredibly valuable, even if this doesn't necessarily lead to a union, although I'm clearly in favor of unions, and I've said that many times, so I'm biased in their favor. But just being transparent about salaries is a really important step.

It's going to help people at the company no matter what. Anybody who's negotiating for a raise in the future is going to have that document to refer to. So already they've achieved something very significant in my eyes that's worth commending them for, and they've done so bravely. worth noting that it's anonymous and also it's not like verifiable so it's not a hundred percent transparency still though knowing what what the gap is between different roles like even if job titles are there that's really great so and it's also i really hope they make another slack because i feel like that's step two and i am hopeful for them that they figure out that that's step two because once you go outside of work hours and you start talking to your fellow

workers, you can really achieve some incredible things and realize altogether that you are the people who are creating capital for CEOs who are making a lot more than you. Well, that was part of it is the Bobby Codex. And like actually Bobby Codac, the CEO, his salary was on the spreadsheet, like in a cheeky way like he saw CEO, $40 million. It's big. And then, yeah, I mean, I think there's some hesitancy about unionizing and a lot of it is kind of that Stockholm syndrome, like, we're a family feel where it's like, hey, we like it here actually we don't want to like cause fights or whatever and i think it's worth pointing out that at gocker when we unionized in 2015 we were all really happy at the company like things were good this is like right before

hogan the company was doing really well thanks to like kinchotiles and we were all really stoked about things and the real reason we unionized and we all said this was like we want to keep what we have and like for the bad times we want to be protected and when the bad times came which they did very quickly we were protected which I think is really important for people to keep in mind is that like unionizing, saying you want to unionize doesn't mean like I hate this company and I don't want to be here anymore. Kirk, any quick thoughts before we move to one of you guys? Yeah, I agree with what you were saying, Maddie,

that like unionization and organization are two slightly different things and that often when people just on the outside thinking about this, listening to it, maybe don't have a dog in the fight exactly, think about it. They'll think in binary terms and be like, either you've unionized or you have not. And that's it. Where like you said, even small stuff, of organization, even like, you know, when there's a boiling point, like it sounds like just

happened. That can be a great thing, and it can just lead to more communication and collaboration among workers, which is great. And my other thought is that it's nice that Blizzard said they were looking forward to hearing from people, like the people in charge, rather than saying, what's the line, it's, we think that unions are great. They're just not great for us. That's what they usually, that's usually the line, right? Well, that'll come if they ever actually decide to unionize. I'm sure it will. I totally support unions. Just they're not the right fit for our company. So we'll keep an ear out for that one.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. So Maddie, what is your one more thing? Okay. So I don't know if you guys have heard about this video game Destiny 2. What? What's this game?

I've been playing it with my friends. So this is a cool game. I don't have a lot more to add about Destiny 2 as a video game except to say that slightly before the stream that we did, I started getting back into it again because I was like, I got to remember how to play Destiny 2. Arguably, I still haven't remembered how to play Destiny 2. I may never truly remember how to play Destiny 2 if I ever knew. But it kind of got me back on the grind again.

And I was like, oh, yeah, I have a bunch of friends who still play this game. What are those people up to? That's so funny. I could just be playing this game with those people. And it has become a pretty good COVID coping thing for me in that it's a very low-impact socialization situation where we're playing a game together, but the people that I play with, I don't really care that much about how well we're doing. And so we're really just hanging out. And that is, that is so great. It is really hitting the spot in a big way for me.

And yeah, so I recommend it. So here's my question for you, Maddie. Do you want to go get Whisper of the world? I'm still working on it, guys. I don't, I don't know how to do all the jumps yet. I will let you know when I have fully nailed every jump. Even if you want to go, even if you want to go learn, I'm happy to go hang out. I think that's the only way. Or either. that or just getting carried through by somebody who's very patient, which could be the two of you. Maybe we do it. Maybe we stream it again. What's your power level now, Maddie? I don't know. I'm over 800 now. I don't remember. I'm truly not playing for that reason. And so you're just like playing for missions and stuff? Yeah, that's right. Just playing strikes and hanging out with my pals.

So it sounds like what we have to do is the three of us have to really dive in when the new Beyond Light comes out in November. The three of us have to just jump in. Oh, I mean, I'm sure we'll play it. Right? Come on. It's going to be new destiny stuff. I'm sure we'll play it. And I'm going to be so good by then. I'm going to be way over a thousand. That's so funny. So like Kirk and I pull out and you're just like, hey, I'm playing Destiny too. And we're like, oh, God. I don't know. It's a pretty great low impact game. It definitely is. I, again, am not invested in being good at it. I can't emphasize that enough. It's truly a hangout game in a great way, which I know is the purpose of MMOs, but I feel like I hadn't quite hit the sweet spot of

like enough people I know playing it at the right times. And COVID, I think, has resulted in that for my friend's group. And so that's probably also a boon is that multiple people I know who also aren't that invested in Destiny 2 are back on the grind again right now. So I don't know. It's just been kind of a perfect storm in my life. Well, that's the nice thing about Destiny is that the grind is all that matters. Like, unless you want to be PVP master, skill doesn't matter. Like, all you have to do things. Yeah, you just play and you get your power level up and then you can do more stuff. some orbs and then you turn around and there's another orb waiting for you. I mean, unless you want to do like the high level raids and stuff, but like you don't have to.

That's what I was going to say. Skill matters on some of that really gnarly stuff, but for like 80% of the game. It's not that big a deal. But it's like it doesn't have to. So it's the perfect hangout and talk game because you don't even have to be paying that much attention to the game. Like you can just be shooting the shit with your friends about life. And also you're shooting aliens. But like, eh, it's fine.

Doesn't really matter that much. That's awesome. So yeah. That's cool. Cool game. This is, yeah, but you're getting, Kirk and I, you're giving us the urge to jump back in, it's a real problem. Join me. It might happen.

I do feel like just to, we should conclude the whisper of the worm, like, helping Maddie get that. I think we just have to do it at some point. We have to. We've started it. Well, we should just stream again. Yeah, well, at some point. We should. We're going to stream other games too.

But yeah, that can be something we do. Yeah, well, there is a certain other games. I've only heard of Destiny too. It's not even sure you're talking about. All right, well, my one more thing is. is a TV show that I've been watching, and it's sort of tied to a news item too, I guess. I didn't put this in the show outline. But first of all, just to recommend this show, I've been watching Doom Patrol. So is that like Paw Patrol meets Doom?

No, though. You play as Doom Guy. I'm trying to think if there's a Paw, an episode called Paw Patrol. Each episode is something Patrol, and some of them are very funny. So like the names of each episode is that, I don't think there's been a Paw Patrol yet, but it would not surprise me if there was one at some point. Got it. So Doom Patrol is a great show. It is on HBO Max. It was previously on DC Universe, but then was brought over to HBO Max and is now just an HBO Max show.

It is just concluded its second season. I'm near the end of the first season. I started watching a couple weeks ago with Emily on a bunch of people have recommended it. And it's been always kind of recommended to me as the antidote to Umbrella Academy, which is a Netflix show that I just could not get into. Did either of you watch Umbrella Academy? I did and I did not complete it. Oh, right.

I am on the same page as you, and I think we talked about it on a split screen. When Jason was out, that's right. And we were both like, okay, so we're not crazy. We were both like trying. Yes, it was like, this show seems like it should be something that I like. It has all these aspects that I like and actors that I like and it's just not working. What are these shows? Don't worry about it, Jason.

You weren't even here. It's fine. They're kind of similar. So both of them are like misfit hero, anti-hero groups from the sort of are they cartoons? No, they're live action. from the sort of dredges of comicdom. And Umbrella Academy is kind of like more of a West Anderson thing,

like a school of kids who are all gifted and then are all messed up now. So it's like Royal Tenenbaum's meets X-Men, meets something. Which like, wow, doesn't that sound like a great premise? Needs like kick ass because it's very bloody and intense and sad. Right, but then it just winds up being weird and it never worked for me. Like I didn't like the characters, the vibe was weird, the story was weird. It just was weird. Doom Patrol people would always say, oh, you should be watching Doom Patrol.

Like that's the one that gets way less. buzz, but is much better. So then season two comes around, everyone's talking about it, I'm like, I'm finally going to watch it. The show is great. It's so great. I love it to death. Man, it's so good. It's bizarre. It's a DC show, and it's based on DC characters.

The most notable character in it is Cyborg, who is in the Justice League movie, and people know him. And he kind of comes into the show as, oh, it's cyborg. He's famous in the world of the show, because it's like a separate DC universe. I guess it's not the same one with, like, Affleck Batman and Superman and stuff. But it is the DC world. so people know him, and he's the proper superhero, and all the rest of them are these, like, weird fuck-ups

that, like, time forgot. And they're all characters from the DC vault, and there was a run, I believe Grant Morrison was the writer of this in the 90s of the Doom Patrol. Is this different than Suicide Squad? It sounds like Suicide Squad. No, because these aren't villains. It's very different.

I mean, but it is like... Yeah, totally different. They're just called Doom Patrol, even though they're not villains. Well, no, it's just different. Like, Suicide Squad is a group of Batman villains who were all well-known and then are brought together

to be their own rogues gallery. and then are run by the government. Got it. Where Doom Patrol is they were all heroes, but they were like really random heroes from like a long time ago in the DC vault that then are brought together almost as like a, it's like a Guardians of the Galaxy kind of a thing.

And apparently this is very closely based on that run of the comic. And it's just awesome. Like it's got so much going for it. Like the vibe is great. It's very funny. It starts so weird. Like you could watch the first episode and be like, I don't know, this is going to be bad.

But then you keep watching it. really just casts the spell. It's like, I'm so into it. Alan Tudek is the villain, and he's fantastic. He's also the narrator of the show. It, like, exists on all these parallel dimensional levels. So it has a lot in common, actually, with Legion, if either of you watched Legion on FX. I loved the first season of Legion. It feels very Legion-y, where, like, you'll go inside of a character's head for a whole episode, and it, like, exists on all these different levels. There's, oh, my gosh, there's Danny the Street, the most amazing character that I won't tell anyone about just because you should watch the show. So, basically, this is just a glowing recommendation.

of Doom Patrol. I love it. It is kind of the show that I wanted Umbrella Academy to be. It's great on a ton of levels and I think that people should watch it. And the only other thing that I just want to mention is that I'm watching it and then today I'm reading this news about D.C. And there was this massive layoffs all through D.C. And like all these people in the comics division were laid off. It was part of bigger layoffs at Warner. Right. And is this big Warner Layoffs. Sorry, Warner Brothers is John. Yes. And so and just the fact that like it just has me reflecting on how mistreated the people who create all of these characters are when there are all these very successful transmedia versions of their characters. Like the Doom Patrol is super

amazing and like that's a great TV show. They just announced this Suicide Squad game. Like there's, there's, you know, all this cool stuff happening out of the DC characters and Yen and then like the comic world is just totally disintegrating and they're getting rid of all this talent and just like cutting people loose in the middle of a pandemic. And I don't know. I don't know what to make of that and what we will eventually make of that of the fact that all of the people who actually created all of these ideas are so marginalized by the entertainment industry that then creates all this cool stuff based on their ideas. I mean, sounds like all of art under capitalism. It really sucks because people are watching so much more stuff and reading so much more

and playing so much more during the pandemic and that's what we're all really relying on and to know that those artists are being mistreated feels a lot worse. to me. I mean, it always felt bad anyway, but right now it feels very pressing and intense to know that people are getting laid off and that there are no benefits and so on. I don't know. The DC News was really sad to read earlier today and just be like, oh, cool. Like these, I really wanted to watch that Harley Quinn show and maybe give DC some of my money. But now I know that if I do that, that money is going to probably go to other people and not the people who actually made the thing I'm interacting with.

So yeah, I don't know. Capitalism. It is. Yeah, late-stage capitalism just destroying the art we love. But I think that there is reason to be optimistic. So on one end of the spectrum,

you have this conglomerates and getting even more powerful by the day, Disney eating everybody, Warner, where there's an T&T, merge. Yeah, everybody just gobbling up as much as again. But on the other hand, you have things like defector started by our friends who used to run Deadspin, and they're essentially, I mean,

Deadspin, do they even publish anymore? I don't know. I don't know. They started this thing defector and have been really successful in getting people to subscribe directly to them and pay for them. And to another extent, like our show that we have come and taken and gotten entirely funded by you find people who want to support creators of things that you enjoy. And so I do think that like the kind of crowdfunding revolution has created opportunities for creators that weren't there in the past. And so there are reasons to be optimistic. even like it's kind of like a silver lining even though it feels kind of hope crushing when these

companies just like lay everybody off and it feels like all the money is consolidated into the billionaires. I do think there is there are signs of hope I guess. Sure I'll take it. A silver lining and a silver lining is always is always on a rain cloud. I just want to be optimistic a little bit. No, I like it. I like it and it's certainly true that more people talk about collective action now than they ever did a few years ago. We were just talking about Blizzard. in collective action. And that conversation has super changed in the past few years. And that's been really cool to see.

And so... I think a large part of it is social media and that, like, people can actually get to know creators in a level that they couldn't before. Like these days, because if you have a Twitter account, instead of just knowing what, like, Rock Sedy is and that they're making Suicide Squad, you might follow, like, programmers and artists from Rock SETI and, like, see their thoughts. And it's pretty cool. Yeah.

Yeah, you can get to know them as people. And, yeah, like, instead of... of just getting to know the Deadspin brand, you know these writers. And so I think that has given a little bit more power to the creative people, which I think is a good thing. And we'd love to see more of that going forward. So I guess the takeaway here is like try to support your creators in whatever way you can, like, directly instead of just buying, instead of having all of your money, go towards like the Disney Pluses of the world, maybe think about supporting a Patreon of your favorite creator or something like that. I think that is very true. And a good

note to end on support people who make cool stuff. Yeah. And they will get to keep making that stuff. All right. Well, that is it for this episode. Thanks everybody for listening. Thanks everybody who signed up to be a member. And I'll see both of you next week.

Yeah, goodbye. 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. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network. And if you like our show, we hope you'll head over to maximum fun.org slash join and consider becoming a member.

Doing so helps support us and gets you access to an exclusive triple click episode each month. Find us online at triple clickpodcast.com on Twitter at triple clickpod and send email to triple click at maximum fun.org. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximumfun.org. Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Audience supported.