Triple Click - What Do You Do About That One Jerk In Chat?

Episode Date: October 24, 2024

How do you handle that one jerk in your gaming group? What games are good for each season? And what don't Kirk, Jason, and Maddy agree on? This week, we're opening up the mailbag for your burning questions on all that and much more.One More Thing:Kirk: I Am Your Beast (PC/Steam)Maddy: The “I Hate Bill Maher” podcastJason: SunderfolkLINKS:The New York Times on Xalavier Nelson Jr: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/22/arts/xalavier-nelson-strange-scaffold.htmlJason’s Bloomberg interview with Mike Morhaime: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2024-10-10/dreamhaven-s-morhaime-on-creating-games-that-connect-and-the-next-hitLuke Plunkett on replaying Bully in 2024: https://aftermath.site/bully-rockstar-pc-steamSupport Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinBuy Triple Click Merch: https://maxfunstore.com/search?q=triple+click&options%5Bprefix%5D=lastJoin the Triple Click Discord: http://discord.gg/tripleclickpodTriple Click Ethics Policy: https://maximumfun.org/triple-click-ethics-policy/ Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointripleclick 🚀  SUPPORT TRIPLE CLICK:Join Maximum Fun | Buy TC Merch💬 JOIN THE TRIPLE CLICK DISCORD🎮 Triple Click Ethics Policy📱 SOCIALS | @tripleclickpodInstagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitch

Some houses like to put up yard signs to show who they'll be voting for. At my house, there's a pumpkin to show that we like pumpkins. Welcome to Tripoclick where we bring the games to you. This week, we're opening up the mailbag to answer some of your greatest questions about seasonal gaming and why we all like each other so much. I'm Jason Schreier. I'm Kirk Hamilton. And I'm Maddie Myers.

Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. It's us. Hope you guys are doing well. I am back from my book tour, which has been a blur.

Jason's home. You are. You're back home. I just want to say I was, so I was in L.A., San Francisco, and Salt Lake City, Utah, speaking to college there. And I met a lot of triple click fans. So shout out to all the triple click fans who came to signings and college events and said, hi.

I do appreciate it. Especially the most people who came up to me and said they were fans of the triple click was in the Bay area in San Francisco. go. So we might want to consider. Maybe one day we'll go there. Good data. Do a live show. We're thinking what? Portland, Portland, Chicago, the Bay Area. Another New York show. There's a few different places we might play. We might do L.A. again at some point.

Just do them all in New York, so I don't have to go anywhere. That's my plan. It is closer to me. But I feel like I feel like we owe it to Kirk to do a Portland show someday, just so that we're out of our neck of the woods. Yeah, I think there were a lot of people who come out to Portland. If you like helping us go to places and do live shows, because we don't always break even on those. If you do, if you do want that to keep happening, you can become a maximum fun member and help this show happen. Help make this show possible. Go to maximum fund.org slash join, sign up today. You not only get to support our show and our live shows and us talking about city names for like a solid, solid 20 minutes, but also you get bonus.

content from us, including a new saga. We have just put out called Triple Quest, which is a three-part D&D campaign that we have done with the best DM in the world, Matthew Mercer, who was lovely enough, gracious enough to host for us. And it's really cool. Session Zero and part one are already live on the bonus feed. If you can't support us, you can't contribute for whatever reason. Totally fine. Don't worry about it. And just for you, we are still going to put TripleQuest out just a month later on the main feed. So next week we are going to put out TripleQuest part two for bonus subscribers and then the intro, session zero and part one for main feed listeners.

Just as kind of a little add-on and won't replace our normal episode next week. It'll just be a little bonus. Yeah. Yeah, go to MaximfinFund.org slash you know. You also get a ton of other bonus content and we will keep delivering bonus episodes throughout the next year and change, including maybe, maybe. maybe I will even convince Maddie to watch the Sopranos. We'll see. Yeah, that's the kind of thing you just got to pay a lot of money for. So be going to Maximum Fun Dover and open up that wallet really wide. I want to need that. That'll be a stretch goal.

Yeah, next Max Fun Drive. We should have a Pledge Drive like goal for make Maddie watch the Sepados. Maybe we should do that. Would that be effective? I'm not. I'm not. No, because I think I'll convince you like at the end of this year before we even get to Max Fondon. Jason likes the challenge. I don't know. When Max Fun Drive, around. We'll see. We'll see. You can always just secretly watch the Sopranos without us knowing about it. Maybe I already have. Maybe you already have. Kirk, did you have a thing before we start? Yeah, I just wanted to tell a funny story. So, Balatro, which by the way, somehow in my brain has merged and become Balatro instead of Balatro. Is that on phones now? Wow. Congratulations. That is the correct pronunciation. I don't know. I think I I listened to enough people talk about it on podcasts, calling it Balatro that I just have started to kind of go back and forth.

I suppose. But that game is out on phones now, which I'm sure the two of you were aware of. And if you have an Apple arcade, you can just play it. I've been playing it again on my phone. And what's cool is that some of my friends who didn't play it when it was, you know, not on phones when it was on consoles are playing it now. And I've just been struck by how quickly I'm sending absolutely demented text messages to them, giving them advice on how to play this game. And I just thought it was funny. I'm looking at a text here. So this is a group thread with a bunch of different guys. guys, some of whom have no idea what I'm talking about. And I'm just gleefully sending things like it was the usual DNA plus mine plus loads of steel cards, high card build. If you get a couple more good jokers like blueprint or brainstorm, you can really take it to the moon.

And I'm just like sending screenshots of like, look, I got $5 billion on a single hand. And just fully back in it. The other guys are just quietly silencing the chat, never to open it again. I just thought I'd mention it because I think that it's, I think it's kind of a fun, probably a fun moment for a lot of Balotro, Balatro, Super Freaks, where friends who hadn't played the game are now getting into it. And it's been really fun for me anyways, shepherding a new group of people

into their looming addiction and welcoming them to this new face of their lives. Yeah, that's great. Welcome. You should rename the group chat to Balat Troop. That's pretty good. I'll get them all to play eventually. Bala Troop. All right.

So we are not talking about Balatro today. we are talking about burning questions. So this is a mailbag episode. We are going to answer some of all of your questions, all of the finest questions from the finest listeners on the planet. As always, you could reach us at triple click at maximum fun.org. And just the kind of your friendly, regular reminder that we like short questions and we like unusual questions, questions that maybe we might not have been asked before,

or that just kind of strike you a little bit quirky. I don't know. All right. Shall we get to it? Maddie, why don't you read this first question? Sure. So this one is from Victoria, who writes, now that it's September, along with seasonal pumpkin-flavored treats and apple cider donuts, I'm also for some reason tempted to replay games like The Wolf Among Us, The Witcher 3, and Heavy Rain.

These games read as fall to me. Not because of the season the game takes place in or because of the palette, but because of the overall vibe, kind of like how people associate different colored folders with school topics, Science is green, obviously. Do you all have games you associate with or turn to during particular seasons? Some other examples. Cyberpunk 2077 is a summer game, whereas Disco Elysium is that sad late January to February stretch where the holidays are over and there are no vacations in sight.

This is good. Cyberpunk being a summer game is tripping me up a little because that came out in December. Yeah, but I also kind of was thinking about it and I was like, I think vibes-wise, it might be a summer game, though, because it's like, it's hot, it's oppressive, even though it's night, like, it has this kind of like nightclub sticky vibe, it's grimy. I kind of could see it after I gave it a thought and totally agree about Discoeliorium also. Absolutely January of February vibes. No clue when that game came out, but that's when, like a desolate, wintery feeling game.

Yeah. Also, just the energy of that game. That came out in the fall. I think, I feel like big, media. RPGs like cyberpunk or like metaphor, just because I'm playing that now, those feel more appropriate for cold weather just because you want to stay inside and spend more hours in front of your screen during winter. Metaphor does definitely feel like it came out at the right time.

But I don't know. I've never had this thing just because of the nature. I'm curious to hear from you guys because of the nature of our jobs, I guess less so with Kirk, but at least for me and Maddie, it feels like we have to play things more according to when they're actually just coming out or like just before they come out. So for me, it's not, I don't really associate games with seasons other than their release dates. And like, that's what I just think of them. And you remember the sense memory of like, this is when I was playing it.

And it's hard to divorce those two things. Nonetheless, the first thing that sprang to mind was Breath of the Wild, which I don't remember when I played it. But it made me think about spring because there's so many dramatic rain scenes in that game, like spring rain. And there's all the fields and like little flowers. It doesn't feel like it's just, you know, everything's popping up. but it also feels like new beginnings, and Link wakes up. He has no idea who he is. It just has a lot of springtime vibes to me and like a growth and renewal type of a sense.

That was one of the main ones that I thought of that I was like, that's a perfect pairing. You could play Breath of the Wild in the spring. I don't know about Tears of Kingdom, though. Yeah, there's a couple of different ways I could go, I suppose, with this question. I really like it. One thing this makes me think of is a game like bully, which has seasons in the game. And for me at least, that I really like associate that with certain seasons. And I really think of the winter break period of that game.

I was actually, Luke Plunkett at Aftermath had an article about bully and how it doesn't hold up and just basically the headline was something like bully sucks shit. It was really sad to hear that. And reading his article. Is that true? Do you agree with it? I don't know. I think he didn't play that much. But he kind of started it was like, oh, I hate this.

Which I could imagine based on my memory of that game. It is old. I really liked it when I played it, but my standards were kind of lower, and I don't think I was, like, being super critical when I played it. And there weren't a lot of other games doing what it was trying to do at the time, so it felt really revolutionary, too. So there was that one. That is something that actually, that persona games do well as well, especially P4 Golden, because they, like, added that winter break. So there's kind of this very seasonal feeling to that game. And it takes you an entire year to play it, start to finish.

So you probably play it through all four seasons. And that's actually a difference from metaphor, right? Because metaphor is basically set in a time period from August till the end of October. So it's really like set in the fall. I don't think it really represents the fall very much because you go to these different biomes. So you're in the tropical islands and then you're in like frozen mountains and you're in whatever. Like you're in a lot of different places. You're in a desert at the very beginning.

But because the time frame is August to October, I would be curious if people who've played that game around the world and experience August through October. October as different parts of the year, if they associate the game with whatever season it happens to be for them, whether it's fall or spring, depending on which hemisphere they're in. I don't know. The other thought that I have is that I used to really strongly associate destiny with the fall. And that was because a lot of the biggest expansions for that game came out in the fall. So because it was not just like a game release, which do typically take place in the fall, but also it was a service game. that received sort of its big update in the fall. So then the fall was just when they drew you back to the game and kind of got you back playing. And so I've always sort of associated that game with that time of the year. Fall is when the text would come out

and the Discord messages. Hey boys, we're going, getting back into it. Time to get that grind on. Mike already played the raid? What? Come on, yeah. I'm not supposed to look anything up. I can't believe you looked at a stream.

Oh, God. All right, next question. Kirk, you want to read this one? Sure, this comes from Andy. Andy writes, I was thinking about how Jason, Maddie, and Kirk seem to represent three distinct perspectives within games journalism. The reporter, the site editor, and the grizzled retiree. This is such a good descriptive. Kirk is so grizzled. And I'm retired.

Thinking about the ways you work differently made me wonder if there are any genuine disagreements between you related to the world of gaming and other related media. Triple Click is usually so harmonious, but it would be fun to hear about a topic in the industry that is in dispute among the hosts. Fight for us. Well, okay, so not a lot of people know this, but Kirk is actually a hardcore Trump fan.

Why are you outing him? Now, that's not games industry related. We try, oh, that's true. That's true. But when you wear it, you like wear your MAGA hat and you tried to get a MAGA hat like added to your Fortnite character and stuff.

And sometimes Nadi and I are like, all right, this is a little much. Yeah, and also Kirk's really into Fortnite. That's another thing he doesn't talk about. I'm both a mega partisan and a Fortnite partisan. No, I resent this joke and don't even like to imagine the version of myself. It's undoing all of the goodwill I had about the phrase grizzled retiree. And how nice that made me feel to read about Kirk. I thought that was so good.

We grizzled retirees sent about Republican, you know. Kirk, you were texting me a couple days ago imagining the version of me that's a finance bro. So I think this is, uh, me imagining you as a MAGA. I guess in another life, we all had different jobs and then maybe we didn't get along. I, I don't know. I feel like if we fought too much in real life, we wouldn't be, we wouldn't be all on a podcast together. This is a boring answer.

I think it's a, it's, we've kind of sorted for a lot of the things that we already have in common. But people can go back and listen to the Kingdom Hearts episode on Flisbury. Yeah. I think that like, so what Andy's asking about here specifically is about like, agreements about the industry, which makes you think he's sort of asking about, you know, like, labor practices and we know what we think about the way that the sort of industry works. And when it comes to that stuff, like, I just think that we largely agree on things. We do. Yeah. Most of the

differences between the three of us are differences of taste, which I think that we each have very different taste in games. And I find that to be a really good way to have what Andy describes as a harmonious conversation because, you know, we agree on a lot of fundamentals. Because I think would be a little harder to have a conversation if one of us was like, I don't think that we're should have rights. Or like, I think that, whatever. Like, if someone was like really, really far afield. I think crunch is good and it should happen way more. And it should be mandatory. I think that sometimes those, like those types of opinions, if you feel differently about those sorts of things, it's indicative of like a pretty significant different cultural

view in general. And we all were pretty similar. Like, and we view things pretty similarly. So then when we disagree about a game or whatever, like we like one thing more than another thing, it makes for like an easier way for us to move through that conversation and like respect and reflect all of our different viewpoints. And that makes for a good podcast. So to answer Andy's question maybe unsatisfyingly, there isn't really something like major that we're going to fight about that he may be imagining. I mean, sometimes don't talk about every week.

We do like different games though. I think that, well, I don't know. I mean, I feel like when I made you guys play Swekoden too, that cause. fiction. That's true. And Final Fantasy 6. Yeah, but that's a taste thing. Like, I'm just kidding. But I do feel like that's the closest we come to fighting though, right? Is that sometimes one of us will be like, I really like this game and the other two might not like it or some other permutation of those numbers. I guess it can only really be that, right? Or two people like the game and one doesn't. The friction that will arise from that is specifically in the bet context where it's, I am now making you play 70 hours of this thing that you don't like, which is the closest any of us will come

resenting the other one where it's like... But even that it's kind of in good fun, though. But even that, right. Even that is like... I don't know. I mean, I certainly told my jokes about Sweet Codin 2, but if I had like really hated it, I would have just not played it. It would have been fine.

Like, and it was fun to play it and goof on it at times. And then also, I do feel like I really got something out of it. And I say that all the time, especially about Final Fantasy 6, which I, in retrospect, enjoyed more, even though at the time I was like, oh, I'm struggling with this. But then having now played multiple much old, turn-based Japanese RPGs. I'm like, oh, I've actually learned a lot. I never would have played these otherwise,

but I feel like I'm a better critic and just seeker of knowledge because of it. And I wouldn't have played them if not for the bet. Would have been too scared to play Resident Evil, too. If not for the bet, glad I played it. You know, like, I actually feel like those are really good exercises for all of us to be like, let's see what other people like and open our own minds

and try something we wouldn't have tried otherwise. I think it's good. I think it's a good thing. See, this is the problem. Maddie is too good a manager, and she'll be, like, looking for ways to turn, even things she doesn't like into, like, ways to build people up and create harmony. That is my site editor ethos, and that's why I became a site editor, because ultimately, I enjoy that, and I like, you know, kind of learning about other people and trying to help them realize their dreams. Bringing people together. Well, and furthermore to that, anytime we have been playing

a bet game, the person who won the bet has always said to the other two, if you're really hating this you can just stop. That's what people don't see as much. Which I think, again, is, like, illustrative of the quality that all three of us have, which is, like, none of us think that you should be forced to play a 60-over game that you hate. Like, that's sort of in line with... And the one person will get embarrassed. If, like, when we were all playing perfect dark, I feel like I was very embarrassed on going back to it and being like,

this is not. I was having a real luke-plunk-playing bully situation where I was like, why is this not the same game I remembered it being? And like I definitely was sending some DMs to the group chat being like, I don't know, you guys don't have to beat this one. But then it was a fun conversation and that's okay too. Oh, man. Yeah, I was doing an AMA recently and I think it was the Reddit one or Resetti or something like that. And someone asked, is there a game that like would ruin the podcast forever if you picked it from Andy and Craig? I was like, yes, Final Fantasy 14.

by forced you guys to play 400 hours of that game, it would destroy the podcast forever. But no, I don't know. I mean, I'm sure, yeah, what if you loved it? It would destroy it because we'd become. Yeah, we'd be too. Yeah, we'd be too. And then that would just be the show.

We would just become a Final Fantasy 14 podcast. Yeah. I do think, I'm sure there are things that we disagree with on when it comes to the gaming industry. Like, I'm sure if we really dug into it. Like, we all, I don't think that we all are completely aligned on every single, I don't know, political issue or like, Philadelphia. philosophical issue. But I think in general, we all kind of have a belief that, like, people are

important and people who make games are important. And a lot of our conversations are through that framing, even if we don't necessarily agree on, like, whether, I don't know, EA should take a stance on Black Lives Matter or whatever. I don't even know if that's something we disagree on. But that just bringing that, bringing up is just kind of random industry issues. Sure. Yeah. Or like, maybe we don't agree if Twitch should ban Asma on gold. Like, Again, I don't know. We've never talked about that. But just bringing up random issues, we might have disagreements.

But it's not something that comes up often or would necessarily divide us in a big way. I think that last thing is important because I think we maybe would have different opinions about just the gradations of things and talk about them. And I'm like, oh, I think this was a little too extreme. And like, actually, no, I think that was appropriate. But we live in a time in which disagreement tends to fall along these extremely stark divides. And that's true in gaming. just like in politics and everywhere, where if you truly disagree on some fundamental questions, you're really far apart from the other camp, like from the people who believe the other thing.

Are women people? Are people of color people? Like, just some core divides. Should they, should civil rights exist? Oh, Maddie, that's actually our next friend in question. Right. And I guess what I'm saying is, yes, there are those really big questions that are like really huge and like massive, have huge moral implications. But as a result of that, I think in like of like the time that we live in,

it feels as though even small things. Like, you know, I don't even know like whether you invert your thumbstick. Like that obviously maybe not that. But like there are things that are pretty small that can also start to feel like as wide of a golf. Right. Yeah. And but then when you're just sitting around with people where you like don't really have like those huge gulfs between your feelings on, you know, basically anything, then you can disagree in the, you know, technical, like in the technically true sense of the word, you can disagree about one topic or another topic. But in just in terms of like, you know, degrees, it can be a sort of subtle disagreement where we just talk about like slightly different feelings about something, which is pretty, is nice. It's actually like how I wish more people could interact with one another.

Even if they disagree on more profound things, it just doesn't really feel possible right now. So like that type of disagreement is actually a very pleasant type of disagreement to have, I find, at least with the two of you. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So we all leave learning something. Yeah, I think also it's worth noting. And then we should get to the next question. But one other point I just wanted to make real quick is that, like, I think sometimes

work environments and even podcasts can be the result of people just kind of like being brought together and not necessarily knowing that they work well together or that they agree. And sometimes you can even sense that friction when you're listening to them. Oh, yeah. And with our show, since we, the three of us just decided to start this. on our own and do our own thing and have been doing it for four years together now, four and a half years now, God. Oh, really?

It's like, I think that we all, we pretty much knew that we were in Sympatico and that we wouldn't have to worry too much about this sort of thing that we all have kind of similar viewpoints on the world, similar alignments in a lot of ways. Anyway, so that's why we're so harmonious and perfect in the ideal podcast. That's right. Next question. This is from Marcus. Hello, you three. Your answer to this may be to go to a therapist, but I had a feeling about feeling toxicity among one person in our group of four. One person is a longtime friend and help me connect with the other two. One tends to be aggressive, mostly toward me, if a mission fails or we do poorly. The other two don't catch the same grief as I may be the weakest player at times, but we more often than not are victorious and have fun. When this happens, it's been spoken about, even apologize for, but seems to creep up and happen again. I've avoided playing for the

some time now. But now we are all talking about getting into hell divers, too, and I'm not sure I want to. I'm wondering if any of you had been in a similar situation and what you did. Oh, man, this is good. I just want to say, before we get to this question from Marcus is, I love the advice questions. And if people want to send in more advice questions so we can potentially do like an all advice podcast, that would be super fun. Not podcast episode. Yeah, fun and intense. So Kirk and I, we had kind of, I won't name names or anything, but we had one or two people in our destiny raid group back in the day who were a little tough on people when they were like weak links. I don't think it was Kirk or I who were ever really the weak link, but certainly saw some friction

happen. And I think the best way to do that is to just kind of like for someone else to be a moderator. And Kirk was always good at this, just kind of like doing a little bit of peacekeeping, a little bit of just kind of like trying to change the vibe. a little bit, right? Am I remembering that correctly? Yeah, that that is correct or that that jobs with my memory. We had a lot of different people cycle through and yeah, sometimes there'd be someone in there who would be kind of the wrong vibe.

And then occasionally we'd just be in a very stressful situation in the game. Yeah, destiny. Yeah, of course. There would just be like one person would be being very kind of like stringent about what we should be doing and the other and someone else would just get stressed out or get upset because they knew they were messing up and it just kind of led to a bad energy. And yeah, I mean, I think my general role or my general approach to group dynamics is to be the Libra, like to be the person who's kind of like making sure everybody's okay or doing my best to do that. And it's helpful to have someone like that. If you don't have someone like that, which it sounds like Marcus may not, it's a little tricky. Like, I don't know. It's tough because one person is a long time friend. It could well be that you just wind up playing with that long time friend and kind of minimizing your time spent with the other more remote acquaintances. It could be, Marcus, that it's not a bad idea to talk to your, you know, your good friend about

this, just to be like, man, you know, every time John comes at me when I mess up, like, it really stresses me out. Like, it makes me not really want to play hell divers with you guys, even though I've heard that game is super fun. So, like, how about we give it a shot? And, like, if it's not working, maybe you and I can just go play. Because, like, you know, life is too short to spend too much time with that guy. He stresses me out.

And if you're just your closer friend knows that that's the dynamic, you know. he or she, like they might be able to, um, just help kind of smooth things out or like be on the lookout for it. So yeah, I don't know. It's a, it kind of depends on the, on the group dynamic. Mm-hmm. We just find a different group. Yeah, I mean, yeah, that might be the only way. It is definitely easier said than done, although I, I've certainly been in situations where I'm like, I'm just not going to play with this group of people anymore. And sometimes it's not any one person, but it's just that particular group of personalities when they're together, bring out a weird dynamic, which is just a kind of fascinating part of human psychology. I think also

just my sort of general note on this is that it can be nice to just check in on your friends when you play competitive games regularly. This is something that I didn't really do that often in my life. And then I just started being on the other end of it by just eventually having enough friends who do that. Like, we had Nico Deo on the show to talk about Overwatch once and I've played overwatch with her a few times and I'm not good at Overwatch because I barely ever play Overwatch and she's very good at it. And I remember there was one time when I was playing with her and some friends. And I was just really quiet the whole time and I didn't feel like I was doing very well. But I wasn't upset. I just was quiet the whole time and was just like trying to keep up,

you know how it is when you're just like concentrating and you're just like, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm just going to listen to what everyone else is saying and just try my vest. And then the next day she and somebody else in the group who I didn't even know that well, both separately me and they were like, hey, are you okay? Were we being really intimidating? We just wanted to make sure that you had a good time. And I was like, oh, I mean, I'm probably never going to play Overwatch with you guys again, but it's not on you at all. I just kind of realized it wasn't my vibe. But like, I really appreciate that you checked in. And if I had been enjoying myself more than that I would have really appreciated that too, because I would have had the opportunity to be like,

oh, yeah, I was actually like really digging it. And I just was being. it. So I'm just an advocate for this, especially with competitive games because they're really stressful, like a team-based game where everybody's like, okay, get on the point, do this, do that, do that. And like, usually somebody who's really good will come into a leadership role and then everybody else is falling behind them. And that can be really cool and empowering feeling, but it can also be really stressful if you're the person on a team who's not any good at it. And just checking in on that person and being like, hey, did you have a good time? And if you want them to come back. Like, is there anything we can do to help you want to come back? And maybe the answer is

still no, because it's me and I have not played any Overwatch. But you know what, it's fine. Maybe I'll go back. Now I know I could. It made me feel really good that they checked in. Yeah, that's very pro-social behavior. Yes, exactly. Pro-social. Everyone should engage in more of pro-social behavior outside of the game. Yes, especially with competitive games, especially there, because it's so much harder. Let's get through a few more questions. Maddie. Next one. Sure. So this is from Jeremy who says, Howdy, love the podcast since the split screen days. What are y'all's, quote, mediocre games that aren't terrible but worth playing?

If only to make it clear why great games are great. Personally, I think playing Sonic Racing on the PS3 really made me appreciate Mario Kart. I think a lot of action games make like Eldon Ring and Bloodbourne feel even better by comparison. There's just something about those games that have the juice. that like if you play another kind of weaker action game, you can really feel the difference. I had that experience recently playing Flintlock, the Siege of Dawn, which I thought was okay. It's fine. But I definitely played it.

And I was like, wow, it's really difficult to design a soul's like action game. I really was thinking that a lot while I was playing that game, just how difficult it is. And like how dodging, how dodge rolling feels in a game is really hard. And just gives you some more respect for video games. But also, I feel like I would take this question the other direction. and say that playing something like Dante's Inferno, which is a game I would argue is so bad it's good, can also be really fun in a different type of way. It's not critically acclaimed, but it's like corny and gross and over the top and goofy

and kind of shows you something specific about a specific era of games. And that can be kind of illuminating also and teach you something about the world of gaming that you wouldn't get if you just only played just the most critically acclaimed games from the past. Yeah, I definitely find games like that Mad Max game that came out a little while back, I think is a real standard bearer for this kind of game. The mid-open world game that's like good, it's fine and actually beloved by a lot of people, but also like never breaks through or becomes a sensation exactly. I think that Star Wars outlaws is a little bit this way for me. I would not describe that game as mediocre. I think the game is quite good.

Yeah. I think it kind of got a bad rap. Like it's pretty good, but it's not quite, I don't know, Tears of the Kingdom or something. Like, it's not, I'm not playing it thinking, wow, I'm playing a real all-timer here. I'm thinking, wow, I'm playing a really cool Star Wars game. That's a fun thing to do with a little bit of my time. And I think that that's an okay way to play a game. My other thought on this is that, you know, I spoke quite a bit on last week's episode about how mixed I am about metaphor refantazio.

And I still am. I really have just been spending forever thinking about and wrestling with and kind of critiquing and listing my problems with, but also the things I like, the things I wish were different about that game, and have just really found, I would never call that game mediocre. I really do think that it's really great in a lot of ways. But I found that playing all the way through an 80-hour game that really I struggled with at times that I found really frustrating and tedious at times, it was a great experience. I don't recommend everybody do it or anything. Your time is your own. I understand why someone would think, no way. Like, life is short.

I'm going to spend 80 hours only on something truly extraordinary that I love. But for me at least, especially as a, you know, as a critic, it was really great. Like, I really found it to be this rewarding experience. I love talking to people about the game now because I'm not just like, wow, yeah, wasn't it cool when this happened? And like, it was so great. I'm also like, yeah, I get ready for this part that kind of sucks. Or like, what did you think of this thing?

And they'll be like, actually, I think it's fine. And I don't know, we'll have a kind of interesting back and forth about it. So I also just find that playing flawed games or games that I don't totally vibe with can just be really rewarding. God, we got to talk more about this. Even aside from a bonus episode. We'll do a beans cast on it. Yeah, I think we will. Maybe we should do another episode on it because, like, I'm almost done.

Maddie, I think you're nearing the end too. We should. There's so much more to talk about. Yeah, I'm almost at the end of September and so much happens in September. It's a wild month of that game. Yeah, that's, yeah. Do you remember the month of September? It is like that.

Okay, let's do a couple more questions. Kirk, I think it's your turn for Greg. Yes, I am up. This is from Greg. Greg writes, after reading Jason's books, I have become interested in the ongoing support, maintenance, and post-release development of games. Whether they are just getting patches,

DLC expansions, or the full live service model, I'm sure there's some interesting stories there. One thing I've often wondered regarding live service games is whether the developers and publishers have an end-of-life date, an end-of-life date mapped out from the beginning, or perhaps some kind of metrics that determine whether the game keeps going for another year, or is it a little bit more ad hoc? That's a great question from Greg. I don't really have the answer to that. I thought that maybe Jason, that might be one that you would have heard something about. So something that always surprises me, and I just had a conversation. about this with someone in San Francisco last week is how everything in the video game industry

is always ad hoc. I was afraid this would be the answer because I was like, I'm pretty sure that's what it is. Something people don't realize is that like, okay, so one of my favorite reactions to Bloodstone Pixels was people being like, I'll never call game developers lazy again. And it's true, game developers work hard. They're not lazy. But oftentimes when game developers finish a project and they enter that period of like just kind of like no man's land of like, oh, what are we going to do next? So let's do some pitches.

Let's do some prototypes. There is a lot of like not. There's sometimes not a lot of work going on to some of these game studios. And the reason I bring that up is because like a lot of game companies I think are way less organized and mapped out and kind of strictly planned than people would expect from multi-billion dollar corporations. And I think that like the answer as to whether, like, I don't think anyone could have possibly predicted that Concord would be shut down after two weeks, like less than two weeks on the market. Like the numbers have to be really grim for that to be the case. I'm sure there are always, like there's some people with Excel sheets and plans and kind of mapping things out. But sometimes it's just like a bunch of executives in a room.

You're like, so what should we do now? like what are what is our option this is what the number looks like what are we going to do here um suicide squad i can speak to that because i have a lot of inside info on that they had plans for a long time of supporting that game and then it launched in such a kind of to such a tepid audience and tepid reaction and low short weak audience that um that they decided not to do that whole plan and instead to just kind of cut it off at a certain time and move a bunch of people on to other things. And they decided to reduce the support. So, like, a lot of this is just kind of, like, on-the-fly decision-making.

And oftentimes, that's what's happening behind the scenes is on-the-fly decision-making. I think people are just kind of, like, making plans for the next year, ideally. But, like, very few people have concrete plans for, like, what's going to happen five years from now. Or, like, if people... It's interesting. I was talking to someone else about service games because I was talking to someone whose company is making a service game

and after having not done them before and I was kind of like, look, if this is a flop, that's bad for you guys. If this is a success, that's also bad for you guys because suddenly that game like sucks up all your staff for the next five years. So yeah, I don't know. I think there's not a lot of planning.

And then one more example, just to kind of pull another just kind of interesting anecdote out of the data here is Noddy Dog. Nottie Dog decided to cancel the last of us online after four plus years of development. And their stated reason, what they said in public, was that they didn't want to commit to this because they didn't want to overhaul their entire operation

around a service game and hire hundreds of staff to keep it going and so on and so forth. And there's definitely some truth to that. And that, to me, shows you how little planning there is on these things because that's a conversation you have four years earlier, not after four years of development on this game. So, yeah, it's, I mean, the answer here is everybody's improvising all the time. As crazy as that is.

The premise, like, if you imagine a world where a publisher has some number, like they have all of these sort of fail safes and these things in place that are hard and fast. And if you miss this number, then we activate contingency plan B. And that means that we only make one more expansion and then we cut it off. Like, it imagines a type of structure and a type of plan. planning around games that I have at least never heard anyone describe in game development where much more commonly people are inventing everything for the first time every time. Like they're always, even though they maybe don't need to, and it seems to be a source of

frustration for many game developers. There's a sense that each game is just made out of whole cloth and totally, yeah, improvised all the way down. And that does seem closer to the truth of game development. And also those metrics would be affected by a billion different factors. It's like usually you have a parent company that might be publicly traded. And so you're kind of at the whims of earnings per share and stock market targets every single, like your kind of estimates every single quarter. And so like your situation one year might be totally different. And so you can't really have a rigid plan in place.

Or your C-suite might change. You might get a new CEO. Or like it might be more valuable for you to announce a new DLC than to announce that you've stopped development and laid a bunch of people off, just even if you're never going to make it just because like, you know, it helps you that quarter. Yeah. Yeah, like just to give another concrete example, at Blizzard in 2018,

Mike Moorheim stepped down and suddenly that gave Activision a lot more control and a lot more influence over pressuring things. And so here is the storm, which I don't know what its future would have looked like under Moorheim, but it certainly changed, it started winding down that fall as a result of kind of financial pressures

and Jay Allen Brack, the new president, like, look, I have to do this. We have to kind of cut some projects and refocus things because we're getting a lot of pressure. So it's, it's, even something as like the CEO stepping down can just change everything for any plans you might have had in place. And in fact, with Heroes of the Storm, they had plans in place in like November that were then ditched in December. So yeah, it's, it's tough. All right. Next question. This is from Spencer. Second playthroughs never capture the experience of a first run. If you could play any game for the first time, what would it be?

Let's do lightning round Okay, let's all say it at the same time Outer Wilds One, two, three, Outer Wilds Return of the Ovid Yeah, that would be second for me But it would be Outer Wilds first Case of the Golden Idol

Portal, Portal 2 I mean, I remember beating Portal and saying about Wordle, Wordle 2 There's a Whartle, Portal, Portal, you're thinking with Portals I wish I could play Wordle for the first time Every day I'm playing Wordle And I'm like, if only I could just erase my brain and play this again.

And replay today's world. But I'll never be able to. Yeah, I think it's definitely outer wilds for me. Though, yeah, I mean, yeah, the whole fall of 2007, I think if I could re-experience that, because that was when I played Mass Effect over the course of like one delirious weekend. That was when I played Portal for the first time. That was, I played through Modern Warfare, Call of Duty Modern Warfare, which was a pretty amazing experience for what it was.

and like, I don't know, I think Bioshock also, like, there was so much stuff that fall. And maybe that's cheating by making it a lot of games, but like, that would also be cool. But if it's just one game. Kirk, it wouldn't be you if you were trying to fit a bunch of games in a one thing. I want to give people a variety of answers here. But no, I already gave my real answer. If it was any game, it would be Outer Wilds. Next question, Maddie.

Sure. David asks, when an employed journalist writes a book, is the employer involved? Jason's new book, Play Nice, had me thinking. Is Bloomberg involved? involved in the book? Do they own part of it? If not, do you have to be very careful not to blend your Bloomberg reporting and you're reporting for your book? Well, Jason? Kirk, you want to feel this one? Yeah, I'll take this one. So Mike Bloomberg actually gave line edits on the whole, on the whole book. It was actually pretty annoying for him. No, I don't know. Tell us, Jason. This is a great question,

and I'm sort of curious to know. They do not own part of it. I had to fill out some forms. I got a book leave from them. And the only condition for my book leave was that I give them an excerpt, which I was going to do anyway. As far as reporting- Your only condition is that you let us help you promote the book. Right, exactly. Okay, fine. Yeah, like, oh, God, it'll twist my arm. Why don't you? The Bloomberg reporting and reporting for the book, that's a really interesting question because there's kind of, it's, the lines are very blurred. So the actual, the conversations I had for the book, which was some 350-plus conversations, they were all me approaching people. and saying, hey, this is for a book.

So it's not like I would take that and use it elsewhere. That said, as a result of just talking to people from the book and meeting people from the book, I stand in touch with some of those people. And so they might tell me things or want to talk to me about things that I can then report on a more day-to-day basis, especially surrounding Blizzard, obviously. So, like, I did some reporting when Blizzard did the layoffs in January-slash-February of this year that like I both did for the book and also did for Bloomberg. And so for them, for my, for my news outlet, for my day job, it's kind of, it's a mutually beneficial thing. And I think they know that,

both because of the prestige of a book and also because of the, like, number of people that I'm talking to that then can be kind of sources of information or just kind of interesting tipsters for Bloomberg stuff. So this seems to be something that Bloomberg, clearly understands only because like every book I hear about about any current subject is usually written by Bloomberg reporters. So really there are a lot of people at Bloomberg and have been for many years writing books that then yeah, like you said, cause your reporting to just get better and richer and better sourced.

Yeah. Yeah, a ton of really good ones on my team. A couple of the Kurt Wagner wrote a book about Twitter a few months ago. Sadly, I have not a chance to read it. It was called Battle for the Bird about Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk. My colleague Sarah Fryer wrote a book about Instagram. My colleague Zeke Fox wrote this amazing book called Number Go Up about crypto and crazy his crazy. Zeke who blurbed your book, right?

There's also a lot of incestuous Bloomberg blurbing going on. We call it Bloom Blurb, you know. So I don't know Zeke personally. I specifically did not get any blurbers from Bloomberg who work with me like directly. So I was objective blurb. You didn't take advantage of any of your personal connections. I tried to do that. Well, I figure people look at it.

just kind of like they'll be fishy if it's like oh this guy's an editor of Bloomberg hmm I wonder this other guy's also an editor of Bloomberg oh and so is this person is what a fun but yeah there are a lot of I have a super talented call it like group of colleagues and it's really cool to see and yeah I mean I think media organizations in general understand that it's a really win win to have their reporters write books about the subjects that they cover it's like professional development almost yeah yeah it's a benefit It's a benefit. All right, let's slip in one final question.

Kirk, can you read this? Or no, you just read David's. I will read this one. Nick says, hi, legends. First of all, thank you for all the hours of entertainment and laughs over the years. I've just finished the episode on Jason's book. You got me thinking, which novel would you love to see adapted into a video game? I personally like to see the Miss Born series as an action RPG or press reset as a survival horror game.

Hope to see a live. show in Australia one day. I too would love to see a live show in Australia. I hope. I would like to go to Australia one day. All right. Yeah. Well, that's, yeah, that's what we would be.

This would be our excuse to do that. What novel would you love to see adapted into a video game? I'll just pick one. I mean, any novel I've ever read. It would be fun to see just about any novel. But one that comes to mind that could be very interesting is Cloud Atlas, the David Mitchell novel. My niece is actually reading this book right now. And it's been fun talking to her about it.

She's pretty young, but she's a very advanced reader. And her English teacher was kind of like, okay, read Cloud Atlas to see what you think. And it's actually kind of a great book for someone who's a young reader who wants to just experience something really crazy, like is open to it. Cloud Atlas, for anyone who hasn't read it or seen the movie, I recommend reading the book before seeing the movie. The movie is actually a really wild, weird thing, but it's much more enjoyable, I think, if you've read the book. The book, Cloud Atlas, is structured like a pyramid where, Each section of the book, I can't remember how many there are, maybe five, is a completely different time period and a completely different set of characters. And it moves through time. So you start, I think the first chapter is, I believe, on board a ship in like the 1600s.

And then it's like in the European countryside with a composer in like the 1800s. And then it's in like the 1920s. It's a kind of noir detective story. And then it's in the future. And it like stacks up. This sounds so expensive to make it's video game. Well, let me let me finish the game thought. So it stacks up. and you ride it all the way up, and it's like very, it's cool because it's not clear what the connections are. Like, it isn't like exactly like everyone's a reincarnation of the person from the storyline before, but there are these echoes, and it just has like a lot of cool connections. And then you go all the way up and then you go all the way back down. So you get to have like two, like, you spend time with each storyline twice on the way up

and then on the way back down. And I could see a game adaptation of it or just a game, like a game that takes that approach being very interesting if it's able to like shift genres. This would have to be an indie game. I couldn't imagine a big budget game being able to get away with the types of shifts that would be required. This level of ambition oddly could only be accomplished by like a small team working with like, you know, a more flexible tool set. But I could just see it being kind of cool to have a game that like shifts modes and almost shifts genres in a way that is kind of not explicit but implicitly building some sort of a richer tapestry. there are games that have done this but like not in the way that cloud atlas does anyways whatever

this question made me think of that along with a thousand other things so there's my thought thanks nick for that making me think of that go ahead guys what do you think yeah okay i have two answers answer number one the bible and i will not be i will not be explaining further great uh it's self-exed this is just god of war god of war six right cratos kills the bible jason have you heard of dante's inferno i mentioned it earlier on this very show. Well, that's, no, that's Dantes Inferno. You're right.

And that's the book I'm picking. Straight up Bible. Yeah, that would be a hell of a video game. I mean, I tried. I mean, they tried. We've got the Adventures of the Old Testament on Steam, mostly positive reviews. I feel like, I was like, I feel like there are Bible video games. The Bible on Steam.

Yes, this is a digital recreation of the Bible. Very positive reviews. So they're out there, Jason, if you want to see. I mean, there's a reason I didn't elaborate for people just kind of figure out what my version would look like. It would be a turn-based JRP persona style where you go through the entire biblical calendar and you make decisions along the way. Maybe it would be like civilization. You play as the Holy Ghost maybe? I don't know.

Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. Well, only Old Testament for me. So it's the Torah really. Keep your New Testament, Newfound gold nonsense. We'll save that for the sequel. The other one is Lies of Locke Lamora, the series. It's like a heist, heist type of series, although the game would never be finished. Ugh, that would be a bummer.

Miss Bourne is a great pick, by the way. It is. Pressure set is a survival horror game. I don't know, but Miss Forne really would lend itself to a video game. Maddie, do you have a pick before we take a break? Yeah, I mean, I really like the Inheritance Trilogy. NK. Jemison, I just think those books are really cool. But then I was like trying to think about how I would turn them into a video game and there's so much world building that I was like,

that might be miserable to do. And then as I was thinking about I was like, what about misery by Stephen King? That would be a really cool, weird indie game. That would be awesome. I think they should do that. And they should get Kathy Bates back. She's still working. I've been watching Matlock. They could get her. Nice. Nice. Nice. All right. Thank you all for the great question. Once again, triple like at maximum fund.org is where to send your own questions and send us advice questions. And maybe we'll do an all-advice burning questions episode. Burning advice, we could call it. Or awesome advice or, I don't know, something else catchy that we think of later.

Let's take a break and then we'll be back with one more thing. This season on the Adventure Zone, Abnibals. Get ready for a brand-new crime-fighting trio here to protect the anthropomorphic muscular animal citizens of River City. Featuring Justin McElroy as Axolyle, the firefighting Axelato. Clint McElroy is Roger Moor, the debonair cow of mystery. Griffin McElroy is Navy Seal, the Ross Seal that has never served in the armed forces, and Travis McElroy as every other swall critter in River City. This swear-free Saturday morning cartoon-inspired story

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Yeah, as long as you're fine with 25 randomly inserted, super loud car insurance commercials. On our podcast, free with ads, we review streaming movies from the darkest corner of the internet's bargain bin. From the good to the weird to the holy, look at Van Dam's big old butt. Free with ads, a free podcast about free movies that's worth the price of admission. Every Tuesday on maximum fun.org or your favorite podspot. And we are back, Kirk Maddie, and it's time for one more thing.

Kirk, when you go first? Sure, I've been catching up on indie games, playing through a few cool things and wanted to shut one of them out. It's a game called I Am Your Beast by a Strange Scaffled. It's on PC, as far as I know, just PC, but it might be on other consoles. I think it's just PC. This game is very cool, very fun. I think a lot of our listeners would probably enjoy it. It's a bit of a sort of hotline Miami, super hot,

and then maybe a little bit of neon white that game. It's a kind of fast-moving first-person shooter with an eye toward kind of perfecting runs through short spaces. So this game is made by Strange Scaffold. That is a small indie developer, a very prolific indie developer, headed up by Zelawier Nelson Jr., who recently had a profile the New York Times. I'll actually link it in the show notes.

A really interesting guy, a 26-year-old developer who has been working in the industry for a long time, a very outspoken sort of advocate of black game developers, just a really very interesting guy and very young for how many games he's worked on. It's really impressive. Yeah, I think I realized he was 26. That's wild. Yeah, me neither. I can't believe it.

he headed up directed and voice acted in the game El Paso Elsewhere that I talked about last year, which was the kind of Max Payne spiritual successor or like inspired vampire game. That's a really, really cool game. And also made a game called Click Holding from this year that I haven't had a chance to play, but I gather is this very provocative and very interesting short game that's supposed to be really cool. I plan to check it out before the end of the year just to have played it. But that's wild on its own. Like El Paso elsewhere was what last year?

and then there's two games this year from the same studio. So kind of a lot of output. Well, that's his thing is like micro game development because he talks a lot about sustainability in the video game industry. And his approach is to do much smaller scoped projects that can actually be made in a few months rather than five to seven years. It's really cool. Yeah, it's impressive.

It's a really cool embodiment of something that I think we've talked about a lot, of the idea of making, you know, I want smaller games that are worse looking and I'm not kidding or whatever. Like I wouldn't say, worse looking. I think he has, he and his team have a very clear, artistic, a really neat eye for cool visuals, but they're very simple looking. And I Am Your Beast is similar. So this game is a, it's a first person shooter. You're playing a guy named Alphonse Harding, who is basically, it's one big trope, the story. And that's kind of on purpose because it lets you just get to the

gameplay. The trope is the hardened super killer secret agent who's done a million jobs for some black ops organization is off the grid in the woods somewhere. And his boss shows up at his doorstep. And he says, you should never have come here. And he's like, we need you for one last job. And the badass secret agent said, not interested. It closes the door. And next thing you know, the forest is like teeming with special ops goons who are there to kill him.

Because if he won't join them for this job, they're going to have to take him out. And then he fights off an army of his, like, you know, the guys who used to employ him until he finally kills them all or whatever. It's First Blood or actually Rebel Ridge has a little bit of this. I was about to say this sounds like Rebel Ridge. Yeah, and the way the story plays out, it's kind of cool. It's like each level is prefaced by just a conversation over the radio between Harding and his handler. And it's all played out. I believe that Nelson is the voice actor in this, just like he was in El Paso elsewhere.

He's a really good voice actor. He has a great voice. And it's just these like hard-boiled kind of funny, kind of poetic, pretty cool little. just dialogues where it's like you should have come in, you know, you should have left me alone, whatever. All right, well, I'll say hi in a minute. And then cut to, bam, the game. The game itself is a run-based game where, or not run-based, I guess. It's like, you can repeat levels because they're very short, but it's first person you move extremely quickly and you're just flying through some environment. You're climbing up a tree, running across a rope, jumping down,

shooting a guy grabbing a knife, throwing it through another guy's head. Like the one guy drops the gun, you pick up the gun, shoot the gun until it runs out of bullets, throw the gun at a guy, catch another knife, you know, jump around. It's like one of those games where you're moving super, super fast, almost everything is a one-shot kill, especially once you've kind of learned the level, and then you make it through to the X-fill point in like a matter of minutes. And then it gives you a score. So it's like, you know, whatever, F or D up to S. And then you just go on to the next one. In each level, they grow more and more elaborate. And pretty soon as you learn the game's mechanics, you're really pulling off some awesome shit. Like, it feels like Hotline Miami

in that it's a little more forgiving than Hotline Miami. It isn't like a one-hit kill if you get hit. You can usually take a few hits. But it's just as fast and brutal. It is a very violent game. It's very stylized, but it is very violent. You were just shooting people in the head over and over. So it has that kind of energy to it. It feels a little like super hot just in that it's, you know, really small environments and you're moving through them really quickly. And it feels, feels like neon white that game because you're really encouraged to perfect your runs, like to play through them a couple of times and like really work out what you're supposed to do. There are actually times in the story where you're gated on story progress and you have to go back and like

get a high score on a proceeding level. I actually don't love that decision. I think it'd be fun to just blow through it. It's a short game. It's like two, three hours. It'd be cool if they let you just blow through it and didn't make you go back and do that. I get wanting to encourage players to like really engage with the run-based part of the game or the like repetitive part of the game just because it's um it's fun like when you really master a level and are like like you have to get an s rank at one point on just one level and it takes up it's really hard like it's very stringent in its rating like if you just move a little too slowly you'll get an a and not an s and so anyways I think that that's like I get why they made the decision but I'm not totally sold on it

that's like maybe my complaint about it but really it's a it's a pretty wicked game. It's really fun. I think there might be a demo of it. And if anyone just can look at it, if you like this kind of game, you'll know if this is your speed. It's like 20 bucks, I think, on Steam, totally worth checking out. So that is my one more thing. It's I Am Your Beast. It's out on PC right now. It's very cool. Cool. Maddie. All right, mine is not a game. It is a really strange podcast, but I've been listening to. And the title of the podcast is, I hate Bill Marr. And it's about what you would think it would be about. So it's hosted by this comedian named Willowden who hates Bill Marr.

And he, at least for the first 15 episodes or so, and then he kind of gets sick of doing it, he starts with a disclaimer that goes something like this. This is a podcast about hating Bill Marr. It's not about trying to understand Bill Mar. I'm not going to come to some sort of realization about Bill Mar over the course of recording this series of episodes. I will come in Hating Bill Barr and I will leave hating Bill Mar. And it is that. He is a comedian and he has on a fellow comedian. in every single week, and he forces them to watch an episode of real time with Bill Marr with him.

And they're starting at the very beginning of real time, which is in the early 2000s. So this is like right after 9-11. Was this one it was called Politically Incorrect with Billmer? No, but I will say politically incorrect predated real time. And the very, the pilot episode is actually Willedin having watched the final episode of Politically Incorrect, which was then canceled, and then report. placed with real time with Bill Marr. And so that very first episode, I would recommend going in chronological order, I suppose. There's only 20 episodes so far. It's a really, it's a really

kind of fascinating project. How can you listen to that much talk about Del Mar? It's really interesting. And so I, I would say I don't really like Bill Maher either. And it's kind of weird for me to recommend such a hatery kind of a thing on the show. But I actually think the project is pretty interesting in part because of the other people who come on the show. And some of them, like I think probably my favorite episode is episode four with Sophia Benoit, who comes on and just challenges the premise the entire time and is, like, deeply concerned for Will Walden's welfare throughout the entire episode. And she's like, you realize that you're creating some sort of curse, whereby by creating this podcast, you're going to become inextricably associated with Bill Maher.

And he's kind of like, yeah, I've accepted my fate. And like, but also, like, he seems like he has mixed feelings about it. So regardless, they go through every episode of real time. And it's kind of like an interesting historical artifact of like what television was like in the early 2000s and like how Islamophobic people were and how casually Islamic phobic they were and I like find that part of it really compelling. But also just the show is like really darkly funny and like they make fun of Bill Maher a lot. And so if you if you think that that sounds interesting at all and you like hearing people either make fun of Bill Maher or make fun of Willden for doing a really strange thing with his time that I think eventually he'll abandon. There's only 20 episodes so far. And I don't know how long.

it's going to go on. But I'm finding it fun. And you've listened to all of us. I think I'm on episode 15. And I'm not disliking it. I will say, I don't always agree with Willden. Like, some of the things he says, I'm like, I don't know about that. But like, he's interesting. He's a character. And that's part of podcasting is having a character. And his guests are also pretty interesting. And they don't always agree.