Triple Click - What It's Like When Your Game Flops

Episode Date: May 14, 2026

Veteran game designer Nels Anderson joins the show to talk about his latest game, Generation Exile, which didn't reach the audience he was hoping to reach. Nels talks about the development challenges, what he thinks went wrong, and what's next for his company, Sonderlust Studios. One More Thing: Kirk: Margo’s Got Money Troubles (Apple) Maddy: Couples Therapy (Paramount+) Jason: London Calling (Patrick Radden Keefe) Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member 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

Hundreds and hundreds of video games have already been released this year. Is that inspiring? Or just a record of how many great games we haven't heard of? Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we bring on game developer Nels Anderson, who put out a game called Generation Exile that just couldn't seem to hit with people. It's fun to talk about success, but let's not forget the other side. I'm Maddie Myers.

I'm Jason Shire. And I'm Kirk Hamilton, and hello. Hello. Hello, we're back again. Here we are. Can I say somebody real quick? I want to do kind of an addendum to a previous episode because I got a message about this. A few weeks ago, I was like, we were talking about that blog post that was about AI and that how it was found out to be written like written in part of AI.

Another addendum. This is an ongoing saga. We already got one addendum. Well, but then I said something that seemed kind of contradictory that I need to elaborate on, which is that afterwards I was basically like, I can always tell what something has been written by A. I just want to be very clear. I can always tell when something's been written by AI and not edited afterwards. The reason we couldn't tell with that blog post is because it was written by AI and then

purportedly written by AI and then edited afterwards, such as replacing all the MDashes with semi-colons, et cetera, et cetera. What I'm saying is something is raw written by AI. It is very easy for me to tell. Yeah, I think we did clarify that because we also went on to describe my experiences trying to tell which freelancers are and are not using AI. and I was explaining how it becomes very difficult if the person generates something in AI

and then rewrites it on their own. And I think that is going to become something that we continue to debate as to what is and isn't creativity, what is and isn't truly coming up with an idea yourself? I mean, I don't think it has satisfied answers. We'll certainly discuss more. That question is going to be really important. Like, or if a small part of something is AI generated,

you're playing a game and one song is, AI generated and you didn't even notice as it went by because so many other things were handmade. Or you're listening to a song and one synth part was AI generated, you know, like that kind of thing is going to be a really common and is a kind of much more complex part of the conversation. It's so funny you say that because there was a game that was like controversial. I think Tatello was telling me about this that there was a game where like it was an interesting game and then all the music was just generated by AI and the developer was like in the comments defending it. I mean, like, this wouldn't exist about for AI. And people are like, well, why does it

need to exist if you couldn't be bothered to create it? And yeah, really fascinating stuff. Yeah, I think that's just going to keep happening. But hey, you know what isn't generated by AI this show or all of our bonus episodes. I thought you're going to say, you know what is going also keep happening? Episodes of triple click. That's way better. I love that. Episodes of triple click are going to keep happening. That's the triple click promise. People. The episodes of triple click will continue until more helpful. We obviously have triple click every single week. That's going to

keep happening. But we also have bonus episodes and there's just one way you can get them folks. It's to go to maximum fun.org slash join and become a member. And if you do that, you will get the huge cash of every monthly bonus app we have ever previously recorded

including several in which we are slowly, watching all of the TV show, The Sopranos. Our most recent mega, mega bonus episode is about seasons two and three and it's like two hours long, something like that. Almost three hours. It's like two and a half. Yeah, it's a really meaty bonus up, but there are different ones of different lengths and check them all out. The next one we're going to do is about a TV show that I've never seen, but I think you two have both already seen it before, similar to the Super Bowl. Pranos, but also not at all because the TV show is real different. It's called players.

So Jason, why don't you talk about players? Because you've seen it before and I haven't seen it yet. Yeah. So players, it's a mockumentary by the creators of American Vandal. And it is hilarious. It is this incredible look at this e-sports team called Fugitive Gaming that plays League of Legends. And it says it's kind of like a send-up of like sports documentaries like the last dance, except it's about this e-sports team. But it's also just like American Vandal, even though it's at its core very funny. It's also a very human emotional story. So it's fantastic to watch. I love it. We're going to be rewatching it and talking about it. But we're also going to talk about some of the broader themes and e-sports and stuff. So it's hard to find. So if you can't find it, you can't

watch it. I had to like pay 20 bucks on YouTube to stream it. Yeah, that might be the best way to watch it. Yeah, that might be the best way to understand. If you, if you don't want to watch it, that's totally fine. This bonus episode, we're going to make sure it's listenable and fun to listen to you and interesting, even if you haven't seen it. So we're going to talk about it in a broad way. But if you can watch it, it's incredible. I highly recommend it. I will be watching it and excited to see what it is like.

Yeah, I'll be very curious what you think, Maddie. It's a wild ride. Yeah. But we aren't going to keep talking about bonus ups. We're going to get to the meat of the episode now. Jason, what are we talking about today? So today we have a really interesting, candid conversation with someone who released a game that not very many people played.

We talk a lot to people who have made successful games on the show, and now we're going to talk to someone who kind of did the opposite. So our guest today is Nels Anderson, who is a veteran game developer. Kirk and I actually know Nells. We've been friendly for a long time. He was on the show back when it was split screen at one of our GDC interview episodes,

and he actually, he reached out, not too long ago because he wanted to offer his perspective on releasing a game in early access and what happens when things don't go well. He's worked on games including Death Spank, Mark of the Ninja, and Firewatch, the fantastic walking simulator released by Camposanto, the indie studio that Nels helped co-found that would then go on to be purchased by Valve after Nell's left. Nell's left Campo Santo to start a new independent studio in 2017 called Sonder Lust Studios that released a game recently, um, last month called Generation Exile. That is kind of part visual novel, part city simulator. Um, and it's really, it's just kind of a grand strategy game. Uh, and it is about, uh,

the environment and, um, eco, eco, like, friendly, uh, themes and, uh, He released it and he told us that it has not done particularly well. And so we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about what it's like to spend many years of your life on a project and a game that comes out and doesn't resonate with quite as many people as you wanted. We're going to talk to him about that whole process and why it took so long and lots of other good stuff. So without further ado, let's bring in Nels.

And we are joined by Nel Zander. and hello Nells, how are you? Hello, I'm good. Hello, no. Hi. Nice to see you. Welcome. How are you all?

We are doing okay. Congratulations on launching a video game. Generation Exile is, of course, out right now as we speak. It is. It exists in the world. It exists in the world. And there's a lot to get into. We're going to get into some of the nitty-gritty of launching a game of 2026 and what that's like.

But first, let's back up a little bit. So people out there. might know many of the games you've worked on like Mark of the Ninja and Firewatch, but I actually want to cut to 2016 when you decided to go even more independent than you already were. So you were at a place called Campo Santo that would later be purchased by Valve. What made you decide to start a new company after that? Because I'm stupid. Oh, there we go. Starting off spicy. That wasn't the reason back then, though. That's true. Back then, you probably had a good reason.

No, I mean, it was really like, so the setup with Campo Santo on Firewatch was there was kind of a locus of most people were in San Francisco. I was here in Vancouver and then Ollie Moss and James Benson were in the UK. So it was like that experience kind of demonstrated to me that it's possible to have that kind of just like, we can actually be, we don't need an office with only people in the same geographic location. And there were so many incredibly talented people, both here in Vancouver and folks elsewhere, that I knew that I'd like, well, it would be really rad to be able to work in this way with a bunch of these folks. And also, you know, Campo had been talking a little bit about what they wanted to do next. And then obviously, we know where that story goes. They get acquired by Valve.

But certainly at that time, the creative interest was, like, largely building upon a lot of the learnings from Firewatch. Right, so like, a large, the next thing would have been like a first person story-driven exploration narrative thing, which was cool. But I also just made one of those. And because we can be artistic and say I'm a dilettante and not simply someone with an attention disorder that I've never made the same type of game twice. Because like, why utilize all those learnings? You can just throw them away and start over knowing nothing every single time. So that was exciting? That was also part of it.

I think that my interest was like, okay, what else is out there to do, like, creative design game-wise? To put this timeline in perspective for me, so they announced this game, right? Was it called In the Valley of the Gods? This was the follow-up to Firewatch. Correct. Had you already announced you were leaving Canbo at that point? Yeah, I had departed at that point. There was like a very hazy notion, I think, shortly before I left, but it was, you know, even when Firewatch came out, there's still like, you'll launch a game.

but you're still doing support for quite a chunk of time as well. So what the next thing was was like quite hazy, but it was certainly still going to be in that same, like, mechanical design format. So did you have a plan at this point when you're, so you're going into, you start your own studio, you bring some people over,

did you have a financing plan? Did you have a game plan? What was kind of the next, those few months after you left Campos Santa? What were those like? What I did was I had a human child. So that took up my, yep, my child was born.

about a month after Firewatch came out so that both his physical size as well as his size in my consciousness continued to balloon over that time so that was also very consuming and just a giant parade of i don't know what i'm doing about any of this but once that at least vaguely stabilized fortunately at least in this country there's this entity up here called the canadian media fund or the the CMF. It exists primarily to fund like film and television productions made up here in Canada, but they do have a dusty, halfway forgotten corner that's like, oh, also video games, I guess. So back in 2017, managed to secure prototyping funding from the CMF. It's not like an art grant. It's like an interest-free loan, but that's like kind of the second best source of funding one can

hope to get. And so we were able to take that prototype funding, make enough of a like, rough skeleton of what would eventually become generation exile, and then we're able to take that around to various more traditional funding type entities. And eventually we signed a funding arrangement with this entity, I guess, called Cowloon Knights, which is a fund. They're not like a publisher. They don't do like, oh, we'll actually do the marketing or the loke and we'll have like an assigned produce. It's not that. It's like, we will give you money. We will give you advice. And then everything else, You will provide via those funds we have given to you. And that's kind of how we'd always worked in the past anyway.

So that seemed like a perfect fit. And they were, you know, incredible to work with. I think that fund has largely wrapped up, but most of the same people are now running Kepler Interactive. Yeah, the people they did Clear Obscure. Most notably, correct. And so probably between when we have started this conversation and now, Claire Obscure has cleared more funds than our project ever will. So they are doing just fine. We'll get to that.

I have a kind of budgetary follow-up, I guess, or a question coming from the perspective of, I think, how a lot of people who don't work in game development think about how games are funded, which is that Firewatch was very successful. And then Campo, a studio that you at least, I think co-founded, was bought by Valve. Like, did you have money coming in from that game's sales

or from the acquisition that you considered part? of the like funding picture for putting together something new? Yeah, so it wasn't much. So I never owned any equity chunk of Camposanto for various like international law and taxation reasons because I was a citizen up here in Canada. So I had an entity like a legally distinct entity up here that was like contracting for the same amount of money every month that was like wages essentially with Campo Santo. And so everybody at Campo did have a revenue share arrangement from Firewatch, but that the Firewatch earnings were already split between Campo and Panic, who, like, funded the production of Firewatch.

So then of the Campo chunk that was left, there was a small portion allotted to all the individual people. In brief, there was a small amount, but it was like not that much and spread over, you know, six, seven years. Certainly not enough to fund even one person making a video game. let alone multiple. So it was really the CMF funds initially and then that funding from Kelly Knights that actually like afforded us making our game. Got it.

Yeah. So, okay, so at the end of 2017, while you're getting the CMF and then eventually taking it out to publishers and funders and getting that money, I assume at that point you did not think you would be shipping in 2026. Can you tell me a little bit about what was the kind of,

what was the projection, what was the plan, and what went awry? I mean, obviously there was that, you know, whole global pandemic thing. And so even though our working practices were insulated from that, the general life toll non-zero, the intention was always to stay relatively small, particularly at the beginning. So with a game like this, they're so complicated and so many pieces have to touch so many other pieces that if you just slam a ton of people on it once without kind of, having built up enough of all the various systems so they can like actually interact and you know

talk to each other so to speak that it just you just end up having to like generate work for people to do but then you don't know actually is that thing exactly correct and so it can be a big old mess so we stayed with like a relatively small cadre of people for like quite a long time even going in knowing I'm like oh yeah these things are really complicated so I was thinking you can know but you can't really know until you experience it. And then you're like, oh, I get why almost nobody makes games like this. Okay, cool. And the people who do...

By games like this, you mean city builders? Yeah. Describe the elevator pitch. So, yeah, Generation Exile is a sustainable solar punk city builder where you are essentially rebuilding a society inside of a generation ship that has departed from Earth due to ecological collapse of our planet due to, you know, excess. excessive desire for growth. Completely unrealistic, utter, utter fantasy.

Totally made up, not at all. Who ever could have thought? So the idea was, kind of the incepting idea of the entire game, was, you know, the emergent narrative stuff that lives in like a Crusader Kings or a Rimworld, the player-driven, non-deterministic, like, it's different every time type emergent stories that live in those games, I find experientially, like, incredibly compelling and a thing that, like, kind of only exists in games. But, and I say this as someone who loves C.K.

And Rim World and Door Fortress, like, those games are for crazy people. Crazy people like me, but they're also for crazy people, right? So it's like, okay, well, can we get at some of the emergent narrative stuff that leaves in those games, but maybe set it on top of a bedrock of like a slightly less inherently complicated game, right? Like rather than, you know, a big paradox, you know, Europa, Universalist, Hearts of Iron type grand strategy game. What if it's a little, what if it's a city builder, which is like, like a little bit more discreet, contained, familiar, right? And then we discovered that actually that is doing that is way more complicated than one might think.

Like, I'm still trying to figure out exactly where so much that complexity came from. But I think part of it is when you have a game where ultimately what you do is you move little guy around screen in whatever format that might take, including little guy being like a gun in your eyes are the guy, that that necessarily bounds what the game is about. And I don't mean in terms of fiction. I just mean like in terms of experience. What is the game about? Like what do you do is kind of like inherently person constrained?

But when you don't have that, then it's like, what's the game about? And now your constraints are like, well, what can a board game be about? And the answer is, well, whatever the hell you write in the mail. and then whatever pieces of wood, cardboard, and plastic you put in the box. It can just be anything. And that seems empowering. It is also means that you have no, like, firmament that you're building on at all. But then you're just staring into this, like, infinite possibility space.

And so that's itself challenging. But I think that that property is why if you look at strategy games, there are pretty, like, discrete lineages of games. and stuff is a lot more like iterative in conversation within that lineage. It is actually quite difficult, just because so many of these just like invisible assumptions depend on the way that all the systems interact with each other, and you kind of can't, not nearly as easily can just pick one bit out of it and put it in here. So we're like, oh, we'll take the emergent narrative stuff from your Crusader Kings-ish type

things and we'll put it in the city builder. It'll just work. I mean, not that we thought it would just work, but the, the interoperable. integration difficulty there, I think, was significantly higher than we imagine. So did you ever think to stop, to go in another direction? Because, like, there's only, I don't know. I personally, there's only so long. Well, I mean, there's only so long.

I personally would be willing to ram my head against the wall of something that's not working. I'm curious. And I don't know, are you happy with what you ultimately wound up with in the game? I mean, I think we ultimately got to an interesting expression of some of those ideas, right? Like, I don't think, you know, the thing we shoved out the door was like, oh, this is some horrible half-baked trash. But, well, here you go. Like, I think we ultimately got it there.

For good or for ill, and the answer actually is probably a bit of both. Like, I have a disposition toward being unable to not see something through no matter what. And obviously, as we were, you know, iterating through. like we tried all kinds of different, like, experiments within the actual systems of the game itself. So it wasn't just like, oh, this one thing, we'll force it to work no matter what. But Stunner, doing a new thing really hard, it turns out. But I think also a confounding factor with all of this is, you know, like a big systems-driven strategy game. It's so hard to evaluate any of it until almost all of it exists, right?

You have to build, like, 90% of the systems. in the game before you have any idea if any of it's working or not, right? Where it's like, you know, you can't, the, the prototype of civilization that, oh, the only thing that works is the tech tree. It's like, that's not, that's not anything, right? Like, everything that exists, like, sure, you would have, like, literally the software where you could have the branches, then you click on a thing and then you get it. But, like, the actual game there is like, okay, well, like, am I, how, okay, what's

the tradeoff of getting this type of unit versus this type of technology? Well, that depends on, like, well, now units have to exist and, like, combat has to exist and your economy has to exist and like just all of this stuff has to be there at like at least a relatively complete level of at least like resolution otherwise just none of it makes any sense so then you're in the situation we're like okay well is this not jelling just because we don't have enough critical mass of all the bits talking together or is it something a little bit more fundamental i'm struck by the fact that you're describing the end point of what sounds like a pretty intense learning process where you learned all these things and now you're kind of like okay

I've learned all this stuff. Here you go. Uh-huh. I'm interested, though, in your decision-making process still, because I just think that's something that a lot of listeners can relate to, the idea of finishing a project and wanting to try something completely different. But when you were doing that, though, like, did you talk to anyone who had worked on games like this or who had experience making them? Yeah, a bit.

You know, I remember chatting pretty early on to Soren Johnson, who was at Faraxis for ages on the various sieves. and then has left to start his own shop. And they made the Mars trading one that's kind of like Mule. Oh, my God, off-world trading company. And then more recently, Old World. And, you know, there was useful learnings in there, but also, I think, and maybe now I realize what Soren was actually saying,

is that, like, Old World is just him fixing problems that he saw in Siv. Right? And again, that's kind of in that, oh, yeah, like, these games exist in, like, pretty specific lineages. But certainly there's nobody I talked to who was like describing that broad. This is how the design of strategy games works. And maybe it's a thing that like, oh, yeah, if you're, you know, if you live in this format, this is like pretty intuitive to you, maybe. And I'm doing a thing that's distinct is difficult.

And you never know if it's going to work until it does or does not. Sure. So, okay, so you're working on this game. You're plugging away at these challenges for many, many years. At what point did you start thinking about the marketing of it all? Because in the past, you've worked with publishers and handled that side of things. Now, because of your funding deal, as you mentioned, you're expected to handle it yourself. And something that we will definitely get into is the kind of the launch of the game

and not reaching the player account that you would have liked, which is something you've been open about. But was there a point when you started thinking, okay, we need to figure out how to reach people with this game, how are we going to do that? Yeah, that had been a consideration for, I'd say, most of development. The, you know, even though, yeah, Ninja was like technically published by Microsoft and with Firewatch, Panic did a ton, like a lot of that still was driven by us internally as well, like a significant amount. Yeah, so that consideration was always there kind of from the beginning, you know, and we'd had a pretty deliberate strategy of, okay, we don't want to try to find an opportunity to announce the game with as much like visibility as possible.

Because that's like an arrow in your quiver that you can't unfire. Like once the game is announced, it's announced, right? So we ended up being able to announce the game at the PC gaming show in 2024. Like they, PC Gamer actually sent a film crew up here, did like a little mini documentary thing. Like they usually for every given PC gaming show they'll do like three or four like, oh, we'll actually talk to the people making the game in addition to just like, here's the trailer. for the game in that announcement trailer. You know, we worked with Derek Liu, who's probably one of the best, at least, like, independent

game trailer editors in the planet. So, you know, okay, how do we capture as many eyeballs as possible in just in terms of the announcement, right, and try to get that like snowball going? That was there from the beginning. And then similarly, you know, like, okay, and then we'll have an updated trailer at the PC Gaming Show 2025 that also concords with the demo for the game being. in next best. Like, in general, I would say that we, and again, this isn't like, you know, defensiveness or anything, but I'd say we, like, tried to follow breast practices as much as they

exist. The, I think the challenge is that, one, you know, certainly I probably underestimated just how time-consuming so much of this stuff is. If anything, maybe now, more so than, I don't know, five, seven, ten years ago is that it all tends to be this like halting problem where when so much awareness is driven particularly by like content creator, influencer, whatever, coverage and promotion, that there's this halting problem where many creators don't want to cover a thing unless they think there's interest in it. But then now there's this like standoff of like, well, if I'm not a first mover problem where no one wants to be the first take a chance on a thing that doesn't have people connecting with unless, you know, you already have.

validation so to speak via like hooded horse is publishing your game so people will kind of like take it as red that okay well this isn't going to be like complete junko trash right right or it has X number of wish list or something well backing up for a second to that so that's an interesting one so um and it's funny you say kind of doing the quote-unquote right things uh because that is also a playbook from 10 years ago and things have changed so much since then but putting that aside you're in this PC gaming show that is if I remember correctly that's like part of summer games fest right like they do it around the same time so I guess the advantage of that is that you get eyeballs on the tremendous I'm not sure many eyeballs that one gets in particular but

quite a bit not as much as like the main Jeff Keely not as much as that one but but a good amount yeah so that's the pro as you're getting eyeballs I guess the potential downside is that you're getting kind of announced at the same time as dozens of other games are getting announced and so you might get lost in the shuffle there. Did you find that to be a successful strategy? Did you get good kind of metrics from that? What was that announcement like for you guys? Yeah, I think so.

I mean, off of that, obviously, I could dig around in the big jiggity jig chart in the Steamworks back end. But I think that initial announcement was like well into the five figures of like wish lists on Steam, which like. Yeah, pretty good. All things considered. I mean, obviously, ain't a barn burner, but like, it's not bad. it was, it was, yeah, it was certainly, you know, again, relative to our scale, which is, which is like half dozen people, right? It's like, okay, cool. This seems at least like, we haven't completely missed the mark.

I guess it wasn't like, and silence of 44 wish lists and we know 42 of them. It was nothing like that quiet, right? So we're like, okay, let seems, at least it wasn't like a bad sign. Yeah, okay. So, yeah, so that was effective for you guys. Like, you're happy that you went with that decision. The reason I mentioned that the reason I mentioned that it feels like a playbook for 10 years ago is because it feels to me like marketing, like all rules of marketing of just gone out the window

in 2026 and we just in a totally different spot. So okay, so then moving forward, you guys launched an early access last year. Last November. In 2025, in November of last year. And that's when you came out and you said publicly like, hey, we just launched this thing to early access and crickets. Tell me a little bit out that experience. Like what were you expecting when you launched it?

What kind of setup did you do ahead of the early access launch? Were you trying to build a community? Like, what was your kind of plan? And what went awry? That's a, that's the $55 million question, ain't it? Oh, is that the budget? No. $55 million.

They ignore that golden bookshelf behind me. Just to be clear, you're saying that is far more than the budget. Correct. Just so the listeners don't get the wrong idea. Because some actually might, we should be clear about that. Oh, my God. Also, we're not on videos, so they don't see that there is actually no golden bookshelf. All the gilding.

They don't see that there's 16 golden bookshelves there. It's so hard to know because, like, there are so much of this stuff, especially, whatever, in the broader world gets talked about as if there's all these universalities, which are like absolutely not true, right? Like, you know, make sure you put fucking 40 TikToks up of your game every week or whatever. It's like, that works great for some games that will not move the needle at all for other games that are otherwise like just as quality marketable, whatever, right? So there's already a challenge of like what to do that's appropriate for your title, the type of people you're trying to reach, et cetera, et cetera, is itself like extremely muddy. But, you know, when we launched, I think we had around like,

35, 40,000 wish lists, which again, like, it's perfectly fine, right? And it's the kind of thing where, you know, in general, you can be like, okay, you know, obviously not, it's not like 100% of those people show up minute one and click purchase. And some people purchase without ever wish listing, but you can kind of take that number and be like, okay, within your first month, you'll have like 15, 25%, like, that's normal average-ish. But in general, you can be like, okay, conservative around here, like a good, solid outing here, and then, you know, crazy edge conditions on either side, right? And so looking at kind of how things have been going, we're like, okay, this is probably

going to be fine. But then when it came out, it was like, oh, no, it is so, so much below even the most conservative of projections. In terms of the wish list numbers, you mean, like the percentage of people that actually followed through, that percentage was way lower than. So there's, yeah, there's two factors. There's like using wish lists as proxy for how many, because some people will purchase it without ever wish listing it.

So then you've got like, okay, well, that's a decent proxy measure still, though. So, but the both the number of raw purchases, but then also, and this is the one that continues to be the most difficult to try to, like, be under, come up with like a clear understanding analysis, explanation, whatever of the actual wish list conversion as well. Like in Steam, it'll show you like, okay, this is your, this is how many people actually head the game on their wood. and then clicked add the cart, right?

Relative to other games on Steam, here's where you are, and ours is much below average. So, yeah, what do you do when something like that happens? Is there anything you can do? What was your kind of internal discussions when the game launched and didn't hit the audience that you were hoping for? It's a great question. I mean, so obviously there was looking at the sentiment, right? And while, well, I probably would ultimately be more bummed out if the situation was people played the game, they're like, yo, this game sucks. Like, at least that would be a little bit more explanatory.

Like, at least there would be like a clearer, okay, I guess it's just like, is just not that good? It didn't really, some, we missed some very big things in here. People who actually played it were like into it. You know, obviously, I'm not going to be like, it's the greatest game ever. Get the hell out of here, Sid Meier or anything like that. But it wasn't like, I mean, whatever. Obviously, everyone thinks their own baby is cute, et cetera. But being as distance as I can be, like, I don't think the game is like significantly below average.

And then when we were, you know, looking at sentiment, I put this post up on Reddit that a bunch of people who responded to. And, you know, there were several currents in there. You know, there was one kind of like big through lines in terms of response. Like there were certainly some subset of people who were just like, I just don't play early access games. I simply won't. And I think maybe, well, obviously, and this has always been the case, that, like, there's a certain crop of people for whom they're like, early access is just not for me. I'm going to wait until it's one point no and done.

That I think that the pool of people who are even, like, kind of open to that has gotten smaller. And I think in general, the sentiment around early access as, like, a game, from like an audience-facing perspective is one of, like, skepticism. And, like, it's got kind of a stink on it, particularly if the game isn't like, and it's, six bucks and it's like pocket money purchasing if it's like you know price the way like a normal strategy simulation game is that there is a lot of skepticism around just like early access is the thing it's like what is this game just going to get abandoned after a week etc right and then the other big through line was people are just like i just don't understand what the game is and we're like

okay well all right maybe that's maybe there's like some you know whatever communication marketing as as far as like concept type challenges in there. Plus, maybe there's just like some amount of people are just like not into early access thing at all. And that ratio was higher than we thought. We're like, okay, how on earth do we even continue to pay to keep making this game? Because it's not going to be from its earnings. Well, can we just back up a second, else?

So that reaction you're talking about is from the Reddit post you made after the launch had happened. Was there, what was the strategy for actually getting people to even know about the launch? And just to give you a personal example, I mean, you had emailed or you had messaged me and you were like, did you know that this? And I was like, I had no idea this is out. I didn't even get a press release about it, which seems like a flaw. That seems like a bit of a problem. But like, were you doing press? Were you guys doing any sort of like reach out to streamers? Do you hire PR people? Did you hire marketing people? Like, what was that kind of calculation for you ahead of

the early access launch? Yeah. So at the early access launch, in brief, I sent so many emails to so many content graders and so many various outlets as well. So you are handling it. Largely me. Correct. You know, I think like in general how to approach particularly talking to press, what's like, well, the game is just really access. We're not being like, would you like to review the game?

Because like, my definition is not done. So it's essentially like, okay, well, it's just kind of news updatey, that type of coverage, right? And certainly there was coverage of the early access launch and the places that you kind of hope and expect that it would be, right? like BC Gamer's website and rock paper shotgun and Eurogamer and stuff like that. You know, there was some write-ups of like the way that usually early access coverage is where it's like it's an impressions type thing, right?

Again, those were like, you know, it wasn't like, ah, and the game is perfect and flawless, right? But the sources of friction weren't like, I don't think significantly out of bounds for like the states that many early access things are in, right? But yeah, for that, for the early access launch, we're largely doing that under our own power. We did not do that for the 1.0 launch. I knew it would be a tremendous amount of work, and it was work that I was going to do to the best of my ability, but I did not recognize perhaps the degree to which it is just like, it takes so much goddamn time.

Oh, my God, so much time. And then that also has to be bouncing against, but you still got to keep making the video game. related to the early access thing. The numbers you were talking about, you know, with the wish lists and then looking at the conversion, does Valve contextualize any of that for early access? Like, you were looking at how you're doing relative to other games. Was that like relative to other early access games? Is there a way to distinguish that?

Or were you just sort of comparing yourselves to, like, games that fully launch in 1.0? I would have to double check, but I think that is broken out comparably to other early access titles at that stage of thing because the so much of the stuff in that back end is a little bit opaque but I'm pretty because the the conversion rate counter and how it compares to other titles it did reset when we went 1.0 um so I think that does indeed mean that it was just amongst other early access games as like a cohort or whatever how many copies did you sell that early in around the early access month it was uh about 300 Okay, about 300. And so you were in an early access for about six months and you guys entered 1.0 release in April of this year. And you said you were doing things differently. Can you talk about how that went? Did it, did things like turn out any differently based on your approach?

Nope. What was your approach? Yeah, you were saying that you were handling everything yourself in November and then you changed things this time. What did you do differently? So in another positive turn living in the country that we do, or at least I and most of the folks do, there's a totally separate unrelated to the CMF program called Creative Export Canada, and it's run by the Ministry of Heritage up here. And it's for like all kinds of Canadian cultural works, period. Like everything from like dance performances to fashion to like film, television. And then also it includes video games.

So that funding grant exists primarily to export Canadian cultural works to other locations in the world. So we were able to use that grant to then have an actual PR firm help out and do the full-on blasting of emails and connecting with content creators and do all of that stuff. Still did not receive a press release about the game, by the way. Well, I'm sorry to say. The Canadian government can maybe talk to the PR company. It'll do a little bit better. And then, yeah, and it's like, given that, I mean, that says a lot about the state of the games market today that you put in money to hire a PR firm. And it didn't move the needle at all.

Yeah. I still kind of don't completely get it. So did you sell another 300 copies? Was it around the same? Was it more of a just kind of, oh, this is a 1.0 and people didn't really notice? Yeah, I mean, we, you know, we did a couple big content. Like, you know, we went through early access, like, genuinely, you know, we didn't, we didn't, you know, intentionally. I mean, obviously, with a giant systems-ish game like this, like, you can kind of always keep adding more stuff, right?

But we did have a pretty specific, it's like, okay, to at least have a thing that is, you know, feels to us complete and has the major. all the beats that we are imagining existing in this game. Okay, it's going to take, it's about this much stuff. Can we get, what is the, what is the most expeditious way we can get there? And maybe some of the nice to haves are not going to be nicely had. So we did a couple big content updates throughout that early access period between November and April. And, you know, there was, again, a small uptick of interest at each of those content launches. So, you know, at the end of the day, I think we're sitting around like just shy of 2,000 units sold,

which is like, it seems like a big number, but then you do the math and you're like, wait a minute, that has to cover payroll for a half dozen people for how long? Oh. So what's the answer to that? What do you do moving forward? There was a reality, certainly, that could have been like after one week post the early access launch in November,

like some people probably smarter people than me, would have simply been like, this is not ever going to go anywhere, time to walk away, by and just like left it. You know, it was, as I mentioned earlier, like the signs were not so absolutely clear cut and dry that that's the

best, that is the only advisable course. And at least for me, like contributing to that just culture of disposability that seems to be pervading so many aspects of life, not just video games, where it's like, hey, if this thing

isn't immediately connecting, just throw it in the trash. And then also, it would kind of be contradicting. created in the whole goddamn game's themes too, right? That, you know, it would be both a disservice to us as people who spent so much time on this thing as well as like, the people who did show up and were interested in the game to simply be like, I didn't immediately catch fire. We're done. Sorry.

This thing will just sit eternally incomplete forever, right? That felt very bad as a thing to do. So we just continued to get it to that 1.0, like as robustly. in as robust a fashion as we could. But how we covered that time was digging around in the couch for as much coinage as we possibly could, being smart about borrowing and some tax credits and things like that. So we were able to get it over the line. But certainly at this point, you know, the revenues from the game would not sustain continued to develop.

It's just like mathematically, it's simply impossible, right? But since the game isn't, at least it feels like to us, like, like complete, you know, we achieved at least some form of a thing that isn't just like an abandoned, disposed work. Now we're like, okay, well, in what turned out to be a rather salient hedging of bets, last fall in a very compressed amount of time, I filled in another CMF application. For prototyping funds, that was by some miracle successful. And that program, it's, you know, as we were kind of talking about earlier, like, in particular, getting funding for making a prototype, especially now, is, like, impossible or you're getting terms that are, like, effectively usury.

It's outrageous, right? So the CMF existing to provide effectively, like, an interest-free loan on prototyping stuff that then contentially turn into full production funding with them, or if you get with some other entity, you just pay them back dollar for dollar, and that's it. free and clear. It's an incredibly valuable thing. Yeah, nice to not be in the United States. Okay, so that's what you just, so so yeah, that's your next thing. Correct. Is you're going to be working on a new prototype? Correct. But that funding is like project specific. And so you cannot spend one beaver emblazoned nickel on the project aside from the one that you applied to them for. And it has to be a new thing, et cetera. So it was just like running on fumes to get generation exile over the line. And now,

we're able to start discharging those funds on prototyping a new thing. Are you going to make an entirely new kind of game? That's what I was going to ask. Kind of. You don't. You don't. Okay. But you just explained that throughout the course of this process,

you learned how to make a strategy game. Correct. But never, never again. Well, of this nature, no. No, no, no. So every, every video game hates being made, right? like all of them. There's the quote of the episode.

Yeah. It's true. I don't remember where I heard that, but I heard it from somewhere and I'm like, that is maybe the truest thing I've ever heard in my life. That's a good one.

But this game in particular, like, it really, it really hated being made. So for the next thing, I was like, okay, one, what am I, like, obviously, the overriding interest has to be,

like, what am I interested in doing? Right? Because without that, like, they're far, far less. stressful and challenging ways to ensure that one can cover their renting groceries. But then also I'm like, okay, what is something that I at least feel relatively confident that is designable by myself and everybody else at Sondra Lest that will maybe this time

leverage some prior expertise? So the, obviously we're obviously not. The thing doesn't even, it exists as an empty currently Godot project. We'll see if that sticks or not. So there's nothing but like pure premise and concept, but it is hearkening more towards something that I both enjoy a lot and also feels rich design-wise, but does have that property of little guy move around on screen in that like we can prototype say three minutes of the video game and it will not require building 90% of the goddamn video game to do that. So are you thinking about market research this time? I recently had a conversation with the CEO of Atari for a story that'll be up pretty soon. And it was really interesting.

He's an interesting guy for a lot of reasons. One of the things he told me is that his first couple of years on the job, he was greenlighting things based on Vives. And that didn't work so well in games that he greenlit were not selling. And then he started thinking a little bit more about getting market research in there, kind of looking at doing more proper kind of finance stuff and projections and thinking about what the market wanted. and working for that. Is that something that you're thinking about after this experience for Generation Exile?

Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, that thinking occurred for Generation Exile as well, right? Where we're like, okay, you know, like people like these big strategy games that have emergent stories in them. Like, there's a reason why people kind of conceptualize Crusader King separately from a lot of the other paradox,

you know, Victoria, Europa, Universalis, hearts of iron, et cetera, right? Like, there's something about C.K. that is like a little bit more distinct and resonant and hit a bigger, chunk of people than all those other paradox grand strategy titles did. So this was a thing that we were thinking about like from the jump, but for reasons, some of which I would probably be able to identify others remain to me mysteries. That particular constellation of stuff just didn't line up.

It's very difficult to directly compare like any two games, even just like a broader constellation of games in anything but like kind of the highest level. And with almost anything, you can find some amount, you can find information that will like let you tell whatever. story you want to. For the type of things that we would be making at our scope and scale, like, it's not just like one single outlier title and everything else equivalent is like crickets, right? Like, you can kind of find some picture that tells you whatever you want, kind of, right? But like, all that is to say, like, we did as much due diligence as we could, but I do not think there's any actual, like, yes, we did the market research and we know exactly

what to do. I don't, I just don't think that is a thing that, like, exists. It's just you can, I think you can get to a point of like, are we making a tremendously bad decision? No? Cool. So I guess let me reframe the question, which is what, after this experience of spending a lot of time on this game that didn't resonate with people quite as much as you wanted, what is your takeaway for the next project and how are you, like, what are you thinking in terms of strategy to hopefully try to avoid that for this one? I certainly hope so. I don't think I can survive this again. Yeah, part of that is, you know, spending even more time thinking about what are the properties of this that will, it's a difficult thing to explain where I think the takeaway that some people have right now in 2026 is just like, just puk out the cheapest, fastest thing you possibly can that is immediately parsable, that is incredibly simple. And if it catches, cool, if not just bounce and go on to the next one. And also it needs to be co-op and you need to be doing something viral with your friends.

Correct. Exactly. That's, you understand the broad things that I'm gesturing at. And just for me, one, as a format that doesn't appeal to me a ton. And sure, that might be the case right now, but also 24 to 36 months from now, is that still going to be the thing that people are interested in? Like, this is also part of the eternal challenge of all of this stuff, right? Like, you know, obviously the highway of burning cars of various, like, live service shooters that all seemed like it would be a good idea when Destiny was huge. And then the three to five, seven, however long years it takes to make them.

Then at the end of the road, nobody wants them. So that's also part of the challenge, right? And again, you know, I'm not, it's easy for it to sound pejorative. It's not. But it's not even that they're shallow. It's like those just like wacky viral co-op shit. with your friends type games are fun, right? But like, I guess they're not really, like, about anything.

They're about having fun with your friends, right? And, like, creating something that facilitates those experiences can genuinely be goddamn beautiful, right? But, like, as the person creating the thing, like, they're not really, like, about anything, really, right? Like, that RV game, it's like, what is that about? It's about it's about it's about it's about your friends. And that rules, right?

But if the broad trend of what to do if you're a relatively small, game studio is just to make things that are like kind of shallow, a little bit disposable, or at least like aren't really about anything as like a creative work or whatever. Like I don't want that to be the takeaway, right? I mean, there are a lot of games that are about something that are successful. I'm kind of like, to me, to push you to be a little more specific or maybe a little less specific about some of your thinking. Let me, yeah, let me rephrase that.

To push you to be a little less specific, like, not just like, okay, you don't want to make a friend slop game, sure. But what are you thinking just keeping your values intact? There we go. There we go. The philosophies that you have as an artist, the things that you want to make, the kinds of games that you believe in, games that are about something, that means something. Certainly that's true of Generation Exile. That's true of everything you've worked on. Keeping that intact, like, how do you think you might approach your next game differently? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's a good way to frame this very long and meandering walk.

I think, so yeah, holding true that there is this just broader challenge around like attention, comprehensibility, whatever, that I think for us a lot of thinking about is like, okay, well, how can we make it clear the appeal? That's maybe like a not yucky way to talk about it. Like, what is the appeal of the thing we're working on it? How can we make that manifest like as quickly as possible? Because I think it is the case that right now, you know, you have an incredibly, incredibly thin window to like, like get something to actually lodge in someone's mind.

And if that doesn't happen, that opportunity is gone maybe forever. And just another slightly different, like slightly easier, more comprehensible thing will fit in there instead. And that's it. So I think that like the window of, you know, ability to like get someone's ultimately attention is very, very, very, very thin. So we're like, okay, well, how can we, for the thing that, you know, we're working on, how can we make the appealing parts of that, like, very clear, but not in a way that's like, oh, we'll just build the entire thing to be, like, shallow and immediately recognizable, right? Because I think that, you know, there still is space for, you know, something that has the,

again, this is not exactly the thing I'm ringing or anything like that. But, like, you know, there isn't, like, a cool six-second video of blueprints that in any way conveys, like, why that game is so unbelievably incredible and compelling, right? just that core notion of like you're exploring this house and then every time the house rearranges itself every day. But now you have this like little seed in your mind of like be able to wonder about the thing in a way that isn't like the game isn't so immediately parsable that you know exactly what you're going to be doing in the way that something that has like a higher degree of virality or like comprehensibility or whatever. Like what is the appeal there right? And I think that it's like, okay, well what is our version of that? Well, what Blueprints did, I mean, to kind of get it, what you're going after here.

Blueprints had a few things going for it. One, it was obviously very highly rated and word and mouth helped a lot. But it was also the people behind it, Raw Fury, the publisher behind it, they were putting on a pretty hefty PR campaign months in advance. They were talking in the press. They had a great interview with our colleague Stephen Totillo about the game. He was streaming. They were building a community and talking to fans early and getting people kind of interested in the game with a, drip feed of talking about it. And there was a lot of outreach that they did ahead of that game

that kind of primed it to be a success, which seems like it's a necessity these days. Is that something that you're kind of looking at or thinking about? Totally, totally, right? And I think, you know, part of that is also, it becomes a little bit self-reinforcing too, right? Because like, okay, well, that initial outreach, it's, if you have that, you know, comprehensibility, that appeal, that a reason why someone should care about this thing, okay, well, that becomes easier to then generate. It's like these positive feedback loops, right? So certainly, yes.

A great degree of any amount of future budget planning as well as like production planning and staffing and all of that is like, okay, yes, how do we ensure that all those gears are turning but in a way that isn't compromising, like just making the game itself, right? Because it is like a bit challenging it was like, hey, come into our Discord for this game that isn't out yet, And you can do something.

You want to have the game there, right? I mean, Blueprints did a good job of marketing, but also the game was there. And the central idea of it was immediately appealing. Like, it came across pretty, you saw, I watched a six second trailer of that. I saw the rooms redrawing when you open a door. And I was like, oh, that's what I mean. I get it. Like, I see the visual style.

I see what it looks like, how it moves. And I'm like, oh, that looks cool. And then I see that there's all this buzz around it and the people that, I know are like, dude, this game's amazing and I'm like, okay, sold. Like, so there is like the content of the game itself matters quite a bit in this equation. Yeah, yeah. Well, I think that is the bedrock that everything sits upon is like, okay, yeah, the thing has to be like strong and compelling in and of itself.

And then you then also need to stack all this other stuff on top of it. And it really is about, okay, well, how can we just try to have as many of these things like pointing all in the same direction as possible? That's all. Just make a really good video game and then talk about it in a really really. good and compelling way. That's all you have to do. That's all, that's the solution here. We got it. You know, we saw it. We got there. We have to wrap things up. But Niles, before we go, I have to ask one more question, which is, how are you feeling after this? Like, you've been

through, now you've been through some big hits, Firewatch especially was a humongous hit. And now you've been through a game that was a little bit less of a hit. But you also finished it. I mean, you also like after eight years you you came out with a game you finished it it came out of early access you put in that extra effort i imagine you were feeling a lot of things can you try to try to sum them up a little bit what are things like for you uh yep it's extremely complicated um it really like yeah it's it's it's so much and it again it's easy for some of this stuff to end up sounding like sour grapes or like we were owed anything and i do not believe that is the case in in any way right like, you know, everyone only has a finite amount of time to spend doing anything.

And I think that, you know, as someone creating something that you're ultimately asking someone else to spend their time with, like, you have to earn that every single time. And so that is the case always. And I think that will always be my disposition. And yeah, it's, it's very difficult. Because like I said, I don't feel like we were owed anything, right? But it's also just the, had things just been like kind of on the softer end, right, like, you know, around that like most conservative side of projections, it would be a lot easier to kind of square like, oh, yeah, you know, falls within bounds, right? It being so much further below that, it really, it really does a number on you, right?

where you spend so much time thinking about like, you know, what did we miss? Like what just like, what does this say about my own competence? Like thinking about the people you've like ultimately let down. It's it's a lot. And again, just because we worked on the thing doesn't mean that, you know, therefore inherently people somehow must show up and spend their time with it, spend their hard-earned coin with it. Certainly nothing like that. It really is more just like, you know, at the end of the day, I would certainly much rather, like, struggle for the right reasons than to succeed for the wrong ones. So the fact that, you know, we did get something over the line as, as quipped, every video game hates being made and the fact that we were

able to rest this one into reality at all in the, in the form that it ultimately ended up being, I think it's somebody to be proud of, but, like, it's also really, yeah, it's rough to be like, I thought we were making something that at least, like, some reasonable number of people, like there was something here that could connect with people, right? That there was like something here that people would like want to pay attention to and care about. And having to square all of that with like, oh, okay, maybe not. And you can just never also like really know, right? You don't get to like A, B, test reality and being like, oh, well, if we just done blah,

instead of blah, it would have been, so you're just kind of like, I don't know, you book a whole bunch of therapy appointments. That's for sure. And then you're also just like, you try to look at the, you know, the qualities and the thing that you can appreciate and be proud of it as well as yourself as a creative, like, okay, well, what things did we do well and what things did we want to do differently in the future? And that's kind of all you can do. Still is a little bit of a bitter tonic on top of all of it. And it's just like, man, yeah, I don't. People ask me how I'll do it.

I just kind of make a sound and they go, I don't know. Well, I hope this was a useful therapy session for you, among your other ones. Yeah, you guys can send me the invoice. No big deal. No, I mean, yeah, I do think that there is merit in, you know, just like being honest and talking about this stuff. It's easy to hear from the people who made a thing that turned out far better than they ever could have possibly imagined. But I do think there's, you know, value in also being like, and then what? the other sides as well.

So I appreciate it. It's always lovely chatting with y'all. So, yeah, thank you. Yeah, man. Del Anderson, thank you so much for coming on the show and for being so candid about this stuff. People can, of course, check out Generation Exile on Steam. And, yeah, thank you for coming on the show.

Nels, we appreciate it. My pleasure. Yeah, thanks, man. We're going to take a break, and then we'll be back with one more thing. Thank you to all the Max Fund members who supported us during Max Fund Drive. You're helping us as we try to put more good into the world. And as part of putting more good into the world, we've opened our annual Post Drive charity sale. Max Fund members at $10 per month or more can purchase Max Fund Drive keychains featuring designs for shows across the network.

And all members can buy our charity exclusive keychain starring Mikey, our little microphone buddy from this year's Max Fund Drive. This year, we've decided to send the proceeds of the charity sale to the Center for Constitutional Rights. They're dedicated to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change, tackling issues like human rights abuses, racial injustice, and sexual and gender-based violence. These folks are fighting to make things better. So to get your keychains and support the Center for Constitutional Rights, head to maximumfund.org slash charity sale. And if you're not yet a member, we can still get in on this.

To support the show you're listening to, and get access to bonus content and the charity sale. Just click the link in the show notes. The sale is live now, and it ends on Friday, May 15th. That's maximum fun.org slash charity sale. And thanks again. Sleep is important, but it's difficult sometimes. I'm John Moe.

On sleeping with celebrities, famous people help conk you out by talking in soothing voices about unimportant things. Maria Bamford on parking. I parked in a bus stop. That's just not right. I am not a bus. Roxanne Gay on airports. My favorite airport is Indianapolis.

It has a really smart layout. Alan Tudik on yardsticks. You hand somebody a yardstick. Yard sticks become part of the family. Granted, it's a weird idea, but it's lots of fun. And it works. Listen, wherever you get podcasts. And we are back.

you again to Nells. That was really cool. It was really great to hear from him. But now it's just the three of us back for one more thing. Maddie, why don't you kick us off? Sure. So Dina and I are watching a show called Couples Therapy. And when I was writing this in the document, I was like, are the guys going to think that I'm just going to talk about me and Dina going to couples therapy? That would be unhinged behavior. Well, it says it the one more thing, Paramount Plus. I know. I was like, I'm going to make it really clear. This is a television show. Well, I actually, I assume that you were going to therapy on the Paramount lot with David Ellison as like your therapist. No, it's actually all online. It's part of Paramount Plus. It's a service they're offering. Got it. They're offering AI therapists.

You got to diversify your streaming services. Movies, TV therapy. It's an incredible television show. I don't know if you two have heard of this. It is essentially a reality TV show that presents actual couples who are going to couples therapy. And you get to watch their sessions. And okay, so here's Here's how it works. It's hosted by this woman, Dr. Orna Goralnik. She's pretty famous. She had a pretty hit podcast where she did this same thing, where people came on the podcast and did couples therapy.

And then I think that's what launched her television show career. It's had four seasons already. There's going to be a fifth one. The show is definitely successful. And I can see why, having watched it, we haven't watched all of it yet. But I'm going to recommend how you would start with it. So Paramount Plus, I would say. Is this exploitive?

So I don't, I don't think so. Everybody knows what they're signing up for. So when Dean described the show to me, I was like, okay, so I'm, I, Maddie, am automatically being kind of judgey of anybody who would agree to go to therapy in this way. Like, are all of these people going to be narcissists? Like, what kind of force that agrees to go to couples therapy on TV? Oh, you mean not go to couples therapy, but to go on TV?

Yeah. And I wouldn't say that that's entirely worn off for me, my apologies in that sense, where I'm just kind of like, why wouldn't you just? go to couples therapy privately. I do think that's an inherent structural. I don't want to see problem, but it's something about the show that's interesting, where you're like, what kind of person wants to air these grievances publicly? Yeah, and it's also always going to be performative when you know you're performing. And it is a performance. There's definitely an element of performance to all of it. But I do think the show changes as it goes along. And part of why I say that

is because since Paramount Plus is not a good app, it will do this thing where when you start a new show, it just starts you on the most recent season, as opposed to starting at the beginning of a show. I don't know why it does this. If anybody listening works for that app, please fix this. So we accidentally watched season four.

So help Maddie get her therapy properly working on the app. Help me get in touch with Dr. Orna. No, really. I don't want to do this ever in my life. It sounds horrifying. That's the last thing you're feeling vulnerable enough going to a couple therapy to be doing it on TV. I can't imagine the type of person. But this is why the show is fascinating.

Look, I think it's like the kind of thing where you have to watch it and just see if you can take it or not. And if you think it's fascinating or not. I happen to. So we started with season four. And then we went back and watched season one. And those two seasons are very different. And I'm really glad we started with season four because the couples on season four. because the couples on season four are really grounded.

You root for several of them, and you kind of feel like you understand their problems and how they came to be here. And it feels much more human. And I think that perhaps people saw the show and kind of realized like, okay, I'm willing to be on this show. I think I understand what it is.

Whereas if you watch season one and you start there, all the couples are like really performative. And the show feels more performative. and I think is harder to watch. So are the problems that they're having, like more kind of red zone bad? Yes. In the first season. And they're way more stressful.

Like way more where you're like, I'm maybe not rooting for any of these couples. Like they're in crisis. These are couples in crisis. Yes, exactly. Whereas in season four, you're kind of like, okay, these are kind of more grounded problems. And maybe even things where just kind of an every man could relate or at least like understand where the people are coming from. So, like, you can kind of tell that the dynamic of the show is changing over time and that people watched it and that they're like, okay, there's sort of a structure to the show that I understand.

But there's an inherent kind of warriorism to the show that makes it a kind of guilty pleasure territory, I would say. And it's not for everyone. But I do think it's really interesting. I think it's a bizarre result of the reality TV phenomenon. But I also think that it's interesting. And I don't know. I've gotten something out of watching it. Enough that I recommend it, and I think it's a fascinating artifact of our time.

So anyway, it's called couples therapy. It sounds like what it is, and it is what it is. I recommend just going to season before. I cannot imagine anything more horrifying. Yeah, I mean, I think it's not for everyone, Jason. I said what I said. Yeah, I could see it being interesting. I'll have to watch it.

I have all these thoughts, but because I have a lot of thoughts about couples therapy, and I think it's actually really great, but they may not have anything to do with this TV. so I'll maybe save them for a different conversation that we'll have at some other point. It's just so hard to imagine people actually being open and honest and doing the things you need for a couple of stuff. But just like with any other reality TV show, Jason,

people forget the cameras are there over time and you can kind of tell that they become disarmed and that they aren't thinking about themselves as being on a show. I mean, I'm imagining that that's true. Perhaps they never forget, but I think they do. And I think that that, I mean, we kind of see that happen in any reality. series or documentary that's well made, right?

Where eventually people just forget about the cameras and they're just like, whatever, I'm just going to do this. But again, it is sort of inherently only including people who are willing to air all of their grievances publicly. And you've got to make what you will of that when it comes to the couples on the show. Fair enough. Man, sounds wild. Kirk, what's your one more thing?

My one more thing is a show that I referenced a couple episodes ago. Maddie, I think I mentioned it to you. Yeah, I really want to want to. watch this. Yeah. You know, we're still watching it. Emily and I both love it.

It's so good. I just wanted to make it my one more thing to give it its due and actually properly recommend it. This is the show Margot's Got Money Troubles, which is an adaptation of a novel by Rufie Thorpe from just a couple years ago, which makes me think this is one of those noted author writes book. And it is immediately optioned before it's even published type situations, which I can imagine a screenwriter reading this book. or in this case, I think that it was actually El Fanning the Star, and being like, I want to make this. So I'm going to option it before it even is published, because it's a really great story.

So this is, I'm going to talk about the show. I haven't read the book. Emily listened to the audio book, which incidentally is read by El Fanning, the star of the show, which is like further evidence that she is very attached to this story and wanted to make a show out of it. And Fanning is one of the executive producers on this show, along with Nicole Kidman.

The show Runner is actually David E. Kelly. So this is a really star-studded production on Apple of this book adaptation. It's co-produced with A-24. There's clearly a lot of money behind it. The cast is totally amazing. It's got L. Fanning, Nick Offerman, Michelle Pfeiffer, Greg Kinnear. Nicole Kidman is in it. She's got a small role, but she's fantastic.

Everyone is really bringing it as well. This is like everyone really cared and tried to make something good. And it is really, really good. This is a story of Margot, who is a young woman attending Fullerton College in Fullerton, California. She is a writer, I think a quite gifted young writer, the daughter of a single mother who used to work at Hooters, but now it works at Bloomingdale's. This is a fact that winds up being relevant in the story, and of an absent father who is a pro wrestler. So her mother and father are played by Michelle Pfeiffer and Nick Offerman. Her father was kind of a gruff and grumbly guy, a Nick Offerman type, named Jinks, who was a pro wrestler for a long time and then had a really bad back injury, became addicted to opioids, his whole life kind of fell apart, and he's never been really a part of her life.

So Margot now, of course, is going to college. And she gets into an affair with a professor at Fullerton College that quickly results in her becoming pregnant. The professor is totally useless. he like basically offers to help her get an abortion and she decides, you know what, I actually want to keep this baby. And then he completely is like, I'm not going to be part of this and, you know, vanishes. So she's left kind of alone in this really difficult situation where she's pregnant. She's decided she's going to keep the baby and she has almost no support. So the first few episodes are really just getting to know her, getting to know her mother.

It really kind of reminds me of Lady Bird that film. Have I, did it other views see later? Yeah, I liked it a lot. It's a great movie. It's great at Gour Wiggs first, a kind of autobiographical story of a daughter and a mother. Sirisha Ronan and Lori Metcalf plays her mother. Anyways, kind of similar energy there with like this prickly relationship between a daughter and her mother, a mother who worries for her daughter and the choices that she's making.

And then it kind of shifts a couple of episodes in. Margot has the baby, her son, so she now has an infant, her first a baby, and then eventually an infant child that she's taking care of. Her life just really changes. She winds up dropping out of school. And then she discovers that her talents as a writer make her kind of work on only fans. So this is a, this winds up being a story about only fans and about kind of existing online and figuring out who you are and how that kind of thing works in the modern age. Sorry, what do you mean her talents as a writer make her work on only fans?

I would think something else makes you work on only fans. Well, she looks like El Fanning, so that probably knows. No, I know, I know, but that's the writer part I was just tripped on. So it's that she, you know, she wants to express herself. She wants to be a writer, and she's this very creative person. And as she builds a persona on OnlyFans, she names herself The Hungry Ghost and comes up with this whole kind of narrative and a persona around who she is. So she's doing, she's like bringing her creativity into this role, providing, like, titillating photos. You know, she's not like shooting sex scenes on video.

She's just kind of showing her boobs and stuff on camera. I think in the book there's a lot more, as Emily described it, it's kind of like post-pregnancy body horror. There's a lot of just stuff about the ways that pregnancy affects your body. And I do think that part of the story, at least in the book, is that her breasts just get way bigger. And so she finds herself the object of attention online in a way that she wasn't. In the show that's downplayed, and it's really, it's more that she's just good at titillating people. She has a sense of humor. She's very creative.

And then she brings that in an ongoing way on the show. into like her persona. Like she does build this whole persona. She starts working with two other women who are already big on Onlyfans and they build this whole storyline. They are doing skits. They're like acting out these big sequences

and she's being helped by Jinks, her father, who has come back and kind of is helping with her son because he's a pro wrestler. That makes sense because like pro wrestling has a similar like really big performance aspect. But also incredibly weird that your dad is helping show pictures,

Show your own boobs. It's funny, and the whole thing is very wholesome. The way that they depicted is actually really great, and the way that he finds a way to help. And just, it's just a great story. It's a really feel-good kind of a story that I think does depict some of the, like, misconceptions or the ways that the generational divide

and the ways that people think about any type of online sex work, certainly the way that each of her parents reacts to finding out that she is, you know, that she's doing work on only fans. her mother is in the process of marrying her boyfriend, played by Greg Kinnear, who is very religious. He's a pastor of some kind. But he's a really nice guy, and he's like trying. So there's this whole interesting thing there. You can kind of imagine Greg Kinnear playing this character.

Anyways, we're a couple episodes from the end, so I haven't finished it. But I'm far enough in and have enjoyed it enough to say it's a very easy recommendation. It's not like an incredibly provocative or difficult show, but it is, I would say, notably well made. It's beautiful looking. They put a lot of money into it. It just has this feeling of a product, like of a creative work that people spent time on. There are these beautiful sequences of just, I don't know, they go to a party and the lights and the way that they depicted. It just feels very vivid and lovely.

Those Apple budgets. Yeah, I won A-24, I think. I think Apple is giving money to production companies like A-24 and saying, okay, we will fund something like this with, you know, A-list actors, a lot of talent. and will give you the time and the budget you need to actually make something that sort of stands up. And it definitely is that. So I really recommend it. I think it's a pretty easy recommendation and a great show. And I'm really looking forward to the final two episodes.

Awesome. All right. One more thing is a book that I teased a little bit last week called London Calling by Patrick Radden-Keefe. This is a tremendous book. It's a work of nonfiction about. a boy in London who suddenly jumps off of the balcony of a building and is found dead in the Thames River shortly afterwards. The Thames, I believe. Yeah, I was going to say. It's pronounced Thames, but I'm going to pronounce the Thames because that's how it's written. No, the Thames written

the Thames written River afterwards. Patrick Grant and Keith, for people don't know, is a long-time journalist. He's written a bunch of books, including Say Nothing about the Troubles in Ireland. he's written Empire of Pain about Oxycodin and the Sackler family. Yeah, that's the one I know. And done a bunch of other stuff. He's written for The New Yorker, a bunch. And this book is really cool. And the way he describes how he even found this story is really interesting,

which is basically he was doing, he was on the set for the TV show adaptation of Say Nothing when someone came up to him and basically said, hey, you should hear this story and meet this couple. and he met this husband and wife whose son had died and that led him down this rabbit hole of this story. I don't want to say anything about it or I don't want to say much about it because part of the really riveting nature of this story is just hearing how it goes down and the kind of the rabbit hole of his death and the questions of, was it really a suicide? Was it an accident? Was it something more nefarious? Oh, actually, it turns out that this kid had gotten himself wrapped up in, uh, criminal activity potentially, or at least some lies before his death. What could that mean? What is that going to lead to? Eventually, it gets into some interesting history about Russian oligarchs and London that I didn't know about. But basically, it's a ride that I think is worth just kind of starting

from the beginning of this book and reading it. A lot of people out there have probably heard of it. It's been very successful. It's been a New York Times bestseller for a while. So I probably won't be a shock. Like, you've probably seen it in the front of your local bookstore, but I do highly recommend it. It's really good. It might be my favorite of Patrick Radenkeef's books that I've read so far, largely because it's about just this one specific story rather than some big picture narrative that tries to link a bunch of characters together. This is really a more hyper-specific story that also kind of broaches some big themes about lies and deception and sadness and grief and all sorts of other interesting stuff. So yeah, really good. Also, lots of journalistic

questions surrounding it. I think that are really interesting just in terms of how he told it and how he told it not like bad, not like murky ethical journalistic questions, but more like the way he wrote this book is very much, and he acknowledges this at the end, it's very much like told from the perspective of the family. And he has a lot of empathy towards the family and and kind of spent a lot of time with them while writing this book. And that I think just is really interesting from a journalistic point of view that he chose to approach it that way rather than a little bit more of a zoomed-out point of view or a more cold and distant kind of perspective from the family of this kid.

But anyway, really worth reading, I think it's called London Calling, Patrick Radden-Keefe. I highly recommend it. Nice. Yeah, that sounds great. I will put it on my list. You should put it on your unhold at the library. It's probably got a million holds at your... Yeah, my endless. And your endless cue.

Yeah, well, you did get to King Saro. So, hey, that was... That made it through the queue. Slowly but surely, working through it. All right, that is that for this week's episode. Once again, thank you to Nels Anderson for coming on the show and being so open about... It's very easy to be open about success. Not so easy to be open about failure.

So we really appreciate him coming on. And thank you to Kirk and Matt. for always being here. Yeah, we're going to keep being here. Yeah, thanks to both of you too. This was fun. And, yeah, and very, very interesting. I will see you next week for another interesting episode of Triple Cliff.

See you about next week. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network, and if you like our show,

we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at Maximumfund.org slash join. Email us at triple click at maximum fund.org and find links to our merch store and our Discord server in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network of artists-owned shows. supported directly by you.