Triple Click - What Makes a Game Wear Out Its Welcome? (Mailbag)

Episode Date: October 16, 2025

That's right: it's another mailbag! Kirk, Jason, and Maddy talk about the criteria of a dad game, print vs web journalism, and when you know that a video game has outstayed its welcome. Plus: Kingdom Come Deliverance 2!One More Thing:Kirk: Kingdom Come: Deliverance IIMaddy: High PotentialJason: Long Story Short (Netflix)LINKS:“May I Stand Unshaken” by D’Angelo from Red Dead Redemption 2, 2018“The Decline” by NOFX, 1999“I’m Only Happy When It Rains” by Garbage, 1995Lee Roy Chapman’s “The Nightmare of Dreamland: Tate Brady and the Tulsa Outrage” - https://www.centerforpublicsecrets.org/post/the-nightmare-of-dreamland-tate-brady-and-the-tulsa-outrageStephen Totilo’s 2015 interview with Kingdom Come director Daniel Vávra: https://kotaku.com/my-e3-meeting-with-a-pro-gamergate-developer-1715511964Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinBuy Some 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

Last week, we opened up the mailbag to answer some of your burning questions. So this week, we're opening up the mailbag to answer some of your burning questions. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the answers to you. That's right. We're doing another burning questions. We're talking Dad Games, Donkey Kong Bonanza, wearing out his welcome, and Print Magazines versus Web. I'm Jason Schreier. I'm Kirk Hamilton.

And I'm Maddie Myers. Hello. It's us again. of my friends, I just got back from Los Angeles, sunny Los Angeles, where it turns out that Hollywood is dead, you guys. Whoa. I keep hearing that. Just a wasteland out there?

The entertainment industry is dire to the point where multiple people in separate conversations to me described it as the new Detroit in that the entire industry is just going to be carved out of it and who knows what will be left. In fact, I am very curious to hear from. I think we have some listeners out there who are in the entertainment industry. If you are a listener who's in the entertainment industry, I'm actually very curious to hear some thoughts on what things are like, where things are going. Maybe we'll do an episode where we talk about like the entertainment industry because we're games podcast, but it intersects for sure with film and TV. Some parallels there.

I keep hearing about it, just about how shooting has moved out of California and movies are just being shot overseas a lot because of it's just so much cheaper to do. And yeah, I keep seeing those kinds of prognostications. That the actual location is dead. Interesting. We had a big team meeting at Bloomberg HQ in Los Angeles. And as part of like our team day, one of our editors brought in this woman who is a high up or like a deputy commissioner of something or another in the L.A. government.

And her job is overseeing these tax credits that they're giving studios to shoot films back in, back in Hollywood. But I don't know if that's like trying to stop the blue. I don't know if they can ever recover what it once was. I don't know. I'm very curious because maybe we can do an episode where we draw some parallels between games and film and TV. So if you work in the entertainment industry

and you have thoughts and you want to share them, send us an email, triple click at maximum fun.org because I'm curious to hear from folks out there what it's been like, what the state of the entertainment industry in Hollywood is like. And hey, if you want to listen to all of our episodes, including not just the main feed ones, but also the bonus ones where sometimes we also talk about movies and TV and stuff. You should become a maximum fun member.

We do not have ads, but we do have bonus episodes that come from our, that come because of our listener's support. And we love our listeners for making this show possible. So become a member. You get access to a whole bunch of bonus episodes, including one. We just ran about Holo Night Silk Song and the story and the levels and everything we love about that game. So sign up today, maximum fun.org, slash. join. Also, one more thing before we get into this week's episode, we got a ton of emails, Kirk. You asked for people to email if they'd ever gotten tickets for using their phone, like to text at a stoplight or something or while driving. Tons of people had. Traffic tickets. Traffic tickets. Traffic tickets. Yeah. Yeah. Not like they bought tickets from Ticketmaster on their phone. Sure. Sure. They did not. Or maybe they got tickets for buying tickets on their phone while drive.

Right. Exactly. Don't want to buy tickets on your phone. while you're driving. You don't want to do that. And we got a bunch. I'm not going to read them all, but I do want, I've been talking for a while. So, Maddie, why don't you read this, this email from Elizabeth? Because I thought it was very interesting. All right, Elizabeth writes, I was listening to the recent mailbag show when Kirk put out a call for info about traffic enforcement of no cell phone laws. I worked for a court in Washington State for three and a half years and have lots of insight into this question. Our busiest department at the court was traffic infractions, and we got a ton of them. county has the busiest section of I-5 in the state for tickets issued by Washington State Patrol.

The vast majority of tickets other than speeding were for use of a personal electronic device while driving. There you go. Believe me, officers out there are watching for phone use on the road. And my time there, I saw every excuse under the sun for why people were holding their phones while driving, but they almost never got off the hook. So my lessons learned are, one, have a hands-free setup that holds your phone securely. Two, cue up your latest episode of Triple Click before you hit the road.

And three, officers and judges will not believe that you were, quote, just listening to the YouTube video you had playing in full view of the driver's seat. Thanks as always for putting out awesome gaming content every week. Thanks, Elizabeth, for this insight from Inside the Courts. That's great. That is very funny. Big shout out to listeners there who support the show and make it so people won't get traffic tickets for skipping the ads while driving because we don't have any ads.

Well, we do have promos as we do try to mention. We do a promos and people can skip the promos and people sometimes skip ahead if we talk about spoilers, but just be careful out there. This is what the skip button is for, hands free. I highly recommend getting some type of hand free set up for your phone in your car. You shouldn't be like clattering it around in your car. It should be on something, easy to see. Do you know what I'm talking about when you're looking at directions? Honestly, no, I mean, I think you should just pull over if you're going to interact with your phone. Oh, for sure. Two thoughts on this for me. One is that if I ever interact with my phone

while I'm driving, usually it's right after I've pulled out of my driveway. Like, I'll have to pull up directions, which is also very common, you know, or I need to change the route. And any time I interact with the screen on my phone, and this is, it's technically hands free. I guess the phone is stuck up on the dashboard. Yeah, a little holder. But I mean, when I start doing that, I don't know about anyone out there. But for me, if I reach over to the right, like, the car starts moving to the right. Like, I will notice at times that I am not driving. It's not safe. Because it's not safe. Like, this is why this is illegal. It is profoundly unsafe. So either just let the ads on whatever podcast you're listening to you play or the show promos. If you're listening to Triple Click, just let them play.

Or, yeah, just maybe get the thing queued up before you leave. The other thought is, it's funny. I actually just paid for the subscription to you. Tube, which is like YouTube premium, because I'm just so sick of ads on YouTube and I use it a lot for work. And it was like you can get an annual subscription as much as I don't like giving. This is not an ad. It is a good deal, even though like I wish I was like putting that money toward like a Patreon or something cool instead of giving it to Google, like who do not need my money. But anyways, one thing that it lets you do is listen to YouTube videos audio only. Like you can close your phone. Since so many YouTube videos are just like an hour long video essay, you know, you don't really need.

the visual, like, especially video game stuff. A lot of times it's just gameplay footage and someone talking and you can just listen. So you could actually, I mean, I think if you have the video playing, I can understand why the judge would be skeptical. But if you close the, you know. But if it's a black screen and you're just listening, then it's probably good. It's a very interesting phenomenon that companies just will create something that is so annoying that you'll pay them to get rid of it. That is so the era we live in. I know.

I hate it. Even like things you wouldn't think about. Like I, when I fly a lot for work, I travel probably seven, eight times a year. And I pay for pre-check, which is essentially the airlines and the government saying, hey, the airline's version of this. Security is so annoying. You have to take off your shoes. Pay us and you don't have to do that. And granted, I mean, to be fair, for pre-check, it's not very much.

It's like 80 bucks for five years. But still, it's ridiculous. Yeah, you're supporting the airfare Patreon because they're struggling. And they actually are, though. Well, yeah, I mean, they're not paying their staff because there's a government shutdown. so they could use, yeah, some money. God, watch, like, TSA and the air traffic controllers launch a Patreon due to the government. Oh, my God.

They can't. I can see it happening, honestly, at this point. I would believe anything. They could start a substack. So, all right, this week we are doing burning questions. And, hey, you might be like, didn't you do burning questions last week, to which we say, yes, so what? We like answering your questions.

Yeah, we have so many great questions. We have more questions. They were great, and we wanted to do it again. Last week, we got such a good batch that we wanted to do some more this week. So that's what we're doing. So, as always, remember, you can message us and your questions to triple click at maximum fun.org. And let's get on with it. Kirk, why do you read this first one from Dan?

This comes from Dan who writes, hey, y'all, there have been a couple of high-profile success stories in games recently, like Balatro, BG3. that's Ballersgate 3 and Clare Obscure Expedition 33. And what do you think are some of the, quote, wrong lessons that executives will take away from these successes? Do all games now need to be French gambling simulators with tentacle monsters? Yes. I mean, yeah. That's the right lesson. Tenticle monster gambling simulator and it's written in French, like I think that might do one.

I think that would be very good. I think all games should be made by a single. person and every company should just hire like 2,000 people, but each of them makes their own game. 2,000 games. It's foolproof. Exactly. One of them's got to be a hit. Actually, there's kind of a weird logic to that.

Bellacho is made by a single person. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. So you're kind of taking the best of amnesia fortnight and combining it with the wrong lesson that an executive could take from it. I'm trying to think what are some lessons from these games that an executive might take away. and I don't know about wrong lessons. I mean, I think that one thing that Expedition 33 has going for it

is that all the characters are really, really good-looking. And I think that is actually something that an executive could take away from it. Balders-Gate 3 also, just saying. That's a good point, Baldur's Gate 3 as well. Expedition 33 is kind of, I don't know, the cast is like notably good-looking in a way that is like interesting and distinct. It doesn't have that kind of porny feel that some video games with like, quote-unquote, hot main characters have.

It's just like a bunch of really beautiful people and then the performances are really great too. But I think that that is part of why people got into that game. And I don't know, I could actually see that being a takeaway. I don't know if it's Frenchness would be the takeaway. So maybe the Frenchness would be the wrong takeaway. But I think that I could see them taking the character design thing from that game and actually working out.

Do you think executives are going to be like showing up in studios and like hovering over the artists? screens and be like, I need you to tune up the beautiful hot lever here. Make him more pretty. No, more, more. More like Robert Pattinson. No, more. Turn up the Robert Pattinson knob.

Yeah, turn it up. Put him in a really tight-fitting vest. Then we're ready to ship. Yeah, I feel like the wrong lesson you could take from Expedition 33 is that Perry windows should be too short and really hard. And it should be impossible to predict what different enemy patterns are going to line up into when you should actually hit the Perry button. That would be a bad lesson to take from Expedition 33.

But I don't think anyone's taking it, luckily. Well, the whole turn-based thing is interesting. Like, do you think that could actually be something that people seek to emulate? Right, like the fact that it's turn-based, but it has the Perry window. I actually like that aspect of it. Just that it's turn-based at all. Yeah, that wouldn't be a bad lesson. That would be okay if somebody made more games that had that concept.

Because I thought that was really cool. oh okay we're going to revive marion luigi and that would be fine i guess they did just release of maria yeah they kind of have been doing yeah i guess they have yeah um yeah the wrong lessons i mean i've definitely after expedition 33 came out there were so many lincoln posts being like here's what you can learn from this big hit expedition 33 and they were all terrible um i wish i i don't remember exactly what they said but it was a lot of like this was made by 30 passionate people if you had 30 passionate people you too could make a hit game. That is a 90 plus metacritic.

They found their composer on SoundCloud. So all composers should be unknown composers working mostly on SoundCloud. Exactly. Oh, yeah. One of the big stories was that the writer was her first time writing a game. That was another big one. Yeah, and then she was like in a Reddit thread or something and they found her that way. Or so the lore goes.

I don't actually know if that's even true or if that's lore. A lot of times when there's stories like this, I don't know if this is an executive thing or maybe just a fan thing. A lot of times people are like, oh, this is what you get when you find these inexperienced people instead of the grizzled veterans who like don't know what they're doing. And maybe there's a nugget of truth there in a complex way. But like it's also people tend to devalue experience in a way that is kind of gross. Right. If you're rolling the dice, the odds are still with people who have a lot of experience making and shipping games as cool as it is when newcomers find success. Exactly.

Which at least something like Baldersgate 3 could lend credence to the other. theory, which is keep a team together. Maybe they'll actually make something great again and try not to just engage in tons and tons of layoffs and replacing people after you ship everything. But I don't know. I like how we can't help ourselves, but to learn the right lessons. I know. What would the wrong lesson be from Baldur's Gate 3? How could you look at it wrong? And yet some executive will. Some executive will look at it and be like we need all of the women in our games to be green and to have very small noses. That's what we're going to do. And angry, green and angry.

Need more D&D mechanics in all of our games. Oh my God. That would be the wrong lesson, actually. We need dice rolling. We need dice rolling and we need like a really confusing combat system that's going to take a lot of battles before you figure it out. People love that. Yeah. Interesting question, though.

It's fun to imagine. All right, let's do the next one. Maddie, why don't you read this one? So. Sure. This is from Benjamin who writes, hello. I find myself wondering if dishonored meets the criteria of a dad game. My primary concern is that unlike other classic dad games, such as the Last of Us and God of War 2018, the player of dishonored is not actively escorting their charge throughout the game. Is this a fundamental element of dad gaming or does Corvo get a pass? Benjamin signed this Nobody's Dad, which is relatable to me. I'm not anybody's dad either.

You're not? That you know of, Madden. That I know of. For what it's worth, Corvo is not Elizabeth's dad either. He's a father figure. Right. He's a father figure. Right. Which doesn't make this any less of a dad game.

I mean, I think yes. I think it is too. This question mainly made me think about how lately I'm playing more games about the children of dads, I guess, is the way I would put it. It's changed. My one more thing is actually similar to the game we talked about last week goes to Viota, or I guess two weeks ago. where both games are about the child of a blacksmith who then makes swords and seeks to avenge their father.

It's kind of funny that that trope, I mean, that was also the storyline of Blue Eye Samurai, like that someone reflecting on their parents has actually been a little more common in games I've been playing lately, despite the trend toward the daddening of games. But to answer this question, I do think that Dishonard is, I mean, technically a dad game,

even though it doesn't, I don't think it's really about fatherhood. So maybe not. Maybe it isn't a dad game in the same way that like the last of us and God of War are. Because those games are so concerned with like the primary narrative arc of the protagonist is like learning that being a dad is cool and that it's okay to like care for a child. Kirk, I think that in most games where you play as a person you're playing as the child of a dad, just throwing that out there. Most of the time, yeah. Yeah, I know. I just would say that because it struck me as a funny way to describe a game.

But, you know, these characters are like particularly the children of dads, if that makes sense. Yeah, there's daddy issues happening. Right. Yeah. That is like an important aspect of their character. Children of dads would be a great title for a video game. Children of men too. Children of dads. Exactly. Exactly. I think, I think it's a vibes-based thing, though. Like, I do kind of feel like dishonored is a dad game, but maybe that's because it's from the early 2010s. And I remember that being when the dad may really unfolded. I mean, that's, I also kind of think of Bioshock Infinite as a dad game, even though it has a very troubled dad situation. And like any paternal feelings you might feel towards Elizabeth are kind of complicated by the fact that she's also beautiful.

And I think the player's invited to kind of feel that way towards her as well, to feel some attraction towards her. So like, I don't know. But I still put them in the same bucket in my head. I think they're doing some similar things with the idea of especially like this young girl character. I know God of War doesn't do it that way. But a lot of other games do where it's like, oh, I need to protect this girl or young woman. Yeah. So Biosec Infina, to your point, is another escort game, which Benjamin describes as the kind of the fundamental element of dad gaming,

which I disagree with because there's some dad games where you have to go and rescue your child or find your child, even if you're not escorting them, such as Fallout 4, which I guess you could also be a mom, so not strictly a dad game. Assassin's Creed origins, I feel like, has your dad and you're going to figure out what's up with. So I don't think that escorting is a fundamental element of dad gaming. But yeah, dishonored is a whole other question. Yeah, I guess like the daddest version of a dad game to me is the game, like I said earlier, the game where the primary narrative thrust, the primary game, character development of the protagonist involves learning how to care for a child. And that's

what God of War was about. And that's what The Last of Us was really about, and I think very effectively about. And that's why the kind of accompaniment, the escort, is central to the plot. Like, for that kind of game, you want to watch their relationship change as the protagonist kind of learns, oh, okay, this is what it's like to have a kid. And, you know, I was maybe really hurt by losing my child or I never thought I could be a father. But now I kind of see, I see this new possibility. for myself. And while it's not the only kind of dad game, it is kind of the ultimate expression of the dad game. The platonic ideal of a dad game, if you will. In that I think that dishonored is a little bit different from The Last of Us. Yeah, it's in a different category. You're

right. We need a taxonomy of dad games. All right. We'll get right on that. Dad's anonymy. And Kirk, by the way, I just liked it out. Been Dishonored. Corvo actually is, in fact, Emily's father. Oh, that's right. Because it's like, is this revealed that he is actually the father even though he's not supposed to be? It might be revealed in the second game. I don't remember exactly, but he definitely is. I feel like that's his own

category of dad game, which is that it turns out you are the dad. The secret reveal. Well, that's what I was going to say, I think arcane which makes dishonored and also Death Loop is the master of secret dad games. Death Loop also

did a secret dad. Exactly. Oh my God, you're reminding me of the end of Death Loop, which I never want to think about again. These are games, especially Dishonor 2, where Elizabeth is fully grown in Dissanard 2 and is a playable protagonist, and that is much more of a... Emily, you keep calling her Elizabeth. It's Emily.

You're right, sorry. Emily Elizabeth. It's because we talked about Bioshock. Because Elizabeth is the Bioshock, and these games came out at the same time. But Kirk, I would think you would remember the name Emily, given that your wife's name is Emily. Yeah, but her middle name is Elizabeth. Oh, really? Oh, wow. That's played. Okay,

next question. Jeff, right. High Triple Click. Donkey Kong Bonanza has repeatedly been described as a quote, great game, but overstays it's welcome. I totally agree. And after some thought for me, it was due to the game offering very little challenge. What makes a great game overstay? It's welcome for you. Thanks for considering my question. Love the podcast. Love Jason's book. Take care of Jeff. Ah, thank you, Jeff. I 100% agree. I have this exact same thought while playing. I don't remember if we ever talked

about it, but I had the same thought while playing Bonanza. I think after we recorded our episode about it where I was kind of like, this feels like it's taking forever and I'm doing a lot of the same stuff in large part because there's just zero challenge. And I think, if I remember correctly, I think a few years ago, I said this exact same thing about Super Mario Odyssey, especially in comparison to Astrobot, which does have a nice level of challenge. So I do think it's kind of a problem for this team specifically, because the team that made Bonanza also made Mario Odyssey. What do you guys think? Do you think that's accurate? I don't know about challenge.

I get this critique of Bonanza. I actually kept playing Bonanza and played a ton of it because my wife, Elizabeth and I played it together. Sorry, my wife, Emily Elizabeth and I played it together. And we had such a good time playing it that it didn't actually really matter, that we were just sort of doing the same thing, just because the novelty of the co-op mode and particularly me saying to her basically, Unleash Hell. and then she would just destroy everything on screen.

Like that just kept being fun for a long time, though we did eventually stop, we haven't finished it. For me, I think that running out of gas, like when a game overstays its welcome, it tends to be when the progression system bottoms out long before the end of the game, and then the story isn't enough to keep me going. Like sometimes when my character has become God on Earth

and can destroy everyone and has a million moves, and there's really nothing left for me to do, the story keeps me going because I want to know what happens. But in the case of Bonanza, like, I'm curious, I guess, to see how it all ends up, but also the story isn't really why I'm playing. Yeah, I feel similar to Jason. I also really liked Bonanza when we recorded that episode. And I kept playing afterwards, but at a certain point, I just kind of stop picking it up, you know?

Like, it just, I just kind of burned out on it. And the way that you do when something is repetitious, and I don't know that that's a bad thing if you're playing, you know, with a co-op partner or you're younger. Like, I think as a kid, I would have unlocked everything. But as an adult, I kind of wanted more to be going on. And I also would have liked a little more story in that game. I think they had some room for some more story in that game, I will say, without it still being, without it not being, like, you know, kid-friendly anymore or anything.

I feel like it could have easily been. Like, the whole Pauline is a rock. Like, I don't know. I kind of was expecting more weird Donkey Kong lore. And there's some of that. but not quite as much as I would have liked. Apparently there's stuff at the end that is a little more heavy. Will I ever make it there?

I'm curious about that too. Yeah, it's fun. I've been playing with my kids a little bit, but it's supposed to be watching it. So the difficulty doesn't really have an impact. But yeah, I could see if you have a kid who wants to play through it and like you don't want it to be silk song level.

You want them to actually be able to beat it. Yeah, difficulty for me, I think, is not really the thing. It's more like, is the game still surprising me? With these Nintendo games anyway, Like something that Mario Galaxy does, for example, it's just constantly delighting you and throwing new ideas at you. That's something Astrobot did really well as well. Like if the game is just showing me new things and, you know,

delighting me with weird new ideas, then I'll just keep going. I don't really care about upgrades or difficulty or any of that. And Donkey Kong does kind of do that. I mean, there are levels later on. There's like this cool level with a race where you're having to like race on, what's his name, Rami, the rhinoceros? Rambi.

Ramby, the rhinoceros. There's some fun variety that gets introduced, and the new levels look really lovely and are funny. But mostly the game is kind of that same, destroy everything, collect gold, find power-ups, loop. And so it doesn't feel like a Mario Galaxy or a game like that. So as a result, it starts to be like, okay, well, I'm eating this giant delicious donut,

but at some point I'm just going to stop eating it. Yeah, Kirk, I think you've identified at least two of the main reasons. Well, I'll stick with the game. One is the story gripping me, too, is that it keeps surprising and delighting, and I find that if a game doesn't do those two things, I probably won't stick with it for very long. I guess the other is just that, like,

the core gameplay of it all is just so compelling that I just don't want to stop, which is the case. Like, Palatro. Yeah. That's a good example of that. Or to, like, for a more kind of traditional action type of game, Hollow Night is a good example of that,

although that also kept surprising and delighting. And the story is great. Yeah, the story is good at all. So that kind of checks all the boxes. Yeah. And then that kind of the, the other end of the spectrum here is something like mafia, the old country, which we all talked about and I think just stopped playing and that didn't really have anything. I felt like I'd

seen it all. I felt like the story wasn't interesting enough for me to want to keep going. And then also it didn't have a core gameplay. Like I felt like it wasn't really compelled, like it wasn't good enough for me to want to keep going with it in a way that other kind of some other AAA open world games do that for me. All right. Next question. Kirk, you want to read this next one? Yes. This comes from Corey, writes, hi, Maddie, Kirk, and Jason. I started subscribing to print magazines recently, like Edge and Wired, and consistently find myself reading articles I never would have clicked on if they were on the internet. This is a good thing. I suspect the amount of

data internet publications have at their disposal influences what gets written by their staff, and print is unique in the space that it makes for discovery. I'm curious if you have ever wished for the pre-big data era where publications didn't have a way to quantify all journalistic output, all of their staff's journalistic output. This is an interesting question. What do you two think? Yeah, I don't think that it's quite as simple as, well, this will get us a lot of traffic, so we're going to run this, or we're not going to run this because it won't go traffic. Maybe at some websites it is, but even at Gawker Media, where everything was all about traffic. We were all traffic obsessed. We didn't always think exactly that way. I think a lot of

places recognize that there's room for important things that matter or have an impact but don't necessarily bring in a ton of traffic. And there's also just kind of like you can have other incentives for packaging stuff. For example, the New York Times is a subscriber publication. And they obviously run a run stuff that resonates with a lot of people. But they also have a lot of niche desks that or beats or writers that aren't bringing in a lot of traffic they still have an entire dance section like writer as an example they have a Broadway section and stuff that are very very niche and granted i mean yes that is print to corey's point but a lot of that stuff is just going online and not even going in the paper maybe it's because they're built as a print publication i

suppose but i think that like when you're a subscription publication that maybe plays a bigger role than whether you're kind of print or digital. Because if you're not a subscription publication, then you're relying on advertising, and that is dependent on clicks. But if you are asking for a subscription, then it doesn't matter quite as much if you're reaching millions and millions of people

so long as the people who are paying feel like they're getting value for it, which is one of the many reasons that subscriptions for news is the present and future and that the advertising model is going to slowly disappear if it hasn't already. Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people like Corey, and there's nothing wrong with this thinking. I hear it all the time. Just assume that that's how every publication works is. They need clicks. And there's like a kind of logic to that because in your head you're like,

well, clicks mean, I'm looking at the ads and the ads are what pays for the news, right? But most of the time, ads are not actually paying for enough to support an entire publication. There are some publications that run entirely on advertising, but a lot of them have multiple income streams, and those other income streams might be subscriptions or just e-commerce, any number of other stuff, sponsor content. That's one thing. But also, you really brought me back with your last sentence here about pre-big data because I used to work at a print publication, the Boston Phoenix, and our website was pretty under-trafficked. This was like the era when print was dying, frankly, and the Phoenix One Out of Business in 2013,

and our website was not enough. The ads we had on the website were not enough to sustain its existence. But I just want to say there was also no pre-big data era for any journalistic outlet because we really cared about how many issues people picked up. And that data point was relevant and would be something that every editor would hold to

and would be like, this was on the cover, everyone picked this one up, Circulation as a concept has probably mattered ever since the printing press was invented. So unfortunately, we as writers cannot escape big data. It has been the bane of our existence for as long as we have been able to circulate anything. It has been a matter of us worrying and wondering about how many people read it. And it's hard not to care about it. Even if you aren't solely subsisting on ads, you still want to know, like, hey, did people care about this?

That's the other thing about readership that is good to know about is literally what do people care about. Yeah, that's a really good point. And even in the 1800s, yes, to the avon of the printing press. But really, the avon of like newspapers, which is 1800s, like that was a time when everybody, yellow journalism, the concept came from them. People were just competing with other papers over who had the splachiest headlines. And there was a great book that I talked about a couple of years ago called Battle of Ink and Ice by Daryl Harrell Hart. that was about like these newspapers just battling over these polar explorer stories and they were funding the explorations and trying to compete to be the first to run it. And yeah, that was all about circulation to your point, Maddie. So yes, this has always been a thing. So I think there is a

distinction between big data and just data. Data has always played a role in media, like you're talking about circulation numbers and that sort of thing. Big data, like the era of big data, I think of as kind of post-2010. You know, when these massive the tech companies started aggregating massive amounts of data and using it to drive algorithms and kind of better try to really granularly understand who was doing what on the internet and then use that to profit. And I think that that is the era that we came up in, certainly writing for Gawker, where we had a big board and we were constantly tracking our numbers.

And then that has only gotten more intense since, you know, all of us left Gawker and in the current era. Like watching YouTube, watching the wave that the YouTube algorithms and the very very various incentives of having a YouTube channel have warped all of the YouTubers that I follow. Like in the guitar world, it's totally wild how different things are now than they were 10 years ago. And so much of it is driven by the fact that YouTube is able to collect so much data that they can then push people towards doing really specific things. You know, certain lengths, certain topics, certain types of headlines. Just everything can kind of is up for grabs in a way that I don't, that I think is new.

Like, that does feel different. Yeah, that part is probably bad also. Yeah, well, it's definitely not something that I like as a writer. You're kind of you're driven by outside forces. I mean, it seems to have had a lot of very negative effects on journalism and on the information ecosystem more broadly. And I actually think that one thing I really like about podcasting is that it has proved resistant to data collection.

And it's always something that I've liked about it. I think there's more data now than they're ever used to be on, you know, who listens where and when they stop listening and when they skip ads and all of that stuff. And that's partly because as Spotify and Apple have become kind of the primary places that people go to listen to podcasts, you actually have a central repository of data. So then the like mechanisms of big data can start to grind into action. You know, like Apple has so much data because most people just use their app to listen to podcasts so they can suddenly see, oh, you know, if you want to know, if you go to Apple for podcasters, you've lost.

in, they'll tell you, oh, well, this episode is most popular. People actually skip five minutes in this and this and this episodes, and you can start to really get granular. And then as they start getting transcripts and, like, you know, they can tell you exactly which words people care about. You can start to fall into those same patterns where, like, you know, there's an algorithm basically telling you, talk about this, but not this. Go for this long, but not that long. You know, whatever. Lead with this. Get to your most interesting thing within the first 10 seconds. Don't swear, you know, whatever, any other things that they want to do that can. and start to really warp what you're making.

And I hope that doesn't happen to podcasting because I do think that it is mostly a bad thing. Well, it comes down to what I said earlier about incentives where you're much more incentivized to follow that data in podcasting if you have ads and therefore your money, your financial success is tied to how many people are listening as opposed to getting subscribers, getting paid subscribers,

and your financial output is tied to what subscribers want and what they care about and what will drive them to pay or how many of them pay. And those are very different incentives. Yeah. And there's a Venn diagram overlap between the two things, right? There is. There is. People who are listening, the more subscribers you'll get. Like, you do want to grow, and there is always a kind of a push and a pull.

I feel this with Strong Songs. Which is the case with any of business. Yeah, yeah. No, I know. I'm just sort of thinking this through and sort of, you know, and I just think it's interesting. Like, I'll think with Strong Songs about what I want to cover. If I did nothing but jazz songs, there are some people that that would make happy, but it wouldn't really grow my listenership. And as a result, it wouldn't really grow my subscribers.

Now, that also gets into the question of growth versus sustainability, which is like a separate media question and something that I think a lot of people are kind of wrestling with right now because it's that same push and pull. Like how much money do you need to be making from a given thing? You know, how much does it need to generate? What's your overhead? How much profit do you need? And I think if you don't think in terms of infinite growth, you're then able to stop thinking about, well, I always need to be appealing to new people and always need to be bringing in new subscribers. Because like, maybe not. Maybe you have enough subscribers and it's fine. I just want to say one kind of little bit of contrarian perspective here as well, which is that sometimes it can be very useful to have all this data, even from a quality perspective. Like, for example, there was a stat that I always appreciated back in the days of Gawker Media when we were all looking at charts. all the time, which is our tool for measuring concurrent readers and stuff. And one of the sets that

I thought was very helpful was actually seeing how much time the average reader spent reading an article and you could get, obviously you can read into that a lot of ways. Maybe people are only reading something for five minutes or two minutes or whatever for, it could be countless reasons that they're doing that. But I also thought it was useful to see like, okay, people are actually sticking to this. People are actually reading this. They're not just kind of tuning out after the first couple of paragraphs. And I think that back in the day, when people didn't have access to metrics and information, it was very easy as a reporter, as a writer, as a creator, to just be like, well, I know best and this is what I'm going to do. And I think there is some merit to kind of getting

that reader feedback and getting the data and knowing what people are thinking and how they're reacting to it, even if you're not going to do, like, even if you don't, which you shouldn't, just follow that trend and like do everything, make everything reactive. But it is helpful to listen to in the same way that if you're making games, it's very helpful to have playtesting. Otherwise, your game is probably going to be bad. It doesn't mean you have to follow every single piece of advice that a playtester gives you or do everything to make sure the playtester has an amazing time at every moment or whatever. And obviously different playtesters are going to have different thoughts on a game, different tastes, but the data can be helpful to have still.

Yeah, I think that the data you get from an editor or a trusted reader or audience member is always going to be more valuable. This is something I've been thinking about lately. That the mass data you can get from, you know, X number of people stop listening after five minutes. That is helpful, but it's also kind of vague in a way that I always find a little bit maddening. And also it's so big because it's so many people, it's easy to put too much weight on it, where almost always it's so much more. valuable to just have another writer or another person you know, read the thing or listen to it. And if they're willing to give you real feedback, like that's one person. You know who they are. You know where they're coming from. And like, I think it's very easy to just fall back on all these

automated systems that just tell you numbers because they kind of do it in the background without you having to go out and seek the feedback. And I do think in the end, if you're making art, if you're making media you care about, if you're writing things that you really want to be good, the real way to make them good is not going to be listening to, you know, mass aggregated data. It's going to be finding the specific feedback that you really need. And that will always, that will always be the like best kind of feedback, at least for me. That's true. I mean, yeah, that's 100% true.

But at the same time, if you put something out and you think it's good and maybe your trusted circle thinks it's good, but then it doesn't resonate with people, it can be useful to, that can be a useful metric too. Sometimes people are wrong. That's true. Yes, sometimes the world wasn't ready for it, is what that means. Yeah, for sure. No, no, you're, of course, right. No, no, no, it's an interesting topic.

Yeah, I mean, I think big data is weaponized for sure by media public indications these days, including our former company that we all worked on. All right, let's get to the next one. Maddie, I think it's your turn. Yeah, probably. This one's from Levi, who says, Hey, question for your burning mailbag. Which games have genuinely stuck with you long after finishing them?

Not just because they were great, but because they were great, but because they made you think deeply about something in a way only a game could. Like the combo of storytelling and gameplay merged so perfectly to unlock some profound understanding in your brain. For me, I think the endings of Outer Wilds or Shadow of the Colossus, and I know y'all didn't give Tunic a chance, but that game has got some very heady stuff later on. Maddie, I think this is your chance to clear things up. This is my chance to correct the record. I beat Tunic.

I swear I said this on the show, but maybe I never actually did. I did. I did complete it. Yeah, and, you know, it's fine. I don't know when, Levi wrote this. Could have been a thousand years ago. But I did actually complete it. It has cool stuff in it.

And I don't disagree. I still think the combat feels weird, though. And I stand by what I said about it way back on our tunic episode when it comes to thinking the combat feels weird. I think I'm the one who keeps saying, dang, I should really go back and play to me. You should. If you really feel that way, you should. There are some very. very cool level designs in that game.

For sure. Yeah, I just, yeah, I think that I say it and then sometimes people like misattribute that to all of that. Like all of triple click needs to go back to Tuneik. But for the record, I did. I completed it. But what do we think? What games have stuck with us long after we finished them? A lot of games. Man. Right? I mean, plenty of games, right? I think Journey is one that always comes up for me. That was a game that had a really profound emotional impact on me when I played it. Just when I realize that it's kind of a metaphor for life. It sounds kind of cheesy, I guess, to say that. But that moment when you're old and broken and climbing up a snowy mountain

and nothing works anymore. And I thought back on the early moments when I was flying and my body worked and I was strong and I could soar and the sun was in the sky. And, you know, and how, I don't know, bittersweet and sad it felt. The sort of death and rebirth at the end of that game. I really thought that was beautiful. And for me, it was one of the first games that really made me feel that way. So that's one pick from me.

Yeah, I wanted to echo Outer Wilds as an example of a game that was very meaningful to me. But I also really felt that way about gone home the first time I played it. It was very important to me. And it was a game that at the time was speaking to an experience that about like coming out as a queer woman in this specific time period that really resonated with. me and I went in having no idea what the game was about and then that like really hit me and that was intense to play that and be like, wow, this game is like seeing some part of me and I'm, I don't know. It's what people say when they say I feel seen. It's like a joke now and like it's hard to say that in a serious way. But that was how I felt when I played that game. It was very

meaningful for me. Yeah, man. I mean, there are million games I could pick. Uh, one that comes to mind just right today because I was thinking about it today because after the news that DeAngelo, the singer, died. I was thinking about Red Dead 2 and the power of that narrative, which I thought was pretty cool. DeAngelo, of course, being the singer who had that great song that played when you were doing that long horse ride in Red Dead 2. Side note, but I only just heard about that before we recorded and I'm gutted by it. That guy is like one of the great living geniuses of music. Yeah, very sad.

It sucks, like, rest in peace to a really brilliant guy. Yeah, for real. And, yeah, the impact of that game and the way that Arthur's story plays out and especially coming into it thinking, like, oh, man, this guy, like, he's just going to be this generic, like, white dude, like, a criminal type who just, like, beats people up and is just, like, I don't know, like, I don't know, like, Michael from GTA 5 or something. like that was just kind of this boring like flat dude and instead he turns out to be like one of the

most fleshed out fascinating characters in all of video games and seeing his story play out is really cool and then the end tying to john marston yeah just good stuff but yeah i mean there's so many games that have that impact on me that's a good point though the marston part of red dead too like rocked me it was i found it so beautiful that was like right when i was about to propose to emily too and like playing through that whole sequence as him it was like really amazing i so that's a that's a great It's so funny. That sequence of the game was kind of like the beginning of a Zelda game where you're like herding sheep and doing meenial stuff. But because it's at the end of Red Dead 2, it just is so much more impactful. And yeah, I really loved it. All right. Let's do one more quick question. This is from Sean. Sean says, hey, Sean, aka dignified beard from Portland,

great to see you all in my hometown. He wrote this after our live show over the summer. Jason and Maddie, if you could have Kirk do a strong song is on one song or specific artist, What would it be and why? And Kirk, if you could go full sicko and focus on a specific video game composer or game soundtrack, what would it be? I'll answer first because I've given this some thought. You have a prepared answer?

Kirk, I want you to do strong songs about No FX's The Decline. Do you guys know that song? I don't. Okay, so No FX is a pretty big legendary punk band. They've done a bunch of music, a bunch of tracks. But The Decline is their 19-minute O.E. opus that is one of the most extraordinary punk songs ever written and the lyrics are very prescient and hold up very well today.

Okay, I'll put that on the list. I thought you were going to say the Black Great, but this sounds like this is no effect that's a good one. But this one is the musical themes that they play with this one, I would love to hear you dive into. And it's so long that it's going to be like a mega episode for you. Yeah, it'd be a season finale. I think you would really enjoy listening.

to it and then diving into it. Okay. I'll check it out for sure. I feel like this is going to be embarrassing if I say something that Kirk actually has done an episode on because there's so many episodes of Strong Songs. So forgive me. But I don't think you've ever done a garbage episode, have you? And I love them so much. And I recently saw them live again. I saw them live a couple years ago. And I just think Shirley Manson Live is incredible for starters. They're kind of like a supergroup of just like techno, industrial artists, which is very much my speech. and Shirley Manson's voice is still freaking incredible at this point. She's like an icon to me, honestly.

But I just think that their songs are incredible. I don't have a specific pick, although most people probably know only happy when it rains. I think that was their first major hit, radio hit. But they have a ton of other songs that I just love. And also recommend seeing them live. If anybody listening has that band in their fondest memories, but has never actually seen them perform.

They're incredibly incredibly good. Nice. Yeah, I would, I love garbage. And I've actually never done an episode on Nine Inch Nails. Oh, my God. I haven't done much, like, of that, like, 90s industrial. That's like all my stuff.

I'm like, you know, there's Nine-ish Nails and Toriamos. And like, that was all, that was my high school experience. I did do a Tori episode. I did Silent all these years, which was really fun. Iconic song. But, yeah, Ninth N-Eleads would be great. And so would garbage. Oh, those are great picks.

Thanks. They'll go to the top of the list. Well, I'll answer. last, I suppose, so if I could go full sicko and focus on a specific video game composer or a specific game soundtrack. So the thing is, I have already done episodes about Mario, Zelda, specifically an episode all about Tears of the Kingdom, one of my favorite video game soundtracks ever, and an episode about Final Fantasy 7 that I initially made for triple-click, but has run, it is basically a strong song. So those are, you know, I would pick those if I

hadn't already done them, but I'm going to say actually that if I do another video game soundtrack and if and when, I will probably do something about Shogi Meguru and the persona music. Hell yeah. Good pick. Just because that stuff is so cool, it would be really fun to talk about and to just cover various tracks from, I'd say, four and five, and I guess some from three from those persona games. And then to talk about how those games use music, there's just so much fun stuff in there to

get into. It's a lot of cool kind of jazz fusion, a lot of really neat harmonies, some great guitar parts. I just think that would be a really fun episode. So fun. That's my answer. You would get to listen to it over and over. That would be a reward in an episode. Just like playing the game.

It's so good. I feel like they have to announce Persona 6 soon, right? I know metaphor just came out, but that's like a different team and Atlas. Yeah. It's been almost 10 years since Prona 5. I'm excited about the Persona 4 remake too. Oh, yeah. That would be a good peg for your strong songs episode.

Yeah, there you go. All right. It was it. Thank you to everybody who sent in their questions. Once again, you can reach us a triple-click at MaximumFun.org. Let's take a break. And then we'll come back for Ones, Moors, things. I'm Amber Nash, the voice of Pam Poohy on the groundbreaking FX animated comedy, Archer. Remember Archer? I sure don't. That's why I started rephrasing, an Archer rewatch podcast on Maximum Fun.org. Join me and a bevy of special guests as we discuss every episode of Archer starting from the very beginning. Executive producer Casey Willis and editor Christian Danley will provide insight and fun and help me remember everything I've forgotten about Archer, which is a lot. So, join me on rephrasing an Archer rewatch podcast on Maximum Fun.org, because I can't wait to watch Archer again for the very first time. The wizards answer eight by eight. The cornclaves call to demonstrate their arcane gift, their single spell.

They number 64 until a conflagration. 63 and 62 they soon shall be. As one by one the wizards die till one remains to rain on high. Join us for Taz Royale, an oops-all-wisards battle royale season of the Adventure Zone. every other Thursday on Maximumfund.org or wherever you get your podcasts. Bing. Kirk here, and before we get into one more thing, I actually meant to issue a correction about my one more thing last week, and then I forgot to do it. So I'm just going to do it here before One More Thing. So last week I talked about the new Sterlin Harjo show, which is on

FX, called The Lowdown, starring Ethan Hawke, who is wonderfully playing an independent investigative journalist named Lee Raybon. And at the time I said, I didn't think that Lee Raybon was based on a real person. But as it turns out, he is. He's based on a real-life Tulsa investigative journalist named Le Roy Chapman, who is a really interesting real-life character and someone worth knowing about. So I wanted to note that just because, you know, I wanted to get it right. And also because I think more people should know about LeVroi Chapman.

He wrote a number of really important pieces. In particular, he wrote a 2012 investigative piece exposing Tulsa founder, W. Tate Brady and his links to the Ku Klux Klan, which. which I will link in the show notes. So just one more cool thing about the lowdown, a great show on its own, but it's even cooler to know that it is a tribute to a real guy and that Ethan Hawke's incredible performance is channeling a person who actually existed. Okay, just wanted to note that.

Let's get on with the One More Things. Bing! And we are back, Kirk, Maddie. It's time. One more thing. Maddie, why don't you start? So my One More Thing is a TV show that actually. already has a full season out last year, and I kept meaning to talk about it on this show,

and I never did. But season two is on now, and I'm remembering that I freaking love this show. So this show is called High Potential, and it stars Caitlin Olson, who most people probably know is D from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. And the pitch for this show is basically like, what if D was a genius on the level of Sherlock Holmes and was a crime-solving, extraordinary. Like, the high potential refers to her as a person. But at the outset of the show, she's a janitor and can't, like, translate her literal genius into, one, social skills and to a real job of any kind. She's goodwill hunting. Kind of, yes, but, like, if Goodwill hunting was also, like, a single mom of three who's completely dysfunctional in, like, almost every social

aspect of her life and like exclusively wears gaudy pink outfits and just really high femme performative stuff. I love her outfits in this. Like the costuming is absurd for her. It's iconic. But like if you take that kind of concept of a character and then give her Sherlock Holmes intellect, like, we're all kind of familiar with like the way that Sherlock Holmes in typical stories operates where like he looks at someone and he's like, okay, that's cuff on your boot. That means you actually, we're horseback riding earlier today, but that would have had to be, da, da, da, and you took this train to get here, and that's why you're the killer. Like, she does that stuff and it's really fun, but it's, like, combined with Caitlin Olson's comedic timing and just general goofiness and skill as an actor,

and it's so, so charming. If you like crime procedurals, I really recommend it. It just goes down so easy, and it's really fun. If you like something like Ellsbeth, which I recommended before is another crime procedural that is big hit in our house with kind of an eccentric female character who's like a little smarter than everyone else in the room and they can't believe it when they see her because she's she looks like she wouldn't be it's it's kind of like that but it's katelyn olson so it's a completely different energy that only she can bring i can't really see anyone else in this role but apparently it's based on like some other tv show from belgium or something that i haven't watched so i don't know who the european katelyn olson is but she

Caitlin Olson, she's so funny. It's so good. So it's called High Potential, just to say the name again. I'm looking at this, and it was created by Drew Goddard. Yes, I was going to shout that out. Of course, is like a TV legend and made Daredevil and wrote for Lost and a million other things. He's great. He made Angel.

Buffy worked on a ton of great shows, and this show is also. I feel like I don't see people talking about it, but it's really funny and great. Yeah, I'd never even heard of it. It sounds so fun. I bet Emily would love this show, too. She loves procedurals like this. Maddie, did I tell you I watched The Residence, which another procedure? I think you did off the air, but yeah, just to highlight.

Excellent procedure. Very fun and funny show with a mystery solved by the end of a season. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Cool. All right, I will go next. I also did a TV show, and it is called Long Story Short. It's on Netflix. This is the next animated show from the creator of BoJack Horseman,

both some of the writing staff and also the artist Lisa Hanowalt who also draws the characters in this show. And long story short is brilliant. I love it. It's a lot like BoJack Horseman with maybe some of the comedy tuned down and some of the drama and like heavy-hitting topics. Given how BoJack kind of transformed over the course. Yeah, exactly. It feels like a kind of like a if Bojack had kept going. I mean, Bojack, yeah, very much started, like in seasons one and two as kind of a way more comic show and became much more dramatic and heavy as it went.

And this feels like a continuation of that. So let me explain. So long story short is about this Jewish family in Northern California. And there are, there's a dad, a mom, and three kids. The Schwippers so named because their one parent's last name is Schwartz and the other is Cooper. And so they smush them together. And the story is kind of, it's a little bit hard to explain, but it is essentially like every episode zips around in time to tell different kind of vignettes from these characters' lives. And so it has this effect overall of just kind of like telling this big epic story about the entirety of these characters and what they've gone through over the years.

From like them growing up in the 80s and 90s all the way through the modern day when they're adults and have, gone through things, marriage and divorce and children and all sorts of other issues. And it's really, really fascinating. It's the stories involved are just very relatable and fun to watch and heavy hitting and I think incredibly well done. The mother character is just hilarious and a bottle of Jewish mother cliches that is extremely fun to watch and also very stressful to watch. The daughter, Maddie, you will appreciate this. The daughter is married, it winds up getting married to a black Jewish woman. Oh my God.

Very relatable. Is she literally me? Very relatable. Is Lisa Hannah-Walt been checking it on my life? The oldest son is kind of this neurotic music critic. The youngest son is this total fuck-up. It's kind of reminiscent Kirk of a book we both read Long Island Compromise in a lot of ways. Yeah, I'm reading the summary here and it's making me think of it.

So Abby Jacobson plays Shira. Oh, cool. From Broad City, which is great. Yes, there's a lot of really good, a lot of really good voice casting, just like BoJack had. And really, I mean, what's appealing about it is just the way that these characters, like, it's a character study. Essentially, you're just watching these characters and their lives unfold. And it's just like so fascinating and so well written and well structured and well constructed. And it's not confusing at all despite jumping around in time a lot because they handle it extremely well.

It's not like, I think a lesser show might use that conceit to deliver all these plot twists and stuff, but that's not how it really handles it. Like, you find out, for example, you find out that the mother dies because it's just kind of offhandedly mentioned at some point in a future, like in an episode that has a story in the future. And it's just like, oh, yeah, mom would have loved this, like something like that. So it's not the type of show that is just like, oh my God, the daughter is now in a gay relationship. Oh, my God. the mother is now dead. It's more just like this unparalleled insight into these characters lives and what makes them tick and the neuroses they've inherited and the inherited trauma and what that means for them and how they kind of try to break the cycle or don't break the cycle and how that

affects the relationships and then their kids. And it is just phenomenal and fascinating. And I really love it. I think it got renewed for a second season. So very excited to see where they keep going with it. And yeah, highly recommend it. Once again, it's called Long Story short. And yeah, it feels just like an evolution of Bojack in many ways. Also makes me want to go and rewatch Bojack because what a good show. So wait, are they all anthropomorphic animals like in Bojack? No, no, this is people. This is about real people. I mean, it would have they were anthropomorphic animals and still all the other stuff you said. I just, you know, I was trying to picture it in my head. And I know real people this time, which takes away a little bit of that kind of like the humor that was,

especially in the first couple of seasons. It's just hilarious, just kind of background jokes. and animal jokes. But there is still some great humor and some very good slapstick humor in true Bojack fashion. Like, for example, at one point, one of the main characters, his job is to, like, drive around this ham truck. It's a truck that, like, sells ham and gives away ham or something. And at one point, he gets into an accident on a road by smashing into, like, a tomato and a lettuce truck. And then they get bookended by bread trucks. And it is just, it's very hilarious.

That's a very bojack joke. Great Bojack joke, yeah. And so there's still some good Bojack humor, but it's mostly a drama, and it's mostly about these characters and what they do to each other and family and very Jewish show. There's a lot of Jewish Jewishness in their lives. The first episode is about one of the main characters, bar mitzvahs. And yeah, I really enjoyed it. All right, Kirk, what is your one more thing? Very excited to hear you talk about this one. My memory thing is a video game that I have been playing quite a bit of lately called Kingdom Come Deliverance 2. This game is, man. Yeah, I have a lot to say about this game. So this game is a sequel to 2018's Kingdom Come Deliverance. And it just, it came out earlier this year and I didn't manage to play it then.

But I've kind of had my eye on it because I've been aware of these games for a while. I guess to start with, I mean, I was aware of Kingdom Come Deliverance. deliverance, working at Kotaku because the game's director was like a vocal GamerGate supporter in like 2015. And it was this whole thing. There's our former boss, Stephen, actually interviewed him at E3 in 2015. And it is, I think, actually a very interesting interview. It is.

I went back and read it when this game came out. Yeah. It is pretty interesting. And he just, he seemed to be under the genuine impression that Gamergate was like an anti-censorship movement. And like, obviously, I completely disagree. with that. But I don't know, it's interesting to read now, especially because the common take, even on the first game, was that it was very much its own thing. It stood apart from all of that.

And a lot of people that I know really liked that first game. It sounded super interesting. I just never had a chance to play it. Cut to 2025 and Kingdom Come Deliverance too comes out. And I've heard from a bunch of listeners throughout the year, people keep saying, like, at our live show, people will come with me like, dude, you got to play this game. It's like 100. Yeah, it's such your shit. you would really enjoy it. And I even knew that from the first game. So I kind of had been planning to play it. And then some friends of mine are actually playing at the same time.

And they were talking about it. I'm like, all right, fine. I'm going to check it out so I can talk about it with them. Started playing it. And yeah, I mean, this game rules. I'm so into it. It's so good. It's so weird and so interesting.

And I think I'm actually going to record something a little more substantive about it in the future. So I'll just vaguely tease that now. And I'll just kind of give a quick summary of some thoughts on it. So I've played a lot of this game, like, I don't know, 40 hours or something. I, like, really fell deep into it over the last couple of weeks. And I've gotten really far, but it is massive. So I've played up to, like, the second half. This game actually does a far cry, too, which I mentioned maybe last week.

In a recent episode where you play through a whole first map and then there's an act break. And then it's like, welcome to the second map that's equally huge. Ghostososh Hashima did that as well. In this game's case, I'm actually very excited because I'm really enjoying it, and I do want more. So anyways, what is Kingdom Come to Liverance to? So it is a direct sequel to the first game. I didn't play the first game, and I don't find that to be an issue. This is a historical medieval epic.

It's set in around 1402, I think 1403, in the Kingdom of Bohemia, which is now known as the Czech Republic, but at the time was the Kingdom of Bohemia. It is really historical. So this game is very concerned with historical accuracy and with simulating the life of, in your case, a squire to a knight, a kind of a lower lord in Bohemia in the 15th century. And so it looks like Skyrim. It kind of moves like Skyrim, but there are no dragons. There's no magic. There's never a point at which, you know,

monsters invade the world or you learn spells. It's just a game where you do ordinary stuff, and it's really devoted to simulating a believable version of a historical world. And that makes it so freaking interesting. So you play as a character named Henry of Scalitz. He is not noble. He is a squire to a real guy or a character based on a real guy who's Hans Capon of Perkstein. And he was kind of Hans's squire slash bodyguard in the first game as well. So at the start of Kingdom Come Deliverance too, they're really good buddies.

They're like leading a group of people on behalf of their like higher lords, like the people they kind of represent to see a king or not a king, sorry, to see a lord in what is it? It's a Trosky Castle, which is a real place in Bohemia, on behalf of King Wencesloss, Wensselas the 4th, who was the current rightful ruler of Bohemia. I'm doing this off the dome and see if I get this right. Who was engaged in a war with Sigismund, who was a Hungarian usurper and was kind of like engaged in a war for Bohemia. Now, here's one thing I'll compare this game to. Final Fantasy Tactics. We just talked about Final Fantasy Tactics.

Something that is so cool about that game is this sort of complex. You know, it's these like wars of succession. It's based on the War of the Roses. This game very much feels like that because it is actually historical. And in fact, I would say to me it has been even more interesting because it's a real war. And as a result, there's never a moment where it is suddenly revealed who the real villains are. There really aren't real villains. Because like Wenceslaus, who Henry and Hans are like working on behalf of, he was kind of a useless guy.

He was an alcoholic. He was like not a great ruler. and everyone kind of knew it. He wasn't as good of a ruler as his father, but because he was, you know, the next in line, he was just going to be king. So you're kind of killing people on behalf of this guy who sort of sucks.

There is an argument to be made that Sigismund would have maybe been a better ruler. Who knows? But it's kind of not even about that. It's just like all these complex, you know, lord games that the lords are sort of playing with one another over who gets to rule what, and common people are just getting killed.

So that's the kind of broad setup. The actual game is a first person, action game, action role-playing game. It's very much in the mode of an Elder Scrolls game. It moves kind of like one. It has a similar kind of sometimes janky feeling, even though it is actually beautiful looking. It has the most beautiful fields and forests I've ever seen in a game.

A really gorgeous simulation of the real world. But you know, you walk around, you sneak, you a fight, and as you do things, your skills increase. So it has that kind of old-school Bethesda game loop where like you can just go out at night and just sneak around behind guards not doing anything and your self-skill will just slowly climb. Or I spent the first couple of days in the game just going to archery tournaments and just doing them

over and over and over and over and over to slowly win money and then watch my like strength and agility and archery level up so I could get more powerful. Sounds thrilling. Well, I mean, it is. This is what Kirk likes to do, okay? Let's get into this though. Okay, so that's kind of what it is. And you're doing a lot of side quests for characters around this area and so.

working your way up to like big story beats where you then eventually get swept up in a large conflict and you play a role in like sieges of castles and like big battles and stuff. But most of the game is really just walking around to towns, talking to people, doing side quests for them. And then like helping define who Henry is and kind of making choices and talking to people and having like really long conversations with them about all kinds of things. So yeah, to the like, that sounds thrilling comment, right? Like to the idea that this game is actually like so mundane that it's maybe boring, I actually am finding that that is what makes it interesting and thrilling. So in this game, there is a really a rare level of simulation.

So if you're dirty, for example, if you've been out digging and doing labor, you get covered in dirt. Or if you get in a fight, you get covered in blood, and your armor will be marked as bloody, and you'll see it on your character. And then people will comment on it, and it'll, like, hurt your appearance with them, and you won't, like, do as well in persuasion checks or something. So then you have to kind of go wash yourself, and you can also go to the bathhouse, where they'll, like, wash your clothing.

And so you can, like, get different levels of clean, and you have to kind of maintain your cleanliness, where you get hungry, so you go and hunt. But hunting is actually poaching because all of the game is owned by the king. So you have to be careful about hunting. And then maybe you just go to the, you know, you go buy food at the tavern, and then you just eat that to keep Henry fed. You have to sleep a certain amount of time.

There's this kind of layered simulation. Also, thievery does not work the way that it works in Bethesda Games. You can't just rob a blacksmith blind. and then sell him his stuff back. In fact, I tried to do that, and I got arrested, and I had to reload a save. Ah, but you can reload save, so it's not that realistic. Well, you can, but you can't just save any time that you want.

In order to save, you have to drink what is called savior schnapps, which is a drink that you can brew, and it actually makes you drunk if you drink too much of it. But it allows you to save, but it's a limited item that you have to use, and otherwise you can only save when you sleep, but only in a bed that you own. So there are all these little restrictions placed on you. Of course, there are ways around all of this stuff.

Like at this point in the game, I have so much food. I just eat it. I don't worry about food. It's a non-factor. I have so much save your schnapps. I can save constantly. Or you can just quit and save anytime you want. So there's like really easy workarounds.

I think there are also mods that just lets you save. Like you can kind of get around all these frictions. But there is this kind of deep level of simulation. For that reason, I actually think that the opening maybe 12 hours of this game is maybe it's most interesting. Because, you know, you and you and. Hans arrive in this kingdom and you're immediately set upon and you lose all your stuff and you're like in the stocks and no one likes you and it's a disaster and you have to kind of build your way back up and it's really fun when you're at that low point because that's when you have to really lean

into all the systems you know i'm like sneaking around in my underpants trying to kill a rabbit so that i can eat like that feeling is really exciting now like henry is this unstoppable killing machine everyone knows who he is he's got like i think a maxed out charisma so he can get anyone to do anything like it's more I'm more now just playing for the story. But in those early hours, it was actually very fun to lean into the simulation. The thing is, because it only can get so dramatic, you know, I mean, being on the other side of the wall in a siege of a fort is, like, really dramatic.

Like, that's a very exciting thing. But in most video games, that's, like, the very first thing you do. And eventually, you're fighting dragons. You're fighting God. You know, you're doing just unbelievable things every five minutes. Because this game never gets to those heights, it actually, like, keeps every first within a more attenuated level of intensity, it makes everything more equally interesting. It's the only way I can really describe it. Like, you'll get, I don't know, one guy hired me to go

and steal the maypole from another town next door, because the other town has this nice maple that they're really proud of, and they think they're better than us, and they're using this pasture that we agreed we were going to share, but they took it from us. So, like, go get the maypole. And this quest winds up being really interesting, because it forces you to, like, learn who's guarding the maypole. And then you talk to someone about. about how he doesn't like that guy. And then, you know, there's all these, like, complex sort of interpersonal dynamics between the towns. And eventually you kind of beat that guy up and get him to leave town.

So then just that night, there's no one guarding the maypole and you steal the maypole. And you take it to the, you know, the guy who asks you to do it. But then he wants to do something else. And the quests become, like, really complicated. And what makes them interesting isn't really what you're doing. It's more just like the narrative, the world building, like, narrative framework of it. It's just kind of cool. Because in real life, it'd be super fun to get involved in a kind of little caper like that.

And all of the side quests have that kind of rolling, stretching, surprising feeling, which really reminds me of The Witcher 3. So a couple of touch points I think I'll mention now for this game are one is certainly Skyrim. It looks and feels kind of like an Elder Scrolls game. One is definitely the Witcher 3 in the way that the quests are always more interesting and complicated than you expect. It starts with someone saying, my daughter has run away. Can you find her? In this game, that means you actually have to go talk to everyone in a town and be like,

hey, have you seen this girl? And they'll kind of give you clues, and it really feels like you're doing detective work. You're looking around for tracks on the ground, and it's not just like a cloud in the air that you're following, like in The Witcher or whatever. Like you really do the detective work. But then, of course, you learn it's more complicated

than the guy who initially hired you let you know, and you find her, and maybe something's going on, and you have to go back to the original guy. And then it turns out there's a third party involved, and it always gets so much more complicated and so much more written and interesting. So the game is very good at that kind of thing. So it really reminds me of The Witcher 3 in that way.

I mentioned before Final Fantasy Tactics and Game of Thrones. I think it has that really gritty and real-feeling politics going on in just the world building and the way things work. It is really full of gray areas. It's just sort of complicated. And in the end, I think it's more about the people that you're interacting within the moment. I'd say if there's one takeaway from this game, it is that if there is a war happening and you're living somewhere where there is just war in the background, what really matters to you is just the people around you and helping people that you talk to

to because everyone's just there kind of trying to live their life. There's a blacksmith. He's just got jobs to do. There's a Miller. He's like on his own weird quest. You know, you want to help him do something. People just need help. And as you make friends with people, you kind of come to understand this whole community. And it's really remarkable the way that it builds community.

And then the last comparison I'll make is Red Dead Redemption too, actually. It's the last time that I've played a game that felt this like just endlessly committed to historical accuracy and detail and to just like really building things out. In Act 2 you arrive in Kootenberg, which is a real city, and it's massive.

It's like the first time you really get to a city. And it is unbelievable. I've never seen a city recreated like this in a video game. I just walked around looking at the architecture because this is such a work of like, you can tell, I mean, this is a Czech studio, this is made by Warhorse Studio. These are Czech developers who are clearly really committed

to like creating, the history of their, you know, of their nation and of their people and like showing what these cities looked like, whatever, hundreds of years ago. And it's so cool. I mean, I've never seen anything like it. Trossie Castle is the same way. You're inside and I'm like, I feel like I am actually visiting this castle because this is exactly what it looked like. And you just can't, I don't know, it's so much more interesting than your average video game town or your average video game castle just because it was real and it shows in all these little weird architectural ways. So, I don't know, I could go on and on, and I probably will, like I said, there's more to say about this game.

It really is one of the most interesting games I've played in a long time, and I'm still going in it. I mean, it's still got its hooks in me, and I am still really enjoying it. But yeah, it is, wow, it's really something else. It's not like any other video game I've ever played, even though I just made all those comparisons to other games. Like, it's very much its own thing. And I just think it's fascinating and really cool. Do you think we would like it? I don't think I would like it.

I'm going to go ahead and say I would probably not enjoy it. But I will say I think it's interesting that a lot of your comparisons besides Red Dead are fantasy worlds. And I feel like this is kind of what kingdom comes claim to fame is. And I think that's cool that they're like, we're really going to be grounded in reality. And for good or ill, like you're going to have to figure it out. For good, I would say almost entirely. I mean, yeah, I think that's right. It really underlines how often the medieval settings that we in and

Gage with in video games. Have dragons. Also are fantasy. They also have dragons. And like this shows that you don't need that. Like you can just tell a really interesting story that's based in history that's in the real world. And it'll be like totally entertaining.

Even if you're just like holding sacks for someone, it winds up feeling interesting. Things that would feel like like, oh, this is the interesting mundane side quest that we're doing in the otherwise really high fantasy game. In this game, it's the main event, but that actually really works. To your question, Jason, I really just don't know. I think the game is so interesting. cool. I just don't know. I mean, it's really fun. I think it's a good game. Like, it is really different. It definitely requires a big commitment. It's not, like, mechanically super thrilling.

It's the opposite of Silk Song. I mean, the sword fighting is, like, very weird and doesn't feel good. I've gotten better at it. That's the Skyrim inspiration. Right. And it's just, it's even weirder. Like, it's really frustrating at first. And it definitely has a lot of that kind of janky oddness to it, especially in the mechanics. It just, like, does not have a great game feel. But that's not really the point. I mean, the thrill of the game is this, like, expanding social simulation, this feeling of, like, growing community and, like, narrative complexity and the history of it, too, to know that these are real people, these are real places. It's, like, super interesting. I mean, so much of the medieval history that I'm aware of is

English history, specifically, like Arthurian England. And, you know, we've played plenty of games that are set in England or sort of explore English history. Assassin's Creed Valhalla being a notable one. But this is like, it's just interesting because it's more central Europe. You know, it's bohemia. It's this different part of the world. And as a result, you're kind of interacting with people from different parts of the world as well. And that just feels different.

It's so interesting. Like that alone really kind of supercharges my interest in it. And I've been reading history and learning about who these people were. That's awesome. And what happened during this time period, which was like a really interesting. time period. Like the Holy Roman Empire was just fascinating. I think I would like that part, but I feel like all the friction at the beginning of the game. Maybe I'm scared for no reason, but I just read so many articles from people being like, I lost all my stuff in this game and

it was great. And I'm like, really, it sounds horrible. Yeah, I think that's overblown. I think that that stuff is overblown. And I may, it's worth mentioning just because I'm sure some people listening will think, oh man, is it so hardcore? Like all the things I mention those frictional and like tedious? Like, is it tedious? Yes, I guess. But no, I mean, not really. Like, that stuff is, it's just what do you think of as tedious? Like, I think what I want to underline is that it takes things that you may think would be tedious,

but by grounding them in reality, they stop feeling that way. So doing chores for someone or cleaning up or, I don't know, going to a wedding and figuring out how to sneak booze out of the cellar without anybody noticing or fighting in a big battle, but then afterwards also spending probably even more time cleaning. up after the battle and helping tend to the wounded through a series of like complex interactions, those things could feel tedious, but they don't because in the context of the game, they actually are just fun. Like, they're kind of interesting.

And then the more you play it, the more, or the more I played it, the more I got on its wavelength, and just really enjoyed that. But I do think that the stuff like, oh, you lose all your gear. If you get dirty, people want to talk to you. Like, that's a little overblown. That stuff is there. It's fun. It kind of fleses out the world.

But it's not like a major consideration. There are these little wash bins you can just wash yourself in all over the place. And you just walk up to them and hit a button and you wash yourself off and then you're clean and no one cares. And like I said, it's so easy to really quickly max out your stats and become super powerful that it becomes more about just the stories in the world and the characters and all that. Okay, that's Kingdom Come deliverance too. You'll hear more about that soon of Kirk Kazza Struthers. In the meantime, that is it for this week's episode. Thank you again, everyone who sent in questions.

Thank you to everyone who supports us, and thank you for listening. See you all next time. Yeah, see you next time. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode

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