Triple Click - What Would We Do In The Video Game Industry?

Episode Date: March 20, 2025

If the Triple Click gang worked in the video game industry, what would they each do? What's it like to pitch a game? And should Steam bring back its Greenlight process to help slow down the barrage of new games every year? This week, it's time for some burning questions!One More Thing:Kirk: NotificationsMaddy: We Are Lady Parts Jason: Dead Money (Jakob Kerr)LINKS:“The Writer Will Do Something” by Matthew Seiji Burns and Tom Bissell: https://matthewseiji.itch.io/twwdsArydia: The Paths We Dare Tread https://faroffgames.com/pages/arydiaSupport Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinBuy Triple Click Merch: https://maxfunstore.com/search?q=triple+click&options%5Bprefix%5D=lastJoin the Triple Click Discord: http://discord.gg/tripleclickpodTriple Click Ethics Policy: https://maximumfun.org/triple-click-ethics-policy/ Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointripleclick 🚀  SUPPORT TRIPLE CLICK:Join Maximum Fun | Buy TC Merch💬 JOIN THE TRIPLE CLICK DISCORD🎮 Triple Click Ethics Policy📱 SOCIALS | @tripleclickpodInstagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitch

You know it, I know it. There are just too many video games out there. But there are never too many letters from Triple Click listeners. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week we open the mailbag and talk about the thousands of games. And also what our jobs would be if we worked in the games industry for some reason? And video game names yet again. Oh, and guess what? It's Max Fund Drive. I'm Maddie Myers. I'm Jason Shire. And I'm Kirk Hamilton. And hello. Hello. Kirk, from now on I'm going to be self-conscious saying I'm Jason Shriar because I don't know if they're going to sub it out. I can't imagine why. So we're listeners.

I think they're always going to be wondering, is this past Jason that I'm hearing or is it present day Jason? And they'll never know. Is the show just a series of Kirk editing together various things that Jason and I have said to him? We're coming up on 250 episodes, so we are probably to the point where that would be possible. Yeah, that's true. But we have something far more important to celebrate today, which is that it is max fun drive. It's maximum funds, annual pledge drive, the best possible time to become a member. And we're going to tell you more about that during the break later in our show.

But for now, I'll just say, I mean, you can always go to maximum fund.org slash join. If you just can't wait any longer, just go to that URL. But I also want to say, like we do every year, we are going to do a stream together, a Twitch stream. We're going to do it on our own Twitch channel, triple click pod on Twitch on March 27th at 8 p.m. Eastern. So please come and tune in. We love to do this for Max Fun Drive and sometimes other times throughout the year, but definitely for this time of year because it's a super duper special time of year. And we love to have the listeners come by. And we'll tell you just a little bit about how cool Max Fun is.

mostly be playing a video game and doing our thing. So come tune in then. And also, if you wanted to see us in person and you downloaded this episode really early in the day and you're in San Francisco right this second, today at 2 p.m., we are going to do a meetup, sort of adjacent to the fact that all of us are in town for GDC this week while you're listening to this if you downloaded it right away. So today we're going to be at the Yerba Pluena Gardens at 2 p.m. hanging with some listeners. Whoever deigns to show up and hang with us, come say hi. So that is that. I think I got it all. I just talked for a long time. You did. You didn't specify that it's 2 p.m. Pacific. Oh, right. That's true. So like, you know how I said the Twitch stream was at 8 p.m. Eastern?

Well, don't get confused because when we're in San Francisco, we're going to be on San Francisco time. That's the time zone we're going to be in. Very important. We're going to be meeting up in the park at 5 p.m. Eastern. Don't miss it. Well, it's going to feel like 5 p.m. Eastern to me and Jason, because we'll be adjusting to that jet lag,

but it's going to be 2 p.m. to all you San Franciscans. Can we just say also our pin this year for Max Fun Drive is super cool. It's so good. We'll talk about it at the break, but get excited for it. It's very good. Pins are always really good. It's good to get this year. It's a good time.

It's a good time to support Triple Click and become a member of nice and fun. It always is. But now more than ever. All right, Jason, what are we talking about on the show today? This week we are doing burning questions. We are reaching into a flaming hot bag full of emails from all of you find listeners. Ow, ow, ow. Ow, ow.

These questions. Put on our recesses a glove. I can prepare it. Just a reminder, you can reach us, as always, at triple click at maximum fun.org with your own super hot burning questions. And these are some real questions from real listeners. Got to specify that. None of these are AI. None of these are Kirk pretending to be a listener.

As far as I know, unless he's, like, scamming us. I guess Kirk could be starting another email address to just, like, send pretend emails. In fact, one of these questions that we're feeling today might secretly be from Kirk, but we'll see when we get to it. I think that we've actually answered a question from Jason before. That is true. That's true. We have.

So you were actually the only one of us to actually have done this. This feels like a smokescreen. Jason is covering his tracks right now by pointing at me. Well, but I was upfront about it. I didn't pretend to be somebody else. I don't know that there's any evidence any of us would pretend to be somebody else. No, this is a strange way to begin our mailbox episode because these are all actual emails from listening. Yeah, it seems a little defensive.

Like, why do we... That's what I did say. That's what I'm saying. Kind of smoke screening. Kind of a smokescreen. I said at the beginning of this. These are real. These are very real.

All of the questions. No one's doubted this. All of the questions posed by these emails are real t-shirt are answered by the t-shirt. All right. Let's get on with it. Kirk, what are you to read this first question? Okay, this first one comes from Mateo. Mateo writes, some game journalists have made the jump to game development.

ignoring the game industry's prevalent issues in the current state of the world, pretend it's 2015 or something. If the three of you worked in the games industry, which jobs would you do? My guesses are that Jason would be working on the writing and the story. Kirk would be doing music and sound design. And Mandy would be in production and maybe systems design. Mateo misspelled my name. It's fine. It's fine. Unfortunately, Maddie's name is Maddie. M-A-D-Y. Not D-D-D-E. I feel the need to remind some listeners of that, just as my name is not Kurt, though no one really calls me Kurt. They seem to have the K at the end, right? I don't know, what of the three of you think of these, of Mateo's guesses? Oh, boy. I do appreciate the compliment that I'd be doing

systems design, like level design. I think that's really overestimating my abilities. So even if Mateo misspelled my name, they really do think highly of me. I, I think, that would be cool, but I think it's far more likely that I'd be like a project manager, producer is what it's usually called in that field. Well, that was the first. Yeah, production. Yeah. No, he wrote production or maybe systems design.

Yeah. I'm just, I'm just shaving off that maybe systems design. I'm excising it. I'm a manager through and through. A producer. Could you see yourself like writing, so by systems design, I think that means like the mechanics of a game, like writing a combat. bat system or coming up with a cool encounter system for a world or something like that.

You can't see yourself doing that. I don't think I'd be very good at that, to be totally honest. Production seems like a good fit for you because production is like producers have to wrangle people and make sure they're working well together. You have years of experience doing that. And you're good at that stuff. You've both been wrangled by me back at Kataku in the day. He's a master wrangler.

It's true. But also, yeah, a lot of kind of people management stuff you would be really good at. Yeah, I could do that. Transferbable skills. I mean, when I look at this, it'd be fun to write music for a video game, but I'm not, I don't actually think I'd like to do that. I think it'd be more fun trying to write or do narrative design. But honestly, my real answer is I don't want to make video games.

That's all of our answers, right? Is we don't want to do it. Right, we should kind of throw that out there. Like, at least for my part, I don't really want to make that jump. It just doesn't seem like it would be fun. And even if it were 2015, taking Mateo's, framing into account, I still wouldn't want to make the jump because, you know, a little bit after 2015, I got out of full-time games journalism and I didn't get into game development because I

didn't want to. Yeah, I also, like there are many things I would rather do before going into full-time game development, especially having kind of heard a lot about how the sausage is made. Yeah, you know, and you're a writer and have written books, and I feel like surely that kind of writing, writing nonfiction and maybe even writing fiction, is just more appealing to you than writing on a video game? Yeah. So if you've gone to my head, if you're like, you have to work at a game studio, writing story, like, like, Mateo guest would definitely be my answer. But like, the thought of writing on a game where you have so little control over like how your writing

appears, how much it's changed. Even like that is so unappealing to me. I would rather, if I ever left journalism, my first choice would be like holding myself up in my office and just writing books where you have complete control over your story. Every writer who thinks about getting into video games should play. The writer will do something. Matthew Burns and Tom Bissell's twine game about a writer on a video game. That will maybe put the fear of reality into and make you change course. Yeah. I know a couple of video game writers who listen to this show. And if they are listening to this right now, they are probably having to take a break because they're too depressed. Listen, don't be depressed. None of us are entering the field.

That's true. We're not competing. It's true. And hey, what do we know? Maybe your job is great. We respect everything that you're doing and we know how hard it is. And I really do mean that. And when it's done well, it's all the more impressive to me because I truly don't think I can do it. And I'm not being sarcastic at all. Cosigned. Yeah. And that said, I mean, there's so many. cool kind of like narrative experiments being done in the indie space and there's so many cool story games out there that I feel like you could and maybe I could in theory get a lot of satisfaction out of that sort of thing. It's just like the thought of joining a triple a studio and

becoming a writer is just so unappealing to me. I feel similarly about music and video games where so much exciting composition and musical experimentation is going on in games with this interactivity, this play you can do with the player. There's really, really cool stuff. there. Working on something like that would be really cool. It's just very unlikely that you get to start there. Well, very unlikely you would get to make money there. That's the wrong. Right. And also, audio design is just really tough. Every audio designer, everyone who's worked in an audio department on games, like that is a very, very hard place to be in terms of where your placement is in the trench warfare. It's just a hard role to fill. Huge respect to everyone who does

It is a very hard job. In other words, I think if the three of us ever decide to quit journalism, we'll all just make a game together. Right. We need a programmer, though. But we do have a pretty good lineup. I thought we were going to start a name consultancy. Right. That's what it's easier.

If we make a game, though, we'll just have a really good name on it. We just prefer rubbernecking and being annoying and saying what we think other people should do. Maybe we should make a game about naming games. That's pretty good, actually. Where you have to pick names and then you're like, and that's the whole game. Like, you are a CEO who's clueless about what the game is about. And you're like going into the pitch meeting and you're like, okay, what about Spider Mansion? And you're like looking at everyone's faces and they're like, no.

Name wars. What if it gives you, okay, it'll give you like a one paragraph description and then you have to pick one of three selections and like there's a right answer. It might seem subjective. But there's a right there is a correct answer. I think we're on to something here. Let's put a pin in it. Let's put a pin in that. This really could be the first triple click video game.

All right. Let's get to the next question. Maddie, read this one, please. Okay, this one's from Martin, who writes, the movie industry and video games share a lot of common attributes. Cost a lot to make, need both creativity and technology, long timelines, hard to predict consumer tastes, etc. Yet, crunch does not seem to plague movie making,

but it's a persistent issue with game development. Is there something? that movie producers are doing better than gaming studio directors? What can game devs learn from the movie production process to avoid crunches? So, okay, so I thought this was an interesting question. So crunch for people who don't know is an industry term referring to excessive periods of overtime, working long hours for long periods of time. Crunch absolutely plagues movie making.

Right, okay, good. I'm glad that's where we're starting. Just kind of like infamous stories over the years. about movies where people had to work insane hours. I mean, every time I read a book, I was just kind of skimming through this book about the West Wing that came out a few months ago. It's called What's Next? And I haven't really read it. It's a little bit puffy for my taste, but skimming through it. And West Wing was infamous for like working until three in the morning on their show shoots and then like coming back in again the next morning. So the premise of this question is

a little bit flawed. But I do think there's one part of this equation that that is different for movie making, which is that in movies, every single person on set, or most of the people on set, are part of a union, a different kind of union. And they're very restricted in, like, set hours, set lunch breaks, set overtime pay. So if they work past X number of hours, they get time and a half, or double time, or whatever it looks like. And so that, I think, makes a big deal because that means when you're making a movie, you have to be a lot smarter about your timeline and your decision making ahead of the movie. And obviously, there are all sorts of techniques that people can use to make up for shortcomings there, like reshoots, which are

infamous in the MCU world as an example. But for the most part, movie producers have to plan and they have to know a lot more about what they're doing before they go into production. That said, it's very difficult for games to do that because in games, you have to figure out if something is fun and works. And in movies you do not, in movies you just point a camera at something. And in games, you can discover midway through production that your main feature is actually not very fun. But I think that the one thing that I think more game makers could learn from the movie

world is planning. More planning. Oh, I thought you were going to say unions. But yeah, sure. Well, unions are part of that. And unions force more planning because you know that you're burning so much more money every single hour. Like right now, when it comes to crunch,

if you're a game producer or game executive, you can kind of schedule crunch into your planning or at least know that, like, as a backup plan, you'll just make people crunch because there's no downside for you other than the long-term downside of burning people out or forcing them to leave or whatever, but like that isn't a downside on the current project.

Whereas in the movie business, if you are shooting, you know every minute you go after 12 o'clock or whatever, after 12 hours or whatever, you are just like burning through so much money that you are incentivized not to put in that extra over time because it costs so much. So that's a part of the equation too for sure. Yeah, there's also so much more going on with a movie shoot. I mean, if you're shooting on location, if you're doing something kind of difficult, where if you miscalculate and go long, or if you've ever read the story of any hellish movie shoot, you know, something like The Abyss or Mad Max Fury.

road, these movies that were very, very difficult to make because they were out in the desert, you know, or on a boat in the middle of the ocean, they were doing something very, very difficult. So if you miscalculate, you're also putting your actors through it. You're putting your crew through this incredibly difficult physical, rigorous physical experience, where in games, the stakes are a little lower in a certain sense because you can just say, well, mostly we're all just at computers. We're just trying to crack this thing and get it working. But because the stakes are lower, it's a little easier, I would imagine to just say, well, yeah, we're just going to stay late for two weeks.

Because it doesn't feel quite as bad as, well, we're going to stay out in this hurricane or whatever, in this storm in the middle of the desert for a week trying to get this shot while we all have sunburn and we're getting, you know, dysentery or whatever. So as a result of that, I think maybe it can sometimes feel easier to slide into crunch in video games. And it also means that the comparison, you know, isn't quite as one-to-one. it's a pretty significant difference between the two things. It's also when you're in video games, because it's an office job and you're kind of doing your work individually as opposed to on a set that is coordinated shooting, like on a movie set, you can't have just like the lighting guy crunching because it's all just kind of like a giant collaborative effort as opposed to in games where a programmer could be off crunching at home and you might not even know. Like it's very easy to slide into that. Yeah. Yeah, and something that occurs to me in talking about that is that as movies have become more digital and more like video games, that kind of crunch has actually become more prevalent.

I'm thinking of the reporting on across the spiderverse, which was a notorious and very, very difficult production. And reading the story of that, it was all animated. It really just felt like one of your Bloomberg stories, Jason. I mean, it was so similar in terms of everything, the creative direction, the way that the work worked and certainly the crunch. Yeah, you know, that's really interesting because, yeah, it's a much. easier to not plan when you don't have to worry about, okay, our actors are only available for 14 days in the Mojave Desert and that's where we're going and like, we need to get this all now or else we're never going to get it. If you're like, the season is going to change.

Yeah, exactly. The lighting will be like we have to do this before sunset as opposed to just animation where as the decision makers you can like reverse course four times and not really have any ramifications because you're just animating in a computer. Yeah, that's a good point. I feel like it's also worth noting before we wrap on this that movies have been around for like 100 years and that there's a pretty locked in standard for how a movie is made. And video games are relatively young. And I just think it's worth remembering that. Like a lot of the organizational problems that people run into with video games are because it's still nascent.

I mean, yeah, it's been a few decades by now. There's sort of a standard for how a AAA and a double A video game should be made. but movies have a lot on games in terms of just time and experience and just citing past examples of movies and being like, well, this worked for this movie. There's decades upon decades of examples to point to. Yeah, not just nascent, but also changing drastically from here and year. Yeah, that too. Yeah. But the animation comparison is very apt.

I mean, whoof. Those sonic redesigns. I mean, we remember hearing about. that. Yeah, yeah, there was a lot of similarity. Next question is from Sammy, who writes, I first discovered your podcast from my gamer boyfriend, and she never listened to a podcast before Triple Click. So thanks for all the fun time. And insightful information, you're very welcome, Sammy. Sammy says, I'm curious if any of you know or have heard from other sources what the process tends to be for pitching game ideas.

Is it significantly different from how movies, books, and other media get pitched? how do the initial stages of pre-development compare? This is an interesting one. I've talked to some people who've pitched, though I'm not sure that I'm the most well-informed person to answer this question. Yeah, well, let me try to feel this one, or at least kind of give a basic answer, which is that it's really drastically different

depending on what the game company is. So like if you're at a big AAA game company, a naughty dog, or something like that, than the pitching and the game, like deciding what's happening next is happening at a pretty high level. Like most people at the studio probably just have no input in that. Maybe they can give their feedback or something and be like, I want to work on this. But like those decisions are happening at a high level. At a company like Double Fine, which we've talked about quite a lot,

they have like their own prototyping process called Amnesia Fortnite where everyone stops what they're doing for two weeks and like works on a bunch of cool game ideas that could then potentially turn into games for the studio. So, like, in theory, anyone could pitch an idea and have it turn into something. At other companies, I've heard of, like, votes and polls and people being like, what do we want to do next? Let's try to figure that out. And some companies, a lot of it is determined by executive mandates and what publishers are looking for. If you're a smaller company and you're not owned by a big publisher, it might be just what you can get funded. Like, you might be taking around your pitches and trying to get funding everywhere.

So it's all over the place. they really can drastically differ as opposed to movies can also differ a little bit, but a lot of times it's a more linear process. Like a screenwriter writes a screenplay and they shop it around and maybe it gets made or maybe it gets kind of packaged or something else. Maybe it gets rewritten five times before it's made, but in general, yeah, but in general it's a pretty linear process or a studio decides we need to make the next Iron Man. So we're going to hire a screenwriter for that. And that's kind of how it goes. books are very similar to screenwriting in that either an author can shop an idea around or maybe an editor at a book publisher, like has an idea or a publisher really wants a book about X topic. And so they might be looking and talking to agents to try to figure out if there's a writer out there who's fitting for that.

Is that nonfiction versus fiction? I'm guessing you're kind of talking about nonfiction. Yeah, that would be nonfiction. Although with fiction, I guess if it's like serials, then, or there's a big franchise. then they might have a story in mind and hire someone. But in books, I think 99% of the time, it's just the writer, the author making a pitch and the publishers deciding whether or not they're interested.

So in games, I would say it's a little bit more all over the place than books or film. Yeah. All I really know from people I've talked to who've pitched is that it can be incredibly sold to string to do and it's really grueling and difficult process. Yeah. That's probably true for everyone who's ever pitched anything, though. Pitching just sucks.

Yeah, it does mean, I recommend the double-fine documentary that we're constantly recommending to Sammy because I feel like that process is so cool and is a great insight into a pretty specific pitching process for games and how they could get made. I feel like that gave me a lot of insight into what that could look like in a positive way that I don't know that. I mean, maybe other studios could look to that. I don't know. I mean, maybe other studios could look to that. I don't know. Might be cool. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

And a lot of times, by the way, it's like, there's like momentum. So like you'll feel something in the air. And that, I don't know exactly. I don't think the doc even shows exactly how Psychonauts 2 was pitched. It just kind of shows Tim Schaefer being like, next up, we're doing Psychonauts too. But I imagine there were a lot of conversations within the office that were like, all right, feels like psychonauts too.

It feels like it's time. Like, feels like this is, we're going to see this. Like it feels like there's something in the air here. We're all excited about it. Because I think that like when a studio leader gets a vibe that like people aren't excited about something that can kind of change things. And so I think there is a little bit of kind of democratic input. But usually the decision itself is made at the high highest levels. You can think about all of these service games that have failed or been canceled and how they were pitched.

And when they were pitched, right, there was all this energy and inertia and momentum around service games. everyone was very excited to greenlight things and then we all saw how that went next fortnight baby next destiny yeah man well that's the problem with pitching is that you pitch something and then it doesn't come out

for another five years six years trust me in six years I'm telling you it's gonna be all about just ace attorney clones that's all the way down well but I also wonder how many of those examples were games that were pitched one way and then the pitch was accepted

contingent upon it being a live service game or having some other element, name that trend from the past several years where games got kind of shifted. And sometimes that makeover can work and sometimes it doesn't. So I don't even know if all of those live service games were really connected to that when they were initially pitched. That's true. Though I guess one thing I've learned from Jason's reporting is that as often as not the people pitching the game are the ones who made the decision to make it what it was and it wasn't

actually imposed on them. True. You know, by the publisher. Well, there's some nuance there. I mean, if you're a game studio, if you're a rock steady within Warner Brothers and you're making pitches, like, you want to pitch something that you know Warner Brothers is going to be excited about. Right.

You kind of mold yourself to the person you're pitching to. That's true. And also, you're getting, like, while you're making these decisions, you're getting PowerPoint presentations from executives being like, here's why the future is live service. You're in the middle of the pitch saying, we're going to make a suicide squad game. It's going to be cool. watching their attention wanting you're like it's uh it's going to be live service right right yeah okay so just to just to kind of like ground things for us to talk about it in terms we can understand

um think about how we when we were at kataku like it wasn't uh traffic was always a big discussion at gawker media like there was always chartby it was always up we always talked about like oh this this this this story is a big hit like it's getting lots of views lot of people care about it it's resonating people yeah the big board but like there was never a conversation in that was like every story has to do great traffic, but like it was implicitly understood. We all knew that like it was, you were rewarded if a story did good numbers and also you felt good about it. This is a story people care about. Like there are lots of legitimately good reasons to care about traffic. Think about that on a bigger scale when you're talking about a project

worth billions of dollars where it's kind of like they might not be saying to you, hey, this has to be a service game, but it's kind of understood from the conversations you are having when they or when they're on earnings calls being like the future of EA is live service. Like it's very clear what they really want. And you know it's going to be just kind of a constant like uphill battle, like resistance if you try to pitch something that they don't want. So it's a little bit more nuanced than just like the studio heads made the decision. Yeah, that makes sense. All right.

Next question. Kirk. This comes from Marta who writes, it's no secret that the current industry crisis is in part caused by how many, games there are? Do you think Steam should reintroduce their greenlight process or that there should generally be any process to lower the amount of yearly releases? She writes in 2024, there were 19,000 plus games released on Steam alone, apparently. Or do you think that a good game will always defend itself? What other risks do you see associated with how games are being made now? And by made, I presume she also means release now.

Yeah. So, yeah, I don't know. What do we think? Should Green Light come back? Should we tell people what Green Light is? We should probably explain what it is. Yeah. Go ahead, Maddie.

Oh, okay. So Greenlight was something that Steam introduced whereby it as a storefront would, as the title, implies, either Greenlight a game and it would appear on Steam Storefront or it would get rejected. And the application process was like pretty baroque and just, confusing for people, at least according to a lot of the indie developers that I talked to in that time period when Greenlight existed, it was really unclear why or how Steam would greenlight these games. People would try to game the system in a lot of different ways, and there became emergent methodologies for gaming the system that game developers would use. It really just

introduced additional problems, but I think part of why it existed was because in the early days, Steam was kind of prestigious. Like, it didn't have every game on its platform, but it was still a really important PC gaming storefront. And then when Indies came to the platform, I think, you know, the Steamhead honchos, Gabe, Gabe Newell was out there being like, all right, how are we going to decide what's on our platform? And it's a totally different ballgame now.

There's tons and tons and tons of video games on there. Yeah. There's all kinds of stuff, some of which is shovelware. And, like, that is part of the issue, I would guess. I remember that if you were in the IGF, if you were a finalist in the Independent Games Festival, you got onto Steam and that that was as big of a deal as winning in the IGF just because it was so huge to have your indie game on Steam. Because there were just people who would look on Steam and because there weren't 19,000 or whatever the number is new games, they could just find you. And that was a better world for those developers. And that was a lot of good games because the IGF, you know, tends to have some of the best games featured.

But at the same time, that also left a lot of people out in the cold. Yeah. Yeah. I remember fans could vote right on them. And that was also a big process of it. It was a point at least where I remember they're being voting. Because I remember people were pitching us a lot of Kataku being like, hey, we want this to get greenlight. Yeah.

Yeah, it was sort of the new Kickstarter. There was a period, that whole period when we were at Katakak. First, there was the Kickstarter era where people would write and say, say, my game has a Kickstarter, please, please write about it. And you'd feel kind of, you know, you'd maybe feel like you could help them out, but then didn't want to feel that responsibility toward them. And then Greenlight felt very much the same. Yeah, especially because as a reporter, you don't know if the game is good or not, especially in the Kickstarter phase, but also in the greenlight phase, sometimes it's just like, I don't know anything about this. Why do I support this?

And it just became, I mean, now it's an explosion. It's the indie apocalypse. Yeah. So let's get to the question. So the question is like, should there be some sort of gate keeping or should there be some process in place to reduce the number of releases? Because it's true. I think it's kind of an accepted fact. We talked about this a couple weeks ago when we did our episode about why the video game industry has fallen apart. One of the biggest factors is just the complete and utter oversaturation of games, which I think can be a really good thing for players because they're more cooler new, they're more cool new games coming out every week than there ever have been in the history of video games. A challenging time for podcasters, as evidenced by last week's episode.

And also for discoverability and for making games and releasing them and getting them noticed. And there are a lot of problems with that. It's kind of, it's very much a double-edged sword where there's a lot of good and a lot of bad that comes with it. Should there be a gatekeeping process of some sort? And what would it look like? I mean, it's so, it's so hard to know. So I think about podcasts a lot because one of the things that I love about podcasts is that they're distributed via RSS. And I think RSS is the great hope for the future.

It's this open platform that anyone can use. You know, I put my shows, I put strong songs, for example, on an RSS feed. Anyone can listen to it, and there's no gatekeeper. I'm not reliant on a platform the way that a YouTuber is reliant on YouTube. And yet at the same time, there are these podcast gatekeepers like Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or two of the big ones. And you put your RSS feed into those services, and then you get distributed that way. And I like that a lot.

I mean, I think that the openness, the fundamental openness of RSS is a really wonderful thing. It's not a one-to-one comparison. But when you think about Steam being an open platform that, you know, you pay some fee or something and you can list your game, that openness strikes me as a good thing. Like, I'm not sure just my gut tells me that moving away from that. I mean, podcasts also have a discoverability problem. So it hasn't, this isn't a problem. Perhaps as a result of that openness, it has the same exact problem.

So yes, it's a good thing, but also has that. Exactly. Pros and cons, I suppose. Yeah. That's sort of, right. That's sort of what makes me think of it. And it's why I'm resistant to say, well, what we should do is close things down and make it harder for people to put their work out there just because that just doesn't seem like the way we're going to go. And also, it just seems like moving backward. And in general, things just don't move backward.

They move forward in a new direction. Yeah, I agree. It's hard to imagine any sort of gatekeeping system that would work in a fair and just kind of in a way. that makes people happy. On the other hand, like, maybe there are better options that don't go backwards, but go forward, maybe there are better options for discoverability. Maybe there are other methods that can be used for discoverability. I don't know.

A large part of me, it feels like this is just the world, and this is just, like, where we have to adapt to now is just this glut of games coming out all the time, and that's just what we have to find a way to navigate, and what game makers have to figure out, how to deal with because like I don't see this changing. The game I'm playing now, I mean, this game I'm obsessing over and won't stop telling you two about called called, which we'll talk about more in the future. Wait, what's it called? You should text me about it a few more times.

I never heard of this. I was thinking about that in the consciousness of this conversation. It's like, here's a game that has blown me the F away. And it's just like made by this dude and a couple other people and just came out of nowhere and they're going to be games. There are games like this every single year that just completely come out of nowhere and blow us away. And that's obviously a good thing. It's not a problem, but it's also just like, yeah, I mean, that just feels like what the future looks like is just this massive

glut of games that just keeps growing and growing. And maybe it's on people like us and people of platforms to be curators. And I don't know. I don't know if there's an answer to this. I mean, I think that is the answer. I actually do think the answer is human curators. And this is the kind of question that makes me really depressed about so many video game publications closing, which isn't what Marta's asking about, but it's what it makes me think of because I'm like, there's really nothing better than a human person curating a list based on their taste, and then you understand what that person's taste is, and you're like, okay, I usually like things from this games critic that I'm following, or music critic or book critic list goes on.

And this is semi-related. I've recently gotten really into watching music DJs on Twitch because the music rights have been sorted out over there. And it's just a way that I'm discovering new music now is by just watching DJs play it because obviously there's so much new music constantly. How would you ever discover it? And the way to discover it is by a human person who makes it their life's work or passion to be like, here's some new stuff to check out. And like that's our responsibility. I mean, not to get all corny about it, but like it is our responsibility to tell people about blueprints or whatever it is.

I just, I always hope we're not the only ones, you know? I want there to be other people out there like us doing it. Yeah. And also the problem with that is that it's so, it's like determined by our personal taste because the three of us, I mean, we're not going to be. Yeah, but like, so the three of us, we're not going to be up in triple click like recommending the best, I don't know, sports. games every single week that come out.

And so it's a little unfortunate that, like, the curators, even there, it's so limited to what we like and care about. But I'm sure there's curators for that. We're limited by our human capabilities. And this is somewhere where AI is going to become more and more noticeable. Like, AI DJs are already a thing on Spotify. And, you know, I think some people get something out of that. and I could imagine an AI's capability to look at a vast amount of information and sort through it is helpful in this instance.

Because like you were just saying, Jason, a human being can only play so many games. And I mean, forget about music, movies, books. It is possible to read most of the big new books each year. It's possible to watch most of the movies. Music is a lot harder. There's a ton of it. But with games, I mean, games are so huge. They take so much time.

It's just not possible. So you do start to see a world where they build an AI that can do this. because it's able to, but then you lose the humanity of it. You lose getting this actual human being. Yeah, how can an AI possibly tell whether a game is good or not? Well, this is not going to be in either or a choice. This is going to happen. Like, an AI is going to exist to tell you what kind of game you might like.

After you talk to it and tell it what kind of games you do like, it'll go through a bunch of things or whatever. Who knows? I can imagine a bunch of ways that'll work. It won't replace humans, though. It's just we have to kind of lean into the humanity you were describing as our limitation, the thing that makes us not able to play every single game, and just go with what we like. And then the connection to us as people is the thing that actually makes our recommendation hold

weight with people. And I think that's already true of triple-click. We don't have time to play nearly every game that we want to. There are so many games I'd love to play if I had time and I just don't. But at the same time, I am still myself. And I think that my experience, my understanding, my way of explaining and understanding games is useful. to some people just in the same way that other people are useful to meet because we like to have those human connections.

So hopefully we can keep sight of that as well in this world of infinite media to the point that only machines can process it all and make recommendations. Well, as long as an AI isn't going to become the new steam greenlight and deciding whether it seems to be allowed or not. Yeah, hopefully not. I mean, that's like what's happening on Spotify, right? is there's an AI DJ that's recommending music to thousands or millions of people. Well, but I mean allowing something to exist on the platform in the first place,

it would be my concern. Anyway, let's keep going. Maddie, next question. Okay, this one's from Dom, who writes, I recently received a board game from a Kickstarter I pledged for called Aridia, the paths we dare tread. And imagine my surprise when I discovered that our very own Kirk Hamilton composed the official music for the game.

The idea of composing music for a media, that doesn't typically call for it is so interesting to me. And I was wondering if Kirk could speak a little bit on his experience. How did this partnership come about? What were the challenges that he faced during the composing process? Are there any interesting anecdotes he can share about his experience? I would love to talk about this. I'll be brief.

This is the kind of thing I could talk about at length and maybe we'll on strong songs or something. But this was a very, very fun project that I completed a while ago that the game is just now coming out. This is a game from far-off games called Aridia the Paths We Dare Tread, as Maddie said. It is similar to Gloomhaven. It actually comes in an even bigger box. Cody Miller, the head of this company, sent me a copy of it since I did the music. And it's the most unbelievable box I've ever seen in my life. I still haven't posted a picture of this.

It is so awesome. It weighs, I think, 24 pounds, I weighed it. It is a box the size of a car. And it has so much stuff at it. It's such a cool game. I still haven't had a chance to play it. but I really, really want to with my board game group because it looks very cool. So anyways, how did this come about?

Cody is actually a triple-click listener. Hi, Cody, if you're listening. He's a very, very nice guy. He runs far-off games and designs board games and has had some success with past games. He's well-known in the community and did a Kickstarter for Aridia, you know, pitching it as, I want to make a big, you know, persistent role-playing game adventure that people can play through, you know, where you have a character. and it's like a big D&D campaign,

but it's a tabletop game, similar to something like Lumehaven. And it was very successful Kickstarter, and as one of the stretch goals, he had me come on as the composer. The reason for that was actually that he hired me to write music just for the Kickstarter trailer. So it started with me just writing the theme music for Oridia

that just played on the little Kickstarter video that sort of showed what they were envisioning for the game. Then the stretch goal came, and that was, hey, do you want to actually try, writing some music for this game, so I said, sure, I'll do it. So I'm on top composing five tracks. There's a kind of field music and a town theme, there's a battle theme, there's a boss theme, and a kind of magical, mystical theme. And the idea with the game is that as you're playing, some cards that you draw that have certain, you know, activities or

actions or events will have a little color-coded music cue written on the card. And then you are to play that track of the five tracks. And you can kind of put it on repeat because I wrote them all to be able to just loop. And then, you know, action music, like fighting music kind of plays when you're in a fight or really peaceful, chilled out music plays if you're in a town, that kind of thing. The biggest challenge, I'll just cite one thing, because I think this is, it was interesting for me as a composer and is actually relevant to video games as well. So much of what I had to do, and I worked with Cody on each piece, so much of what I had to do was remove stuff.

I would write this kind of elaborate piece of music and send it to Cody, and he'd say, this is cool, but there's too much, there's too much melody, there's too much going on. And so we just kept pulling stuff out. And the eventual versions that we wound up with were very stripped down because it has to be in the background. It can't be super distracting. And I've actually gone and used this music during my Dungeons and Dragons campaigns with my friends. I'll put it on when we're in a fight.

I put on the battle music because I haven't had a chance to play Arridia yet. but we're playing D&D pretty regularly. So it's a way for me to test the music. And it works. It's actually been really informative. I might release new versions of the tracks that are like five times as long, just so you don't have to put it on loop and it'll just play for 15 minutes, where I just copy-paste the thing basically five times in a row

and maybe make a couple little changes. Anyways, that was the one interesting challenge for me as a composer, is remove stuff, just remove, remove, remove, less tamboral variety, less melody. It has to kind of really get in the back. background. So it was a super fun process. You can listen to the music on my SoundCloud, and I'm going to put it up on band camp at some point and actually, you know, make it for sale for anyone who wants it. But anybody who bought the game gets a copy of the music. And it was really cool. That game is amazing. We'll put a link in the showdowns. People should go check it out. It's, it looks like a really awesome game. And it's been getting good reviews, too. Yeah, I hope you talk more in depth on the process on Strong Songs, as you said. Yeah, I probably will at some point. Yeah, that's awesome.

Let's slip in one more question. This is a fun one. This is from Ricardo. Ricardo says, Hello, guys. I hope you're all fine and dandy. I'm making a game that's similar in style to Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles,

my life as a king. I was wondering if you could help me with being a soundboard for some names I'm considering. For context, I'm half Italian and half English and wanted to have a blended name to pay homage to my roots. Anyway, here are some of the names I've got.

Let me know what you think. Sovranos will. Dominio Eterno Rain de Luce Throne bound Dominion's call All right First of all Ricardo

I just want to say That from now on To listen to the rest of the podcast We'll be charging $100 an hour For our services Okay Spider Mansion consulting is now in session Yes yes yes

All right Let's put our money where our mouth is And give Ricardo some suggestions Please Kirk Go first. Okay, so just looking at all of these, I would say that I think thronebound is the strongest name of the ones that we have just listed, though I don't think that it's incredibly strong. Hard to say with like, throne bound is not a pleasant word to say.

Well, and the thing about throne bound as a concept, it's like being stuck in a chair. Right. That doesn't sound fun. It's not very active. So here's my other thought. Looking through all of these, I think that Dominio Eterno doesn't quite work together. but either of those words could work. Dominio, that could be the name of a game, not bad at all.

Eterno. So maybe less is more. Too much like Eternal, which is too common a word in games. I would nix Eterno. I think it's different enough for what it's worth. So So So If this is a game about being a king and kind of like doing cool stuff. I never actually played Final Fantasy Crystal Connics Souls. My Life is a King.

But this is a game as being a king and doing stuff. Sovrano means king in Italian. So if he wants to blend Italian in English, I think you can play around with that. You could do some alliteration thing. If this is a game about killing a king, like, Slay the Severano would be a fun name. Maybe you can play around with Savrano and like another word that is relevant, maybe another word that starts with an S. You could have some fun with that. You could find something a little catchier than Savrano's will.

Will is kind of a soft, boring word. I'm going to look up what you actually do in life as a final fantasy. I like just Savrano for what it's worth. I think a one-word title is pretty powerful. It's a little tough. Yeah, Dominion's Call, I think that something's something is generally not my favorite structure. Like, Call of Dominion is a stronger name. It sounds a little like Call of Duty, but Call of Dominion, I would say, is stronger than Dominion's Call.

if we're just punching up any of these individually. Strong savranos, strong songs, Severanos. Severano's song. Strength of Severano. That's a little bit. It's tricky. I mean, I'm not wild about any of these names, Ricardo. I will say that.

So I think you should keep working on it. And I think if we were really workshopping this, we would actually talk through what the game really is, who the characters are, and what you do in it. Yeah, what are the verbs is really what I want to know. you do in the game and then how can you convey that? Because I will say that all five of these games don't really convey game to me. You know, like what type of game it is in a way that I think it is helpful when a name does. Great feedback. Yeah. That said, I would not recommend come like

other people emailing burning questions with the main suggestions because we're not going to do this every single time we do a burning questions. Every burning questions just becomes a name brainstorming sessions. Just game divs desperately asking us. I think, If you go listen to our episode, I mean, some of the tips that we talked about, I mean, catchy is first and foremost. Something memorable is first and foremost what you want to go for. Something unexpected, like, I don't know, not this, because I don't know if it fits this game, but something like sad, sad, sad, where you're kind of like, oh, who is the savrano?

Why are they sad? Something that plays around with kind of, and especially I'm respecting that Ricardo wants to have the blended Italian and English here. And I think you can do that. For sure. to find a catchy way to do it. Sovrano, like, Severano's steel or like something like that. Yeah, that's, that's better.

Or like something implying like a climb or like a battle or what, again, what are you doing in the game as part of my hang up here where it's like if you have a verb in there or something that describes action. Yeah, so my life is a king. I was just skimming through the Wikipedia page. It's like a city building. game. You have to like build yourself a new kingdom. So it's like Severano's empire. Yeah, something like that.

Yeah, that's why you get like Call of Dominion kind of tells you that this is a game about taking dominion over or something. Yeah, yeah. Sovrano City. Sovrano spire. Sovranos, I don't know. Severnos the spire, I think. Yeah. Sovrano the spire.

Sepsious. Save Svrano. Slick Zavrano, sly Svrano. Yeah, there are a lot of ways you can play around with this. As long as it's an alliteration really, I like the eliteration. Well, I just think it feels punchier. If you're going to take the Italian name and you want it to feel a little punchier, I think adding a little, like something like Savrano's Will, which is his original suggestion,

that to me feels pretty weak because Will is a weak word and also because you don't, you can't really tell what Savrano is from it. Like, if you're going to use the Italian, word, it's helpful to make it clear what it is in the title. Anyway. Severano's Dominion. Yeah, God. No.

Sorry. That's just way too. It's too long? Like two, three-syllable words. Dominion is a tough word. Dominion is like one of those that I feel like is in a lot of game names or a lot of names in general

that just kind of like flies, goes in one ear, Yeah, I mean, that's what's tough about this list, right? Is it's like will dominion, reign, throne, call? Like all of these, I'm like, these are very familiar. Well, Ricardo, we could do this for hours, as you can tell. You've really... I think we'd get there.

I feel like we would get there if we actually really sat down and spent an hour or two on this. For sure. At some point, you'd have to start paying us. I think I got it. Okay. Okay. Severano's suburbs. Perfect.

Nailed it. That's the city builder of your dreams. It's a SimCity killer. It's coming at you. Thank you again to everybody who sent in their questions. Let's take a break and talk about Max Fun Drive. So don't skip ahead for this one because it's going to be fun. It's going to be fun.

It's going at it live talking about Max Fun Drive. And then we'll be back after that with one more thing. So like we said at the top of the show, it's Max Fun Drive. What does that mean? What is it all mean? Well, you know, if your regular listener every week, we tell you to go maximum fund.org slash join. We're like, become a member. Pay $5 a month.

You get the monthly bonus episode. That hasn't changed. That's still true now. But during Max Fund Drive, if you bump up your membership, if you bump it up to say $10 a month, if you bump it up to say $20 a month, you get something extra. And you only get that something extra. You do that during this specific time period. And the extras are really, really cool.

Like, this $10 one, okay. So every year we get to design an enamel pin, and we've had some really cool pins in the past. And I feel like I say every year it's my favorite pin, but actually, though, this is my new favorite triple click pin. It's a good one. It's really, really good. So if you become an upgrading member to $10 a month,

you can become the proud owner of a lowercase G pin that has a game controller on it and it's in the triple click colors. So if you know, you know, like this is one of those pins where it's like, okay, yeah, I'm a lowercase G gamer. I'm not like a weird elitist gamer with a capital G who's exclusionary and mean. No, I'm lowercase G. I'm really cool. I'm inclusive and open and I'm down.

That is what it means. That's what the pin means. It means you're part of the club. So yeah, the $10 per month, that's really freaking cool. If you want to say to all your friends, hey, I play video games, but I do not check Reddit Kataku in action. Then this is a big video. Exactly. But also, if you were to upgrade to $20 a month, I guess we should say like the theme this year of Max Fund Drive is like spring break.

And there's some like very Lisa Frank inspired designs. And also it's like a classic setup where if you. you know, join at $20, you still get the pin, and you also get the $20 reward, which is like a decision between a really cute hat or like a Lisa Frank towel, for example, or you can go to $35. You get like this cooler bag and then you get all the previous rewards, et cetera, et cetera. You can find all of that stuff at maximum fund.org slash join. But, I mean, the most important thing here is the pin that we especially designed for all of you, right?

I mean, you love it, lowercase G. The pin rules. The pin is very good. Don't delay. Don't put it off. Don't procrastinate it. Just go ahead and type that URL into your address bar. I know that's always a stopping point for people. I include myself in this. It's like, I'll just get to it later. You're going to forget. Just do it right now. Go ahead. And just to be clear, you can sign up for a new membership and you'll get rewards if you sign up at $10 or you can boost like Nadi was saying. You can boost your existing membership. Both of those things totally valid. So whoever you are, wherever you're at, you can get yourself some cool bonus. stuff and you can get that pin on one way or another, which is really all that really matters. You just, you want the pin. I mean, I guess what really matters is that you're like supporting the show and us not having

ads and like us being part of a really cool podcast network that supports us and we love them and we feel supported by them and that's why we still look with them. Support artists, creative people, whatever. You want the pin. You want the freaking pin. We're here for that. stuff. All right.

So that's that's that. Maximumfund. com. Join. Happy Maxfund drive to all of you. And we are back. Kirk Money. It is time for one more thing.

I will go first. I just read a cool book that I want to tell you guys about. It's called Dead Money by Jacob Kerr. Jacob Kerr Kerr is a long time Airbnb executive slash tech guy who lived in San Francisco for a long time. And he has written this book, his first novel that is a twisty thriller set in the world of tech. And it starts off with the CEO slash WizKid founder of this book's fictional version of Uber, which is called Journey. And their slogan, man, I didn't write it down, but it's hilarious. It's like, it's not about the journey, like something like that.

Something awful. And so this guy is found dead. and this woman who works for a big venture capital firm and is also kind of like a lawyer slash investigator is paired up with an FBI agent to investigate what happened and goes on this fantastic path through Silicon Valley and all the tropes that go with it from like the co-founder who's been sidelined and given the bullshit title like chief whatever it was probably like an invention officer or something to the VC firms and the billionaires who are fighting over which startups they get to invest in, even though none of them are actually profitable. And it's got it all in there. You have the woman who's like lots of things that will make me mad. No, actually, it'll make you very delighted and entertained because it's so fun to read.

This book is really good. And I'm surprised that it's this guy's first novel because it's so well-structured and well, well written and just a very compelling book. I really enjoyed it. I really liked it a lot and it has a lot of twists and turns. Like it goes in directions that maybe aren't entirely unexpected, but are certainly fun to read because they don't, they're surprising.

I'll say that. They're surprising and satisfying and interesting. And the main character is this kind of six-foot-one badass woman who has a really interesting backstory that is explored in the book. And I think I'll just leave it at that because she's really interesting and you should read it to learn more about her. And it does some good lampooning slash, not even lampooning, slash capturing of Silicon Valley as you go in a very fun way that never feels like annoying to a degree that you would react like that. Kirk. Like the characters just feel

believable and interesting and real. And you might hate them all or hate most of them, but a lot of them get what's coming to them. So that's fun to read. Anyway, I really enjoyed it. I recommend it. It's called Dead Money by Jacob Kerr. You should check it out. It's a cool book. Maddie, what's your one more thing? All right. My one more thing is a TV show, a sitcom, is called We Are Lady Parts. And it's about a band, a punk rock band called Lady Parts. It's fictional. It's a sitcom, and it's a British sitcom, and it's all about these sort of 20-something-ish Muslim girls. They're all Muslim girls, women, I should say, that live in Britain, and they're in this punk rock band together. And some of them feel different types of ways about Islam, but they're all, like, cool, rebel girls.

And the music in this is so freaking good. Like, that alone, I feel like you two would love. is just the music of the show, but also it's really funny. Like, at the start of the show, it kind of feels like it's going to be like a rom-com about, like, the main character who ends up being the lead guitarist in the band, and she, like, totally slays on the guitar. It's amazing. But, like, you know, she's like, oh, I should be, like, focusing on getting married

and, like, settling down with a nice Muslim guy and all that. But, of course, she gets seduced by the world of rock and roll and joins this band, and her life goes in this different direction that's, like, exciting and fun, but she's, like, very torn about it because she's also, like, kind of conservative. And so like it kind of follows her, the main character. But all the other characters are great. And there's like a queer storyline that's awesome and unexpected and fun.

And you just get to know all the different women in the band and you love them. But like best of all, the music is just really, really good. And I've been in bands. And so like I can really relate to like the fights that some of the characters have and like the tension and all that. But yeah, this is just like great even if you haven't been in a band. It's just funny and fun and about like these really specific human characters and what their life experiences are. And I think it's awesome.

Nita Manzora is the person who created the show. And I think she's just like brilliant based on this. I think it's awesome. And I hope she gets to do a million more things. So yeah, I really recommend this show. It's on Peacock. It's only 12 episodes and they wrap everything up. So hey, what's your excuse?

It's called We Are Lady Parts. It's really good. That sounds great. Kirk, finish us off. When I think of bands fighting in movies or TV, I always think of Almost Famous. Your looks are becoming a problem. I actually, Nina Menzor said Spinal Tap was an inspiration for this because it's a comedy show for sure. So, like, that's maybe a little closer to the vibe.

Oh, I know. That just always makes you think of that scene. I don't know. Almost Famous is pretty funny. It is pretty funny. It's also dark. Especially it's depiction of that band. My one more thing is notifications, specifically.

the notifications on all of your devices because I want all of our listeners to be thinking about the role of notifications in their life because I have been over the last week and it made me realize that, man, notifications are very insidious and they kind of pile up in ways you don't realize. They're like dust bunnies under your couch.

I am, as listeners probably know, always trying to really keep control of my attention and keep my digital distractions at a minimum because the more distracted I am, the less happy I am. It's pretty much that simple. I'm also less productive. I don't feel as creative and focused, but really, I just sort of feel bummed out and depressed when there are a million things pulling at my attention at all times. And in this modern technological era, it is very easy to have a million things pulling at your attention. So I just wanted to mention

notifications because I went through on my phone and checked my notification settings, which you know, now has its own, I'm using an iPhone, it has its own menu. And I swear, I, you know how every app wants to send you notifications whenever you install a new app the first thing that it asks is hey turn on notifications can we send you notifications first of all i think that that should be a sign right there that notifications are bad and that you should never let an app do it the fact that they're so into having notifications turned on tells me everything i need to know about how little i want them turned on it's like when a restaurant is like no shirt no shoes no service i mean come on like now i just want to go in without a shirt to spite you like you really don't want to

Exactly like that. It's pretty much the exact same thing. So anyways, I went through and looked at my notifications and realized that there were just a ton turned on, just various things, you know, even like extraneous things and essential things. My calendar, for example, or my messages app, they just are sending me notifications all the time. And as a result, when I'm working, my computer up in the corner, there's always a few things there. I log in and there's just a couple things out there. Oh, this is updated. Oh, there's some new thing at this website.

Oh, you've got these messages from this person. Even having notifications for messages on my lock screen is kind of an issue. Wait, why is that an issue? Well, I'll get into it. So I went through and I turned off every single notification because I wanted to start there and just see, okay, I don't have a ton going on today. If someone needs to call me, they can call me if there's an emergency. I'm going to turn them all off and see how it goes.

So I did that just to see what it would be like. And it was great. I really, I have no notes. It was fantastic. Looking at my phone and no longer seeing that I have all these messages is wonderful. I really appreciate it. I can open my phone and then I'll see the little badge on the messages app and I know, oh, some people have messaged me and then I can hit it and look at it.

But I don't need to actually look at my lock screen while I'm working and see. Jason Schreier says, Blueprints is so amazing. Oh, my God. You know, I don't need to have that immediately told to me about my locks screen. I don't know. Maybe that was a bad example. I do need to have that told to me. That is important information.

That's like 911 emergency levels. Good point. Yeah, I think if you're going to do this, you should leave on notifications for your podcast co-host. Right. A couple other people. Maybe your wife. Maybe. A couple people should have probably.

You know, I don't think there's a way to do that, though I kind of wish there was. I guess it maybe if you had like some special setting with your favorites or something. I think there is a way to do it. But it's fine. We don't need to dwell on that. For me, turning them all off was great. I would suggest, here's my thing for listeners. I would suggest go through your notifications and just do.

Do an audit. Just take five minutes and do it. Turn off almost everything. Like go way, go even further than you think. And then you can always add things back. If you find, oh, you know, actually I missed a couple notifications. I wish I'd gotten from messages or a calendar thing or whatever. Go ahead, turn it back on. But I would say just try that. Try turning it off. And you might be surprised at how, just how much better it makes every moment interacting with technology feel to not constantly have all these little bugs at your periphery. just throwing things at you when you're trying to focus on one thing. So that's my one more thing. It's just a little idea for anyone out there who wants to explore it.

Yeah. I'm into that. I have a lot of notifications off, and I'm into just specifically checking things at designated times. It works for me really well. Yeah, exactly. I'm not as extreme as you. Like Jason can still text me, for example.

But, you know, that's just how I have set up. To be clear, I still get text messages. I'm talking about notifications. I'm not blocking anything. It's just about having the notifications jumping at me. No, I know what you mean. I know what you mean. I think it really works, especially if you're trying to concentrate and actually not be diverted.

It's diverting you more than you think every time, for sure. Good to know. All right. That is that for this week's episode. We hope to see some of you later today in Irba Buena Park, Yerbauna Gardens. As for the rest of you, we will see. you all next week. Yeah, see you 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. Find us on Twitter at triple clickpod. Send email the triple click at maximum fun.org and find a link to our discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network of artists-owned shows.

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