Triple Click - What's Going On At Xbox? [Mailbag]

Episode Date: June 18, 2026

Why is Xbox in such dire straits? Kirk, Jason, and Maddy open up the mailbag and take some of YOUR listener questions, mostly about Xbox but also about a couple of less bleak topics. One More Thing: Kirk: The Boroughs Maddy: On Together Jason: Adventures of Elliot LINKS: Strong Songs Live! July 11, Alberta Rose Theatre in Portland. Livestream Tickets HERE Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/jointripleclick🚀  SUPPORT TRIPLE CLICK:Join Maximum Fun | Buy TC Merch💬 JOIN THE TRIPLE CLICK DISCORD🎮 Triple Click Ethics Policy📱 SOCIALS | @tripleclickpodInstagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitch

Welcome to 2026. It's a year where you're going to be hearing about the same handful of people and companies over and over and over with no end in sight because they own everything. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we are talking, of course, about Xbox again, as their new leadership is reportedly planning a bloodbath of layoffs and studio closures in the coming weeks. Cool. Great. Let's get into it. I'm Kirk Hamilton. I'm Maddie Myers. And I'm Jason Shire. Hello. Hello. Hello, my friends. It's so nice to see you both. Hello. Did you guys see that the New York Knicks are NBA champions?

I did see. I did. I figured you were probably excited about that. Well, I'm not that excited as we discussed last week. It's not like I'm a Knicks fan, but New York is pretty crazy. It's very funny to see like grown adults walking around with Nick's jerseys everywhere and people just talking about them constantly. There's excitement in the air. Given everything else that's happening, it's nice that there's just this thing that people are excited about that is really, Cool. I mean, I watched the highlights from that game. Was it game four? The game with the incredible comeback. That was some amazing basketball. It's funny to say that because all of them in every single game, the spurs were up by double digits and four of them the next game. There was the one, though. There was like a record-breaking company. Game four was the one. They were down by 29.

The farthest anyone's ever been behind. And they wanted a buzzer beater, right? It was a buzzer beating. It was like a tip-in with one second left. It was insane. It was bonkers. It was like, yes, this is some incredible. basketball being played. Gotta be excited about that. Pretty cool. Speaking of incredible basketball being played, if you like sports, you could listen to a bonus episode we recently recorded about e-sports and a show called players. And that is my way in to talking about the fact that we are listeners supported and people should consider signing up to become a maximum phone member to support our show.

If you become a member, you get bonus episodes like the one I just mentioned and a whole bunch more. But also, you just support us making this show that we love to make. Every week, we don't sell ads on the show. We don't have sponsors. We don't deal with any of that. We are not beholden to anyone. We just make the show. We own the show. And we're very happy to be a part of our network maximum fund, which is a listener-supported network. So maximum fun.org slash join. Go there, sign up to become a member, get a ton of bonus episodes, including a recent one about the show players. the directors of which are going to be making an interesting-looking DC show we just found out, which is kind of cool, a show about Jimmy Olson.

Yeah, I'm excited for that. And a million other bonus episodes. This month we will be doing a spoiler cast about 007 First Light, which we all played and are in the process of finishing. So that'll be a kind of bond conversation. There's a lot of stuff we didn't get into in the triple play on that game because there are so many one-off things that are fun if they're unspoiled. So I think it'll be a really fun conversation about,

Sort of what makes Bond Bond and what that game does well and what may be what could be improved in the next one. If indeed, I.O. gets to make the next one. Yeah. So anyways. Let's hope so. Yeah, let's hope so. Maximumfund.org slash join, become a member, support, triple click and independent media. Before we get into our topics for the day, a quick correction.

Last week, I made the mistake of talking about a Star Trek show that I haven't actually watched. And while I said that, I still made a mistake about it. So last week I mentioned an upcoming Star Trek, it looks like horror survival game from Team Bluber. It's called Star Trek Shadow Frontier, and it stars Ro Leran, a notable Bajoran character from Star Trek The Next Generation, who I mentioned. I think I kind of said I had mixed feelings about her just because some of her episodes aren't my favorite episodes of TNG. But she's a cool character and has like a lot of potential as a character and is really widely. widely beloved and she's going to be the main character of this game. I also said she was on Deep Space Nine because I thought she was and I've never watched Deep Space Nine. I think I said as

much but as it turns out, Roelaren was not on Deep Space Nine but a fun bit of trivia. So originally the creators of Deep Space Nine wanted to get Michelle Forbes, the actress who plays Roelaren to be on Deep Space Nine, to have Roelaren be a character because Deep Space Nine has, you know, like Worf is on that show. There's characters from from the next generation. It takes place at the same point in the timeline. And then Michelle Forbes turned it down. So they wrote a new Bajoran character,

a character named Kira Neres. Kira Neres, who is played by Nana Visitor. Amazing character. It was a beloved character now. Love her. And I understand the Deep Space Nine, Maddie, you have seen it. It's kind of a lot about the Kardashians, right?

It is, it is, among other things. It's funny that I didn't catch this, but it's because I watched these two shows at the same time, because they are set in the same time period. So I should have caught you and I didn't. And you're a racist against pejorians and you think that all the Jorans look to see too. But I do think the Kardashians are a superior race and I am in favor of everything. Right, right.

Who hasn't met a Cardassian and thought, oh, well, you guys are cool. There's a really great Cardassian character on that show. Is this named after the Kardashians? No, the Kardashians were actually named after the Kardashians. So it goes the other way around. Have they done a show called Meet the Cardassians? No, but there is a really fun Photoshop of that in the Triple click Discord. Yes, I think that that... It's a common comparison has been made. Common did. So anyways,

yeah, the Bajorians and the Cardassians, of course, have a lot of complicated history, and you would want to have a Bajorian character on a show with a lot of Cardassians. We don't need to go too in-depth on this again. We've already gone so far into this. You're ready way too in-depth for me. I heard from a lot of people about this, of course, and then in the conversations I was having have, you know, said many times, like, I finished Next Generation, Emily and I watched it, And I think our next watch will be Deep Space Nine when it's time to watch it. It's always hard with those old network shows where there's like 400 episodes every season. There's so many apps.

But I know that show is supposed to be great. It is. So anyways, I just wanted to issue that correction to remember not to get over my skis, especially when talking about Star Trek. And one fun fact that I had kind of forgotten that I will close this correction with is that Michelle Forbes, who played Roelaren, also played Admiral Kane on Battlestar Galactica. Now, that makes sense. there's a lot of creative overlap between Battlestar Galactica and TNG specifically because Ron Moore, who created Battlestar, was a writer and wrote some of the best episodes of TNG. But Michelle Forbes turns up, and I'm sure a lot of people watching the show were like, oh, my God, it's Rowlerin playing Admiral Kane, who's this major antagonist during like maybe the best arc of that show. I, I, of course, had no idea back when I watched Battlestar because I hadn't seen TNG.

And so now I learned that in the process of learning about this mistake that I made. And I think that that's a pretty cool, fun fact. It is cool. All right. When you guys talk about Star Trek, I think I know how my wife feels when I talk about sports. Have you not even seen Battlestar Galactica, Jason? I feel like you would like that show. Wow, that would be a fun one for a rewatch sometime.

That would be like really good beans cast stuff. That's a great show, Jason. You would really like this. It does have some seasons that are bad, I think. But it's also got some great seasons. Oh, I'm not saying it's a flawless show. It would just be an incredibly fun show to take it. watch and talk about. Hard sci-fi is generally not for me. Well, Battlestar's not that hard,

but it is nerdy if that's what you made. I think you could tolerate it. Star Trek, I don't know, but I think Battlestar might be your speed. But hey, that's not what we're here to talk about, is it? No, unfortunately, we are not going to talk more about sci-fi TV. We're going to talk about, well, we're going to answer some questions and also talk about some depressing industry news. Jason, why don't you take the reins? Yeah, so this week we're going to do a mailbag episode. It's going to be a little bit of bridge because we're mostly going to talk about what's in the air at Xbox right now. But we're also going to throw in a couple other questions. So this isn't just like totally a bummer episode. But the news has started getting out and it's important to talk

about. So let's start with a question from Joe. Maddie, why don't you read this one? Sure. Joe writes, hey, triple click. I'm just seeing the news about Microsoft potentially shutting down multiple studios, including double fine, but also that they are negotiating to go independent. My question is, why wouldn't Microsoft just let them? What's the benefit in shutting down a studio as opposed to them going independent? Thanks, love the show. So, okay, a little bit of context here. So about a week ago after Summer Game Fest, I reported on Bloomberg that X-West was planning big layoffs in kind of in conjunction with that report, Asha Sharma, the new CEO, sent out a memo that I don't know if you two read, but it was pretty damning. She talks about...

I did read it. She talks about a plummet and revenue, profit margins, sinking. She says, she uses the words, quote, this cannot continue. She talks about a reset. It became pretty clear what's going to happen. Starting this week, the week of June 15th, the picture started to become a little bit clearer as some studios started informing their staff about what was going on. And so what I reported on Monday is that Xbox is currently in negotiations with leadership at double fine compulsion and ninja theory because they're all on the chopping block and a few things could happen. One is that they could spin off, maybe smaller versions of themselves.

They could go independent, try to find financing elsewhere. Some of the studio heads have money from the acquisition that maybe they could use to try to buy back themselves, buy themselves back. Another thing that could happen is just that another game company comes in and buys them. And so there's a lot of negotiations going on as all that happens. One thing that I think is important to know is that there have been headlines saying, like, this studio is shutting down, Xbox is shutting down the studio. That has not happened yet. Xbox is planning on shutting down these studios, but there's still this kind of negotiation period.

And the layoffs themselves, the execution of all these cuts is not going to happen until after Microsoft's fiscal year ends, which is on June 30th. So shortly after that will be the actual, the acts actually falling. So yeah, I mean, as far as Joe's question, like why wouldn't Microsoft just let them go independent? I think there's a lot of factors. The biggest one is the IP who owns the franchises that the studios have created because for companies it's beneficial to own. Like if you're double fine and you're like, hey, we want to go independent. One of the negotiating points will be like who owns psychonauts as a result of that. Can I interject here to ask you a question, both of you, but Jason, I think you might remember this.

Wasn't there initially something with Xbox and Psychonauts and a question of like, did Xbox help, did they publish Psychonauts to begin with? And then they had to get the rights from it. Like this is almost this full circle thing or it's always been Xbox Double Fine and Psychonauts. What am I remembering here? That's funny. Yeah. Well, so Xbox was publishing Psychonauts, but Xbox canceled it. So the rights reverted back to DoubleFine.

Right. That's what it is. And then Double Fine. wound up going with, I believe it was Majesco to actually publish the first psychonauts. But yeah, Xbox, man, it really is full circle because what happened back then was that Xbox had a change in leadership, but the new leader came in and canceled psychonauts. So, you know, the more things change. Yeah.

Well, actually, if you guys watch the psychodicy documentary, well, you guys obviously, if people out there watch the psychoticy documentary, there's one scene that is kind of, that is pretty interesting where they've just been, they've just signed a letter of intent with Microsoft or Microsoft's going to inquire them. And part of the paperwork they have to do is like go and dig up all the papers like proving they own the rights to like all of these games that they own like brutal legend and stuff like that. And as a result, Microsoft can then do things to them like put them on Game Pass especially is one of the big parts of this whole equation. And I thought that was really interesting. Just getting a little inside baseball into the kind of

the hoops you have to jump through to actually get acquired. You have to prove you own the franchises that you that you own. Isn't there also a potential downside to going independent in the case of any of these studios, which is that in order to afford to do that, they might have to just seriously lay off a significant chunk of their employees. Yes, that is 100% what's going to happen. I mean, just to sort of speak directly to Joe's question, there isn't just a pure benefit to going independent. Well, I guess Joe's question is about the Microsoft end of it. For Microsoft, that part, doesn't know. And it sounds like Microsoft could potentially, let them, but that it is a bittersweet situation for any of these studios, I think.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, absolutely. And so in this case, what we're going to see is that even if there are acquisitions or spinouts, yeah, there will almost certainly be layoffs as a result of that. It's possible that like a double fine or a compulsion or a ninja theory spins out or is bought, but it's significantly smaller than it was before, because whoever, whether they're privately owned after that or owned by someone else, that's a lot of salaries to pay for and you have to kind of like figure out what you can actually afford to keep on. Jason, could you walk us through maybe the possible things that someone at a double finder compulsion, like, you know, a studio head or the people at those studios are doing right now? Because I'm, you know, I'm sure

they're all, everybody's really stressed out and everything is kind of up in the air and it must be very difficult. But I'm kind of just wondering, and I'm sure. a lot of listeners are wondering, what is, what are you, you know, you're maybe trying to find investors? Like, what are you doing right now if you're at one of those studios? Yeah. And so it's worth noting that it's like, it's not just those three. Those are the three that I've confirmed. And the reason I've confirmed those three is because those three have addressed their staff in some way or another. There's some studios or maybe a studio head has been told, hey, here's what's going to happen. But they decided not to tell their staff because they don't want it to be public

and they want a chance to negotiate just kind of privately before it enters a public record. Other studios might believe that their staff deserve to know as early as possible so they could start looking for jobs and also they believe it's beneficial for this to be public. So that's worth noting here. Like also that's worth noting as part of this is that like this is going to be a bloodbath. It is going to be more than these three. I can say that for sure. And it's going to be cuts all around.

I mean, the full picture of this won't be clear for. another couple of weeks, but it's going to be real bad for people who are working at Xbox. I wouldn't be shocked if we wind up in a world where Xbox is like doubling down on just the big franchises and that's it. That's what Sharma said she wants to do, right? Yeah, I mean, she said she wants to put more investments into Fallout and elder schools and so on and so forth, which, I mean, makes total sense. The fact that they had this hit show without an actual new game to correspond and take advantage

of that success is pretty wild. It is. Yeah, though, focusing on those to the exclusion of everything else is a strategy. That's the big question. I would at least question that. Yeah, I mean, that's when you get into this whole idea of, of, like, margins and what they actually mean, right? Like, I talked a little bit about this on Blue Sky. I think just to clear up for people what a profit margin actually is, it's basically the percentage of your revenue that you're keeping as profits.

So if you have $100 in revenue, but you've spent $97 and you only keep $3 of that $100, that's a 3%. profit margin. So you're essentially, you're spending $97 to make $3. So a profit margin doesn't reflect actual like profitability in terms of the amount because that 3% could be $30 billion. You could be making obscene amounts of money and still only have a 3% profit margin if you spent $970 billion to make that $30 billion. So it doesn't reflect profitability. What it reflects is efficiency. And so if you're a business like Microsoft and you have Azure, and other areas of your business that have incredibly high profit margins, then why are you spending $100 billion on Xbox to only make $3 billion

when you could be spending that money on Azure and making $40 billion as a world, et cetera, et cetera. That's kind of the simplified version of how the math works in terms of margins. Yeah, I mean, as far as what Studio Heads are actually doing right now, I don't know 100% what the answer is to that question. I think a lot of them are calling up lawyers or bringing in maybe agents to scour the scene and see what else is out there,

what other kind of buyers are out there because a lot of people lean on like agencies to be like, okay, can you connect me with this publisher and see if they're interested in buying us? Or can you connect me with this potential investor and see if they want to find us? Maybe one of these studios will be like, hey, I can go and find a publishing deal

at this other company. Maybe we'll go independent, but with a publishing deal or maybe we'll be acquired. And they have to figure out what that looks like. They're probably calling up accountants and figuring out what the money looks like. And then as far as the negotiations, I mean, this is not, this is me just kind of speculating because I don't know what the conversations are like between, say, Tim Schaefer and people in the Xbox sphere right now.

But like, it could be conversations like, hey, what does this look like as far as this IP? What kind of commitments can we make to get this IP back? or like what kind of deals can we strike regarding that IP and what that looks like. Could we get psychonauts back if we agree that the next psychonauts game will be on game pass in perpetuity? Like that sort of thing can be the kind of the horse trade of it all. And it's really complicated because they're like so much money at stake and so many people's livelihoods at stake here. Yeah. And it probably depends on how each of these studios is actually doing financially, which we also can only speculate about.

And for each of them, there might, I imagine, be a different question of whether going independent, quote, unquote, is even possible. For some of them, it might only be possible to be sold elsewhere. So then I would think the networking and wheeling and dealing that the studio heads are doing could be very different. And also, what is the actual valuation of each of their IPs? That is one of those things that feels kind of like magic numbers to me, because I am not an expert in this. But I think even if you are, there's a little bit of vibes associated with that because it's like, okay, what is Psychonauts 3 actually worth if it were to exist? And perhaps it's Tim Schaefer's job to make the argument of how much he thinks it could be worth,

how much he thinks it could sell as compared to two or even one. And that speaks to how valuable his company is. But then also he has to consider how valuable is any other possible game that Double Fine could ever create and how valuable is each of his employees. I mean, that is so stressful to even fathom to be thinking about those numbers and making those arguments. Yeah, I can't even imagine.

If you're a double fine, I mean, right now, you've just released Keeper, which the three of us liked, and Kieln, which I don't think any of us have played, not a lot of people have played that game, not exactly critically acclaimed, I believe it's in the 60s on Metacritic. And neither of them really reached huge audiences for various reasons.

And I don't think either of them were profitable. I don't know, though. I can't say that for sure. But, I mean, just based on the numbers that we do see on Steam, it doesn't seem like either of them made much money. That said, what a company like Double Fine would typically do, or any indie studio would typically do, is they would be signing deals to fund the future of the studio.

So, like, before DoubleFind was acquired by Microsoft, it was not funding itself largely based on its own, cash reserves and sales of previous games. It was funding itself based on contracts for future projects. And so what stressed them out was they were constantly looking for new projects and trying to pitch new projects and doing the traveling road show thing with publishers and sometimes having to sign bad deals because they didn't have much of a choice in the matter. That changed when they were by Microsoft. If they were to go independent again, it would again turn into that model where they're funding themselves based on contracts for future games.

Right now, after Killen and Keeper, they have a new game. that Tim Schaefer is spearheading. They mentioned this in the end of the psychonauts, a psychotasy doc in the epilogue. They mentioned that Tim Schaefer has the project of his own. So it's possible that they spin out and either keep working on that with Microsoft and Microsoft funds them to keep working on it or maybe they find another buyer for that project as part of this whole process. I don't know. It could look like a number of different things. And it could mean that they have to lay people off who don't fit into that or who they can't afford to keep employed along the way as part of that.

I don't know. Maddie, something you were saying about trying to determine the value of psychonauts. Video games are an industry and people need to sell things, but it's just, it's such a challenging thing to do. I mean, just thinking about this as a creative work and something that actually tells a meaningful story and means something to the people who made it,

I make art and I don't have to sell it or think about how much it's worth. And that, I think, is a good way to make art. And it must be so hard to look at something that you've made that's been so hard to make that's so meaningful. And in Psychonauts' case, like really genuinely great. And then have to put a number sign, you know, a number at the end of it. In particular, because after the Xbox exposition, they were basically told, well, you're coming to Xbox. You know, this is like during the Phil Spencer era.

You're coming to Xbox and this is going to be on Game Pass. and like we're all about game pass. So as a result, you can just make this really cool, artistic, beautiful thing, and it's fine. And then, you know, I'm sure when they started on Keeper, this is like a Lee Petty, I would guess, passion project. The art in that game is beautiful. Lee Petty is an artist and art director. He made something just totally gorgeous and weird and cool. And yeah, maybe only whatever.

Some small number of people played it relative to the Call of Duty. But they were, again, they had been told, like, well, just make. Keeper, make a cool game about a lighthouse. Like, it's going to go on Game Pass. It'll be cool. And so they finally could just start thinking about their art as art as just a thing that they want to make. And so, hey, Lee Petty, all right, man, it's time.

Like, make this cool thing. And then that changed. And of course, this happens when you get bought. This is one of the, we've run into this in media, right? You get bought by someone. They tell you things they're going to keep being the way that they were. And then the market changes, their, you know, the incentives change. They change what they're telling you to do.

and suddenly what you're doing isn't good enough. And that seems to have happened here. And that is kind of at the heart of all of this. Like there's, Jason and I watched your video that you posted today about talking about Xbox. It's fantastic. I would recommend anyone listening to this, go watch it. Just because you go through the whole story of Xbox. And it's the story of just changing directives, you know, starting the Don Matric era up until today, the Asha Sharma era.

And that's something, I think, a really important point that you make. I think a lot of people, look at these studios who are now in trouble, and they look at games like South of Midnight and Keeper and even Psychonauts, too, and say, well, you know, those studios were always kind of not selling that well, and it was always hard for them. So, you know, the implication being, oh, it's kind of their fault, you know, they weren't going to survive in this cutthroat business. And so the fact that Microsoft is cutting them loose is like a market correction. But it's important to remember that Game Pass mandate and the way that they were brought in and like

what they were told to do. And how that that. is now changed and the rug has been pulled out from one of them and suddenly it's all accountability margins and you have to be making a whole bunch of money which is supremely unfair honestly yeah i feel like it is you're getting punished for like listening to your bosses a few years ago yeah and and making these games that to kind of list them off again these are critically acclaimed games but maybe didn't sell gangbusters like call of duty numbers as we might say because very few things do but it didn't even sell maybe half of that, which is south of midnight, very critically acclaimed game, very personal game. Well, hold on. I want to pause there for a second. That's not, that has like a, hold on,

I'll double check the exact number because critically acclaimed in some ways, but it has a 77 on Metacritic. So we're not talking about a game that has gotten like unanimously rave reviews for what it's worth. Sure. Maybe it's better to say critical darling for this kind of game because it's like a game that's really special to a lot of people, but maybe doesn't have the high metacritic score or the widespread appeal, or maybe, I should say, mainstream appeal because they're games that are trying to take an artistic risk and be about something really specific. Yeah, I think that's a better way to put it, is that it's like it really appeals to a certain person and to that person it means a lot, but it's not going to be appealing to everybody.

And it like mattered to the person who made it, right? Like, sorry, that's also a way to think about this. The only reason that I mentioned the metacritic is because I think, if you are a studio that does make critically acclaimed games that maybe don't get commercial success, and you could be like, hey, this got an 88 on Metacritic, it just didn't get the sales it deserved, then you have a much stronger case to make if you're trying to fight closure from someone like Asha Sharma. But if you have something like South of Midnight, it's very easy for numbers people to be like, look, this was not widely well reviewed either.

It's tough too because I have really mixed feelings about how important Metacritic has become to these studio conversations because Polygon and Kotaku were never on Metacritic. We didn't score video games anymore. Both of those sites used to score games in various ways and stopped over time. And a lot of websites as a result of that are not on Metacritic. We're not here to talk about games criticism as an industry, but I do just think it's interesting how Metacritic in particular has become such a lightning rod for studio decisions and arguments. But regardless, my point is, these are studios that were. making, I would say, creatively daring games, because again, that's what they were told to do.

Make specific games and personal games that speak to specific audiences and then add a perceived value. Again, we're talking about vibes-based numbers here to Game Pass because there's so much variation on the platform. That's part of what they were asked to do, at least in my perception, of the public messaging of how all of these games were described. And that's why it feels unfair, It's like they did read the brief. They did complete the assignment. They did make games that spoke to maybe not everyone in the way that a medic critic score or mainstream appeal or even wide sales would demonstrate. But I know people who really love each of those games, not just like them, but adore them and are like, this was my absolute favorite thing, maybe ever. And like,

that's just sad to me to think that Xbox is pivoting away from being a company that also houses. is special little games, or at least smaller games. Yeah. Yeah, it's both sad and it's also a huge problem because Xbox controls so much of the games industry. Like, this is definitely yet again a symptom of the fact that so much art is being funneled through an increasingly small number of companies, and they're just churning them into these massive portfolios

that then are suddenly subject to new requirements as this huge company decides, oh, we actually, actually need to make money this way or that way, or like the way that we were doing things wasn't working. So now we're going to just completely change. And this, I mean, this is what is happening at streamers as well. This is what's happening at Spotify. Like, this is all of these companies that have, like, consolidated an entire style of

art, Spotify for music, a handful of streamers for movies and TV shows. And, I mean, this is increasingly happening, right? This Warner Brothers Paramount merger is happening. And soon, like, the guy who owns Skydance. now is going to own both Paramount and Warner Brothers and combine all those streaming networks into one huge thing. And then this is also happening in games where Xbox bought this substantial percentage of the whole games industry.

And for a while, okay, that seemed fine because they wanted to have a variety of different games. Now to think of them just being like, okay, well, it's only going to be these sure bets, Halo Fallout. Which are they even sure bets? I mean, we don't need to talk about Halo in front of today. It's just fallout, elder scrolls, call a duty. Yeah, those are maybe better examples.

And Halo, definitely. The idea of them doubling down on those, like, sure, I guess that makes sense in some kind of business brain way in a very narrow sense. But it's not actually how like a thriving, you know, like industry works. It's not how great things are made that excite people. Like the biggest games of the year, like Subnotica 2 is one of the biggest games of the year. That's like from a pretty small developer. It's like a pretty small game. There are just games like this that just come out and then become a phenomenon.

Like, it's not, like, you have to allow those things to exist. You have to allow people to do new things. I just saw this clip from Noel Gallagher. That's this great Noel Gallagher quote where he says, people didn't want Jimmy Hendricks. Jimmy Hendricks just gave them Jimmy Hendricks. The consumer didn't fucking want Jimmy Hendricks, but they got him. And it changed the world.

And the consumer didn't want Sergeant Peppers, but they got it. And they didn't want the sex pistols. but they got it. Fuck the customer. The customer doesn't know what he wants. You fucking give it to him and he likes it. And I think he has like, I think his takeaway is fuck the customer,

which, okay, obviously he's Noel Gallagher. Like, people are going to agree with everything he says. But he's making an important point. Like, you can't just go off of like what's already successful. You can't just focus us everything and be like, okay, well, call of duty is successful. That's the only thing we're going to make. Like, that's not actually a winning business strategy.

So anyways, the fact that this company is so huge that they control so many different studios, when they make a decision like this, it has a huge effect on just the entirety of an art form around the world. That is a huge problem, and this is great evidence of why. Yeah, I mean, I think there's a little more nuance here for what it's worth. I'm always empathetic with the developers, but I also think a large part of this conversation is how long these games are taking to make,

and that's a problem with many, many factors, including just kind of bloat and people putting more time into things than maybe they need, putting a lot of pre-production into things, things going off the rails. I mean, we also psychodicy, and you can watch that documentary and learn a whole lot about how games are made, including many of the human mistakes that developers are making along the way that lead to this thing, including a lot of micro things, right? In that developer, there's a lot of talk of like, well, we got to this sprint, we got to this milestone, and we only finished 80% of what we set out to do, which is like, like maybe a lot of little micro decisions along the way by individuals.

Maybe this individual like did 80% of what they could do. And maybe if they had like, I don't know, like if for various reasons, maybe that was inefficient. Maybe some faults of their own, some faults of other people. It's just kind of little things that really add up. And so I think, I think there's a little nuance to the conversation of just kind of like, hey, let these people make art. And I think in some degree some of them were allowed to just kind of like,

be making art. Let me put it in another way. I think it's much easier to just allow Jimmy Hendrix to be Jimmy Hendrix when it's like one guy who can write songs like as, as, like in short periods of time or like even at its longest, like a few months or a year, whereas in game development, it's just so many more moving pieces and take so much longer and cost so much more that it's a lot harder to allow for that. I mean, you mentioned some Nautica too, like that team had a massive hit on their hands. And yet it's much smaller than some of these studios that. that are being affected here. And maybe that speaks to part of the problem too.

Maybe some of these studios are too big for various reasons, including them being part of Microsoft, and Microsoft encouraging that. Right. I mean, the thing I'm talking about with, like, this new initiative to double down on what already works, that's kind of what I'm talking about with the Jimmy Hendricks thing. Let's actually, can we stay on what you're talking about

and look at how it intersects with the size of Microsoft and the fact that Microsoft bought all of these studios? Because that, I think, is an interesting, it's very naughty. It requires a very nuanced understanding of what's going on because, you know, imagine that there is no, none of these studios are going to be bought and, in a way, kind of rescued the way that double-fine was, where they were like in trouble, they were trying to finish Psychonauts 2, and then Xbox kind of came in and gave them an out and gave them a way to finish the game.

Imagine if a studio, a theoretical studio, is taking too long, they're burning too much money, they're not shipping their game, then they just are going to run out of money and have to close down or lay people off. And that's kind of the way it normally goes. And now we have a world where an Xbox can just come in and buy them and say, hey, we'll pay for this.

We'll let you finish it. And then what would have been corrected by, well, you can't afford to keep making this, you're out of money. Like what would have been corrected just by those harsh circumstances, suddenly those circumstances go away and the studio can then just take

a really long time making the game. and they were, you know, presumably some of these studios were told that. How do you think about that? You know, that is, like, was Microsoft doing a disservice to these studios by coming in and buying them and telling them, go ahead and take all the time you need? Yeah, I mean, it could be. I don't think, to be fair, I don't think Microsoft is coming in and saying take all the time you need necessarily. But yes, yes, you're 100% right.

Then not having that pressure, not having that fire under your ass can lead to, like, worse products. Because you just don't, or you just take your time. You don't feel that sense of urgency? 100%. that is that is totally true um and like we've talked before about how the best creativity comes from limitations one of those limitations is financial uh are one of those limitations is a financial one and i think when you don't have that anymore because you're part of Microsoft that can restrict what you do creatively that or that can by by not restricting what you do creatively it can kind of like

put put breaks on your creativity it's kind of the paradox there yeah so i guess i would at least just to kind of offer, I guess, a final thought or to come back to that idea of the size of Microsoft, that I think is worth thinking about that downside of the size of a company like Microsoft is that not only does each decision that their executives make reverberate around the industry and cause these massive changes because they're just in control of such a large percentage of it, but also because some of those decisions can just like distend or like totally blow everything out of whack and actually make it harder to make art in some ways that are not easy to predict as it's happening.

Just because there's so much money, they're buying so many different studios, it like totally threw a wrench into things and created this artificial, weird environment for a few years that now is having these terrible repercussions down the road. Bing! Kirk here, I'm editing the episode, and I had another thought listening back to this that I just wanted to kind of add.

It's not a complete thought, but it occurs to me that some of what I'm talking about here, Some of these critiques of what Microsoft has done that I'm articulating, they're kind of free market critiques. They mirror some critiques that people have for state support of various industries or even the arts to say, you know, well, the market will actually dictate what works. And so that'll lead you to make the best possible thing or the best possible art. And in this case, what's crucially different is that it is not the state supporting the art or the industry. it's a publicly traded corporation.

It's just so large that it's almost become similar to a state entity. So I just wanted to point that out. The parallel occurred to me as I was editing it, and we didn't mention it in the episode, but it's just some food for thought and something that I would throw out to all of you out there. Okay, back to the show. Bing!

Yeah, let's get to this next question, because it's very related. So this is from James, who writes, Hi, Trip, I had a game's industry question that I felt you three would be able to shed some light on. After all the layoffs and studio closures of the last two to three years, Would game developers in the industry be better off if there had never been a COVID bump to the industry, circa 2020 to 2021? Or even with the chaos that came, was that burst of money and funding and jobs worth it on the whole. And extrapolating further from that, this is me, not James, but in addition to COVID, just kind of blowing up the games industry and leading to all this growth because people were stuck in home and had nothing to do with play games,

COVID also led to zero interest, 0% interest rates, which led to all of these acquisitions, including Microsoft deciding to spend $69 billion on Activision, which leads to exactly what you're talking about, Kirk. So, God, it's hard to, it's hard to see much of a positive in, like, in the long run from all of that. Yeah, I mean, there's definitely, like, shorter term positives that I think we just don't see. So that's one to at least mention. And, you know, I think about, okay, what if some company swooped in and bought strong songs from me for $10 million? Is that your price? Is that what people out there should hear? I'm just imagining a number that's so big.

Listen to up Spotify. I guess I'm imagining a number big enough to do the thing I'm about to talk about. But basically, they pay me $10 million. They buy strong songs. And then four years later, this is, say it's bought by Spotify or something, some podcast network. Four years later, they shut the show down. They're like, it's not making enough money. We're pivoting to something else.

Like, you know, no more strong songs. And I've lost, I don't own my show anymore. But I did get $10 million. And I would say that's like a very obvious version of this. But I'd say this is probably true for a lot of people who work in video games. That it could be getting bought by Microsoft allowed you to buy a house. Like it could be it allowed you to pay off all your student loans. It allowed you to be in a better position even if you did get layoff.

Like I think a lot of people who, you know, there were a lot of smaller benefits, I guess, to this huge economic boom that happened. during COVID. It wasn't just Microsoft got to buy a bunch of studios. It was also a lot of people working in games got a lot of money that they could use just for their families or for themselves. And that was probably like a really vast good just on a scale that we don't really see. It's a thing that is worth thinking about when considering this question. Yeah, I mean, everyone at Double Fine got a bonus as a result of the Microsoft acquisition. We saw that happen on the documentary. And those bonuses don't just mean like, oh, you get to buy a cool new guitar. You know, it can mean

like a down payment, you pay off the down payment on your house or whatever. Like you, you know, something, it can be really life changing for a lot of people. Yeah, I heard what it was for double fine. I don't remember the exact amount, but it was like mid five figures, if I remember correctly. It wasn't an insignificant amount. Yeah. Something that's been hard for me to tell in part because the figures are so massive and spread over such a long period of time at this point is whether the COVID bump has just been a correction that we're seeing now and whether all. all of the layoffs that have happened in the intervening years since that COVID bump are just taking the games industry back to how it was before or perhaps how it would have already been if COVID had never happened, which is, of course, something that we could never possibly know because we don't live in that alternate reality. And also maybe all kinds of other things happen in that alternate reality where COVID didn't happen.

Maybe there was another series of events that happened in the tech industry. maybe AI did or didn't happen or different things happened with it and an investment. I don't know. This is getting very sci-fi to me when I try to picture all these alternate realities. But that is a question that I keep having even now when I see these layoffs is to what extent is this a correction to the COVID bump, which was massive and can't be undersold. It's a great question because if you say, okay, this is totally made up numbers. I don't know the exact numbers. But like, let's say COVID led to there being 200,000 people working in the games industry,

whereas without COVID it would have been 150,000. Again, made up numbers. Don't like these numbers are meaningless except just me pulling them out of nowhere. And now, after all these layoffs, we're back to 150,000. Then yes, it's a great question, Maddie, of like whether we would have been here regardless. And COVID, just that bump just unnecessarily hurt a lot of people's lives. I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. One thing I'll say is that like what I thought, if you had asked me this like a year ago or two years ago about the current spate of layoffs,

I would have been like, yeah, it's a COVID correction. Like this is, this is pretty typical. Feels like 2008 after that recession, et cetera, et cetera. Now, 26, in June of 20206, this feels more like a complete change in how the video game industry is going to work moving forward. And I think a lot of that is just kind of companies looking at U.S. costs of game development and getting the F out of here as games start to cost $400 million plus to make. Yeah, I mean, we've been saying, and you in particular, Jason, have been saying that the video game industry is unsustainable for a long time, a lot longer than COVID. And now we're here. So that's also worth keeping in mind that while a lot of what's happening is related to the COVID bump, you know, this industry has been. operating unsustainably, you know, cooking way, way hotter than it can cool off for, I don't know

how long, you know, decade, two decades, I mean, for just an incredibly long time, the check was, you know, the bill was going to come due at some point. And it feels like maybe it is. Maybe that's what's happening. Yeah. Let's read a few more questions before we wrap things up and try not to end on a super downer note. Mattie, or Kirk, why don't you read this next one? All right, this comes from Chris who advice, hey all, after the news broke that Destiny 2 would no longer get new updates moving forward, you each shared stories about how Destiny led you to form new friendships that have continued outside of the game. I've had that experience as well, and also credit Destiny for leading me to Kataku's split screen. After I started playing the original Destiny, I came across Kotaku's posts about the Lute Cave and the other oddities of the game,

which naturally led me to find early episodes of your podcast. I have become a weekly listener since. I just wanted to say thank you to Bungee for creating a game that allowed us all to make both real and parasyal friendships that will far outlast the game. And thank you to Kirk, Jason, and Maddie for all the fun and interesting discussions. That's nice. A little thing that we can thank Destiny for. Man, Destiny is so special. It is.

What a game. And we used to be a Destiny podcast. That's true. Let's do a couple more. Maddie, why don't you read this next one from Jacob? Sure. This one's from Jacob who writes, I am just reading press reset.

And while reading the story of Zach Mumbach, a question popped in my mind. Why do corporate execs earn so much money? And what is their actual job? What was Bobby Coddick's day like when he was at Activision? Great question. Do we know the answer to this? Yeah.

I feel like, Jason, you probably have the most complete answer to this lock. I mean, this relates to like CEO pay and how it changed in the 80s and 90s. Yeah, I mean, we don't have to get into all that. I mean, the answer to why do they earn so much money? is because they are increasing shareholder value and therefore they are like getting a big part of that. Because like most of the CEO pay is tied to stock. Like most of when you hear about a pay package that's like $30 million for the CEO this

year almost almost like 90 plus percent of that is in stock. They're not getting a paycheck that is like $30 million a year. So theoretically like because they are doing well as a creator of shareholder value, their pay is going up as a result of that. The question of how that money, how that number got so high is a whole other one that we don't have the time to get into now, but it's pretty wild. As far as the actual day-to-day of a CEO, it's interesting. I mean, it could be a lot of things. I think it very much depends on the day. Sometimes there are company decisions and crises that make their way up to the CEO, but basically the CEO hires people to triage that stuff and decide when a decision actually needs to

go up to the CEO. So if there's a company crisis, like some big PR disaster or like California government suing you for sexual misconduct, that is probably going to make it sway up to the CEO and the CEO will have to be involved in decisions. Other stuff might be just kind of lower on the, on the hierarchy. In Bobby Code's case, because Jacob asked specifically about him, he was very hands-on with a lot of stuff. He was very invested in the business and wanted to make decisions on his own. So a day to day, I mean, I don't know, it could be anything from like speaking to the company and giving your CEO speeches to like addressing investors to having board meetings to like going and visiting studios and checking in on the progress of projects and getting kind of like paper presentation, PowerPoint presentations and like documents from different studio heads about like how things are going. Could be just kind of like dealing with day to day crises and just kind of management issues and HR issues. and it could really range.

But a lot of it is really just kind of dealing with Wall Street, if you're a publicly traded company, at least dealing with Wall Street and you're bored and talking to analysts and making sure that everyone understands the direction you're going and that nobody is frantically selling off your stock. Yeah, I mean, this is like what Asha Sharma has been doing for the last couple of months. The main character energy of Xbox over the last couple of months has been so exhausting. Like, I don't care that much about Xbox. and just find myself constantly reading posts about them and seeing them announcing new things,

the amount of stuff that they're just doing in the way that they're messaging it. I mean, that's clearly her job right now is going out and explaining to everybody, her strategy. And that includes her own employees like people at Xbox. Yeah. Well, what Asha Sharma's been doing, and I can speak to this specifically because I know is she's been going around and having meetings with like all sorts of people on the org and asking their advice, one of her first questions to everybody, is like, what advice do you have for me?

Because she's so new to this business and learning, trying to learn how it works. It's, I mean, to her credit, that that's what she was trying to do, and she's trying to wrap our head around it. We'll see what the results of that actually lead to. But that's what she's been doing is a lot of touring and talking about people. I mean, one of the things about being a CEO of one of these massive companies is that you are essentially responsible for 10,000, 20,000. people, which is pretty mind-boggling.

Like, that seems like an impossible thing to manage. No company should be that large. Yeah. Well, and that outsider perspective, it's kind of the perspective of the, you know, the consultant that you bring in to determine who's going to be laid off, the guys from office space. What is it you do here? You know, it's that.

The bobs. So if you come in with her perspective and you kind of lean into that position, it's then helpful for you're basically being the, in this case, hatchet woman. You're coming in and saying, I don't really know everything about this. So everyone just tell me, what is it you do here? You know, what advice do you have? And then, all right, well, we're going to now lay off however many people because I, from the

outside, just came right in and I looked at everything and I saw all these problems and here's how I would say we're going to fix them, which is like definitely one very common perspective that leaders or people put in this position take, the outsider perspective. Yeah, they're also just responsible for such unfathomable amounts of money that it is very stressful to me to picture. And like anyone else, I do tell jokes about CEOs sometimes on their pay and how ludicrous it can become and, oh, what are they doing all day? But really, I do not envy Asha Sharma or even Bobby back in the day when he was doing that

job because even though it might seem like, oh, they just must live this blessed life, riding private jets around and, you know, doing whatever rich people do. We've all watched billions. We know what they do. They're private chefs, etc. But their actual jobs seem horrible to me. How many of the people on billions seem happy? None of them. And isn't that kind of the point of that show and of succession, which is kind of like the even darker counterpoint to billions in some ways, which is that these are unhappy people with jobs that are stressful in ways that I'm like, companies shouldn't be this big, really, because it's beyond human fathoming to picture how much money this really is. And yet we put people in charge of managing companies this large. And also, there are boards that are holding them accountable.

And I feel like the tone of Asha's messages always kind of speaks to me as like what I'm imagining the board is telling her of like, how long have we been funding all these freaking tiny companies that are giving us nothing and we're paying all these people. and like you've got to figure out who to get rid of, girl. Like I can only picture the amount of stress that she's being put under as this new person and how she now is like, I don't know anything about this. And yet I have to make these massive financial decisions. Even if I don't necessarily agree with all of them, I sure wouldn't want to have to make them. And I don't know what I would do differently. I don't have any advice, Sasha.

If you were asking me for advice, I don't know what I'd tell you. A few years ago, someone who was in the C-suite of one of these big gaming companies, told me something that has really stuck with me. And maybe this should have been obvious to me, but I hadn't thought about it until this person said this. And what they said was essentially if we are, we as a company, if our stock is on par with or below the S&P, then we are failing at our jobs.

Because our job is to make our stock so attractive that people want to buy it, like whether it's retail investors, individuals, or more commonly, kind of like these funds like Black Rock or Vanguard that are representing the investments of everybody like 401Ks and whatnot, your average person's retirement fund. We want to be attractive just as an individual stock and be outperforming the S&P because otherwise why wouldn't you just invest in the S&P and just find something that is like investing in the broader stock market

instead of our specific stock. So if we're not hitting more than whatever it is, 7%, 8% a year, then we are failing to do our jobs. And this is why we get paid the big bucks to do that. Yeah, that's a lot of pressure. That's a big responsibility to have to outperform the S&P every year. Yeah, and especially since a big chunk of your salary, quote unquote, is literally those stocks. So also, are you even making as much as you, quote, unquote, should be making as a CEO.

If you aren't ensuring that the value of those stocks is as high as it possibly can be, they really are working for it. I guess, according to... Well, and then also at that point, when you're so rich that, like, the numbers are kind of meaningless to you and you don't have to think about what groceries costs or what your gas bill is going to be, then it just becomes this game in your head where you're just watching the number go up and you're like, I want this number to be as high as possible. That's how I win at capitalism.

And it, like, can fundamentally break you as a person. I mean, we are having this conversation in the context of Elon Musk becoming the world's first trillionaire by playing this exact game we're describing better than anyone ever has, which is basically just moving stuff around and doing creative stuff with stock until he has a trillion dollars. And also he's like a sociopath who's ruining the world. Like he's, this is not like, oh, well, okay, this is how it goes and everyone just has to play the game. Like this is a, this is a bad system. This is like a real problem.

I'm just going to save for the record. Yeah. We need to reform this. This like needs to be changed. It's out of control and it's destroying the world. Yeah. And like the kind of person who wants to become a CEO and then is very successful at it is someone who will be really good at play. that game, which then leads us to circuitously always be in the position you just described.

Not a coincidence that so many of the people running our world are also terrible people. Yeah. Because they're really good at the game. We've talked before, and I think I believe pretty strongly, that there should be like a cap on the amount of money that a person can have. And nothing like, like, it should be like a healthy amount. Like 100 million or something like that.

Maybe not a trillion. I don't know. Yeah, maybe not a trillion. But something else that I wonder if there should be just kind of a cap on for a healthier society is the number of people that can be employed at the same company. Like if one company, such as Microsoft has hundreds of thousands of people, that to me seems like an unhealthy, just kind of status of society. And you could argue the other way, the counterpoint to that is that like, well, growth is an important part of being, watching is like an important part of the economy and

there has to be some sort of growth. Otherwise everyone will just get eaten alive by inflation, yada, yada, but I don't know. Surely there's some way that we can build an economic system. I mean, monopolies are also bad. We're supposed to regulate monopolies, typically. Right, exactly. At some point, the U.S. decided to stop doing that. I mean, we've all maintained a garden. I just, it's possible to have growth without just letting everything overgrow and, like, choke itself out. Or choke other gardens, every other possible garden on the street.

I don't know. Gardening is a very old art form. Like, this is something that humans know how to do. It is possible. Like, it does not have to be just, like, infinite growth or everything is pruned down and can't thrive. Like, there's a middle ground. There's a way to do this. I'm confident.

100%. Let's do one last question that's a little bit of a later note to end this conversation on. This is from Paul. Paul writes, hello, as an aging millennial who is first online in the late 1900s, aka in 1998, I have a great nostalgia for the myths and rumor mongue. The late 1900s, that's really good. For the myths and rumor wrongering of that era of gaming, is this something you can all relate to?

What contemporary games do you think would have been excellent fodder for Game Facts Forum, disinformation, and conjecture, still trying to resurrect our, and get Mew out from under that damn truck, Paul. Of course I remember this. I mean, one comes to mind for me, and that's going to be Grand Theft Auto 6. And that's because Red Dead Red Dead Redemption 2 is one of my favorite games and the original Red Dead Redemption also. Though this is true of GTA 5, but for some reason, I think because of the wilderness

of Red Dead Red Dead redemption, it feels even more mysterious. And just the ghosts, the hauntings, the strange things, the urban legends around those games have persisted for so long. Our former colleague Patricia Hernandez was always really great at covering that stuff and tracking down the people on the forums, talking about them. Not actually just in those games, but in a lot of games. But I totally, like, I'll throw those out there. Those continue to have myths around them because they're just so detailed.

They're so rich. The worlds are so believable that you could believe there is some weird hidden, you know, ghost or alien or monster. Yeah, my thought was Eldon Ring and how it would be, it's very easy to imagine if Elton Ring came out in 1998, all these, like, facts that were saying, here's how to resurrect the queen and Eldon Ring and it sends you on this rabbit hole. By the way, I don't know if you guys did this, but I actually had printed out guides back and then I followed this kind of these bullshit misinformation instructions that would be like,

it was for Final Fantasy 6 specifically and people would just come up with these ridiculous conceits. It would be like, if you fight this dinosaur 600 times and then walk back and forth in this train, 200 times, then you get back to the castle. and you'll find Edgar waiting for you on the throne, and he'll give you this thing that lets you unlock this character from Final Fantasy 4 inside of Final Fantasy 6. And I definitely as a child believed one of them and followed all the instructions and was like, damn it, I was fooled.

Yeah, that's too bad. I never got taken in by them, but I did really love the myth-making around this. I feel like games like blueprints and animal well actually tap into this sensation, which is part of why we love them is because it's almost like, They're made by people who grew up reading this kind of myth-making around a game and we're like, what if the game actually did contain some extremely esoteric secret and like finding the secret would be its own reward? And also, especially in blueprints, like it does feel like there could always be something

more around that corner. I think because it's not really, it's still not done yet, right? Like, isn't he still saying that it's not actually technically done? He still has to add dirja box. Yeah, that's right. Deroja blocks is still missing. is still missing. Derogiblox is going to unlock the whole, the true ending.

I mean, I kind of believe that. Like, that does kind of feel like an old Gamebacks thread where it's like Deridiaflax is actually going to be the secret. You just have to play it 4,000 times. Right. You have to get all, every single spot on the leaderboard of Derognex and that'll open a door in the comma series. Yeah, and then, or like you get a certain spot at a certain score. I don't know.

We're all going to print something out and it'll tell us some absurd thing that we have to do. Now I really hope that happens. That would be so cool. Yeah, right on. It could happen. Yeah. And a little, well, that's a good one because that one, I think, came the closest to it. Like, you had to actually, like, use a fax machine or a printer to, like, make an origami and get one of the craziest secrets in that game.

Yeah, it's a good ball. Okay, cool. Let's take a break, and then we'll be back for one more thing. Ready go. Knock, knock. Who's there? We got this. With Mark and How?

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Thanks, Real Billy Joel. No problem, Griffin. And we are back, Kirk Manny. It is time for one more thing. I'll do a quick one first. My one more thing is a game called Adventures of Elliott, which came out this week. It is a new game from Square Enix. It's an HD2D game from the team Asano, which made like Octoboth Traveler and a triangle

strategy and a bunch of other HD2D games. Pretty cool art style. This game is fun. It's silly. It's a Zelda-like slash mono-like. So it's an action game where you have a bunch of weapons like swords and a shield and arrows and bombs and you go around this big world. And also you travel through time and you have this fairy who keeps you company and is just one of the most irritating characters to ever exist in a video game. The story is kind of inane and there's a lot of it. and the characters are all just like these, what's it called, Mary Sue's, except like your main character, Elliot, is a dude Mary Sue. I don't know, Mark Sue.

Marty Stu. Marty Stu, I love it, where he has no personality and no character traits or flaws other than I am a hero who loves to go in adventures and save the world. And everybody he meets, he just saves them immediately. It's one of those types of stories, which is very irritating to play through. But the game itself is pretty fun. You can use this fairy to, like, teleport you. and cast fire and stuff like that, which is cool.

Cool. Some cool abilities. Some silly rudimentary Zelda like puzzles in it. I'm enjoying playing it. I wouldn't say it's mind-blowing or anything or that you guys have to jump in the way, the way that like Mina the Hollowar was, but it's fun. It's like a good bit of fun that I'm enjoying just kind of monotonously going through. The time travel in it is not really used very much in interesting ways, but it's there.

A good bit of fun that I'm enjoying going monotonously through. Yeah. Jason Shrier, Triple Glank. That's my, you can tell how articulate I am after talking for so long. That's the box quotes. Anyway, adventures of Elliot, it's fine. Nice. It's fine.

It's fine. Kirk, what's your one more thing? My one more thing is the Burroughs, a TV show that I watched on Netflix over the weekend that I thought was okay. Hey, it could have been better, but it... The trendier is just things that are fine. Hey, I like mine. Okay, good. It's funny.

So I watch this at the... I also watched Disclosure Day over the weekend, which I also thought was fine. And I have a... I actually have, like, I want to talk about that movie, but I decided not to because I want to talk about the people who've seen it. Like, I kind of don't want to spoil it. So anyways, instead, the Burroughs, which is actually kind of similar in some ways.

I want to watching that, too, and sitting there watching another, this is a very Spielberg inspired, TV show with another, you know, grand orchestral score that sounds very old-fashioned. It's kind of got, you know, sci-fi, creepy, sci-fi elements, and it was just pretty similar. So anyways, the Burroughs, all right, so the Burroughs is a new show produced by the Duffer Brothers, the two brothers who created Stranger Things. Its showrunners are named Jeffrey Addis and Will Matthews. They created the Dark Crystal Age of Resistance show for Netflix, which is the third.

the puppet follow-up to the Dark Crystal that I thought was actually really good. It was not watched by that many people, but it was amazing. They did the whole thing with the puppets. The making of for that show is like one of the coolest things I've ever seen. So these guys kind of know what they're doing when it comes to genre follow-ons and this kind of storytelling. Basically what it is is it does feel kind of like the Netflix algorithm or like the data people at Netflix saying, okay. So people really like the Thursday Murder Club, the film adaptation we made about the senior citizens of the retirement home who solve a murder. They really liked a man on the inside, the show with Ted Danson, about a retired guy who moves into a senior living community and solves mysteries.

And Stranger Things was our biggest hit. So what if we made a show that was a bunch of senior citizens living in a retirement community and then it's Stranger Things? And that is what this show is. and I am almost certain that that is exactly why it was made. Do you think it came from like a chat GPT prompt? No, I don't think, well, maybe, but I don't think they're really... Like the concept, not the show itself, but the concept for it. Like, hey, I doubt it only because it's so clear cut, and I do know that Netflix does a ton of data analytics and that all these streamers do, and that they just have these mandates, you know?

You don't even need chat GPT for this. Yeah, we can already come up with this without it. They just have a board at Netflix that's like, These five things, you know, are the kinds of movies that people like. Just stick them in a blender. You don't need the model. You just stick them in a blender. And I think that literally is like how they're approaching pitches and like, especially on their own internal stuff as opposed to projects that they're buying from outside.

And in this case, this is like, well, what are the, you know, what are we going to do? We're going to do this. That said, it is like as the setups go really strong. So the cast of this is incredible. Alfred Molina is the lead who people will know from Frida as Doc Ock, of course, in Spider-Man 2, an incredibly charismatic actor that I love. Alphrey Woodard is another lead. She is great.

This also has Gina Davis, who is fantastic in it. And I can keep going. Clark Peters from The Wire is married to Alfred Woodard's character. Jenna Maloney is in it. She plays Molina's daughter. And on and on, there's a bunch of, there's some really fun cameos, actually, of other people who are kind of in their 70s,

actors who a lot of people will recognize. Ed Bigley Jr. is in it for a bit, too. he's fun. So it's like a great cast of mostly septuagenarian actors in this community called the Burroughs that's in New Mexico. And it's kind of like, it's like the, is it called the villages? There's in Florida, there's this famous retirement community, like thousands of people live in it. It's almost all white. It's like pure Trump country. It's kind of, it's wild. Like it's like a whole massive community. Like seven, eight thousand people live there. So it's like not just a retirement home. It's like, you know, infrastructure and like, you know, you know,

know, commercial district stores, like, I don't know, a movie theater, that kind of thing. And the boroughs is kind of like that, but in New Mexico. So it's in the desert. It's very spread out. There's houses everywhere. There's a whole big commercial center. And you come there once you've retired to live with your spouse or on your own to make new friends and be part of a community.

And these folks have all moved there. And Alvar Molina's character is kind of the central character. And he's moving there after his wife just died. And he is, like, grieving her loss. Like, she died, like, really suddenly. And he is like really, really, like, destroyed over it. And she was the one who always wanted to go live in the boroughs when they were, you know, ready to move. And so now he has to go there by himself.

And he's kind of alone. So it's a good setup for a show because, you know, he is a great actor. He's dealing with, like, this very visceral grief. And then, of course, once he gets to the boroughs, he meets his neighbors, who are all these actors that I've mentioned. And then it starts to become clear. there's like something bad happening. There's like maybe some kind of monster is sneaking in. One of his neighbors dies mysteriously and he sees this horrible thing, you know, over his body and realizes like, okay, what's going on?

The two people who run the burros are very creepy and weird and seem like maybe they're not on the up and up. And so, of course, this little scooby gang of senior citizens, you know, comes together to solve this mystery. They should have called it the Thursday Monster Club. I was thinking also a man on the upside down. I was trying to come up with like all of that. Very good. I was going. I'm sure these jokes have been made.

Yeah, the Thursday Monster Club. That's a good one. So yeah, it's once I give you that setup, you can just imagine the Netflix pitch meeting where they're like, yep. Like greenlit. Get all the actors you need. Make this thing. Can I read the premise that's on Wikipedia? Yeah.

This is very funny. Quote, in a seemingly picturesque retirement community, a group of unlikely heroes must ban together to stop an otherworldly threat from stealing the one thing they don't have, time. Yeah, that's probably, that was probably like the pitch line, right? Yeah, so the show has a lot going for it.

I mean, Molina is great. Gina Davis is great. Alfred Woodard is really great and has probably the most dramatic. She and Molina have the most dramatic material to work with. So it's fun watching these actors. They're all really good.

This show is like pretty thin a lot of the time. It started strong, and I was like, oh, is this going to be great? Because as it turns out, older people are, I think, much more interesting often than younger people. Like older characters have a lot more going on, watching someone dealing with the grief of a life lived, of pondering what this final chapter will be. You know, that is like actually compelling stuff. And when you get an actor like Molina playing the grief of losing his wife,

it's like immediately very affecting. And it's a great kind of, you know, emotional throughline to connect to this supernatural thing. and then have the, of course, there are echoes of what's happening in the supernatural storyline with his grief. And it's like all kind of tied together. So that's all cool. Unfortunately, I think that the script of this show is just too lightweight. It's too predictable. Halfway through, I just started feeling a little bit listless like I was watching content.

And that was disappointing because it started really strong. And I was actually like, oh, am I going to be really into this? And then by the end, I just felt like, oh, they just couldn't quite execute. And I shouldn't say that it's not still worth watching. Like, I don't know. Like, in this age where there's just a lot of things that you just kind of put on, it's better than a lot of stuff. Like I mentioned, that...

I know that sounds damning. It's just this world we live in where so much stuff is like this, where you just put it on and you're like, all right. And it's wild because it's like Alfred Molina and Alfred Woodard, and there are like elements of it that are inspired. I mentioned the score. Joe Paisano can post the score, and it's really cool. He's going for this job.

Williams thing. And it was interesting, having just seen Williams bringing a really old-fashioned score to Disclosure Day, I just feel like I've been in that world, and it reminds me of something that's kind of missing from a lot of modern films, this orchestral, these light motifs, these melodies, you know, a little piccolo playing when something mysterious happens, identifiable acoustic instruments playing in the score and not just like thrumming beats and orchestral-ish sounds. That's really cool. I like the music. I like the kind of energy that it has, It's this kind of men in black meets close encounters, you know, meets cocoon kind of thing. That's really neat.

These are cool inspirations. But it still does have that feeling of this is something we know you're going to like. We're just giving it to you again. And it doesn't go beyond that. And then there are just plot holes. There are just moments in the story where you're like, oh, what? Like they just kind of got away with that. We're like, oh, that just worked out.

Like, oh. And then by the end, like the final couple of us is, I'm like, okay, I'm going to predict. every single thing that's about to happen. Like the next, the whole resolution of all of this is so completely predictable to me because I'm familiar with the source material and it's just like never surprising and I found that disappointing as well.

So, you know, take that for what it's worth. Like it's pretty good. The actors really are great. They elevate it. Them being in it makes it worth watching. If they weren't, it would just be whatever. But these actors really are all a lot of fun and it's just cool to see them all.

Gina Davis is so great. It's just fun to see her having a good time. She's always so much fun. So, yeah, kind of mixed on it, but better than it could have been. That's the Burroughs. It's on Netflix. Glad they all got a paycheck. I like all those actors, so.

For sure. Maddie, what's your one more thing? My one more thing is a game called On Together. I guess I'm going to call it a game, but you'll see why I'm hesitant when I describe what it is. Okay. So I work from home. We all know that because we all do that.

And sometimes it's very lonely working from home. I really enjoy having one other co-worker at Mothership. It helps me a lot. But sometimes I really miss having a lot of coworkers. Like I used to have at Polygon and Kutaku and the Mary Sue, which were the three jobs where I started really working from home full time. And like having a digital co-working space was really pleasant. And I just kind of accepted like, okay, my digital co-working space is very small now.

And also I do solo things outside of Mothership that, I am the only worker on any other project I do, and I am doing it alone. And I do live with my wife who works from home as well, but she has meetings all day. And so she has her own office so that she can do that. So we're not really like co-working per se. So On Together is a co-working online game where you create an avatar and you go to a virtual place, like a fictional world, and you set up, up your little laptop and you hang out with other people who are working. And it is so adorable. Mark Zuckerberg's dream. I know. It's the Metaverse. This is interesting. It's very cute. So you're, when you say working, you do your actual regular work. Yes. And so it's like a second life. You're just having an avatar

somewhere. You have an avatar somewhere. And there's a variety of ways that you can minimize the game. So you can minimize it so small that you kind of just see your little character in the corner of the screen and she's on her laptop. Or you can have it as kind of like a bookmarked side. And you can have it as kind of like a bookmarked thing that's like a long strip on the side of your screen or at the bottom, or you can full screen it and have it all on one screen if you have multiple monitors. And what it does for me is that it also has all these additional tools inside the game that are pretty well designed. This game's gotten kind of buzzy this week. I first read about it in Teen Vogue, and I think part of why it's buzzy is because it has all these other tools inside of it. So one of them is a Pomodoro timer. I'm sure you guys are

familiar with this conceit. You work for 25 minutes. You take a five minute break, et cetera. The timer in this game allows you to set it for any amount of time that you want. The break can be as long as you want. It can recycle as many times as you want. It's automatically set up to go for four times and then stop. And it'll like play a little chime for you when it completes. And there's like a ticker over your head when you set off the Pomodoro. So like everybody else you're co-working with can see like, oh, like Maddie's working under Pomodoro. And she's at 22 minutes right now. sticking down. And everybody has like a little like ID card in the game so like you can click on them and you can put whatever you want. You don't have to fill it out at all. But like most other

people do fill it out and they'll say what they're working on and where they live. And like one person I was co-working with yesterday had set their Pomodoro timer to be like one million, like one bazillion minutes. And their profile just said the Pomodoro is counting down to my death. And it's just like, okay. I'm like, I guess. So people like really have fun with it. And there are also like all these silly little activities that you can do in the game. If you take a break, there's a fishing mini game that's actually pretty fun. You can like go buy yourself a virtual snack if you want.

I haven't really engaged any of this stuff because I don't really care. Have you met anybody? Like have you talked to people? Yeah. And there's like a chat and you talk to people. And like like yesterday we all talked about what we were having for lunch around lunchtime. And then we all went back to work. But largely like no one talks.

They're just sitting there. So you haven't developed like any actual relationships. No, but I've only recently started playing this game, so I guess I can get back to you if I make a friend of the game. And you're using it every day? I've only used it yesterday and today. But it's sort of this phenomenon called focus sharing, which is basically just, okay, we're all working and we're all working together right now. And it's like a way to trick your brain. It's pretty effective where like you see other people working and you're like, okay, I got to get my thing's done now. And that's why people go to a cafe to work or library to work. It's very similar to that. And there's even like a virtual. library in the game. Like, you guys get what I'm saying. Anyway, it's, it's really adorable. I don't know if it's going to work for me forever, but Zoe was out of town for a minute, and I was like, let me try this and see if this is fun. And it was really fun and a little less lonely for a couple days of my life. So if that sounds cool to you and you like Pomodoro timers, this one has a very, very cute and

visually pleasing and sounding Pomodoro timer in it. So even if it's just for that, it's pretty good at that. It's called On Together. I would love to hear more. Like, if you wind up using this, consistently. I would love to hear like what it's like for you over the course of the next few weeks or months. I'll let you know. I'll let you know. I tend to burn out on tools like this. I can't promise I'll use it forever because I feel like I there's not enough going on in it. If that makes sense that I don't know that I'll stick with it forever, but maybe I will. Maybe I'll get super into it and be like, this is my main thing. For now it's really cute and I'm enjoying it. And there's a lot of these kinds of productivity games they're often called.

that include to-do lists and Pomodoro or whatever other thing, where you can kind of log your work hours and, like, create tasks inside of a game, and then it'll hold you accountable and, like, gamify things by, like, giving you tokens or whatever for completing tasks. I don't really need stuff like that. But I did like working with other people in this kind of, like, online work MMO. That was the part that I thought was really fun. And just, I don't know, it just added some lightness to my day that I really enjoyed.

So yeah, if that sounds fun to you, check it out. It's called it On Together. It was 10 bucks on Steam. Very interesting, yeah. Wow. I'll be curious to hear more about it if you use it. Yeah, Mark Zuckerberg, if you're listening, this is the future that you were not able to create. I mean, look, I don't think he understood what people actually want.

No, you don't think this would be better if you had to wear a huge headset and had no legs. That wouldn't improve use brands. I do feel like the cuteness and aesthetic of the designs really helps. the game. It's very visually appealing. It has kind of an animal crossing look to the character designs. Very pastel. Yes, it's very pastel and cutesy. And that helps, I think. Having it be something visually attractive in the corner of your screen kind of motivates you to keep it open as well, I would say. All right. Well, that is it for this week's episode. And we'll be back next time, next week, same time, same channel. Yeah. I will see both of you then. I'll

See you both in a week. See you guys 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 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 maximum fun.org slash join. email us at triple click at maximum fun.org and find links to our merch store and our Discord server in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network of artist-owned shows. Supported directly by you.