Triple Click - What's the Deal With: The Metaverse?

Episode Date: August 12, 2021

Metaverse! Everyone's talking about it. Every company wants a piece of it. But just what the heck is it? This week, Jason, Maddy, and Kirk try to figure out what the deal is with the Metaverse... and can't even agree themselves on what it really means. From Fortnite to Facebook, come along on a wild ride through movie crossovers and alternate realities.One More Thing: Kirk: Schmigadoon!Maddy: The Suicide SquadJason: New Teeth (Simon Rich)Links:GameMaster Anthony Message Board Post:  https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/gamemasteranthonys-birthday“Space Jam: A New Legacy runs on video game logic, in every way,” by Cameron Kunzelman“Ralph Breaks the Internet and the rise of mash-up cinema,” by Abraham Riesman“The Metaverse: What It Is, Where to Find it, Who Will Build It, and Fortnite,” by Matthew BallSupport Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinJoin 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

In one life, you play games and listen to podcasts about games. The other life is lived in the metaverse. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. Jack in and get ready to design your avatar because we're talking about the metaverse and the second lives we live in games. And whether those lives have a future or not. I'm Maddie Myers. I'm Jason Shire.

And I'm Kirk Hamilton and hello. Hello. Hello, my friends. It's us. Hello, hello, hello. It is. Nice to see you both. It is great to see you both.

Yeah. It's another week, another episode of Triple Click. It sure is. And this week it falls to me to remind our listeners that if they just can't quite get enough of us and they're willing to open their wallets ever so slightly, they could go to Maximumfund.org slash join. And then, after becoming members, they could get access to one monthly bonus triple click episode. a beans cast, a beans talk, if you will. And what are we talking about this month, fellas?

We're going to talk about, well, we're talking about video games, but we're also talking about a TV show. So it's a TV show about video games, specifically Mythic Quest, the new-ish couple years old Apple TV Plus show from the creators of Always Sunny that we all really like and is interesting and funny. And I think we'll give us a lot to talk about, both about games and TV. So that'll be exciting. That's for this month. And workplaces. And workplaces. And so many things. Yeah. So that's seasons one, too. And then there's like a couple little interstitial episodes between the two seasons.

Which are good. Both of those were good. They are great. Yeah. Worth catching up on if you're a Mac's phone member go catch up before our beans cast because it's really good and you will enjoy listening to us. It's a fun show. Yes. Yes. And Apple TV Plus just gives away memberships for free like candy. So if you don't have it and you want like it. a year or six months or whatever. It's really pretty easy one to obtain. It's true. But for just the regular, shmangular mainline episodes, we are all playing Half-Life together,

and we're going to talk about it on next week's episode. And we are going to spoil it, I believe. Yes, we should say Half-Life 2, not Half-Life 1. Oh, sorry, of course. What am I saying? Half-Life 1 we don't care about here. We won't even be discussing it a little bit. It won't even come up. up. We're only talking about Half Life 2.

Correct. Plunging into the G-Man, who is he, we don't even know, and only Kirk Hamilton can tell us. And we will talk about that next week. Yes. And that is going to be spoilers for the base game. Not the episodes, not Alex, just the base game. I just finished last night. It's good ending. It's going to be fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm still in Ravenholm. I think Jason's beaten Ravenholm, right? Jason, you're done with that? Yeah, but we'll save this talk for next week. Yeah, who cares. You have some ground to cover. So, you know, grab your gravity guns and get throwing stuff.

What do you do with a gravity gun? Get gravitying. Get gravitying. Get throwing stuff? Yeah, that's what we all say when we pick up our gravity gun. Okay, so this episode, I am the king of this episode because I will also be introducing our topic, which is what's the deal? What's the deal with the metaverse? That is a great question.

The buzzword that is everywhere. Jerry Seinfeld never asked about this. Not a question that Jerry asked, it's true. No, I kind of wish they had. No, Jerry did not, but I happen because everywhere you go, it's like Facebook wants to to build a metaverse, Epic wants to build a metaverse. It's just the hottest buzzwords since blockchain. Yeah, which we are not going to explain blockchain.

We are going to do everything we can to avoid explaining blockchain to our listeners, but we will explain the metaverse, or at least I will. The metaverse is one of my favorite brainworms for whatever reason. I just really enjoy reading articles about it and the history of it. And so I read an article this week about the Ariana Grande concert in Fortnite, which happened as we record this just a couple days ago. It is ongoing. You can watch the pop star Ariana perform a show.

It's not exactly live. It's pre-recorded and you can sort of participate in it, but it's live in the sense that it's only happening for a limited time. And the Ariana costume can be unlocked as well. And so people can run around in Fortnite all of them embodying Ariana Grande's essence together. And that is a part of the world we live in. And so this article is on TechCrunch. What is Fortnite?

And it just casually, casually uses the term Metaverse by saying, Fortnite's Ariana Grande concert offers a taste of music in the metaverse, just sort of taking it as a given in this headline that you would know what the metaverse is and also that the metaverse is Fortnite and that Fortnite is a part of it. And I would say that's true. So I feel like the metaverse has been kind of defined

as both interchangeably with the word multiverse, like as people use it in the Marvel Comics world, like the multiverse of madness, if you will. I feel like those two words are very similar and people use them interchangeably. Can I just ask you something about the concert? Sure, of course, of course. Yeah.

Why did I move past this? This is the most important thing happening this week. When you go into Fortnite, I know Fortnite has been doing this a bunch in recent years, like having these big events and stuff. When you go into Fortnite for a concert, is it still like a Battle Royale and people just have decided not to kill each other to watch?

No, it's a separate thing. It's like a separate thing. It's like a limited time mode, basically. That's just for the concert. So like when Christopher Nolan was screening, stuff in Fortnite, you would just sit there and watch the Christopher No way movie on a screen in the game. And you can't kill anybody. I feel like that by definition kind of defeats the purpose of a metaverse because the whole idea of a metaverse is you can do whatever you want. But if it's like

disabling your commands. I mean, is that the whole idea of a metaverse? Because it turns out the definition is relatively simple. So a metaverse is basically just a shared virtual space like a video game or virtual world that also crosses over with our actual reality. So like Ariana Grande performing in real life and also in the game simultaneously and players in real life interacting with one another and her, that is an example of real life intersecting with a virtual world. And also the fact that you can use real money in Fortnite to purchase items. All of those things are metaversy, if you will. Although I feel like the multiverse part of it, I think Fortnite has been. has been part of what's muddied the waters here because even Donald Mustard kind of uses Metaverse as being multiverse.

I have this quote from him in our little outline here where he says his goal of Fortnite. Explain who that is. Yeah, so he's the creator of Fortnite and, you know, just so his real name is Donald Mustard. I feel like he sounds like a video game character. He's a clue character. Yeah. He's a Colonel. He's a Colonel.

He created Fortnite. And his goal. In the entryway with the Lead Five, he created Forty. This goal with the game he says is, quote, to create a metaverse, a place where all IP, that's intellectual property, can live together where all kinds of experiences can happen. So he's kind of conflating the idea of both this virtual world that people from our world can enter and intersect with, with this additional multiverse component of also all intellectual property is intersecting and available in this metaverse as well. Okay, so his definition is like that message board post. You guys know that infamous message board post by Game Master Anthony, who is like, hey, it's my birthday.

And then he posts, it's adorable. It's very nerdy. He posts, hey, it's my 30th birthday. All of the characters from all of my favorite franchises come in to celebrate wearing party hats. And it's this adorable message board post. I know exactly what you're talking about. That is Donald Mustard's version of the matter of every. Yeah.

That's Fortnite now. That post, that is. is what Fortnite is. Donald Mustard wrote that post, as it turns out, and he grew up, and he was like, it's my birthday, and I want Thanos and I want Superman, and I want Black Panther, and I want them all to come over. And they have. It's so funny because I feel like when Facebook talks, it feels like everybody has a different definition of what the Menaverse is. Because it feels like when Mark Zuckerberg is talking about it, he's thinking of like, we all put on our Oculus rifts and enter like the Ready Player One world where it's like a totally alternate reality that we're all living in. Whereas Fortnite is

just like the biggest crossover event of franchises ever, which is a very different proposition. I mean, is it that different though? Because it's still a place you're entering, I mean, you're designing an avatar that could represent you or not, and you're hanging out with your friends in this shared virtual world and you can participate in a variety of activities. But I don't think, to me, at least, when I think of the concept of a metaverse, I think of it as replacing our world. And I think of it as like, like, the idea of it is to be like, you know what, the earth is on fire, everything sucks, let's put on VR headsets and spend 16 hours a day somewhere else entirely.

Nobody is ever going to think of Fortnite as that. No. Well, I guess that's why there's so many different definitions. Ask us again in 20 years. Let's see how the planet is doing that and how Epic Games is doing as a company. Well, part of the whole concept of this is that you have to be able to sense that world. So it has to be like the VR and maybe the tastometer and the smell sniffameter and the audio. Like you have to be able to have the senses.

You're describing the fictional representations of the metaverse. So I would argue and most people who study the metaverse would argue that there has never been a real life version of the metaverse. Like something like Fortnite is the closest thing we have to it. Like going to see Ariana Grande perform and sort of embedding yourself in that world and like seeing a pop star perform for you. is the closest we have, but it's really not the Metaverse as it's depicted in fiction. So Metaverse is actually a term

that was coined in Snow Crash, which is in 1992 cyberpunk novel, it's by Neil Stevenson. It's a very tongue-in-cheek book that it's sort of like pre-ready Player 1 and aesthetic and tone. I read it when I was a teenager. I kind of want to read it again as an adult,

but I also feel like I wouldn't enjoy it. I don't know. I might. So that's 1992. And there have been a whole bunch of other fictional depictions of the Metaverse. I originally had Who Framed Roger Rabbit on this list as well. I believe that's in the 80s. I want to say, yeah, 1988. And my other examples were Space Jam, the first one in 96, the Matrix in 99,

Ready Player 1 in 2011, the book, you can talk about the movie later, and Recit Ralph in 2012. So all these examples, like there's a reason I didn't put the Lego movie here because I felt Like it didn't quite work. But all of these examples have people jacking in to this other world. The Matrix is also kind of an unusual example here. Or entering another world through like interdimensional rifts, for example, or some form of either magic or science is allowing them to transport into other worlds. And there are plenty of video games that do this too to like cross over IP.

Like Kingdom Hearts, for example, has like Travers Town. and that's how you enter the other worlds. And like, Heroes of the Storm has the nexus. And that's how it crosses all these other Blizzard games together. And Super Smash Brothers has the invitations in the mail because, sure, why not? And so... And the hand. Massing hands.

And, like, these movies all have this idea of humans, like, from our world, crossing over into, like, Looney Tunes world or entering into a virtual video game world. And either of those, in my book, is... is metaversey, although there are a lot of different ways to think about it. I really enjoy these movies that I just listed. I enjoyed Ready Player 1 at one time in my life. But that, I feel like, has changed. And part of why I wanted to talk about the metaverse today

is because I feel like our collective sense of what the metaverse means has fundamentally changed because of, the way that corporations control everything we do and we realize it's not fun anymore. But I did want to ask you to, do you feel like your relationship to these kinds of ideas has changed? Like, did you have a Ready Player 1 phase or even like a Space Jam phase in your childhood of like thinking or Who Frame Roger Rabbit? Like that was like the best thing ever, you know? Yeah, I think it's cool. I mean, there was a time when it was just cool. That's what, definitely what's cool about Who Framed Roger Rabbit is there's a kind of a, there's a,

meta level to Who Frame Roger Rabbit that I think you only really appreciate when you're an adult. When I was a kid, I just thought it was, I actually thought it was a pretty weird movie and kind of scary, but I just liked it because it was a fun movie and it had a lot of fun stuff going on. As an adult, I appreciate it that I believe it is the only time that Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny have been together on the screen. And I've rewatched that movie not that long ago, and it's a crazy movie to rewatch. I recommend it. It's really a really cool movie. And that scene is pretty wild, but it's wild because I know that Disney would like never let that happen now and that like I'm aware of the sort of various machinations that were probably required to make that

happen. So it is a precursor of the like corporate, you know, actually owned IP part of that. And to me, what's really cool about the metaverse as it's presented in say Ready Player 1, which is this fantasy digital world where everything is possible and there are no, as far as I can tell. And I think this is, I can't remember if this is mentioned in the book. The premise of Ready Player one, by the way, for anyone who hasn't read it or seen it is that there is this like VR world called The Oasis that everyone uses. It's like more ubiquitous than Facebook. It was bequeathed to the world by the guy who made it and no one owns it. And so it's like totally free of ads and ownership and it's free for everyone to use. And in this world, they all just

make whatever they want. So it's like nothing but movie references and, you know, video game references and he like drives around in the DeLorean and the Iron Giant is there. Maybe that's just in the movie. Yeah. Copyright law doesn't exist. Well, it also somehow, coincidentally, it's all stuff from when Ernest Klein, the author was growing up. Oh, yes, yes, yes. And that is absolutely invalid criticism in the book. And I'm not even like, we could do a whole conversation about like the problems with that story. But I'm more just talking about the fictional metaverse in it. And that imagines that there's just a free for all. And it's almost like people can make or conjure or design their own things.

And to me, that's actually pretty cool. Like, that comes closer to Minecraft as Metaverse, which is the sort of the version of the metaverse that I think is really cool. Yeah, Roblox as well, where kids can create whatever they want. But continue. Right, and I'm less familiar with Roblox, but I gather it's the same idea. But in Minecraft, what's cool is, like, you'll see, you know, they'll make Westeroos in Minecraft.

There's that whole, like, big project that all these people worked on, or someone will make Bioshock's rapture. Yeah, yeah. Right, and that feels like that same energy that Ready Player 1 had that I think was this kind of enthusiastic, fan-driven thing where we all just make whatever we think is cool from our favorite fictional properties. And then we can do whatever we want with it. And there is no corporate control. There's no oversight. It's not licensed.

It's not being used to promote it. When people made Rapture and Biosec, that wasn't something that, like, 2K paid for as, like, a promotional thing. That was just something someone made because they like BioShok. And that's really cool. And the flip side of it, that's way less cool. is what's usually happening in Fortnite, which is like Marvel has a movie coming out, and so suddenly there's like Marvel characters from that movie

are now appearing as a promotional thing. Or even Ariana Grande, as cool as that concert looked, she's like promoting something, and it was part of this huge deal that was done between her label and Epic Games to put her in the game and make it all official. That's neat, but it's less exciting than the version of the Metaverse that I think, you know,

has like real verve, and that's the one that's more user-generated. Yeah, I do think that the user-generated, side of it and like the idea that there are these spaces where IP law is just a little bit softer on fans, like maybe because, you know, they're not trying to sell anything or just because it's a really creative space that feels like it's capturing something. But in researching this, I also feel like part of it is just the way that people's relationship to corporations has changed over the past 20 years of the internet. Because a lot of the other early examples that I would say are still really fun are because of, corporate, like, you know, sharing between IPs. Like, for example, yeah, like Roger Rabbit, yeah. Like, Roger Rabbit is the perfect example because that is a movie that is subverting a lot of tropes of how cartoons felt at the time and, like, making them not only dirty, but also just weirder and, like, positioning the cartoons as, like, a marginalized class

and, like, just the idea of even doing that as absurd. But I feel like they're... So in the very early 2000s... Well, first of all, Kingdom Hearts One came out in 2002. And I feel like when that game came out, I mean, Jason, you can tell me what you thought of it as a kid. But, like, I thought that it was very special and cool that, like, Disney was willing to have their properties be in a video game. Because in 2002, I think I had a pretty different relationship with Disney as a brand. Like, I just saw them as one brand among many other brands as opposed to this hyper-successful conglomerate that owns my soul and the souls of everyone I know.

and it's terrifying. Like, it was just like, oh, Mickey Mouse is in a video game that is similarly funny and weird and cool to him being in Who Frame Roger Rabbit. Like, what a nice, weird thing. And, like, some of the other examples, like, I found this list of Tony Hawk Pro Skater appearances. Like, apparently Wolverine and Darth Mall

were in that game in 2001, which were also, like, Star Wars, and I think the first X-Men movie was, like, probably the reason for Wolverine to be in that game. But like that game also has real human beings in it. And like the idea of Darth Mall being in it was just deeply charming to me in a way that I feel like it wouldn't be now. Like if Tony Hawk came out and was like now Thanos is in the game, I'd be like, this sucks now.

So I do feel like something has changed. Well, now they felt they felt very, when Kingdom Hearts came out, the idea of a crossover felt pretty special because it wasn't happening very often. Same with like, I remember there's a finding game series. I think it was Soul Calibur. They like wound up putting Link in the Nintendo version and like, yeah,

tech and characters in the PlayStation version, that sort of thing. And that was, that felt special. I mean, yeah, in general, I think the whole, the charm of these big crossover events is that they're rare.

And same thing happened with the MCU where like, because nothing like that I've ever had ever been done before. It was very appealing. Nowadays, with Fortnite and everything else because it happens every week. It's lost a lot of its appeal. To me, the most interesting thing about the metaverse is not brands and these giant crossover brands. And it's kind of like the missed potential in Ready Player 1 is that it focuses,

it's just kind of an excuse to get all nostalgic and focus on 80s movies instead of what was really interesting about that world, which is that like humans had to create this alternate reality because they live in a dystopia in real life. And that to me has always been what's really interesting about the metaverse or really, I mean, I guess you could say that something like that exists on the internet in the sense that since we were all kids, you could go on the internet and become someone else and live a different life and have kind of two lives. One is your real person who goes to school or goes to work and the other is the person who lives on the internet. You're like doing the monologue from the beginning of the matrix right now.

There are two Mr. Anderson's. One, unobstating. Anyways, I won't do the last phrase. But so I guess in some ways that has already kind of come to fruition. I am very curious as to like... With her garbage. Sorry. I'm very curious as to like what, like,

what else do we need from a metaverse short of like the world actually falling into a dystopia and us needing to escape somewhere else and spend all our days like, sitting at our computers with our goggles on so we can we can pretend to live a normal human life but like i don't know i guess i'm curious as to what the end game is for something like fortnight like it's the goal of fortnight when they say they want to be the metaverse does that just mean they want to be the home of every possible brand coming to their battle royale game or or well okay that's one thing or doesn't mean that fortnight becomes this like you put on your headset and you're suddenly living in this world of Fortnite where you can do anything you want.

That, to me, is so much more interesting and allows for so many more possibilities and interesting exploration than frigging brands. Like, to me, it's like, who cares about all these brands crossing over at this point? We see so much of it that it's lost any and all appeal for me. So I think that the two things are already happening. Like, both of those are already happening. Like, Fortnite, it does seem like their business plans. man is to be the go-to place for any promotional thing for any corporation large enough to pay for them.

Like, that seems like that's what they want short term. But you're talking about like our digital selves. And I think a lot about our digital selves these days and the way that we all are building slowly digital selves. And also the digital world, you know, the world that exists in the realm of, you know, data is also building versions of us. And some of those, some of the parts of those digital selves are owned by different. companies, the way that Facebook has a version of you that's a pretty convincing version of you to a kind of scary degree. And this is something that I'm more and more aware of. And I think a lot of people are more and more aware of as we're sort of more concerned about privacy and

like who owns my behavior and the things that I've done. And as more of what I do is done online, someone is just logging all of that and is basically recording every moment of my life and will soon be able to just make a version of me. And we are kind of heading in that direction. So So the interfaces are sort of narrowing the gap as they increase in their sort of ease of use and ubiquity. Our phones have definitely done this. If we get into some sort of augmented reality world or a place where it's just kind of all around us, you know, that's like just narrowing, narrowing, narrowing, but it's already narrowed quite a bit from where it was 20 years ago. And the gap is just closing until there will be a point where we just exist in this virtual self-hood.

I mean, we already really do. Like so much of the Metaverse, it's not a thing you can quite put on a VR headset and exist inside of. But if you just get on Twitter or Reddit or really wherever, the triple click Discord, heck, it's like there's so much smashing together of IP. There's so many people making up their own stories, making memes and like building things and, you know, making character designs and fan art that sort of combine things into different stories. That feels way more like, you know, there's a future to that. And it'll just keep developing and keep growing and keep kind of becoming more, like, closer to our lived reality. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I mean, it's muds and MMOs have always been that kind of the metaverse in a closer way, I would say, to how I pictured the metaverse. Of course. Yeah, I mean, I'm just talking about it's just, now it's just life. Like, it's like Twitter, it's social media, it's everything. Right. But I think that online games have always been, like, online RPGs in particular have been. closer to the idea of this metaverse than Fortnite has ever been, at least for me. And again, maybe that's just because my definition of the metaverse is different than Mr.

Mustards. But I see it as like you log into World of Warcraft or your favorite mud or whatever, and you can spend many, many hours a day there living out a different life and becoming a different personality who interacts with different people than you do in real life. And that, to me, is a lot more interesting. And, yeah, to your point, Kirk, about internet personas, I think. what social media has done in the past 10, 15 years has blurred the lines between our internet persona and our real life persona to the point where like many, many people out there,

maybe not. I feel like our real life persona has come through a lot more on this podcast, but like people out there, the many, I have like 300,000 followers on Twitter. None of those people, like most of those people have no idea who I am, but they think they do because they know my Twitter persona, right? And that kind of line. blurring is interesting and almost makes it impossible to have a metaverse in some ways. Like social media almost feels like the anti, the anti-metaverse because it's instead of allowing you to live this separate life, it's kind of like forcing you to to extract parts of your life and putting them on the internet and like deal with all the complicated emotions that

come as a result of that and seek for validation and get depressed when you don't find it and all sorts of deranged stuff like that. I mean, I guess it depends on whether or not you want to be yourself in the metaverse or if that's valuable to you. I mean, I think there will always be people who fantasize about just being themselves, but getting to do whatever they want in this fictional world. And then there are people who are like, I want to be someone completely different or be a different person every day. And that's what my own fantasy of it would be. And I do think that Fortnite will approach that. I feel like Fortnite is the logical conclusion of something like Second Life and these other games that encourage you to build a house or like have a multiplayer experience with people where you can create quote unquote whatever you want.

Minecraft is another example where you can have discrete servers with just friends and you're designing your own world together. I think that Fortnite is going to approach. But Maddie, but Second Life has so many more verbs than Fortnite. That's what I was saying before. That's why I don't understand how Fortnite began. to saying this. It's like a freaking battle royal game. Like, how did Fortnite become? Everyone's acting as if it's, I just don't know.

I mean, it didn't even start as a battle royale game. Right, that's the thing. Yeah, it was added later. Yeah, it was like a survival like Minecraft left for dead game. Yeah. I just don't understand. Like, why would Fortnite succeed where second life didn't? Just because Fortnite is massively popular?

Like, that doesn't pass a stiff test to me. I mean, I think because Epic Games has a lot more money. I feel like that helps it. And I also think that. Doing these branded crossover events is getting them money to do other stuff, TBD. Like, I don't know what that is or what Donald Mustard wants to do, but I don't feel like his endgame is like a million cool Thanos mods. I feel like more likely his endgame is more user-generated content that he doesn't have to build at all

and that like every band in the country or the world can have their own Fortnite concert and people can go to that. And that is just a part of your life is that you can go see your friend's band play in Fortnite in the level they designed for you to experience or like you watch a music video or whatever else. And it just so happens to be on the platform called Fortnite. But who really cares? It's just a platform now. And it's just this interactive thing that has all these little bits and pieces. Like how much Facebook has changed since it began as basically a hot or not game. And like now it's a place where you can get radical. into marching on the Capitol. Like, I don't even know what Facebook is anymore. And I mean, to tie it to this, I mean, Mark Zuckerberg is very into the idea of building a metaverse that is Facebook. Like, he owns Oculus.

And, like, that's what he wants to do in VR. So he has definitely got designs on the same thing Epic's doing. To this distinction that the two of you are sort of teasing at between something like Second Life and something like Fortnite, there's also just the question of ubiquity and accessibility. I mean, Fortnite is everywhere. It's extremely easy to play, and tons of people can play it. Even though it's not actually, like,

maybe as good of a platform for a metaverse as something like Second Life would be, it's so much more just everywhere that it just is the thing right now that so many more people can use, that it's just much more likely that it will be the home for, you know, whatever, like just for the moment. And there will totally be a time in five years or whatever where it'll be something else and we'll look back at Fortnight. It'll be like, man, good times. Well, that's the thing.

The idea of, so, Kirk, to the point you made at the beginning of this conversation, The reason that Oasis in Ready Player 1 succeeded is because nobody owned it. And I think that is going to be the fatal flaw with all these companies. It's like when I log onto the internet or when I open on my computer and I log on to the internet, I am aware that like a few big companies are kind of watching everything I do. But I also know that I have the freedom to go on any website I want to like to avoid using Amazon if I want, to avoid using Twitter if I want, avoid using Google, et cetera, et cetera. and just the openness of it all and just knowing that like there's nobody really pulling the strings when I go to,

when I type in a bot like a URL on my web browser because nobody can control like, oh, I'm typing in, I don't know, CNN.com and it's actually going to send me to MSNBC.com, at least on the free internet as it exists now. I think that that is what's appealing about it and that consequently would be what was appealing about a Metaverse, But if you log into a Metaverse knowing that it's like, this is the Facebook branded Metaverse and you see the giant Facebook logo everywhere. Or like, this is Fortnite and Epic Games is controlling everything that's on here. I think that immediately just loses any potential like appeal that this concept has as something that people would consider part of their lives. I would say I'm totally with you personally. Like I feel the same way.

I don't think that that causes it to lose any possible appeal that it would have to people. I think a lot of people would just be fine using the Facebook Metaverse as evidenced by all the people that just happily use Facebook. I would certainly feel that way, though, and I do agree with you that at least for the time being, it's just a kind of a bummer about the state of affairs that, you know, Facebook is paying for Oculus to make this headset, right? That's just one example of many, but like Epic is paying for Fortnite to do what they're doing. Like somebody is fronting them bill, and as a result, they get to own the space that we're in. and I could see that being the case for a long time. And I, you know, the small, dying, optimistic part of me would like to believe that at some point there could be like an open version of it once the technology becomes ubiquitous enough. Because there is a feeling when I just think of the whole internet and the way that we all just kind of share whatever.

And so many people just use whatever IP they want to make whatever they want. And by and large they're able to. And you can see these organizations trying to like file copyright lawsuits and like stand. things out, but it's just like someone being swarmed by bees and like swinging their hands around. Like there's just no way that they're going to be able to keep up because of the size of the world and because of the way that these things work. And that actually makes me feel sort of heartened to see that because that metaverse, like if you just think of the internet itself as a metaverse, that is outside of the control of any corporation and

hope, I think at least for a while will remain so. That's what I was saying. One thing I should mention also is that none of us have really spent a lot of time with Roblox, so I don't want to talk too much about that. But I think to the points that both of you were making earlier about user generated content and that being an important part of this whole kind of

puzzle that is the metaverse. One of the reasons Roblox is as massive as it is, I think, when it had its IPO a few months ago, it was like some ridiculous number in the billions, many billions of dollars. That was probably the Bloomberg headline, I think it was Roblox.

IPO some ridiculous number many billions of dollars. Yes, you can tell that I'm a business reporter. Bloomberg News. One of the reasons that actually I would say the main reason that Roblox has become as big as it is is because the people who are making stuff in it can sell what they are making and make a profit off of it and therefore directly are rewarded

by this thing. And I suppose that is one way to get fans. I mean, Kirk, I see your point. I think, yeah, definitely enough people to hit a certain threshold would certainly not care enough about the Metaverse being owned by a single company. But certainly this would help them bypass any inherent obstacles, which is them being able to make money off of the thing. And I think that's kind of an important distinction here. And one of the reasons that maybe Roblox is the closest that we've come to this concept is because

people are really heavily incentivized to go and make stuff for this thing because they can make a ton of money doing it, like in the millions, if they make things just right. Similar to YouTube in a lot of ways. And Second Life was this way, too, where people would, like, make clothes and houses and stuff in Second Life and make a lot of money. Were they able to sell it? I thought Second Life, did Second Life have, like, an official marketplace in the game where you could, like, buy and sell stuff?

I don't know if it was in the game, but there were definitely people who made a living for a long time, like, making clothes and making items. Right, selling assets and stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Roblox has like facilitates it within the game so it makes it easy to make money and they probably get a cut which I'm sure helps too. Yeah, much smarter to do it that way. I mean, I feel like that's a more ethical version of the future where these are just platforms where anybody can create what they want and sell it without it being all owned by Epic or all owned by you know Microsoft or whomever we imagine is owning each of the competing metaverses, Mark Zuckerberg. I guess. But I think the more likely reality is competing metaverses and you have to decide which one you're going to log into and oh, all of my friends are on the Facebook Metaverse, but I want to go

check out the concert on the Fortnite one. And that's such, it's such a limiting thing, right, when you're limited because you're not just buying into something that somebody else owns. You're also limited in the amount of stuff that you'll see. Like if we go back to this idea of like all of the different, all of your faves interacting. That's what, so I have not seen the new Space Jam movie. But what I've read about it. But it's only your Warner Brothers faves. That's so weird that it's like just, especially because like Warner Brothers like has made

some cool things over the years, but they're not, like only Disney really has the kind of terrifying purview where it's like all Star Wars and Disney and Marvel. But like if it's just Warner Brothers, it just feels kind of weird. And it's the sort of thing you'll see in video games where it's like just Capcom characters or whatever, and it's like kind of cool, but you're like, yeah, what if Mario was here? That would be cooler. But then Super Smash Brothers is also, it started with just Nintendo characters, but like, part of what makes it fun is that you're like, oh, Joker from Personas is in here, like,

Riu from Street Fighters in here. Like, it's fun to have those other crossovers in the mix, but you can only have them if those corporations are shaking hands with one or other. Or if you have an open platform, which, like, to get to the, just, I guess I'm always ringing the user-generated mod, user-generated bell, but like, when you're you're playing a game and like, you know, Thomas the Tank Engine is in Skyrim or whatever it is. Like the way that modders, that's like half of what moders do is like just break copyright law and like insert things where they shouldn't be because that's what people want because it's cool.

So as long as the platforms are still somewhat open. You will not be surprised to hear that Roblox has a big copyright problem. Oh, I'm sure that it does. And I mean, a lot of these questions are sort of like, how is copyright law going to evolve over the next 50 years? Because ever since like, man, the thing where Disney like changed the law so that. a copyright lasts so much longer, it's led to so many problems. And I mean, just across the board, like, don't even get me started on the DMCA and, like, don't even get me started. And it's a mess. Like, it's like laws that don't make sense that are enforced incorrectly and there need to be

better laws. Not that I have a lot of faith that, like, our government is capable of, like, creating better laws, but they could at some point in the future. And that could really change the trajectory for, like, what we're talking about right now. Yeah, yeah, I agree. And, And also, I was trying to think of the first ever metaverse, like in human history. And first of all, I was thinking about Sherlock Holmes and Herlock Shoms, which we've been talking about a lot, which is like the idea of how many times Sherlock Holmes has been in other pieces of media and the copyright issue that led to Herlock Sholm's being created in Loupin, which we talked about on the show a while back.

And I was like, Sherlock Holmes isn't really a metaverse. I have to go back further. I have to go deeper, one level deeper. And I was thinking about Shakespeare. Fallstaff is in multiple plays. But I went even deeper than that. I think the first ever metaverse is ancient Greek mythology. I was hoping that that's where you were going to come down.

Nobody owns Tyresius, y'all. Like, nobody owns Odysseus. Like, you can put these characters. There was no copyright law. So you could put whatever characters you wanted into whatever plays or epic poems you wanted. And all of those stories were shared. And like Tyreseus could be like one type of guy in one story. and a different type of guy in a different story.

And that's part of what's so fun about reading those old plays, at least for me. So anyway, I think we should go back to that, like whatever time period that was, because the ancient Greek metaverse was actually pretty sick. And it was like pre-computers, pre-Snow crash, and like pre-everything else. Right. This is just the crossover. These are just crossover. But it's, but it isn't because it's also like intersecting with this idea of a metaphysical

religious world that is outside of our own. It's the ultimate metaverse is really the metaphysical religious metaverse. What is more of a metaverse than Mount Olympus, you know? It's very true. It is not our reality that we know of. I like this take a lot. It's very good. When you, when you die and you wind up in the halls of Valhalla, you are entering the metaverse. Valhalla would also be a metaverse, the nurse mythology as well. Sure, why not? I'll throw them in. The concept of like Neil Stevenson's concept of The metaverse is nothing to do with a crossover. He would disagree completely with me.

Like the concept of a metaverse is like this is an internet reality that feels like our reality and it's indistinguishable and we inhabit it in a different way that we inhabit like the real world. Like that to me is what metaverse is. But it is also about like multiple worlds intersecting and anything being possible and like creating your own story. And like that part of it is is a key part of it too. And furthermore, I mean we have seen whenever. people have the opportunity to do this, they do the stuff we're talking about. This is what they do. They like want Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny to hang out. Like that's always what happens. Even if it's like in ancient Greece, it's always the same impulse. We always want that. You can do whatever you want

and what you want is Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse staying out. That is what you want. What you want is for Sonic Hedgehog and Barack Obama to kiss on stage at the Arianna. You want them. That is why fanfic is great. But go ahead, Jason. think, I actually think that like we're getting to peak saturation on crossovers at this point. Yeah. I'm like, like it used to be. I blame brands for that though. Well, I blame Fortnite for that. Like three years ago, it was super cool to be like, oh, Fortnite is getting like Marvel characters. That's wild. Like how are they doing this? Now it's like, oh, great. Fortnite just got like 40 new franchises this week. It's like, oh, Game of Thrones is here and Silver Surfer and all this is the shit. It's just like it's not interesting anymore to the point where, if you showed me a game tomorrow that was like all of my favorite final fantasy characters are meeting up in the metaverse with all of my favorite, I don't know, Swiko, an Ace Attorney characters.

I mean, we're talking about the difference between like Kingdom Hearts 1 and Kingdom Hearts 3 basically. Yeah, yeah. The time that has elapsed between 2002 and 2019, a lot of shit has happened in the intervening time and it isn't that cool anymore. Exactly. And I just don't think it's that interesting anymore. Yeah, and so I think that like the concept of Metaverse is this brand crossover.

And Kirk, to your point, like, I don't even think that it's that interesting anymore to like be able to log into a video game and have Mickey Mouse like fight Sephora or something since that happened already. Even the two, two names that. Not if it's the whole point. It's just something that happens as a byproduct of our shared digital spaces. But I just don't think, but I don't think that's, I don't think that I think that used to be interesting. 15 years ago, that was a lot more interesting to people than it is now. Now it just sort of is. It's just a fact of the internet.

Everywhere you go, you see these things. Right. But that's why I'm just incredibly skeptical that Fortnite's concept of a metaverse will ever really amount to much other than Fortnite just staying super popular as a game and being like a place where weird things happen. I just don't see it. Yeah, I mean, I agree. Fortnite is a blip in the broader conversation of the metaverse, though I don't think that any of the three of us think that Fortnite is the future of the metaverse. When I say Fortnite, I just mean any concept of the metaverse that is like all of our favorite brands. will come together here as opposed to this is a place that is like going to be an alternate reality for people that that's what's so much more interesting i think and like so much more feasible like if

facebook's version of the moniverse instead of focusing on brands is like you put on your oculus rift and suddenly you're in this world where you can do whatever you want and it's like the most wild version of like it's an amped up version of second life or something like that that to me has a lot more lasting broad appeal than something like oh log in today and now you can see you can see you can see you all your favorite character is from the White Lotus, meeting up with the cast of Survivor. Yeah, I mean, it's just the two things aren't mutually exclusive. One is just like, it's the one thing will happen in the other thing.

And, you know, the one thing is just much bigger. One thing pays for the other thing is really what it is. I suppose. The metaverse that you log into, that's the internet. That's just huge. And then that other stuff will just happen in any online space. Sure, I guess so. I guess I just don't think people are as interested in it anymore.

Even the past three years, I think that's sort of. that sort of concept has just gotten less interesting. Or maybe that's just us. Maybe it's just, could be. Maybe we're just old. Yeah, maybe we're just old. Ah, well, I guess we can leave it there. I could run down the timeline of all of things Disney bought because I wrote all of that

down, but I think it's a little depressing. Suffice it to say, I think that just looking at the past few years of acquisitions is part of what made me get sick of the Menniverse as just brand acquisitions. But, Kirk, you've really put a different spin on it for me and given me some hope that maybe stuff like Roblox is the future and that there is a version of the metaverse that looks like mod forums where people are just creating like every version of Chris Redfield in every outfit you can imagine.

And like that's how you can play Resident Evil if you want to. I feel like that is a much more fun imagination of the future and what it could be than Thanos and Fortnite ever could be. So I'm going to close this out on that thought and hope that the metaverse is you hanging out with Chris Redfield and whatever you want him to be wearing in the future. That's my hope. All right, let's take a break and then we'll be back with one more thing.

Well, hello, I'm Renee Colvert. Hi, I'm Alexis Preston, and we're the host of Can I Put Your Dog? And we got breaking news, we got an expisay, all the beans have been spilled via an Apple podcast review that said this show isn't well researched. Well, yeah, no duh. Of course it's not. Not since the day we started as it been well researched.

Guessing and anthropomorphizing dogs is what we do. The Can I Pet Your Dog promise is that we will never do more than 10 seconds of research before telling you excitedly about any dog we see. I'm going to come at you with top 10 enthusiasm, minimal facts. We're here for a good time, not an educated time. So if you love dogs and you don't love research, well, you know what, come on in to Can I Pet Your Dog podcast every Tuesday on Maximum Fun Network. The Beef and Dairy Network is a multi-award-winning comedy podcast here on Maximum Fun,

and I would recommend you listen to it. But don't just take it from me. What do the listeners have to say? I would rather stick a corkscrew inside my ear, twist it around and pull out my ear canal like a cork, than listen to your stupid podcast ever again. Please stop contacting me. Hell would freeze over before I recommended this podcast, the Beef and Dairy Network, to anyone. Not in a million years.

Actually, stretch that. Make it a billion years. No, how long's infinity? That's the Beef and Dairy Network podcast, available at maximum fun.org, and at all good and some bad podcast platforms. Disgusting. And we are back for one more thing.

Jason, tell me what you've been up to lately. So, I do not have a video game to talk about because I'm playing Half-Life 2, and that will be next week's discussion. So instead, I will bring another. entry to the triple click book club. I've been reading a book called, I've read a couple of books recently, but when I wanted to talk about is a book called New Teeth by the author Simon Rich. Have either of you heard of Simon Rich? Are you familiar with Simon Rich? Yes. I have. Probably

from you. Yeah. I've talked about him before. Yeah. So he's this great author I've been following for a very long time, very prolific comedy writer. He's written for tons of things now. He wrote for SNL for a while. He wrote for, one of his books wound up turning into that show Miracle Workers. I don't think it's super popular, but did he write the pickle thing too? He wrote the pickle thing, yeah, that turned into

that Seth Rogen movie, an American pickle. He wrote the short story that turned into that. He wrote the screenplay as well. He is an immensely talented, prolific writer. One of my favorite books by him is a book called Elliot Oligosh that is about this, it's this amazing, like,

It's a little novel. It's like a short novel, a novella almost, but longer than a novella, about this kid, this eighth grade kid in private school in New York who winds up befriending the richest kid in the world who like is also an evil, devious schemer. And it's all about this kid's schemes to turn, turn this kid into a popular kid. And it's a brilliant book, Elliot Ola Gosh. But anyway, his newest book is called New Teeth. And it has been cracking me up. It's a book of short stories. and they're all very funny and very good and I am very enjoying them.

I actually took the book right here because I want to read you guys a quick, quick excerpt. Great. From New Teeth. This story, I'm going to read you like the first few words of this story. This story is called The Big Nap by Simon Rich. Chapter 1. The detective woke up just after dawn. It was a typical morning.

His knees were scraped and bruised. His clothes were damp and soiled and his teeth felt like someone had socked him in the jaw. He reached for the moment. bottle he kept under his pillow and took a sloppy swig. The taste was foul, but it did the trick. Now he could sit up and think. Now he could start to figure out how to somehow face another goddamn day. He stared at his reflection in a mirror. He wasn't getting any younger. His eyes were red and bleary. His scalp was dry and itchy. He was two years old and soon he would be three. Unless he stayed two. He wasn't sure if he stayed the age you were or if that changed.

That's good. Anyway, Simon Rich, neat teeth. It's a good book. Go check it out. Definitely go check out Elliot Oligosh by him because that's my favorite book of his and it's really, really good. Nice. Wow. Awesome. All right. Kirk, tell me what you've been up to. So I've been watching a show called Shmigadoon.

Oh, I need to add an exclamation point. Yeah. Because it has an exclamation point in the title. Is that the musical show? Yeah, I've seen ads for this. It's called Shmigadoon. Yeah, I don't know how this wasn't on my radar, given my interests, but I started watching it. So this is a show on Apple TV Plus, produced by Lorne Michaels, so it has a kind of an SNL energy,

starring Kegan Michael Key and Cecily Strong as the two leads. Though it's also got, let's see, it's got Fred Armisen, it's got Kristen Chenoweth, it's got Alan Cumming, who's amazing in it. It's got Jane Krakowski just showed up. Martin Short has a small role. So it's like a whole lot of people. Who's who? Who's who?

Who's who? No, A who's who. Oh, who's who? I think he said, who's who's who. Like who's playing which character? I'm like, well, Kegan Michael. Key is playing Josh. And Sesame is playing Melissa.

So this is a, it's very funny. It's a send-up of musical theater that is also, of course, a very loving tribute. All of the episodes are directed by Barry Sondonfeld. So it has that kind of Barry Sondonfeld TV energy specifically. This is the guy who directed Men in Black and, I don't know, Adam's family and a lot of things. But he also made Pushing Daisies, if anyone watched that show, which had a very musical energy.

And this is even meaningful. more that. Great choreography by a guy named Christopher Gateli, who's like a Broadway choreographer, and a lot of the show is like, has that kind of Broadway energy. So let me just explain what it is. Half-hour episodes, it's the story of like two

modern American sort of late 30-somethings who've been in a relationship for a while that's kind of grown stale. They go on this trip to kind of rediscover the flame. This is Keegan, Michael Key, and Cessley Strong. They get lost, and they find themselves in basically Brigadoon. So it's, if you know the

lot of Brigadune. The musical is that there's this city, this magical city that appears, I think in the Scottish Highlands, I haven't seen Brigadun in a long time, like once every 40 years or something like that, and then it's there for a week, and then it goes, and this guy discovers it, and he has to decide whether he wants to stay in Brigadune forever or not. This is the same kind of idea, only the whole town is ridiculous. It's, like, from the 1940s, so everybody's, like, really old-fashioned in all these ways, and it's also a musical. So everything looks like a musical. They're on sets. Like, it's all very, like, look like lighting on a set, and they can't leave until they find true love, so they are, of course,

trapped there. And then they just find, it's like, so it's two normal people where people just start singing all the time, and, like, music starts playing from the sky, and they're like, nope, I'm not singing, like, Kegan Michael Kee refuses to sing. So, like, a musical cue will start when he's, like, talking to someone, and he's, like, expressing some feeling he's having, and he's like, nope, not happening, and he, like, walks away. So it's that kind of energy. It's really, really fun. And I mentioned the choreography, because they do a lot of really long takes, where they've really worked out the set and all the staging and they're moving the cameras and they'll do,

Kristen Chenoweth just did this huge one-take musical number that's super fun if you're into that kind of thing. The shows, it's like not very long. They're moving through a lot of stuff. It's sort of all over the place in terms of the actual story. But if you just want, it's like six or seven episodes of a half hour of just like really polished, silly, you know, people that you probably like being funny and singing songs.

And like, especially if you're in a musical theater, It's a very loving parody. So I'm really enjoying it just as a sort of palette cleanser fun show to watch. So I recommend it. So that's Shmigadoon. It's on Apple TV Plus. And I think the final episode is about to air. And we'll find out what happens.

So it's all original music then? It is. But they're very true to the source material. But they really sound like, you know, they just did a like Music Man number. Kristen Cheninous number sounds just like, you've got trouble. Is that what it's called from Music Man? Capital T rhymes with P. That stands for pool.

Yeah, yeah, of course. So it's like each song kind of has a corollary. It's an homage of something. And her, Cecily Strong's character, is like a musical fan. So there will even be times where she's like, oh, okay, so this is, you know, the sound of music. So I know what archetype you are and, you know, that kind of thing. That's fun. I would enjoy that.

All right. I'm last. So I watched The Suicide Squad. Did you two see this yet? No, but I'm going to. We had guests over the weekend and I didn't get to you, but I want to see it. No, and I'm not going to. Really?

Why aren't you going to watch it? Because I don't have room in my brain for DC stuff. Marvel is already taken up to me. Fair enough. Okay, that is valid. I feel like if you're only going to watch one DC movie, it should be Birds of Prey, all the other ones. That one is very good.

Take her leave. And that is really the only reason I watched this one was because I was like, I would watch Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn again. I'm interested in this Birds of Prey sequel, which is almost what this movie is. There are many other characters in it. A lot of them die.

Idraselba's in it. John Cena's in it. They're both very good in it. They kind of turned out to be the main characters. I didn't really expect them to have so much to do because you never know who's going to do anything in a movie that has 26 actors in it. But there are a lot of other fun, like, cameos and bit parts for other funny actors, like Nathan Phileans in it and so on.

But yeah, it's pretty fun. It's no birds of prey, but. I think James Gunn's humor is basically like, you know if you like it or not. And I consider it to be fine with a capital F. Like, I enjoy it. I think it's enjoyable. And I thought that was true of this movie as well. I think it's a little long.

But yeah, if you're on the fence and you liked Birds of Prey like me and you just want to see Margot Robbie chewing some scenery and doing some really, really fun gun-foo action scenes, she gets a really good one in this. movie that I liked a lot. There's some cool fight scenes, but yeah, it's a little long. That's my only complaint. I guess I want to ask you if Huntress is in it, but I don't want to know because that was my favorite part of birds of prey.

So I just want to ask. I'll answer that question off the air. Thank you. Okay. Is it called the suicide squad? It is. Trying to like pretend that the first one didn't happen. I think we should all pretend that.

So I have also seen the first one. So I did see the first suicide. Squad. I reviewed it for the Mary Sue back of the day if people want to like really do some Googling and dig that up. That one's terrible. That is also a movie that has Margo Robbie as Harley Quinn in it. That was her, I believe, debut performance as that character. And Will Smith is in that movie as Deadshot and he's actually pretty good too. And Viola Davis is in it as the wall, Amanda Waller, who like puts the whole suicide squad together, just sort of like a team of DC super villains who all are in jail, in prison, and they can get several years off their sentence

if they're willing to participate in this black ops squad and go on basically death missions where no one expects them to survive. Viola Davis puts a chip in your brain and she will kill you if you disobey her orders while you're on this death mission, a suicide squad mission, if you will. That's the premise of the comic books and also these two movies. And this second movie, it's kind of funny because it like keeps the same casting. like Viola Davis is still Amanda Waller. She's still putting together the team.

Marga Robbie is back in prison. They like have a one-liner to explain it at the beginning of the movie because they're like, whatever, she's in prison now. Who cares? She just needs to be on the team again. And like, I think those are the only two characters who are the same and everybody else is different, but they're all playing new characters. So it's like not as though it's contradicting anything.

You know what I mean? Like it's sort of like a sequel to the other suicide. Squad, but they don't reference it at all. And also it's as though... She mentions, like, we've done this before. It's just like where... It's like it's the first time. No, they do...

They have done it before. Like, in this movie, it's like, they've done the Suicide Squad like hundreds and hundreds of times. And it's completely old hat to them now. And like, we know... The Suicide Squad takes place in this world where it's like, we're just regularly putting together black ops teams of super villains and sending them to their deaths. And like, you get to kind of see in the...

the first five minutes or so, like, how commonplace it is for all of them, which is like pretty funny as well. So, yeah, I do feel like it is funny when movies have to acknowledge their own, like, the metaverse they're in, if you're, if you will. Yeah, they're complicated canon. Yeah. I'll play the video game. That'll be great. Yeah. Sure. I'm totally going to watch this movie and I'm looking forward to it. Yeah. Hit me up, Kirk. I think you'll dig it. All right. Well, this has been another episode. I sure has. Thanks everybody for jacking in along with us.

Don't forget people out there who want to catch up on Half-Life 2. You have until next week, next Thursday. Get gravity gunning. Jumping in. Get that gravity gun and throw some stuff. All right. All right. See you both in the week.

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 great. 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 Maximumfun.org and find a link to our Discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximum fun.org.

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