Triple Click - Which Parts of EA Would We Want To Buy?

Episode Date: November 27, 2025

What would Triple Click do if they had the chance to buy pieces of EA? Why do so many people talk about games before finishing them? How do patches impact the way we experience games? All those and lots more questions on this week's Thanksgiving special Burning Questions.One More Thing:Kirk: Fela Kuti: Fear No ManMaddy: Secure Boot settingsJason: 1929 (Andrew Ross Sorkin)LINKS:Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinBuy Some Triple Click Merch!! https://maxfunstore.com/search?q=triple+click&options%5Bprefix%5D=lastJoin the Triple Click Discord: http://discord.gg/tripleclickpodTriple Click Ethics Policy: https://maximumfun.org/triple-click-ethics-policy/ Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointripleclick 🚀  SUPPORT TRIPLE CLICK:Join Maximum Fun | Buy TC Merch💬 JOIN THE TRIPLE CLICK DISCORD🎮 Triple Click Ethics Policy📱 SOCIALS | @tripleclickpodInstagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitch

Happy Thanksgiving. Hooray, hooray, hooray. Aren't you glad you have Triple Click on this Thanksgiving Day? Welcome to Triple Click where we bring the games to you. This week we are opening up the listener mailbag and answering a whole bunch of questions like what parts of EA would we want to buy? And what happens when a game gets patched? I'm Jason Trier. I'm Kirk Hamilton.

And I'm Maddie Myers. Hello. Hi. Hello, hello, my friends. And happy Thanksgiving to both of you and to everybody out there. Yes, it's the day of. Happy Thanksgiving. Don't forget to, well, if you're listening to this on Thursday morning, it's too late to

defrost your turkey, so if you haven't done that yet, you're getting take out tonight. No, there's no speed defrost option. That's just not in the cards. It's not very safe. Not for a turkey that's like 20 pounds. You can use the microwave. Yeah, just throw it in the microwave. If you could fit a turkey.

There's a defrost setting in my microwave, Jason. I might just have a more advanced microwave thing. Are you going to, I mean, you either have a massive microwave or you'll chop the turkey into like pieces to fit into the microwave. A frozen turkey. A frozen turkey. I could imagine myself trying to like fit a turkey into my microwave. Like, this seems like a kind of a montage of a person.

They're like backing into it. Pushing the turkey. They finally get it in and then de-prose. Well, hey, if you out there would like to help Kirk afford a microwave that can fit a turkey in it, like a giant industrial. A huge microwave. Huge microwave. We'll walk in microwave.

Then you should become a maximum phone member and help us make this show possible. We are entirely listener supported. You can support us by going to maximum fun.org slash join, signing up, supporting our show. And in addition to making the show possible, you will also get bonus episodes every single month, including the most recent one we did. What was that again? Indie Game, the movie we talked about. A whole month ago. Really fascinating.

Yeah, I mean time. And a new one we're about to put up on the feed, which is about the Sopranos season one. We are going to talk about that. I'm very excited. So that's going to be cool. And also, if you, in case you missed it, there's a little special extra bonus that you don't have to pay for. Kingdom Come Deliverance to Kirk Talk to. Yes.

Some fascinating people about that. That extra episode should be in the main feed. So check that out as well. Bit of an all-star roundtable for that one. It was very fun to have those gifts. Yeah, Wolverine himself. Wolverine himself, Tom Bissell. We had an actor, Liam McIntyre, an actor who knows how to sword fight because he was on Spartacus Vengeance.

And so he could talk about the sword fighting in the game and actually come from a place of some amount of training. Yeah, I started playing the game and I'm excited to listen to it. I'll talk about the game at some point in the future too with you. That's very exciting. But yeah, sopranos is coming soon and support us, maximum fun.org slash join. Actually, I should mention, too, that we have new merch in the merch store. We've said that for a while because there was new merch a little while ago, but now there was new new merch. And one is, one item is by request.

There are now mouse pads and desk pads with the triple click logo. Some people had written in to ask about those, so you can now get those. And, excitingly, the Bing pin design that is in the style of the Ace Attorney objection is now available on merch. So this was previously a reward for a Max Fund Drive from, I believe, last year from like two years ago now. And it's a wonderful design by an artist named Merit Bondaru. And it is just really, really cool. And so now you can get that on like a shirt or a mug. I'm going to get it on everything because I love it.

So anyways, definitely go to the merch store. It's time for the holidays. Like we've got new stuff. So support triple click buy. Give the gift of bang. By buying some merch and yeah, give the gift of Bing. The gift of Bing. When you say that, I think of the D&D.

character in our Triple Quest campaign. That's right. Everyone does I think. Bing the Barbarian. All right. This week, we are doing some burning questions. We're reaching into our turkey bag and answering some goblin questions for the week. Did you defrost these questions before? I hope you defrosted them like yesterday. They're burning.

I suck them in my microwave. They're burning up. They're burning up. They're burning. They're burning. We're like them in the deep friar. We've got to take them out because they are. just covered in charcoal at this point.

They're more than deep frosted, really. Smoldering. As always, you can reach us at triple click at maximum fund.org. These are real questions from real listeners. Do we need to say that? I feel like that makes it sound like they're not.

Yeah, you say that every time. This is a long-running thing. That's your response every time. Jason always says this and then you I say that. I still think it. History repeats. You know what? I don't remember what I've ever said on any previous episode. That's why we love you.

It's just groundhogs day. It's a new day every day. Who are you guys? Kirk, why don't you read this first question? All right. This question comes from Neil, who writes, here's a burning question for you all. Now that Electronic Arts has been bought by what functionally seems like private equity,

presumably at some point, some parts will be sold off to pay the debt. After looking at the Triple Click checking account balance, after a very successful Max Fund Drive, you realize that Triple Click can buy an Electronic Arts property. Which one are you buying? what do you do with it? So, okay, I think that, like, the obvious answer to this question might seem like, oh, bio-aware, oh, the Sims.

No. But, well, okay, hold on. That's why I was getting it. Sorry, you finish your thought. For me, I mean, people might not realize this, but EA owns a lot of, like, beloved old franchises that have just been never touched or have only been touched in mobile game form. For example, dungeon keeper, the classic bullfrog franchise, ultimately. the classic origin franchise, Richard Garriott franchise. And so there's a lot of good stuff in there.

I think a new Ultima game in kind of the style of Baldur's Gate 3, maybe not as quite high fidelity, but like in the same sort of systems heavy, you can interact with the world in all sorts of ways, the way that Ultima underworld and Ultima 7, all those old Ultima games did, I think could be really cool. So I think that would be my answer.

I would be like, I want to buy up Ultima. And also, I feel like we might actually be able to afford that because, like, they don't give a shit about Ultima, right? 50 bucks. Make us an extra beans gas and you can get Ultima. Maddie, how about you? Well, I guess we're just saying we don't want to buy BioWare. No, no. I was saying my, that was my.

That was just Jason's big. Pick whatever you want. You can buy whatever you want. Apparently, I have no competition in this sale. I guess we made so much money on this hypothetical max fund drive that each of the three of us can purchase our own EA property. Jason will be buying Ultima. I'll buy BioWare and then I'll sell it back to BioWare for a dollar because I actually don't want to own a game company at all. And they can just be an independent company and run themselves however they see fit.

I would ask that they make a really good RPG, but that would just be my advice to them. They wouldn't have to take it. A new Jade Empire and you can have yourself. Yeah, you can do whatever you want. I think it'd be cool if you made a pretty good RPG with, you know, just like some fun characters in it and some player choice. But hey, go nuts over there. I just, I just want to, I just want to see BioWare making cool stuff again. And I'm sad about what's happened to them. Wow, a cool RPG with good characters. I know. Mattie's out on a, out on a limb here. I didn't have like some

complex answer prepared for this. I just want, I just want things to go back to how they used to be. Because I'm actually conservative. And we all know that. And I've always been that way. Kirk, what about you? Well, I have two picks, I guess. Jason, your answer made me think of Magic Carpet, which was a game series that I loved that EA also owned back in the day. So maybe I would buy whoever I need to buy, or I would just buy the Magic Carpet series and make a new Magic Carpet game. I'm a little worried that I would realize that it's not actually as fun as I remember it being. But I think that the, really the smart business answer is I would want, okay, I think I'm going to get the name right. I would want EA Sports FC, which used to be FIFA, because that just prints money. And so I would take

EA Sports FC and then I would just be like, please just do whatever you've been doing. Absolutely no input from me. I'll just, you can make the checks out too and then give them my business name. And then I would just enjoy having a lot of money forever. You could use that to invest in the magic carpet game. Right. Because it's going to need a lot of help. It's going to be in development help for a long time. They're going to have to be figuring out the fun factor. It's going to be tough. Maddie, something you said reminded me of one of my favorite bits of EA trivia, which is you talked about how you would sell Byware back to itself.

Yeah. Did you guys know or do you guys remember that in 2005, Biware and Pandemic were both purchased and set into, like put into this entity by a company called Elevation Partners, which was this private equity firm. And then in 2007, it was. was then sold to EA for some enormous, something of money, $800 million or something like that. But here's the rub. Elevation had a founding partner by the name of John Rick Cello, who was part of Elevation. Then John Rickettello became the CEO of EA and then bought a viral pandemic from his own private equity firm.

The type of things that you can do if you're really rich is just transfer money from yourself to yourself and just make a lot along the way. Yeah. Cool. That sounds great. Really that's the kind of story I love to hear. Fun times. Maddie, why do you read this next question? Sure.

This one's from Riley, who writes, I was listening to the episode with Cameron Cuncelman and his comment at the end about Expedition 33 and how there was less discourse around the ending that expected got me thinking. Games seem to be the only medium where so much criticism and discussion isn't looking at the whole work. It's pretty rare to see someone write an article or make a podcast about the first third of a book, but games are often very long and there's been a blurring between. criticism and product reviews over the years. Social media also creates its own incentives

to cast a very broad net and get your opinion out there early. Of course, you don't need to play a whole game to determine whether you like it or would recommend it, but there's a distinction between that and deeper criticism of a work. I guess I'm wondering how you approach this as people who make a gaming podcast, since you have to balance your time, how many listeners finish or even play the games you discuss, and a variety of other factors. This is a great question. I mean, this is one of those questions from clearly a very thoughtful listener who answers some of the question in their email. And I mean, that's fine. I think that some of these factors that Raleigh lays out are part of the reason and part of the reason that people don't finish games. They're very long. It takes a long time to finish them. There are so many of them. It's hard to keep up. And there are all kinds of incentives on social media and elsewhere to get your opinion out there really early. So that's definitely, you know, those are some of the incentives drive. what Riley is describing. And I think that is very true. It is unusual. It's an unusual thing about video games that so much of the discourse around them is being generated by people who have

not finished. In some cases, have not even seen a significant percentage of the whole work. Yeah, it's tough. Yeah, it's unfortunate. It's like, it's something that I don't think there will ever be a satisfying answer to because it's, like, when you watch a TV show, it becomes timely to talk about that TV show in the day out the day after it comes out the week after it comes out when a game comes out though because it takes so much time to actually complete it you either you have to find a balance between like talking about it in a way that feels timely aka release day or release week and being able to finish it so unless you just marathon the whole thing like the day it comes out or if you're fortunate enough to get early copies um which is the case for like professionals working in the field

but to talk about general gamer discourse you either talk about it like right then and there and give half-complete thoughts and like early impressions or you wait a month and then everybody's moved on to the next thing. So yeah, it is unfortunate. And again, I just don't think there's a good answer to it because of the nature of games. Like they just take so long as opposed to shows or you watch it and finish it in an hour. Maybe a more app comparison is books, but like books don't really have the same sort of discourse machines surrounding them. Occasionally they will. But like even that can be, there isn't really a time constraint on them because usually if a book breaks into discourse, it's about some bigger thing than just the book itself, or it's about some big topic,

plagiarism, or something being PC and pissing people off, or whatever it is. Or cultural appropriation is always a big one in the book space. Is like, does this person have the right to be telling this story? And those sorts of conversations, because they're more breakout and broader, can be discussed long after the book comes out. But yeah, I just don't know the answer to this when it comes to discourse around games. The book comparison is funny, though, because can you imagine a world where people read the first three chapters of every book that came out and just immediately weighed in on it and we're like, I don't think I'm going to continue this one. Like, that would be wild, but that is

the world that we live in. And I don't even think it's strange. And I agree, I don't see it changing any time soon, even though I am the person that beat Claire Obscure. I'm not holding it against anyone for not beating it. I think that would be strange, but I also think it's sad at the same time because I know I wrote at least one story about the end of the game, and I don't remember it getting like a ton of reactions, but I also think that's because a lot of people didn't beat the game. So I don't have a high expectation of somebody reading my one opinion story that I wrote about the ending because in order to read it, you're going to scroll past my spoiler warning. And why would you do that if you haven't beaten the game? You know what I'm saying? And then I,

therefore, I'm kind of dissentivized to write something about the end of a game because I'm like, well, probably people won't have finished it. So can I write an opinion story that doesn't spoil the game but still makes my point? And I do try to do that sometimes, but it's not always easy to do. Yeah. One thought I just had while you were talking about this is that, so we were all playing, actually, no, I don't remember if we got reviewed copies of Claire of Scare, but usually we're playing games like one or two weeks before they come out. And usually we will be finished with the game or at least like close to the end of the game when the rest of the world is just starting to play it. And then so for us, we might start having that conversation about the entire game, maybe the ending, the spoilers, whatever, when it's a little too soon for people. Sometimes we might wait, we might try to find a balance there. But then Silk Song came out, and Silk Song was a really interesting one because there was a ton of like half-baked impressions, pieces and nonsense that came out on ostensibly professional video game websites in the days after it came out. But also it did feel like we were able to play that at the same pace as like the normal world. And so maybe the discourse felt a little bit fresher after a couple weeks. And we could all talk about the ending together.

So, yeah, maybe having kind of staggered releases. doesn't help when it comes to quote-unquote discourse. Then again, also, we're kind of talking when we talk about discourse. We could be talking about a million different things, whether you're talking about what you're seeing on your individual blue sky feed or in the discords you hang out with or the Reddits that you hang out with. So it's kind of a scattered, fractured environment in the first place. Blueprints is another game that comes to mind as one where we actually did have it quite a bit early.

And I think you, especially Jason, had maybe almost finished the game by the time it was out. And then there was a lot of, okay, you had finished it. And there was a lot of very early and fairly incomplete criticism of the game in the first few weeks. And I think you in particular found that very frustrating because you knew, you had such a broader picture of what that game was. And that game certainly demands the kind of conversation we eventually had about it in the Beanscast. It is this incredibly elaborate thing that makes more sense taken as a complete object than if you play the first few hours of it. And then, of course, that's true a lot of games.

And you're playing it and you're like, oh, I bet this is just a video game thing and not like some deeper thing without realizing that you're just right. That actually it's like the thing about the religion or the world building where it's like, this just seems pretty tossed off. And you're like, oh, no, wait, they invented the entire history of these people. So my own thoughts on this. Let's see. Yeah, I think there is room for complete video game criticism. I think of people like Noah Caldwell Gervais, a YouTuber who I really enjoy, who puts out these very long, very in-depth videos where he'll talk about, you know,

the entire Alan Wake series. And he'll have played all, he just recently made this video, it's great. And it's played all of Alan Wake, played all the DLC, played Alan Wake too. And he is able to like take this really wide view of the whole thing. And he has an audience. His videos get lots of views. He is supported on Patreon. And I think he is able to do that as his,

you know, bag. That's his thing. And I don't think he feels I can't speak for him, but he does not engage in, oh, we got to get out quick impressions. I'm doing product reviews for people so they need to know at Embargo Day, whether this new Alan Wake game is good. He's going to go and just make a big series about

Fallout that will be really thoughtful. And there are other people who do this as well. A H. Bomber guy doesn't do it as much, but used to. You know, he's one of the best at it on YouTube. So in certain spheres, there's a world for this kind of thing. Actually, to mention Cameron at Mages and Murder Dats.

They did this with the Baldur's Gate series, with Disco Elysium. Like, it's much later, and they have an audience. So I think if you can establish an audience of people who want to hear complete criticism, then you can sustain yourself and you can do that work. And I personally find that work far more satisfying. I mean, considering that we get games early, I still really, I mean, almost all the time that we're doing a triple play, I feel as though I wish I had been able to play more. And we don't even rush to get things up, but we try to be timely.

always feel like I would have such a stronger take on this game if I just had like three more months to play it. But then, you know, like that's just not the world we live in. And, and you kind of got to, you got to just decide to come back to finish the thought if it, if it occurs to you ever, it seems worth doing. That's the difference between a triple play and a beans cast. I mean, what you're describing, right? We can give ourselves kind of, and I do think there is like a room for these early impressions. I don't think they're necessarily a bad thing. And I think that part of having a conversation about a game can be just kind of acknowledging that your perspectives and opinions on it might change over time, especially if you've only played the first five hours of a 40-hour game.

And then you can, I think what's helpful about our triple plays is that we all just put our cards on the table and say, this is what I've played. This is how I'm feeling about it. And I think all of us are pretty open to allowing that perspective to. change. And actually, I think that's the biggest difference between podcasting as a medium or YouTuber, YouTubeing as a medium versus social media and even to some extent written articles. Because I think that like when you have something in writing on the internet, it can be weaponized a lot more. You feel like you're kind of, you're, you feel a lot more committed to it. You feel like you have to double down on it in a different way than you would if you were just

kind of sharing thoughts out loud with your friends on a podcast. There was certainly been times where like I put something on social media and been like, hmm, I've kind of changed my perspective on that. But like, are people just going to start like giving me shit and like screencapping my old thing? If I'm like, actually, I've changed my mind about that. I kind of, you feel like you have to put your foot down.

Like you're entrenched once you put something out there on social media or again, to a lesser extent in a written article. It's harder to withdraw, like to backtrack on that or change your mind, I think. And people won't always see the follow up too, which is the frustrating thing about social media. and also articles and just the way the internet works. I feel like I learned that really early in my blogging career, as it were, where I would write something and then be like, okay, I have more thoughts on this

and I'm going to link back to this and even try to cross link them. People would still not find it and would link back to the first thing and be like, did you know this and that? And I could be like, yeah, I wrote about that four times, but it's fine. You don't know that. How could you have known? It's just a tough thing. I agree. It's kind of a thing about the written word. It feels permanent, even though the internet doesn't seem as permanent as maybe a print newspaper or a book does. There's still just something about the written word.

Yeah, some of this is related to the incentives of the internet and of the way that communication works on it. I mean, you know, social media is essentially a bunch of people at a cocktail party who haven't seen the movie talking about the movie. There's so much of that. And because it incentivizes reaction above, content because it incentivizes reacting to headline over reading the entire article and saying something meaningful about it. It incentivized short sound bites. You know, it leads to a pretty significant degradation in discourse, which we've seen happen over the last 10 slash 20 years. And I mean, you know, like we were talking about books. I don't actually follow book talk, but it actually wouldn't surprise me if there are people on book talk who are like, I've read the first three paragraphs of the new whatever book. And like, and I think it sucks. You're like the first three chapters. This chapter three is where I'm getting out, and people actually do share like immediate impressions or almost live reading it.

That actually wouldn't surprise me if that existed because the incentives of social media are what they are. And one other thought here, which is a separate conversation, but this also relates to spoilers. And that's something that we also run into where even if you have finished the game, if you finish the game early, a lot of times you're trying to say to people, well, the character is actually a lot more interesting than they seem at the beginning. and it's because you've seen all this stuff that happens, but you don't feel comfortable telling people about it because they don't want to know about it, and that can also kind of hinder you. And that is another nice thing about some of these,

people like Noah, who are doing criticism years after a thing came out. You can just talk about it. Everyone assumes that you're going to have spoilers. And it's why I love making our beans cast. It's actually why I loved our dispatch conversation a couple weeks ago, too. It's so nice when all three of us have just seen the whole thing. We're not talking around anything, and we can just talk about what the damn thing was.

I really think that is by far the best kind of conversation you can have about a work of art. Yeah. I mean, also part of this is like story games versus games where you kind of can get a sense of how the whole thing is going to play out after just playing a few hours. Right? Like in a couple of weeks, we're going to do a triple play on Metroid. And none of us will have completed the game because we'll only have it for what, like five days, six days by the time we actually have to maybe have less than that by the time we have to actually record it. And that game, I mean, I don't know, maybe it's heavy. story, but I have more talking in it than maybe we thought it would actually. Sure, but I have a feeling we'll be able to like deliver like we'll be able to get a sense of what that game is after playing five hours, 10 hours, whatever it is, as opposed to a game where you're or a book where you're just kind of like giving your impressions on like the first act of a three act story. You know, we have an upcoming question that's about the kinds of games that you can't play the entire thing. You know, if we did an episode of Battlefield 6 or Fortnite or something. That's kind of a different thing, but I guess there's an upcoming question about that. So maybe we can get into that when that question comes up. Yeah, all right, let's keep moving.

Here's the next one from Lulu. Hello, Team Click. Is there a deliberate reason why Kirk never chooses a musical album as a one more thing? Yeah, Kirk. Yeah, what's going on? Why am I holding back? Yeah, I guess there is. It doesn't occur to me to do that partly because I do a lot of that on strong songs and in my newsletter.

like I do share a music recommendations, but part of it is that there are a lot of new albums that I love. I mean, I'm constantly sharing music recommendations in those two places, especially in my newsletter. I like do it all the time. But it's rare that there's an album where I'm like, I think triple-click listeners need to know about this one album in a way that is more than, I don't know, something else.

So it's not like a conscious choice, but it's mostly that I have another venue to do that that is like really specifically, two other venues to do that, that are really specifically geared toward music recommendations. So I always have a variety of things competing for my one more thing. Like I know the two of you do as well. I'm always thinking, well, you know, I want to talk about this. I want to talk about that.

So it's rare that there's an album that'll edge out, you know, something else that I could only talk about on triple click. Good answer. Satisfy answer. Cool. I think it's your turn next, also, Kirk. Oh, yes. Okay, so this is the question I was referring to a couple minutes ago. Joe writes, hi, triple click.

One thing I find interesting about video games is that they can change after release through patches. A recent patch to the ending of Hades II got me thinking about how much that can affect the overall video game experience. In this case, they reworked the entire ending and I think it's way more satisfying now. That's actually exciting to hear.

I didn't know that. Sorry, back to Joe. Joe says, so I'm curious, how do you think patches impact the way we experience games? And are there any patches you can think of that changed a game for better or for worse? Man, it's so weird to think that, like, you can play a game and then the ending will be patched and other people will just have a totally different experience of the ending. It's so bizarre.

I mean, I'm not like, I'm not pro it or against it necessarily. It's just so strange. Remember when they patched cats, the movie? They actually did. And it was very game-like that they did that. And I think we converted to games at the time. Maybe not on this show, but certainly amongst ourselves. There were certainly Polygon articles about that.

Sorry, but anyways, to this question. I always thinking about destiny and the many evolutions that that game has been through over the years. Peter Dinklage getting patched out of the entire game and replaced by Nillanorth. It was a big one. Also, just then every single time, way back in the day, Destiny won early days. Every single time we found some fun little exploit that just made the game more interesting. They would patch it out and just make the game slip, maybe more stable, I guess, but slightly less fun. Like when we could beat Kroda Zen by pulling out the landcape.

and like getting him to free. Or the Lou Cave, the Lou Cave, which was the ultimate metaphor in my review of Destiny one where we all just stood in front of a cave and shot enemies all weekend. That was how we played Destiny. And yeah, I think that like this kind of changing the nature of a game and smoothing over the friction, I think, can have some downsides too. It's just such a strange. There's no other medium like that, except I guess in Katz's case, but that's a rare

exception. And I think you just have to accept that games are kind of like, I don't know, like stage plays or something where they're just kind of changing over time and evolving. And especially these live service games where the version you play today is very different than the version you played a few years ago to the point where like kids at the playground might be treating Fortnite like it's an oral tradition of like telling the stories of how your your father used to play Fortnite. and what it was like then

and what his father's version of Fortnite was like, that's like games are going to be like. And especially Fortnite, because there's this Simpsons thing going on with Fortnite that looks totally amazing. I don't play Fortnite and haven't checked it out, but it looks so cool. You can explore Springfield and like go to Mr. Burns's house.

But that is going to end. And when that ends, at least historically, I believe that it will just be gone. So it isn't even just that like they're updating the game and making it smoother and balancing it. They're also adding things and then taking things away. I guess Destiny has done that too. Most MMOs have to take things away at some point.

Otherwise, the install size just gets so huge that the game can't support it. Yeah, or like Sony, they gave us Concord and then they took it away. Okay. That's a really sad example, I would say. I mean, I was going to say, I mean, Concord aside, I generally think the concept of ephemeral art is really cool. I mean, I've always like theater as an art form, and this is a place where I think games are really similar to that. in that it's like you really have to see this live. It's going to be taken away at a certain point.

With a live game, you can actually have that experience of participatory role playing or experience, whatever it is. And I think to give an example of something we've all played, at least a little of Helldivers 2, has done this in a really cool way by just continually updating the game and having patches be a story that is told to the players over time where there'll be like, oh, rumors that a certain kind of insect or robot is joining the game or like leaks quote unquote and people will get really scared in character about what's going to happen and then they'll all have to fight it together and like the in-universe government is denying reports of these things even though players have seen them. I mean, those types of updates are so cool and they can only happen in a live game. And I just think it's neat to see something like that emerging in our current time period.

even though it's also funny to think back on like the Peter Dinklage examples where it's like, well, that's also ephemeral art that we all got to experience at the time. And we can just look back on the memories of that and the YouTube videos of that. And it's lost to the ages. But it wasn't intentional ephemeral art in the way that held divers too is, and that Fortnite can be. Yeah, there's an interesting kind of bit of tension there in the way that games work. Right. Because, yeah, ephemeral art is wonderful.

I mean, I won't start talking about jazz, but jazz is one of the ultimate ephemeral art forms. It is the thing that happens in the spirit of the moment. And recording jazz is almost in some ways, any ways, counter to the whole idea of this improvised conversation that everybody experiences life. Yeah, it's about what you don't record. Right, it's about the raids that you don't go on. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, yeah, certainly. And I actually really like that theater comparison that you both made.

I think that's an interesting way of thinking about it. Because, you know, one example that we haven't mentioned is the ending of mass. Effect 3. That was a very famous example of, you know, a studio changing the ending of a game, in this case, after widespread, you know, criticism of the ending, and a lot of players didn't like it, and they went and changed it. They added stuff to it. And then they also made a DLC, the Citadel DLC, that gave a much grander and more emotional sense of closure to the whole thing. There really does feel like a really wonderful final chapter, sort of final hurrah for that game. And that does feel kind of like a live performance where, you know, a Broadway music,

or something where there's one version of it and then someone reimagines it later. You know, you've seen the recent reimagines of Oklahoma, for example. One of the very first musicals ever written now has been reimagined in this whole other way and they've re-contextualized everything that's happening. Like that's a good way of thinking of it

and games work in that way. And then the tension, I guess, arises because games are also software and we think of software similarly to how we think of games where they changed Microsoft words. So now it's like so hard to select multiple paragraphs. It's so annoying. They moved the edit bar to somewhere. I hate what they've done with it, you know, like where software is always

getting updated and in theory it's getting better, but a lot of times it's not. And games kind of do the same thing because games are also software. So it's this sort of tension between games as art and games as software. Well, yeah, I mean, it's kind of, it follows what we were talking about before where it's like you can patch the gameplay and you can patch the story. You can patch a boss to make it less difficult. You could also patch the end of the boss to make it so he no longer dies. And those are kind of two different interesting things. I think there's a school of thought that like a game is a piece of art and the artist put it out there and should not change their vision just because players react in a certain way. And I've never really bought

that school of thought because every single game, as far as I know, certainly most games have playtesters and the people who are making them respond to how playtesters are reacting in the game. And releasing it to the world is kind of just like getting a whole bunch more playtesters. testers to check it out. And all games are kind of in conversation or a conversation between their authors and their players. And I think if you as an author are finding that people aren't resonating with something or aren't reacting to something in the way that you wanted to, it's kind of like changing the design of a level because you're finding the players aren't experiencing the feeling that you want them to feel with it. So why not do that on a grander scale? So I've always, I've always

kind of been into that this idea that games in general are just kind of an ongoing conversation between their creators and their players. But still, it's so weird. It's just super weird. It's a distinct thing about games, you know. It's what makes them different from George Lucas, tinkering around with his movies and adding stuff to them in a way that I think a lot of people feel sort of makes them less good, you know,

sort of impacts his original artistic vision. And I think a lot of people, myself included, I sort of wish he'd just left the original Star Wars movies be. But then actually getting back to theater, there is the very interesting behind the scenes process with musical theater where there's like a set, usually a kind of pretty rigid production book, like the Bible, for a given show. Like Hamilton, I know, for example, has a very rigid production Bible where the ropes on the stage

all need to be a certain length. And they're like really, really strict. So every performance, the West End performance, the touring performance, the Broadway performance, like the set looks the exact same. The blocking is the same. Like, everything is really set. And this was true for Phantom of the Opera for a long time as well. And I'm going here off of Lindsay Ellis, who came on Strong Songs, several years ago to talk about Broadway, and she was explaining some of this because she's a big Broadway aficionado.

And she was talking about how, for a long time, Phantom also had a very rigid production. You know, the guidelines for production were very, very rigid. And as a result, it was kind of sclerotic. Like, you always got the same Phantom, which was fine because Phantom was, I think, the longest running Broadway show ever. But it never changed. It couldn't change with the times. And that's finally, I think, starting to change with Phantom so they can, like, do. do more interesting casting and they can change the blocking and they can start to reimagine it.

And you can see a little more of that reactivity happening like happens with games. So anyways, I think there's actually a really interesting theater games comparison to make here. Sure, yeah. And Sleep No More is kind of that ultimate just crossing the border between theater. And it has influenced so many games. I mean, far from the only example of a theater piece that's influenced games, but I think because it's interactive and because it's different, as people experience, it makes so much sense that it influenced games.

Let's keep going. Maddie, what's the next question? Okay. So the next one's from Jess, who says, my question for you is, if you could be programmed as an NPC into any game past or present, what game would it be? And how would you add to the story slash what would your side quest be? Man, I would just be with the saxophone player in GTA4 because he's pretty good. It would just be you. There'd be no differences. No, I'd just stand there playing saxophone,

and I'd get to be as good as that guy because he's pretty good. I think I'd probably be a character in Metroid Prime 4 who talks to Samus the entire time and just kind of like tells her where to go and what to do. Makes lots of self-deprecating Marvel-style jokes. Yeah, it's kind of like self-effacing and then just kind of dies horribly at a certain point. That's a great call.

Samis gets tried to. trapped in a room and Maddie is like, well, that just happens. And then immediately starts suggesting how to solve the puzzle to get out of the room. Maybe you should look up. Look for a key. Oh, that door seems to be locked. I don't think you can open that right now. You got it.

You could play this character. I think you're already recording your voice lines. I know. I'm made for it. I feel like I would be, I would like to be added to one of these RPGs that, like, has a journalist character and be the person yelling at the journalist character. at the journalist character that they're completely like fucking up

every ethical boundary and should be staying out of the story and not helping the player because they should be trying to stay fair and at least somewhat objective. Jay Jonah Jameson, but actually with journalistic ethics. Are you like an editor

character who's like calling a journalist character on the phone and yelling at them? I'm thinking of like, you know, the journalist in Fallout 4 that journalist has some problematic some problematic notions. I usually do. I would be the press sneak fuck who comes in and is like,

actually, I can't join your party because that would not be appropriate, but I can chat with you and hear your story and monitor you and try to tell your story in a fair way. But don't be surprised. The first thing you do in every dialogue exchange is established whether you're on background or on the record. Yeah, we're on the record here. Exactly.

Well, that's really what the player character should be doing. Jason's going to assume it's all on the record. And the player character needs to very carefully select whether or not it's actually off the record ahead of time. It's funny to say that. I do. No, I always establish it pretty clearly because I don't assume that people will know how that works. Sadly, they don't. All right.

Next question. Let's see if we can fit in two more. Maybe I'll do one more. Let's see. Chris asks, hello, Kirkmoney and Jason. I was wondering what it's like being on the other side of a paris social relationship. listening to the podcast each week for years, I've learned a lot about you three, your taste, interest, histories, experience, likes, dislikes, etc. You three are part of a large network of parisocial pals, quote, that exist in my life. And I imagine that's true for many other listeners. But y'all didn't even know I existed until reading this. To me, these parasycial connections feel distinct from traditional, quote, fandom. They're more intimate and personal while still remaining very one-sided. So what's it like on that other side? It's a good question. It's pretty chill, at least for me. I mean, it's funny. You know, we've been doing enough, we've been doing live events for a few years and meetups and, you know, these wonderful times where we get together and kind of a crowd of people come out and they talk to us and everyone's really, really nice. And it is a manifestation of what Chris is talking about, where it's a lot of people who have listened to the three of us talk maybe every week for years. And as a result, yeah, like Chris says, they know all kinds of little things about.

about us. And we're meeting them for the first time. For me anyways, it feels very natural and relaxed. I think we have relaxed listeners. We are a fairly relaxed show. The whole thing is pretty chill. We're not trying to be larger than life in any way, I don't think. And so when people meet us and we are, in fact, just normal life-sized, it just kind of feels like, oh, you make a thing I like. This is so nice. I get to say hi to you. And it always just kind of feels fine. So to me, that fact makes the whole thing just feel pretty much fine. And I have lots of podcasts that I listen to or YouTube, YouTubers that I watch or whatever,

people that I also, I guess I have a parosocial relationship with them. I feel like I've been watching them for a long time. I've watched their career change. I do know things about their life. And to me, that also feels kind of chill. Like if I ever met one of those people, it would be really similar. It'd be like, hey, like, this is funny. You know, there's that little odd thing where I've watched you do a lot of

different things. I'm kind of aware of that parts of your life. But it's just increasingly a part of the tapestry of life. Like so many people now have, you know, an audience or some kind of like relationship, like that kind of one-sided relationship with some level of audience. So everyone's kind of grown comfortable with it. And it's become a little bit more natural, I would say, over the last 10 years. I think I've also gotten better at it over time before I ever was on split screen, which I'm just thankful that I is the case for me and that enough people read my work and recognized me at a Pax or whatever it may be that I got used to people coming up to me and I will say I wasn't back great at it at first and I regret being really shy early on and and often not knowing what to say

in those early days when people came up and were like oh I'm so excited to meet you I'd be like why I don't really like have some regrets about being so self-effacing And that was like a really important lesson that I learned very early on was that people get very uncomfortable if you're self deprecatory in that moment, even if that's how you feel, which for the record, it's always how I feel. Like Kirk said, I don't feel like I'm a big deal when I'm beating any of our listeners. But if somebody comes up and they say, oh, I've followed your work, you have to just say thank you and treat it like a compliment, which it is. And I just do that now.

And it makes every interaction so much better because anytime I was self-deprecatory, I didn't realize I was kind of accidentally insulting the reader. Right. I suck. Yeah. Exactly. Well, you're actually stupid for liking me. Well, your taste is terrible, clearly. I'm trying to like make the interaction less awkward.

But in actuality, I would always be making it worse by doing that. But now I just say thank you. And I love now to learn about our listeners or. my readers. And that's so fun to get to have a real conversation with them and find out what they're into and get to, you know, be on the other side and not be the one who's talking. That part is really great. Yeah. I mean, what you guys said, we've had pretty good interactions with people over the years. I feel like, Kirkway, you said it was particularly funny to me because I have watched the psychoticy documentary many times and met some of the people in that.

documentary, including some people in that documentary who listen to Triple Click. So it's kind of like a dual, a double-sided. Yeah, like we're both. Parasciality. Which is very funny. Oh, you're on my favorite TV show. Oh, you're on my favorite podcast. Yeah, that which is, which is fun. Yeah, I think maybe, yeah, I think that to your point, Maddie, I actually think there's some other shows, including some that I've listened to over the years, where like there are people who maybe act a little bit differently or are putting on more of a front while performing on stage or on a podcast because they're actually quite introverted and they have to be extroverted when they're putting on the show. And so meeting them in person, they're kind of like almost like different people. And that can be a little off putting. I think the three of us are not really like that.

All three of us are just kind of the same people on the show as we are in real life. we don't really have to put on a personality or put on a character or anything like that. Although I will say that for all of you out there wondering, Dan Reichert is exactly the same in person as he is on his podcast. Not a character. And so I think that is helpful. And yeah, I mean,

it's just like the biggest factor here is just that our listenership is so chill and cool and normal. And I can probably count on one hand that a number of times I've had weird and interactions with like triple click listeners. I've had way more weird interactions that just kind of like just I don't know oddball people in the world who just have nothing to do with triple click or just gamers or like weird people at conferences who are just confrontational and stuff like that who don't listen to our show. I think if you listen to our show chances are you're a pretty well adjusted person I will say huge compliment. I don't even like well adjusted might not even be the right word. You're pretty you're like someone who treats people well I think is might be the

the best way to put it and we've experienced that nonstop in our real lives. In fact, I remember one time Kirk and I were doing, before you joined the show, Maddie, we were doing a split screen episode or a panel or something and it was like right after Gamergate had started and we were like so nervous. No, it couldn't have been split screen. It was some Krataku panel. It was like, I think just like a Krataku panel. We were nervous about the reactions and it turns out everyone who was there was just super chill and nice and and there wasn't a single like bad person among them and we realized that like, oh actually, okay, the people who are like fans of us are not going to do like pull that type of shit. Yeah.

And the the people who are haters are often very reticent to actually talk to you in real life I've found and thank goodness. Yeah. But that's as far as just like knowing that like tens of thousands of people out there listen to us every week and know things about our lives. It's always a little bit strange, especially when it kind of crosses into the real world. Like, my wife will be like, oh, yeah, this person I met is like a fan of your triple click. And it's always a little strange.

But it's fun. I mean, it's not a bad thing. It's just a little weird, kind of like video game patching. It's like not a bad thing. It's just weird. Weird part of life. Yeah. Makes it feel like a small world.

I don't think we have time for another one. So I think we're going to call it here. Thank you to everybody who sent in the great questions. Once again, if you want to send in questions. Triple click at maximum fun. dot org is how you reach us. Let's take your break and then we'll be back with one more thing. Ready go.

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Hewn in rock? Yeah. How do you hew something in rock? With a chisel. There's only one hue in rock and it's Huey Lewis. And the news is we got this with Mark and Howells available every week on maximum fun.org. I walked right into that. You need a gift for a Max Fun fan in your life?

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Maximumfun.org slash gift guide. And we are back. It's time for one more thing. Maddie. Start us off. So I went on a PC gaming journey, like the kind of frustrating experience that will make you sarcastically go PC gaming to your friend. And I just wanted to warn some people. That'll make you out of a SC machine.

We'll see about that. So I wanted to play Blackop 7, specifically the campaign and not the multiplayer. But even if you want to play the campaign for Blackop 7, you still have to install their anti-cheat that is for the multiplayer, I would say. And that requires you to change a setting in your computer, specifically in the BIOS setting. which is called secure boot. And if you don't change your computer to be in secure boot mode, you can't run the game at all. And this is also true for a ton of other games, Battlefield 6, the Valerent, a bunch of other modern multiplayer games have this as like a way to implement

anti-cheat. And I've certainly changed stuff in my bio settings before. This is like, you know, when you're restarting your computer, you see those things at the bottom of the screen. It's like, press the delete key to go into bio settings. I've done that. before I've changed things. And I'm pretty cocky about this actually as it happens. So I was like, whatever, I'm just going to go in and I'm going to change this toggle. And I would say like for a huge percentage of people, that is all you do. You change a toggle to a secure boot and your computer does that and it's fine. But for some percentage of people, I'm not sure how high, but I know it's tons of people because I found dozens upon dozens of Reddit threads from other people who had this

happen to them. If you change these settings, your computer will not work anymore. And that is what happened to me. I changed these settings. They should call it secure. Can't boot. Secure brick. Insecure, non-booting. Am I right? Folks? Uh, anyway, I'm on my computer again. I did fix this. But I did want to warn people about this. It is a pretty serious thing to change. And it's fixable if this happens to you. It's not going to brick your computer or anything, but in my case it did make it so the display didn't turn on anymore, even though the computer was on. Do you really need that? I know.

Like, do you need to see Black Ot 7 to play it? More and more people are asking this. And so I did figure it out. I did have to like learn how to Q flash my bios, whatever the frick that means. And I did that and it's all fine now. But it was really frustrating. And I guess I'm just going to go ahead and come out and say that even though this was really easy for a huge majority of people, it wasn't easy for me. And so therefore I'm against it.

This does mean I'm biased. And maybe the anti-cheat software is going great. But I don't think that you should have to go into your bio settings to play a video game. I just, I don't know. I think that might be a bridge too far for me. Well, the burning question here is, is it PC gaming that's the problem or call a duty that's the thing? problem. I don't know. I don't know what the problem is. And I did end up fixing this, but it was quite complicated to fix it. Luckily, I have a laptop so, like, I could download the, the motherboard,

like, Q-flash stuff to a USB drive and, like, learn how to where to plug it in and learn how to Q-flash the motherboard. It was all a wonderful PC gaming learning experience for me. And by wonderful, I mean, it wasn't because I was really scared that my computer was never going to turn on again. And it was, it all turned out okay, but. Sounds like a real PC gaming experience. Terrified for a moment and eventually relieved. Yeah, it turned out fine. But I just, I guess I don't really understand why this level of anti-cheat is necessary if I simply want to play the campaign.

So that's my big existential question is our game is going to start doing this now? I hope not. Isn't this the case that Blackop 7, you can't pause the campaign because it's like a multiplayer, it's like running like multiplayer. I think I saw people complaining about this among many. I can't verify that, but that could make sense. I remember playing Black Ops 6, and this was after watching Dunkies Review, video game, Dunkies Review was like just the menus and trying to play the campaign of Black op 6.

It was like 10 minutes of him failing and getting kicked from menu to menu to menu. Because there are like 17 menus that you have to go through in order to play the campaign to the last one. I did experience the menus, yeah. It's wild. Call of Duty is a series of menus now. They had some real cruft accumulation in that series. Jason, you and I earlier this year.

we both this year had to do the BIOS update because I got the pop-up. I think it was for Outer Worlds. I believe that both, maybe both Obsidian Games did this where there's a little Windows pop-up that says, essentially, alert, your computer will explode like a grenade if the wrong wires crossed, so you might want to update your BIOS.

But it wasn't the games. It was the Intel CPU that we both have that had an issue, that this game just happened to warn you about a security vulnerability or like some big vulnerability that, like, we should have been fixing regardless. It's just this game. game happened to warn us about it. It didn't have anything to do with the game, I don't think. It was like, oh, my understanding was that there was some sort of critical error that could happen.

No, it's your Intel CPU. If you didn't do this one update that we both did, your CPU would just melt over time, just like lose performance over time. Unrelated from the game. I mean, that's terrifying. That was actually a kind service that the game was doing for you. Yeah. Yeah, I'm happy to have done it. It was just a pain in the ass. I mean, it was a very similar process, Maddie, where you have to install a new bios. on a USB drive, but then it has to be formatted to a certain type of fat formatting and then it doesn't read it. Or it can't load it or it doesn't see a BIOS because you actually downloaded the one for the ASS motherboard that doesn't have Wi-Fi, but I have the ASS motherboard with Wi-Fi.

Yeah, like did you download the V-1.0 motherboard or the 1.2? And which motherboard do you have? I was kind of joking before, but like if the Steam machine running SteamOS will likely not run into a lot of these same issues. Well, but the Steam machine can't even run the anti-cheat that we're talking about. And so these games will not play on it. Yeah, that's true. Then you don't have to. Blackop 7 and Battlefield.

I mean, so it's doing you a favor. So actually the solve is you don't play Blackop 7. That's the solve as it happens. I helped you have to play it. You didn't want to play Battlefield 6, the most popular multiplayer. It turns out of you didn't want to play it. You didn't want to play it that bad. Just trust us.

You're going to bank us later. You can play Deadlock. Kirk, what's your one more thing? My one more thing is a podcast series that I listen to, and loved, and I just really want to spread the word about it because I'm sure it will appeal to a small percentage of our listeners, but those who don't know about it and might like it, I think might really like it, and I want more people to listen to it. It is called Felakuti, Fear No Man.

This is a new series from Higher Ground and Audible, Higher Ground the Obama's production company. So one of the last companies that are producing narrative sort of high production value podcasts. Last year they made the wonder of Stevie, which was all about Stevie Wonder, hosted by Wesley Morris, an incredible show. I actually had Wes on Strong Songs last year to talk about it. And then this year, they worked with Jad Aboumarad, the creator of Radio Lab, podcasting legend, to make this show about Felakuti. And actually, I had Jad on Strong Songs as well to talk about it. So if you listen to this series and like it, you can also hear me talking to Jad about his career and about this show.

So Felakutti Fear No Man is the story of Felakutti, who I'm sure is a name that some of you, out there know. And I'm guessing that some of you don't really know who he is. Like you're like, yeah, I think he's like an important African musician, but I don't really know who that is. And I think that's a totally reasonable way to feel. It's pretty common. He is someone worth knowing about and he is a fascinating figure. So Felakuti was, he is credited large, kind of as the father of Afrobeat, which is the whole style of music that you will hear in everything you listen to now, but was kind of a new thing in the 1970s. It was this like evolution of high life music, which was a style of African pop music that kind of merged with American, African-American

music like James Brown and became like funkier and kind of more urgent and more intense. And Felakuti was like at the forefront of that. So he's a Nigerian musician. He made most of his music in the 1970s and then the 80s, the music he made in the 80s was pretty different. And the 70s is kind of where he did the bulk of the songs that you will hear. He was also very importantly a really intense political activist. He was a radical political activist at a time when Nigeria recently independent, granted its independence by Britain,

but of course saddled with all kinds of restrictions that led to all sorts of horrible things happening in Nigeria, which are still happening today. This is very much like the legacy of colonialism and how formerly colonized countries were not really given an opportunity to flourish after Britain left them. And that definitely happened in Nigeria.

So Felao was a really important figure in the movement for African independence, for Nigerian independence, and he kind of became a figurehead. He was a really intense activist. He suffered all kinds of violence. I mean, there were just raids on his compound all the time. Being in his band meant you were going to get beat up by the police, beat up by the military, and maybe even killed.

There was a lot of that. So this podcast series tells his story. It's the story of his music. It's the story of his family. His mother, actually, Fumaleo, was a really amazing lady. She was like also an activist. in Nigeria, kind of leading in the years leading up to independence, Britain had like left in the 1950s, but they still had a kind of puppet ruler. And she was part of this big like women's

union protest that was amazing where like this whole group of Nigerian women protested against the kind of puppet ruler in Nigeria and like ran him out of the country. They tell the story of that. Then it's the story of fella of the good and the bad. He was definitely like a complicated figure. He did a lot of bad things and a lot of good things. He was kind of a cult leader in some ways. A lot about his music, what it meant to people, zombie, his most famous piece, like, what that means. It's this kind of anti-military anthem that you'll hear all over the place. Beyonce quoted zombie at her Coachella performance. Like, it's a really important piece of music. And then it gets into his children as well, who his two of his sons are actually big

Afro beat stars as well. So it's this kind of generational story about Nigerian history and about what protest music can mean, about how. to make art in the face of oppression and why that art matters. And it's like a really relevant series. It's so well made. I mean, Jad is like the best to ever do it. There's some incredible audio storytelling. They conjure the feeling of like being at a show, you know, at an Afrobeach show in 1974 and what that would have been like so effectively. They interview all kinds of people, women who worked with Fela who've never been interviewed before. They went to Lagos in Nigeria to talk to all kinds of people. It's so, so amazing, and you'll learn so much about the world,

about music, about Nigeria, and just, I can't recommend it enough. So that is my glowing recommendation for Felakuti, Fear No Man. It's a podcast series. They're, I think, a little over halfway done with it. They're releasing new episodes still. I've listened to the whole thing. It's really great. And if you do listen to it, you like it, you can also check out my interview with Chad on Strong Songs, which was a lot of fun. Nice little cross-promotion opportunity. Yeah. That's part of the reason they probably let me My Wormer Thing is a book about a period in time where the stock market was frothy. People were really excited about tech stocks.

There had been a pandemic just a few years earlier, but now things are really, really rocking, and people are really excited about money. And that book is a verse called 1929 by Andrew Ross Sorkin, a reporter for the New York Times and also the co-creator of billions. Oh, cool. Prolific journalist. He has a great newsletter called Deal Book that pops up in my inbox every morning.

I always appreciate it. Always interesting business reporting on there. And he has written this book that is about, not just 1929, despite the title, but that entire period of like the stock market crashing leading into the Great Depression, which includes a presidential transition, and includes a lot of kind of ups and down,

along the way with the stock market and the kind of financial fate of the country and then leads into FDR's New Deal and the Glass-Steagall Act and the formation of the SEC and a lot of things that happen as a result of that. It's a really fascinating book. It is fun to read and Sorkin, not related to Aaron Sorkin as far as I know, but Sorkin does a good job of picking these characters to follow, who are all pretty much awful people who just take advantage of the stock market in all sorts of different ways. He paints a lot of really interesting pictures. He's done a ton of reporting for this book, did a lot of research into old depositions and newspaper articles from the 20s and all sorts of other just kind of primary sources that he did a really good job

digging into and paints this really interesting picture by following these people on like the effects they had on the market at the time. And as you're reading it, you just keep thinking like, oh, my God, this is so similar to what's happening now, the income inequality, the way that people are making these bets. It's actually, there's a lot of parallels between this and, like, the housing crisis of 2008. People are making a lot of bets using money they don't have, doing what's called margin calls where, like, you're buying stocks that maybe you're putting down 10 or 20 percent of the actual money they're using to buy it, and the rest is based on debt. But everybody feels like they have to keep buying because they're excited about the future and all this technology and

there are all these kind of quote irrational reasons to remain exuberant. Irrational exuberance is a famous, a famous stock term. And people just kind of like continuing to whip themselves into a frenzy until the house of cards comes collapsing down. And it's also about how it's like, what's the quote? It's like stock market crashes or any sort of like tragedy like happens. gradually and then suddenly, and you kind of, you see that, and the way that circled the story is really cool because he, like, focuses on specific days over time. So it might be,

like, October 26, 1929. And this is the day that, like, they call Black Monday or whatever it was, because that's when the stock is crashing. But actually, then we go ahead a few weeks, and then, oh, things have recovered. Actually, maybe it's not so bad. Oh, go ahead, another few weeks. Oh, bam, bam, it's crashing again. And it's really kind of get that sense of foreboding as you're reading. Like, oh my God, this is all about to collapse. I'm getting a sense of foreboding as your describing this. I just looked at the New York Times homepage to just make sure that there hasn't been a massive stock market crash since you started your one more thing, because it feels very possible. It's really interesting. It's

similar to 2008, there were very few people who suffered serious repercussions as a result of the misdeeds they did. And there's a lot of just kind of like, bad behavior, such as companies offering stock prices at one price to, or stocks at one price to the public and then another price to preferred traders and friends of the firm, including like prominent politicians. Well, this was when you couldn't trade stocks unless you had, unless you were like a licensed stockbroker, which is something they didn't even relax until like, I think the 70s, 60s or 70s.

So there was a lot, there were a lot of restrictions over who could even get involved in the stock market. It's a really, it's a fascinating book. I really enjoyed reading it. Yeah, it sounds great. I would love to read it. I highly recommend it. And Sorkin, like the best nonfiction writers, has a really good knack for just writing in an interesting way in a way that is compelling and fun to read, even when it's about a subject that you might find dry, such as finances in the 1920s and 1930s. And he does that in a smart way by focusing on these people and you kind of get into their heads for.

for that time period which is really interesting. So yeah, I recommend. Does you do a good walk-in talk? Like the two characters are walking toward the camera and having a conversation. Different sorkin.

Different sorkin. Does he not know how to write women? I mean, there aren't any women in this story, but that's because of the history, not because of the story itself. I don't think there were any women on the trademarker back then. Probably not.

And other than the wife, there's one guy, one main character who to avoid paying taxes sells his stock to his wife. And that's a fun little side plot there. But anyway, it's a good book. I recommend it 1929. Andrew Ross Sarkin. Really cool.

Fun read. And that is it for this week's episode. Thank you to everyone who sent in questions. Thank you to everyone who supports us. I hope you enjoy The Sopranos episode shortly. That's going to hit pretty soon. And thank you, Kirk and Maddie, for being my podcast host on this wonderful Thanksgiving day. I'm feeling very thankful.

Yeah, I feel very thankful for our friendship and for this show that we get to continue to make together. Same. Thanks to you both. That's so nice. Happy Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. We'll see you next week for Game Awards predictions. Oh, yeah.

All right. I will see both of you then. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes.

Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network, and if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at Maximumfund.org slash join. Email us at triple click at Maximumfund.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.

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