Triple Click - Why Are Games So Much Like Jobs?

Episode Date: April 24, 2025

How should video game consoles differentiate themselves without exclusives? Do games make us more or less lonely? And are RPGs popular because they feel like jobs? This week, Maddy, Jason, and Kirk open up the listener mailbag and take some of your (excellent) questions. Plus: three killer new games that are out this week!One More Thing:Kirk: Sunderfolk (PC, Consoles, Switch)Maddy: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33Jason: The Hundred Line: Last Defense AcademyLINKS:Triple Click LIVE in Portland, July 11: https://albertarosetheatre.com/event/triple-click-live/alberta-rose-theatre/portland-oregon/“All Work and No Play” by Sam Adler-Bell for Dissent, 2021: https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/all-work-and-no-play/Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinBuy Triple Click Merch: https://maxfunstore.com/search?q=triple+click&options%5Bprefix%5D=lastJoin the Triple Click Discord: http://discord.gg/tripleclickpodTriple Click Ethics Policy: https://maximumfun.org/triple-click-ethics-policy/ Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointripleclick 🚀  SUPPORT TRIPLE CLICK:Join Maximum Fun | Buy TC Merch💬 JOIN THE TRIPLE CLICK DISCORD🎮 Triple Click Ethics Policy📱 SOCIALS | @tripleclickpodInstagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitch

If you think about it, a lot of video games are kind of just jobs that are so satisfying that we pay in order to be allowed to do them. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we're opening the mailbag to talk about console exclusives, games as labor, how to enjoy a prequel and more. And after the break, we talk about three great new games that we've each been loving. Lots to talk about. Let's get into it. I'm Kirk Hamilton. I'm Maddie Myers.

And I'm Jason Shrier. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hi, my friends. It's us. Welcome to the Gates of Oblivion, aka the Triple Click podcast.

Yeah, that's the day we're recording this. We just saw that. Just watched it. Good stuff. The key with our podcast is you run in, you pass all the enemies, you just run to the very end, and then you get the unique piece of loot,

and then you run out. That's how you listen to Triple Plac. I thought the key was that you hit a rat, and then the rat starts just wildly flying around the room and not obeying the laws of physics at all, and you just kind of watch it happen. That happens, too. I think we've lost a metaphor at some point there.

That's just my oblivion gate memory from playing oblivion, which I think we'll talk about in the future. At any rate, triple click. At any gate. At any gate of oblivion. And any small gates. A listener supported oblivion gate. This oblivion gate only opens to the plane of oblivion, thanks to the support of all of our listeners who worship at the idol of each of the gates to keep the magical power flowing so that the gate is open. Yeah, everyone knows this.

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It's just us and all of you, and that is wonderful. So maximumfund.org slash join, sign up to become a member and support triple. Click. Last thing before we get into this week's episode, we are playing a live show in my hometown of Portland, Oregon on July 11th at the Alberta Rose Theater. Damn, I'm excited. People are buying tickets. Pre-sales are up. You can get your ticket now and you really should because that tells us how many people to expect and guarantees you a spot at the show. It's going to be super cool. We're going to talk about all kinds of things. It'll be kind of a super-size live taping. There will be music. There will be songs. There will be instruments. There will be instruments. There will be other surprises. We're still figuring some of it out, but I'm incredibly excited at least, and just psyched to do a show in Portland and at a very cool venue too. So that's Friday, July 11th, Alberta Rose Theater, buy some tickets. Come see us live. All right. Burning Questions time. Jason Schreier, take us away. We got a whole lot of questions from all you find listeners out there. So thank you for them. We're going to open them up, read some questions. As always, you can reach us a

triple click at maximum fun.org with your own burning questions. Keep them short. Keep them interesting. Pity. Keep it secret. Keep it safe. And let's get to it. Kirk, when do you read this first one? This first question comes from Billy who writes, how should platforms or consoles differentiate themselves without console exclusive games? That's a great question, Billy. What do you think of this? And maybe they shouldn't. This is what keeps Phil Spencer up at night. right? The answer is they can't. How do we? What is a brand? What is the nature of a brand? The Xbox is the friends you made along the way. Well, I guess there's two ways. One is by having unique hardware, like gimmicks or functionality, like if it's portable or if it has motion controls.

A mouse suddenly? If one of your controllers becomes a mouse, that might be noticeable. A mouse controller. Yes. So that's one way. It's just kind of weird gimmicks. that never seems to work if you don't have exclusive software to support those gimmicks. So I'm not sure if that really is an actual successful. I mean, it certainly differentiates it. I guess the question is a question is can it sell? The question is it doesn't differentiate itself. Nintendo absolutely is differentiating itself.

No, Nintendo is exclusive games. I'm saying that's true. That's true as well. In this idea of like a console that can't have exclusive software. hardware gimmicks are one way, although that wouldn't be successful because it's very hard to sell hardware gimmicks without software that it associates with it. The other thing that I always think about and have been preaching that Xbox should do for like a decade now since like early days of Kataka split screen is that they should make some sort of living room PC that differentiates itself by being open and letting you hack it and install mods on it and run windows on it and run steam on it. and do all that other good stuff. So I guess that's one way you could differentiate yourself. That's an interesting thought that if you're not closing it down in order to keep your exclusive software on your console, the answer is to open it up because you don't have any

exclusive software. So the way you can differentiate yourself is to open your platform up. That makes it kind of sense. It does. And I think that could be really appealing to people. I don't know if it's got the same sort of like widespread appeal as a switch. But I think it could be appealing to people. I think people generally like the idea. I mean, like Android phones are incredibly popular for that reason. So it could make it work.

Yeah, it's funny. Like, I think one thing that differentiates the PS5 for me is the dual sense controller, which I really like. And I really like all the haptic stuff. I really like how the raindrops feel in my hands when I'm walking through the rain in the game. But the thing is, I really appreciate that Sony has, put dual sense support in a lot of PC games or allowed PC games to support the dual sense

because I just leave my dual sense plugged in to my PC. So I play them there. So even that doesn't keep me over on the PlayStation 5, even though it is a hardware differentiator. You know, one intellectual exercise we might try for this question is what if all the streaming services that all of us are constantly spending all of our money on didn't have a exclusive shows. What if The Last of Us wasn't on HBO? What if Squid Game wasn't on Netflix? And they just all kind of had the same stuff. Why would we subscribe to one or another? And what would it take for them to differentiate themselves from one another? The only thing I can think of is discovery. That that could be something. No, what about quality? Like some of them have

4K streaming or whatever. And they offer that. That seems like that. That seems like they would reach parody pretty quickly because that is true even for me now. But that's kind of what consoles are offering is sometimes a quality difference. And so in my mind, I'm like, well, it could offer something about the app that works way better, easy to use, ease of use, and then also quality of the content on the app. With quality, with streaming anyways, that is true that for me at least, and it might just be what I'm paying for. Netflix has Atmos and we have an Atmos sound bar, so the sound is better. So if I can watch something on Netflix or on Apple that also has an atmosphere, I'll watch it there where I think our HBO like Max app doesn't do that. So that's a

little differentiator. And Discovery, which I mentioned, I could kind of see maybe because there's such an overwhelming amount of stuff, you know, if the algorithm on one of these, if the way that it surfaces stuff for you works really well, I could maybe see that. Even that feels like week tea. I don't think it is. I think it's like why people like TikTok over Instagram Reels, even if There are creators who share identical content on both places because TikTok is famous for having good discoverability. So it's like, why you like one? Yeah, but also there is a content difference. Like there are a lot of people making TikTok, TikToks that aren't making real.

There's not, they're not perfectly comparable. But some of it is like I prefer the experience of using this thing. And it's not just name brand recognition or even reputation, although all of those things play a role. Discoverability is a very different piece when you're talking about. a minute video as opposed to a 40-hour game, 40-hour game. Or even as opposed to a TV show or something. Like, each one of those is very different. But we're talking about consoles.

To bring it back to consoles. Like if you're thinking about this hypothetical console that is really good at discoverability and has an algorithm that will recommend you the perfect game, you still wouldn't necessarily follow the algorithm's advice because the commitment, both financially and time-wise, is so big compared to a TikTok where you can just let the algorithm guide you in, there's no real loss to that. There's no detriment to that. So discoverability, I mean, this hypothetical console that distinguishes itself, let's say a console existed as all the same games as all the other consoles, but it distinguishes itself through

discoverability. I don't really know if that would necessarily work. Yeah, feels weak. I agree. It was just one I could come up with, but it doesn't feel super compelling. Yeah, it's tough. I mean, at the end of the day, I think that like we're moving more and more away from a world of console exclusives because they don't make financial sense for a lot of these companies. And I think that is going to broadly be a good thing, as much as we might love Nintendo and the games that they make and the games they make are only really possible because they do it on their own machines. I think a world where you can just kind of have access to, I don't know, let's say hypothetically we live in a world where like instead of a place,

and Xbox. There was just a living room PC and you could buy it and upgrade it and mod it and get kind of different versions. And maybe some of them were kind of streamlined packages that you could buy for 500 bucks the way that a console is now. But then you had access to any game you could get on PC. That to me seems like a way more appealing world than the current one where you're just like, oh man, well, I want the PlayStation exclusive, but I also want to play a vow. So which one am I going to get? I don't know. That sucks. And maybe if you're thinking about the TV comparison, And maybe a better comparison point might be like, am I going to get a Roku or am I going to get an Apple TV? And when you ultimately get those and all of those are successful, despite the fact that you can download any app on those.

Like I'm not going to Roku and being like, oh, damn, Netflix is exclusive to the Apple TV. And so I can't watch it on my Roku. I think that like in a world where consoles were more like those kind of set top, table TV top devices, that would be better for people overall. I guess it would be, though, mentioning the Apple TV makes me think of Apple in general, and something that Apple does to incentivize people to buy their hardware, is that they have this whole ecosystem that you're kind of bought into slash locked into, which consoles haven't really managed. And I don't know, you know, I certainly feel very conflicted about that.

Despite the fact that I use Apple everything, I really like the Apple TV. I recommended it on the show. I think it's probably the best streaming box you can get, especially if you were in the Apple ecosystem, which is always that qualifier people add, because you can use it as like a home hub, or you can stream to it, like cast to it super easily from your phone, or it has the Apple Fitness app, which we really like,

so we can do yoga in the living room, and it talks to my watch and knows that I'm working out. Like, it synergizes with all these products. I just, Kirk, when you describe that, it just sounds like an Apple commercial where it's cutting from you, like, you're in the studio, like, recording music on your MacBook, and then you move to the living room,

and this music is playing over you while it's, a montage of you doing these different things on Apple devices. Right, putting on my Vision Pro and bumbling around in the studio trying to play guitar. Yeah, but at the same time, I'm often very annoyed by the fact that I am required to use all these products together, and they don't even always work together all that well. You know, my watch that I wear when I run doesn't always work with my AirPods. Like, there's really annoying things about having to be locked into one platform. This commercial is suddenly a record scratch.

Yeah, this is taking a turn. My Apple Watch is really working anymore. It's actually an Android commercial. So, you know, like, I think like that experience is one that I'm sure a lot of people have and feel conflicted about, where it's, there's a lot of convenience, but it is also frustrating. And you can't get out. You have that sunk cost feeling. And the consoles don't really feel that way. I mean, especially PC gaming doesn't really feel that way, except for Steam.

You know, I feel very tied to Steam because I have such a massive Steam library. But I don't feel like there's this big ecosystem that I've bought into quite to the same extent as Apple. It does seem like Nintendo maybe kind of wants to go. more in that direction with what they're doing with the Switch 2 and how it feels a little bit like a just upgraded version of the Switch. I don't know. Like, I'm sure all three of those companies would love to be as successful at locking people in as Apple is.

Yeah, the analogy is never going to be perfect just because there's no gaming device that will ever be as essential to your life as your iPhone. So it's hard to make a one-to-one comparison. But, yeah, I mean, I don't know. I think traditionally to just kind of put a pin on, put a ribbon. on Billy's question here. The traditional model has always been that you sell consoles through these killer apps exclusives, like going back to the days of Super Mario Brothers being packaged within NES. So I don't really know that we have seen a model that works outside of that.

And I don't know if there is one other than everyone just going open and ditching console exclusives entirely. All right, let's keep going. Maddie, want to ask this next question? Sure. So this one's from Ethan, who writes, are creative sandbox games like Roblox and Minecraft popular for kids because they are, quote, childish, end quote, or because kids' minds haven't been molded by an employer yet? And are RPG games popular with adults because they give you a familiar formula of do this job this way? Wow. I love this question. Can I read an excerpt from something as a kind of a prompt as the beginning of our response. of this question. So a little while back I mentioned an essay by Sam Adler Bell, host of Know Your Enemy, co-hosts of No Your Enemy, I should say, and a very smart guy called All Work and

No Play that he published in dissent. And it's all about this. We're going to link it in the show notes. And Ethan, I hope you will read this. And anyone who's interested in this subject will read it. But I want to read you two an excerpt that we can then talk about. So this is Sam writing, quote, amusement under late capitalism is the prolongation of work, unquote. Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer declared in 1944. The mechanization of labor, the Frankfurt theorists thought, had so enmeshed itself with human leisure and happiness, and so profoundly determined the manufacture of amusement goods, that entertaining diversions were inevitably after images of the work process itself.

Following this lead, game theorist Stephen Poole observed in 2008 that modern video games, quote, seemed to aspire to a mimesis of the mechanized work process, unquote. We learn or are disciplined by the game's rules and receive positive feedback for following them efficiently. Quote, you didn't play the game, unquote, pool writes, much less beat it. Rather, quote, you performed the operations it demanded of you like an obedient employee. The game was a task of labor, unquote. A little more from Sam. Single player games with plenty of weapons to upgrade, skills to gain, and currencies to spend are perhaps the archetypal iteration of this phenomenon,

but almost all contemporary games contain some memetic elements of work and market exchange. They don't offer fantasies of escape or imaginative play for its own sake. They offer a fantasy of rules, a rationality otherwise missing from the contemporary wage labor process. Vicki Osterwell has called this type of game a utopian work simulator. It doles out rewards at predictable intervals in exchange for our disciplined effort. These rewards can make the game easier,

allowed us to purchase in-game adornments, signal our achievements to others and progress in a logical and satisfying trajectory towards an achievable goal. Games remain a form of diversion, but what they divert us from is not our labor, but our disappointment with its volatility, its arbitrariness, its cruelty, and its unfairness. Wow. So what he's saying is that it's not a coincidence that the video games as an art form emerged around the time that the American dream of you work hard at the same company for 30 years and then you buy a house and you have four kids.

There's a meritocracy and it's all going great. That died out at the same time as video games emerges in our form. And that the ultimate, I love this idea. It's kind of bleak, but it's so fascinating and it really feels true to me. That the fantasy that so many games offer is a fantasy where your work results in coherent rewards for you. Your work pays off. Yeah. Yeah.

You actually, you get a raise every year. You don't get laid off randomly. Right. Despite the fact of the game. experience points and you get to see the sparkly level up signifiers, whatever those may be. It's great. Feels good. Yeah.

So I think to Ethan's question, I think he's really onto something. I mean, he's asking this question in a way that makes me think that he has thought about this. But the fact that kids love these games like Roblox and Minecraft, Minecraft especially, is really interesting. Minecraft, of course, does have its own systems, its own leveling. But it is so playground-like, it's so open-ended. it allows you to just fool around in a childlike way. And it doesn't always feel like it's this, you know, whatever recreation, a memetic recreation of work. Yeah, that's true.

Yeah, I don't think it has anything to do with kids' minds being molded by an employer, just kind of having kids and seeing what they play with and what they do. Because kids around Roblox Minecraft age, which is like 8 to 12, I think is kind of that sweet spot of those games in particular, kids around that age and even a little younger are really into imaginative play and they're really into just kind of finding things and making up their own rules and getting their friends involved and pretending to be something that they're not and Roblox and Minecraft both allow for that in a lot of different ways. And I think that is just kind of appealing to that age. And then you kind of you grow out of that a little bit when you become more of a teenager and you want more kind of authored. stuff and you want more kind of like you have different types of play or different types of leisure that I don't think is really related to just kind of joining the workforce and learning how jobs work and

becoming getting all the creativity just kind of like hammered out of you. I don't know. I mean if you take for a given that labor shapes every aspect of our culture, there is some reason that we move away from imaginative play and it is kind of related to how we're educated and how we learn to begin doing things. I think about this a lot with music where play, right, you play an instrument, play as this essential concept in music. But to really sit around with other musicians just playing, where you're just playing whatever and messing around, becomes a very hard thing to do. You very rarely do that the longer you live, especially as a professional musician. It's mostly work, and you mostly really structure what you're doing around these achievable goals. You want to

make a record. You want to make a song. And I think even in people's leisure, time, it's also very unusual for people that just sit around and play. It's what's so wonderful about Dungeons and Dragons. That as an adult, you're allowed into this space where you just make up your own rules and do whatever you want. And even then, a lot of people play Dungeons and Dragons very strictly and according to, you know, the rules that are put in place and the leveling up and all of that kind of work-like stuff. I don't know. The other part of this equation, though, is that, like, when you are a kid and playing, you're engaging in the magic and play, you are making up pretty strict rules. And like one of the, my five and a half year old's favorite activity is when she's

playing with people is telling them they're not playing by the rules, right? And they need to be following the rules. I guess so. I don't know. I think of Calvin Ball where there are rules, but the rules are always changing. And it's kind of even the rules themselves are a bit of a creative act. But isn't that also like a commentary on, yeah, the developmental stage Calvin's at. He's like an age where that's still fun. And then like as he gets older, maybe, and the version of him, we never get to see. The one that Jason's describing as like a human developmental concept,

which is like as you get older, you become attuned to the idea of rules, also sometimes being fun and interesting. Maybe as you get older, the society beats it out of you and makes you start following rules. Rules and structure are always bad, the idea of Calvinville is not that he's just like a kid imagining.

It's that he's controlling and wants to be an all-powerful, like figure who can, make up the rules as he goes and Calvin Ball is frustrating for Hobbs who's like why you're just making up the rules to benefit yourself no that's all a different thing um but I do think there's like yeah I don't know I think this idea Roblox and Minecraft by the way are two very different things we should say like Minecraft is more of the imaginative play it's true there's very rules based roblocks games I mean Roblox is is you're playing games that other people made or you're making up your own games and those games can be wildly different it can be anything you can make anything other

world than Minecraft. Right. I'm really just using Minecraft for my own thinking here. But yeah, I mean, it's an interesting talking point. I'm just not sure if I buy into that just because I feel like there's this kind of natural inclination of people. I don't know if you guys, I always have like a distinct memory of like that time in my life when I like when I got home instead of turning on cartoon network, I would turn on MTV and that to me always felt like the moment that I moved away from like being a kid and became an adolescent instead. And I feel like people have that with Roblox and Minecraft or other games too where they just kind of like, okay, that part.

Yeah, maybe. But they're just like that part of my life is done now. I've just gotten grown past this. And I don't really think labor plays a role in that. Like why do we do that? But culture plays a role in that. Yeah. Sure.

You're socially rewarded for growing up. I don't think that's like purely, you know, nature and not nurture. And you think because labor, you think because of the effects of labor? I don't know. It's something to chew on for sure. Not labor exactly, but just that our whole culture is so formed by our relationship to work. That everything in it, I mean, our whole educational system is built around teaching people how to become workers. And so much of what we do and the lessons that we teach our children relate to that, like how to function in our culture. It seems like it's not too much of a stretch to say that, you know, the ways that we change as we mature are,

at least somewhat driven by that. And I really think, I mean, I love this essay by Sam. I think he's really on to something that when you play a game, it really reflects your work. And then, you know, he goes on, he talks about Cecilia, our former colleague Cecilia's work, where she has written about, you know, long-distance truck drivers who play Euro truck simulator. Or, you know, I don't know about power washers who play power wash simulator. But that's something I've talked with Emily, my wife, about, where she's like, I can't really play games like that because I could just go power washers. The front watch.

And I don't really want to play Power Wash Simulator where I get a Power Wash more things. But that there is this even like direct relationship sometimes between the job someone does and the game that they play and that they find it rewarding to play a video game version of their job that offers all of these clear goals and really obvious feedback and stuff. So there's a lot there. I mean, it is a really interesting thing that goes very deep into our culture. All right. Let's move on the next question. Here is Corey. Corey writes, I had a question about sales expectations.

People often joke about certain companies like Squarionix saying that their games are missing sales expectations constantly. Did these games actually cost more to make them these sold? Or is it just a case of capitalism demanding more profit? If these companies had a magic crystal ball that could perfectly forecast sales, what would they change? This is such a good question. I'm very curious, especially Jason, what you think since you've talked to so many people. people at this level, but I'm very curious what you think. Sales expectations are a funny thing because they're like very imaginary. The way these things work, I mean, I've heard all sorts of

stories from the world of big budget game companies where it'll be like, all right, we have these business people putting together these kind of like surveys where they look at comparable games and just try to figure out like, okay, let's say I'm making a 3D platformer. I'm going to look at how Mario Odyssey sold and what were the business context surrounding that. And then I'm to look at how Psychonauts 2 sold and how Bubsy sold, whatever. And then I'm going to figure out a number based on our pre-orders and based on sales comps and based on our like wish lists and all these other, whatever other factors you can you can play into that. And then you might send it to your CFO and then the CFO will turn around to you and be like, all right, that needs to be twice

as much now. And you'll be like, what? Like, it's literally just made up numbers and then people's jobs depend on them. Wall Street works in similar ways where it's like all, everything lives or dies based on analysts estimates. It doesn't matter how many, how much profit you've made, how much revenue you've made in a given quarter. It matters whether you've hit or missed analyst expectations for what you've made. So this hypothetical in this question, if a company could know exactly how they were, how much they were going to make from a, game, how do you two think that would affect the way that they make the game? Yeah, like if an analyst was really good at their job.

They just knew. They just, they knew 100%. Yeah. It's tough to kind of, all right, so we need to establish a baseline for this question because like. So magic is real. Yeah, magic is real. Well, because the question is like, could you, how much could you cut of the quality

of the game and still hit that same number? Like, are we, because the amount that you spend on a game, like, would you, you would try to cut costs on that. Like let's say, okay, let's say we have a game. We can profit even more. Exactly. Like how could it not influence you? Right. Sure. Or let's say we're going to miss it. Let's say we have a game and it's going to cost $100 million to make and our sales expectation shows we're only going to make $80 million. Can we cut costs of that $100 million? But then with the $80 million number also be impacted if we cut costs because it might be a worse game. And so it's a little bit of a tricky kind of like chicken or egg question there.

But I mean, I think that the answer would be try to get the budget as low as possible and the profit margin as high as possible. I have to think, go ahead, Maddie. I'm picturing like a magical actuary basically with a table where they're like, okay, well, then if we adjust this number, then that's going to affect the sales in this way. And this person just has divination powers such that every adjustment they can make, they can do it all perfectly. So if you have an analyst like that, then it's like, I think you'd probably have the most functional video game studio in the world.

This like goes back to our last question. Because you'd always have the answer. You'd be like, well, I know exactly how much money we're going to make if we just spend another year on this game. And it's going to be worth it. And here's why. Functional game developer simulator. But it doesn't exist. Yeah, it's funny.

If they didn't have quite that level of granular detail, you know, where every cut is then reflected accurately, if it was more just, okay, we're going to make this much. How can we get it there? I do wonder if that cost-cutting question that you were asking, Jason, would result in people cutting a lot more stuff out of games and finding that people still really like them and they do just as well. I do kind of wonder if that would maybe be a result, yeah. Yeah, I agree with you. I think that is, that would be a good result potentially is to take out some of the extraneous stuff and be like, yeah, I could just sort of imagine it. Oh, maybe we didn't need all these features. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure that's a factor, but I think that the bigger factor for these bloating budgets is just the amount of time you spend trying to figure out what the game is and just wasting time on leads that never go anywhere and just kind of more management issues.

So it's a little bit harder than it might seem. That's true. It's not as simple as saying we don't need multiplayer. It's saying we don't need those first three years of pre-production. Exactly. Or like we don't need all this like testing of an entire part of the game that we've now realized. isn't going to be fun. It's like, okay, great, what are we going to do? Just not have that time exist anymore?

I mean, even the magic ball analyst can't help you with that, I guess. Yeah, it's kind of a fun hypothetical, though. One of the thing I just want to note is that Corey asked, did these games actually cost more to make them they sold? One of the funny things about accounting is that you can kind of, you can, a game budget can mean a lot of different things. It is, yeah, it's really interesting.

And the defense department. Like, profitability. This is just a story with that movie Sinners where people were like, hey, it just had this big opening weekend, but it's going to take a lot for it to be profitable. And nobody really knows how much it would take for it to be profitable because the arcane magic behind profitability is so strange. I mean, I think that, like, I'll never forget something that I put in my first book, Blood Soot and Pixels, where like, this is me paraphrasing, but I was talking about Dragon Age 2, which was a tortured game that was made in, like, less than a year and a half. And Mark Darra, who is the executive producer on the Dragon Age franchise, told me that they were proud of what they did because they pulled it off

despite critical reception. And also, in some corners of EA, like the dark wizardry has it as being profitable. And I thought that was so interesting because... They worked really hard and they got it to... Yeah, accountants, if you just, like, move some numbers around in a spreadsheet, you can... Profitability is an interesting thing.

And, yeah, that's why it's, like, so often about these estimates and targets and how... far off you are from a target, which is mutually exclusive from profitability. Yeah. All right. On to the next question, Kirk. This next question comes from Mike, who writes, something I enjoy about dramatic storytelling and video games film and TV is the sense of unease

you get when a character or characters are in danger. Fearing that something bad may befall the character that you have come to care about, adds emotion and nuance to the narrative that really enhances my experience. I find myself having a very different experience when watching her playing a prequel. When the prequel involves characters that exist in the original story, it's hard to get that same sense of unease and danger.

When my brain knows that no matter what, this character will survive. And he mentions, as a reference point, Red Dead Redemption 2, and and or as two examples. So, Mike asks, how do you each watch and enjoy dramatic prequels when you already know

the end game? Can I just say So the new trailer for the new season of Poker Face just came out. Poker Face was such a good show for so many reasons, but one of the things that did masterfully was that it showed you who did the murder,

who did the crime at the beginning of the episode and there was no tension there and you just spent the entire episode watching the characters figure out who did it. And that can be just as interesting and dramatically compelling as when you don't know what the outcome

is going to be. So that, keep that in mind with a prequel. That's a good example. That's a good example. It's a good example. In Andor too, I think it's similar. Where like Andor is about how it happens. How does Andor become that person? And also how do we get to Rogue One and the planning and the kind of heist-like nature of

that movie? It's a similar emotional experience of setting up something that you already know how it's going to end. If you saw Rogue One, you really know how it's going to end. end, but seeing how it all builds up is the payoff emotionally. And I think if it's done well, like these are examples of it being done well. I can agree completely with Mike on a prequel that doesn't do it well, where you're like, well, I don't really know why we had this, like, say, the very first Star Wars prequel, for example. I mean, so yeah, I agree with that

about Andor, though also Andor has a lot of side characters who, some of whom die shocking deaths in the first season and we know we would assume a lot of these people aren't going to make it who we've come to care about in season one. So, you know, everyone who isn't and or basically wasn't in Rogue One, so pretty much. And so, you know, there's also that sense, those stakes do still exist in that show. But I think it's true that you can, you can do this kind of storytelling very well without needing the risk to the characters to be the primary thing that's giving the viewer or the audience excitement. I mean, so many times, if you just watch a TV show, I don't know, you watch

McGiver. McGiver is in danger, but like, McGiver isn't going to die. There's a joke that Emily's dad will always say they'll be watching an episode where there's a cliffhanger leading into the final act of the episode, and McGuver's hanging off a cliff, and the bad guy's got him and instead he'll say, maybe it's the last episode. Maybe he's finally going to die. This is me learning that I have the exact same sense of humor as Emily's father, because I also make that joke every single time we watch an episode of anything. And my wife still laughs at it,

so I don't know. Yeah, we make that joke every time. And so because, right, you're not actually, most of the time you're watching a show like this, you're not actually worried that McGiver is going to get killed because the show's called McGiver. It's going to be fine. So the tension comes from other things. And that's okay. So a lot of times I derive excitement from prequels from all kinds of other things. And yeah, like with Andor, what's so fun is knowing that it's going to lead to this momentous thing, but also seeing how small it begins and appreciating all of the small ways that a resistance movement kind of forms through these sort of responses and these little bits of inertia, this avalanche, whatever Nemex manifesto says about a million small acts of

rebellion eventually culminating in an avalanche. Like that's so satisfying to watch that the thrill of the show for me is mostly in that. All right. Next question. Maddie. All right. This one's from Ryan who asks, question, how does gaming in 2025 help address or exacerbate the loneliness epidemic? Context. I was in a conversation with some friends recently about the loneliness epidemic and started wondering how gaming fits into that story. Gaming has continued to transition into online formats, live service games, less local multiplayer options, etc. And does that do more harm than good for folks' ability to build and maintain community? As an example, do you think the fighting game community has a higher chance

to address the feelings of loneliness. Man, I have really conflicted feelings about this. I don't know about the two of you. I mean, I think Ryan does too. It's clear even in the wording of the question that it's not an easy one. I mean, a big part of the loneliness epidemic is that a lot of kids are

going home and playing Fortnite with their friends instead of hanging out with their friends in person. And I think that like, as awesome as it is to spend time online with your buddies, it doesn't really really like, it doesn't meet every need. Yeah. And also, you know, speaking, like going and playing Fortnite with your friends is one thing,

and that is somewhat social. But there are a lot of people, you know, related to the loneliness epidemic. I don't know the statistics off the top of my head. But there are a shocking number of adults who just will say, I have no friends. I don't talk to people. Like, they don't go home and play Fortnite with their friends. They either go home and maybe play Fortnite by themselves, just online, or just play, you know, whatever.

big single player game or something. Or, you know, read books, maybe, or watch TV, but they just don't have other human contact in their lives. And that has become pretty widespread. And it's a real problem. And I do think that games really appeal to, they appeal to me when I'm in that situation. When I'm feeling very isolated,

games really are a great diversion. They are a really good way to occupy your time. They give you that structure, like we were talking about earlier, a feeling like you're doing something. they let you have all this sensory input they're so pleasurable and pleasing. Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to say they're responsible for the loneliness epidemic, nothing like that, but they kind of intersect with loneliness in a way that isn't always constructive. And I'm more acutely aware of that, the older I get,

and the more things I have in my life that are just social, and the harder I work at maintaining actual friendships with human beings that I hang out with, the more I realize how important those are and how much more nourishing those are for me than playing video games. As much as I love video games, they just, they don't fulfill the same thing for me. Yeah. I also wonder, like a lot of these, the kids who are kind of, you know, zoomers, basically, that age range were coming of age during COVID. And I just think we don't yet know how, I mean, I think it's fair to say it'll be a bad effect on them, but we just don't know what that's really going to be like for them as they continue to get older. But I know if it were me,

that would have really changed my life if I hadn't gone to the mall all the time with my friends and just hung out with them in the freaking mall. I was that age range where that was the normal thing you did. And just having not that in my life would probably make me even more socially awkward than I already am. Can you even imagine it? It's horrifying to the pandemic. The pandemic gave us all kind of a taste of that kind of loneliness to some extent, especially if we lived alone. Yeah. Or if you were young and you just didn't get to go to school and have control over your schedule anymore because you're a kid. And it's too bad that we kind of memory hold it and didn't use it as an opportunity for a more substantial conversation, just about what it is to be lonely

and how important it is to have one another in our lives. Like it's still there. We can still talk about it. So I suppose we're doing that right now and that's good. But yeah, the the pandemic did. give us a kind of a preview or even those of us who do work to maintain active social lives, it gave us a sense of what that's like to just be alone in your house every day and to feel so isolated. Yeah, it sucks. Also, games got too good. That's so true. They did. They did. It's not not true. Jokes aside, they did. When you have something like Baldry's Gate 3 and the characters like feel so real that they could be your friends, then it's very easy. It's very easy. easy to use them as a faxamily.

Well, and this is the dark thing about AI, that AI can really feel like a friend to people. A generative AI bot can really feel like someone's friend. And for all the different uses you can get out of that kind of technology, it's such a, it's such a poor fill-in for an actual human being. And it makes, I don't know, it really, it feels so backwards that people talk about using AI to address the loneliness epidemic. Where, okay, maybe, but it just feels like you're building the. solution to a problem that we haven't addressed or created, like that we created where we should

know we should be building a culture where we spend time together and we like value having actual connections with the people. But that's hard and that is, and you know, and there's not billions of dollars of venture capital in that. So let's, let's build an AI and stuff. You're building more problems. Did you guys see that article by the former like guy who ran business insider about his new AI newsroom. I reeled Bernico's Defector article about it. I'll just repack.

That was all I needed. It's something. All right. Let's take a break. And then we'll be back with one more thing. Thanks again to everybody who sent in questions. And once again, you can send them a triple click at maximum fun.org. We got a jam-packed.

One more thing, three video games to talk about. So let's take a break. And then we'll come back with some big, once. Good evening. Thanks for tuning in to 101.1. It's midnight here on Host to Coast, and we've got Sarah for Michigan on line one. Hi, I'm calling him for some help.

I used to love reading, but between grad school, having kids and the general state of the world, I can't seem to pick up a book and stick with it anymore. Sarah, this is an easy one. Just listen to Reading Glasses, a podcast designed to help you read better. Brea and Mallory will get all the pressure, shame, and guilt out of your reading life. You'll be finishing books you love in no time. Great. That sounds amazing. Also, I do think my husband is cheating on me with Mothman. Can you help me with that one?

Ooh, I don't think they cover that. Reading glasses every Thursday on Maximum Fun. WrestleMania is the biggest. And busiest. Time of the year for wrestling. And the Tides and Fights Podcast is more important than ever. We have so many questions to explore. How can you understand John Cena's motivation as a bad guy?

Why is a car crash actually a great expression of friendship? You mean friendship, right? Of course. Whether you're a long time wrestling fan or coming back after a break, tights and fights has you covered. This WrestleMania and every weekend after on Maximum Fun. And we are back, Kirk Maddie, it is time for one more thing. We got three new games, all that come out this week to talk about.

And none of them are named Oblivion. So let's go one at a time. Maddie, why don't you start? Sure, I'll start. I have been playing a game called Clare Obscure Expedition 33, a title. Nice. Just a fantastic name.

No, notes. Yeah, we, I've come around on the name. No, that's not really true. I do really like the game,

though. I think it's really, really cool. I am very into it. And here's why. So, first of all, combat,

really, really hard. So I'm just going to put that right out there. Do you want to just explain what the game is for people who don't know? Yeah, it's a turn-based RPG,

and I haven't beaten it yet. Apparently it's about 30 hours. It's not an open world. It has kind of discrete areas. So think like a metaphor re-fatazio, but shorter. It's a fantasy game. But it's got turn-based RPG mechanics, except there is a live mechanic where you dodge Perry or jump over certain attacks. So, Mario, Mario RPG style.

Actually, yes. It is almost identical to that. But way harder, very unforgiving Perry Windows. even on the easiest mode in my experience, I enjoy pairing, as I think most people who've heard me talk about Dark Souls know about me. So I really enjoy this mechanic, but I just feel the need to warn everyone as like

the first thing to say about this game is that it's difficult. Even the easy mode of the game, I find difficult. I've tried the different modes because I was curious about this. So I don't know if they're going to change that on release, but it's tough, tough game. But once you understand all, the combat mechanics in addition to those pari mechanics, I think it's really cool. Like different attacks can compound on each other.

You can make your party freaking unstoppable in a way that's very satisfying, classic turn-based RPG stuff. That part is wonderful, and I'm loving it. The story, also fascinating to me. So the deal with Claire Obscure is that, so you know how in metaphor, we Fantasia, everybody was always explaining to you what was going on all the time? Like, every time you met a new character, they'd be like. Like, here's my tribe that I'm from.

And here's like a really long monologue about exactly what our situation is and what religion we ascribe to and where we grew up. And, you know, you're just kind of used to that sort of thing in an RPG. Well, Claire Obscure dares to ask the question, what if we never did any of that at all? And even several hours into the game, Maddie's still going to be wondering, what? To be fair, it's called Claire Obscure, not Claire, Clear. Not Claire, Claire. Not just Claire. It's Claire.

The Claire is not so clear at all. In fact, it is quite obscure, if you will. So these characters, I'm going to describe the premise of the game because the game's not going to describe the premise of the game. And I at least knew it before I played. And I think that's going to help. Tell us about the painter's. I'm going to tell you guys about the painters. So this game takes place in this sort of Victorian steampunk fantasy world where there's this goddess called the painter.

who's ruling over the entire world in which you live, where humans live and also strange little creatures live. I don't know why that they do. And the painter's doing this weird thing. She's been doing for the past 70 years before the game begins, which is she's counting down and eliminating all of the humans of a certain age. So like she started at 103, all the 103-year-olds died, and then the next year she killed all the 102-year-olds and so on and so forth. And now we're all the way down to the 34-year-olds. And that's where the game begins. The 34-year-olds dying.

It's like children of men in reverse. Precisely. And so when you're running around that open area at the very beginning of the game, it's really creepy because there's no old people at all in the world. And you're going to this ceremony for the main character is Gustav. And he's going to the ceremony for his ex-girlfriend who's about to die because she's 34. And they're still on, like, okay enough terms that she's, like, invited him to this. But it's really awkward.

them, which is like a really fascinating scene. And the whole game is kind of like this, where you kind of meet characters and you have to put together what happened between them just from context, clues, and conversations. All of what I said is not something that was spelled out to me. So you watch her die and then you watch Gustav and the rest of all the remaining 33-year-olds, the oldest people in this world, go on an expedition, the one of many, many, many, expeditions that have happened to try to kill the painters. Can they do it? Can they kill God? I don't know. I sure hope so, folks, because this is an RPG.

So I hope we can make it there. But so much weird shit happens along the way that I also don't understand. And it's clear that the game is just like, this is just the world we made. This is just what we did. And we're not going to tell you how it works. And I find it really refreshing. I love that the characters aren't constantly explaining stuff to me. The dialogue's very naturalistic. The voice acting is great. But you have to be willing. to play a game that is both, one, really difficult, and two, just like, going to throw you in the deep end of the story and just be like, we're not going to tell you what's going on. We're just going to put you on a roller coaster. Are the characters interesting enough to make this worth it? I'm really enjoying them.

Yeah, I really like them. So, yeah, for me, yes. I want to know what happens, too, because I like them. This sounds cool. I'm totally going to play this game. This sounds really neat. Yeah, the thing is oblivion is going to come out. Well, I played oblivion.

I'll play a little oblivion. But no, I'll play this over oblivion. Fair enough. I do know, though, that this game is competing with some other RPGs. And also a couple other games that you two are about to talk about. So there's that too. Yeah, Kirk, you want to go next? Sure, I'll go next.

I have been playing and loving a new game called Sunderfolk, which is developed by Secret Door, one of the studios under the Dreamhaven umbrella, which is Mike Morheim's company after he left Blizzard. And Jason, I'll actually ask you to tell us a little about that after I've talked about the game a little, because it's very interesting. Sunderfolk is very cool. It appears to be, and I believe is inspired by pandemic era, tabletop simulator sessions with Gloomhaven, because that is what it feels like, only it's a video game designed to emulate that feeling. So Gloomhaven is a game that I have talked about on the show before, that I love very dearly. It's an incredibly popular tabletop game, a sort of hecker.

based tactical role-playing game that also has a lot of city building, especially in the sequel Frosthaven, a lot of sort of character development. And most of the game is you and your friends kind of RPG party in a pretty cool fantasy world, just dungeon crawling. Each mission is a sort of intense fight through a dungeon with a variety of different character party, you know, character classes. And you play with cards. So you have a deck and you kind of play different cards at different turns in order to move around the battlefield and use your special abilities and kind of synergize with one another in order to win fights. And it's really fun.

It was a great game that is particularly good on tabletop simulator, which is a PC or just a computer simulation that basically just makes a table that you can then put plug-ins like mods that people will build for any tabletop game. And there's a really good Gloomhaven one that allows you to just instantly set up a Gloomhaven game and get playing, which is what my friends and I did. Bing. Kirk here, as I'm editing the show, just to chime in and clarify something, even though I know I've said this before on the show. My friends and I own a copy of Gloomhaven that we could have been playing. We also have a physical copy of Frost Haven. One of my friends has supported both of those Kickstarter.

So we had physical copies of the game, and we were just choosing to play it on Tabletop Simulator. Okay, back to the show. Bing! Gloom Haven has a famously huge box. There's a jillion pieces in cards. It takes a million years to set up. It's very complicated. So playing in Tabletop Simulator was really nice, though a little janky since it's user-created mod, and it's still pretty complicated. So Sunderfolk is the same idea you can play with up to four people in an RPG party only it's a video game and it's designed to be much, much more accessible. And it's very successful, I think, at doing this. So the way the game works is you load the game up on a console, it's on Switch, I'm playing on PC.

So I had a couple of my buddies from my tabletop group over so that we could test it out. and play it together. We played a few nights together. So you load the game up on the TV, and it puts up a QR code. And you open the QR code on your phone, and you download an app. So this isn't quite like Jackbox games, the you don't know Jack games, or I suppose, whatever, jackbox now. It's not you didn't know Jack. But it's not like those where you're going to a web browser and using HTML to, like, go through the internet. You're actually downloading an app that I believe is able to talk on your local network with the game.

And so it's like a much slicker. Yeah, it's a much slicker thing, and it allows for a much more sort of tangible interaction with the game. So you download the app, you load it up, you scan your game, and you join in, and then you control the game with your phone. And everybody uses their device to control the game. And then it works a lot like Loomhaven, where we had a party. I was a big barbarian bear named Bing, of course, and I was our kind of tank, and then we had, you know, different animals played different classes. The story is kind of, there's like a city, the Sunderfolk are these animals that live in this underground city, and it's under attack from ogres, and you're kind of trying to defend against them. And then you play through these turn-based battles that work a lot like Gloomhaven, where you're choosing from your attack deck and you're playing it, then there are modifying cards that you play each time you attack.

You're kind of taking turns, you know, with like turn order. It's cool. Like initiative works kind of like all the good guys go at the same time. So you sit around a lot just talking and you can use your phone to have a cursor on the screen. And it works with almost no latency. It's incredibly cool. I mean, it just works really well. It's like you have a track pad and you can kind of move around and point to what you want to point to and say,

okay, well, if I go over here, I can go first and then I'll, you know, tank up and I'll attack this guy's attack. So then you come around behind me and you can open this chest and then you can do a range attack. And we're all kind of pointing around at the screen and talking just like we do when we're playing Gloom Haven together. And then the game just does a lot of little clever touches in addition to being a just well-designed strategy game. For example, when you load up a new mission, it will ask one player to name an enemy unit type. So my friend Sam named the enemy archers, like the ranged attack. He called them Flingums, F-L-I-N-G-E-M-S. And then for the rest of our campaign, those enemies are called Flingums.

But then at one point, I was just talking and I called them Flynn gems because it spelled that way. And I was like just reading and I was like, oh, and there's a Flynn gem over there. And then we all started laughing. And so now we call them Flynn gems. And there are a lot of things like this in the game where because of a little user-created, you know, idea. And then, you know, you create your own little silly inside jokes. Like it starts to feel very personalized, which I really like. And you'll get these little, you know, you'll go to town.

You get little interactions with townsfolk that are just happening on your phone. So we're each kind of being like, oh, cool, I'm like talking to this guy. look and he says this and oh I'm learning some of my character's backstory and then you go back out together. The whole thing is incredibly slick and it feels like a Blizzard game. It runs like a Blizzard game. It's it's so well designed like the experience at least for us using our phones was just seamless. I was incredibly impressed by that part of it. So this would be a very, very fun game for anyone with a tabletop group who like wants to try something like this out. I really think a lot of people will really dig it. Cool. It sounds cool.

So Jason, you know more about Dream Haven, and I'm just kind of curious if you could tell people a little bit about them, because I do think that that backstory of this game is also interesting. Sure, and we'll talk about this more, I think maybe in a few weeks because they have another game that's really interesting that I played, and hopefully we all got a chance to play. It's funny, I actually just spoke to the director of Sunderfolk, like two hours ago for Bloomberg piece that I think I'll go up this week. Yeah, Dreamyven was started by the Moorheims, Mike Moorheim, the co-founder and long-time CEO of Blizzard and his wife, Amy, and they started it shortly after leaving Blizzard. And one of the reasons they started it is because Blizzard, after Moorheim left, canceled these two games. One was a project called Aries that was supposed to be a Starcraft shooter, and another was a project called Orion that was supposed to be a kind of like D&D campaign-ish. sort of thing. And then the people who made those two games wound up teaming up and working with the

Morehams to form Dreamhaven. And then they went on to make a shooter and then a D&D-ish table top campaign. That's funny. But yeah, this company has a lot of, it's a mix of like some really veteran Blizzard people, ex-Blizzard people and then some newer people. So, for example, the director of this game, she's relatively young, has been in the video game ministry for like less than 10 years, I believe, came from riot. That is cool.

But then the studio head, who was also pretty intimately involved in this game, is this guy, Chris Sigody, who was an executive producer on Starcraft, too, and, like, ran many, many projects at Blizzard. So it's kind of a mix of that veteran experience than that youth. The director's name is Aaron Marrick, by the way. And yeah, it's a really interesting company. I've talked to them a bit about it. I've interviewed them for Bloomberg a couple of times.

And one of the things I find really interesting is that it feels like they are learning a lot of lessons, both good and bad, from their time at Blizzard. So, like, the good you can kind of see in your description of Sunderfolk, right? Like that it feels like a Blizzard game. It's very sleek. It's very polished.

It's very, like, clearly been tested by hundreds of thousands of people. You know, it also, just to continue that thought, that the Blizzard thing, this is based on your book, that something Blizzard was very good at was playing a game and then saying, this is really fun, let's make a better version of it. And this does feel like someone played Gloomhaven and Tabletops similar and said, this is fun, but it's pretty crifty. It's got a lot of, it's very difficult to use. What if we made a version that was slicker and kind of worked better? I don't know if it was quite Gloomhaven and Tabletop Similar.

I think the initial idea was like mixing Tabletop games or Gloomhaven with Jackbox was the initial thought. Oh, okay, yeah. But yeah, with the gloomhaven, like, as being the root of the idea. Exactly, yeah. But just like this idea of this, like, polished, yeah, finding a way to really polish something rather than inventing a new genre. And, yeah, it's really interesting. I mean, I think it's worth knowing also. I was talking to Aaron, the director a little bit about this. She joined the company, like, her first week was when the blizzard scandal happened. And internally at Blizzard, or eternally at Dreamhaven, because Dreamhaven is run by the guy who ran Blizzard. like for many years and co-founded Blizzard and also a lot of the people who are high up

a Dream Haven or ex-Blizzard people they had a ton of conversations and like lessons and Aaron was telling me they put together, Amy Moorheim put together this like 40-page document about like action plans and like how to avoid this and one thing I think is worth noting

is that when I spoke to Mike Moorheim in October at a Bloomberg event I was interviewing him and he told me that they were I think the number was like 37 7% either female or non-binary at Dreamhaven, which is much, much higher than the industry average, which is like 20% or something like that. Sadly, it is much, much higher.

Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, just worth noting there, it feels like they're learning a lot of lessons, both good and bad. But one more thing I'll say is that, like, there have been a lot of companies over the years that are like, hey, we're ex-Blizzard, we're X Riot, give us money. This, I think, is the closest to a company that is actually X Blizzard or at least like some of the people who made Blizzard what it was, especially in Mike Moreheim, who was one half of the duo that created Blizzard and also ran the place for many, many years. So I think that's

also worth noting that this company is one I've had an eye on for a long time. Nice. Yeah, it's very cool. Sunderfolk is great, and I will be keeping an eye on them for sure. Yeah, their other game, Wildgate is really interesting. Yeah, we'll talk more about this. I think we'll put a spotlight on Dream Haven down the road at some point. Yeah. Cool. All right. My One More Thing is also a video game that came out this week.

It's called The Hundred Line Last Defense Academy. And this game is friggin great, you guys. Nice. I think you both would really enjoy it. Three good games and one more thing. We all liked our game. It's always good. Good games.

Yes, yes, yes. Okay. So a few years ago, a guy named Kazutaka Kodaka, who is a creator of Dangan Rampa, a game series. we all know well. I've heard of it. And Kotaro Uchikashi, who was the creator of Zero Escape series, we also know well. That's the series of 999, 9-9 doors, whatever.

And then... Well, this is a real all-star undertaking. Visual novel greats. So the two of them started this new company. Well, so the two of them started this new company. They left Spike Junksoft, their old company, started this new company called Tokyo Games, like T-O-K-Y-O-Games. and they almost immediately released one of the worst games I played in recent memory called World's End Club and a few other games kind of on their own that were just whiffs or at least like mediocre at best.

Games that were not great. Now they have finally released a game that is truly worthy of like these two powerhouses coming together and it is called the 100 line Last Defense Academy. So let me explain this game. So the way this game starts is that a bunch of high school students are brought to a school and an adorable mascot kind of comes out of nowhere and explains them the rules of the school, which is that they are trapped there. And they need to do certain things in order to survive. And the characters are, of course, they all have very unique personalities,

one of them, and they have very unique visual styles. one of them is very kind of self-deprecating and just calls himself pig shit all the time. Another one is kind of a maniacal lady with like blue crazy hair and clown makeup. And she talks about killing things all the time. And can you guys guess what's coming next? What's coming next is not a killing game. These characters do not have to kill each other. Because despite the fact that it starts off, looking and feeling a whole lot like Dangan Rampa,

it changes pretty dramatically over the course of the rest of the game. What this actually is is a strategy RPG. And what happens is these people are told that they have to defend this school that they're in because there's some sort of hidden room inside there. There's a room in it with like a hidden secret. And they have to defend that secret because there are invaders coming. And they have to fight off the invaders if they want to save the world and save all the people that they love. Sounds like an ender's game situation.

Like actually we're killing other humans. There's definitely some Enders game involved here. And so to defend these invaders, you go to this grid-based battlefield where your characters kind of put on these, like take these, this complicated mechanic where they like ingest blood or something. But anyway, they become like superheroes and have to fight off these invaders. And you can move them around on these grid-based battlefield, sort of like a fire emblem sort of thing we're using them to attack the invaders and invite them off. There are always way more invaders

than you and your characters are powerful and they can take them out. And ideally, you want to take them all out in one turn before they even get to attack you. There's this really cool system. It starts off really easy and kind of simple and you're just like, why am I even doing this? But it gets more elaborate as you go. A very slow start, very slow burn of a game, but it gets much, much better after the first couple hours. And the strategy battles are really addictive and interesting because the way they work is that you'll start off each turn with only like three action points. So you can only do three things and you'll have like 15 characters and you'll be like, oh my God, like I can't even use all my characters in one turn. Like, what is this? But you gain an action point every time you use

one of those characters to take out a particular, like a mid-level enemy, an enemy who is a little more powerful than like the base ground. So you're like fighting to increase your currency in the action economy. Exactly. And so the strategic way to play is to like take advantage of all your character's abilities, either synergizing with one or another or like on their own to take out multiple high level enemies in one shot. So then you get an extra turn involved and then you can use that turn to set up other attacks. And so it feels it's very, there's like a Rube Goldberg-esque element to it. It's very chess. It's very strategic. It's very, it's not, it's got a lot of complexity and depth to it that you, that only reveals itself. a little bit later on, but when you get the hang of it, it's really, really fun. So it's got that, it's got a few other kind of mechanics, and it's also got a lot of text. It's a visual novel also. I would call it half visual novel, half strategy RPG. And then there's also a persona aspect of it, sort of like Danga Rampa, where you have free time as you go. One of the reasons it's called the 100 line is because there are 100 days that you have to kind of live through. Because at the end of the

100 days you are told that the invaders will be stopped and you will win and you will save humanity. And so during these days when you have free time, you can go and you can talk to some of the characters or you can give them gifts or you can study in the library and each of doing any of these things will raise your stats, which allows you to develop new skills for your characters in combat. So it's all kind of tied together in that way. Yes, very familiar. And it's really good. I mean, the story and the writing, it's a very Dangan Rampa, like you can see immediately there are sex jokes. There's like one girl who like is this samurai-looking woman who has a sword and all the other characters make fun of her saying,

what are you doing with your sword late at night? And like all sorts of like crazy, like wacky writing. It's very entertaining. It's very fun to play. And the story is sufficiently, it's kind of, it's got the wackiness and the crudeness of Dengen Rompah's writing combined with like the twisty sci-fi of Zero Escape games. Makes sense? Yeah, that's cool. And so, as you can imagine, there are a lot of twists and turns along the way. Definitely some Ender's game in there, but obviously other stuff. I'm sure everything is as it seems from what you described in that premise.

Definitely everything is as it seems. That is a premise where it's just very straightforward. It's open and shut after the 100 days. It's all over for sure. It's all going to be fine and we'll have won against the back guy. And then on top of all that, there's one more mechanic, which is that like you can explore outside of the academy, and then you have this kind of like Mario Party mechanic where you're on a board game exploration field, and you go around this board game with your character, and every turn you get to pick, like, do I want to move two spaces or do I want to move four spaces? And then

each tile you land on has a different symbol on it, meaning a different thing, and then you'll have to make little micro-decisions along the way. Like, it'll be like, you stumble upon an abandoned warehouse, and there's a fridge in here, and there's also a table in here. Do you want to, open the fridge or check under the table. And then sometimes you'll take damage if you pick the wrong choice. Sometimes you'll get cool stuff out of it. And you could do that with your free time too is like explore that Mario Party mini game too. So yeah, it's all, it's really fun and it's really good.

I'm really enjoying it. I'm very close to the end. From what I've heard, there are like many, many endings. In fact, somewhere I heard that there are 100 endings, which I'm not sure how that's going to play out yet. So TBD on that one. You have a near out of a situation. Well, it's interesting.

There's also, so you guys know the zero escape games, there's always like a big flow chart. And you're always kind of like making a choice and then seeing that play out and then going back in time and seeing what the alternate option was, what other outcome could occur from that. In this, there is also supposedly a flow chart. But I'm up to day like 94 or something out of the 100. And I still haven't seen it or had to make any choices. So I think that's coming up soon, and then I'm not sure how it's going to play out from there, because I'm already, like, substantial ways into this game. I don't know.

I haven't checked my Steam hour count, but I'm a hefty amount in, and I haven't seen that play out yet. So I'm very curious to see what happens here. I might be back in, I might talk more about this in a future week once I've played through the entire thing. But, yeah, I really like it. It's really good. If you like Dengarampa, if you like Xero Escape, especially if you've been following Tokyo games, and you haven't liked their recent offerings, this is very much like them returning to form

and delivering something that's really cool. It feels like a really good successor to Dangan Rampa without repeating the same tropes and same formula that was thoroughly smashed in the last Dangan Rampa game. And one more thing I'll say is that also because you're not killing new characters every chapter and watching your character count dwindle,

you can actually grow attached to a lot of these characters. because most of them are sticking with you the entire time, which is also nice. That was always a flaw in the Dagan Rampa games, which is that, like, you have all these really interesting characters, and then you never get a chance to even spend much time with them, because half of them are gone by, like, Chapter 3. So, yeah, it's really cool. I think you both would like it, and I've been playing it all on Steam Deck where it runs beautifully. It's a perfect game to play for, like, an hour or two before bed, get some reading and some

tactics in. Yeah, highly recommend it. Yeah, it sounds amazing. I'll check it out in two or two or two or two. three months when I finally finish blueprints. Only 100 hours into blueprints. You're closing in. Having heard where you got to last night, Kirk, you're closing in.

You're getting there. You're definitely in the end game. And now you can see why I laugh when people talk about how they're in the end game because now you're actually in the end game. It is quite a journey to get to where I am. That's true. All right. That is that for this week's episode.

Thanks to everybody who sent in questions. And thanks to everybody who listened to us talk. for an hour. Yeah. Yeah, this was fun. And yeah, I'll see you both next 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 by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. Triple Click is a proud member of the

Maximum Fun Podcast Network. And if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at maximum fun.org slash join. Find us on Twitter at triple clickpod. Send email the triple click at maximum fund.org and find a link to our Discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

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