Triple Click - Why Are There No Pregnant Video Game Characters?

Episode Date: May 30, 2024

Where are all the pregnant video game NPCs? What happens when you grow out of a video game genre? And what's it like to be both friends and professional podcast coworkers? This week, the Triple Click gang opens up the mailbag for some wacky listener questions, and confesses that they're actually all secretly enemies.One More Thing:Kirk: Ed Wood (1994)Maddy: Elden RingJason: Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door (Remake)LINKS:Kirk's 2018 Kotaku piece "Real Guns, Virtual Guns, and Me" Jason's interview with Jake Solomon: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-05-14/game-makers-at-midsummer-studios-look-to-take-on-the-simsLorelei and the Laser Tampon: https://www.polygon.com/gaming/24162613/lorelei-and-the-laser-eyes-tampon-why-reason-itemShadow of the Erdtree Miyazaki interview: https://www.famitsu.com/news/202402/22335199.htmlTriple Click LIVE in LA! Saturday, June 8, 6:30PM at the Teragram Ballroom: https://teragramballroom.com/tm-event/triple-click-podcast/Preorder Jason’s Book! https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/jason-schreier/play-nice/9781538725429/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

Is this the most well-realized video game character who's ever been devised? Or is it just that I named her Maddie? Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we open up the mailbag to answer questions about blank slate video game characters, party games, and whether or not we're really friends or we just host a podcast together. I'm Maddie Myers. I'm Jason Schreier. And I'm Kirk Hamilton and hello.

Hello. It's us again. Here we are. How are you? both doing today. Doing pretty good. Finally, just a regular, regular episode of Triple Click,

all three of us here again. For now. NBD. It's wild. No explanation required. Why wouldn't all three of us be here? Until the craziness starts. No, it's just going to be regular this week.

It has to be regular. And just like any other week I'm going to mention, just off the cuff. Like, apropos of nothing at all, that we're part of the maximum fun network and that we really love it there, and that that is a part of why we don't have any advertisements on our show is because we're part of this network and because our listeners support us.

And if you want to be like those cool, cool listeners who support us, and why wouldn't you be? You'd go to maximum fun.org slash join and you would join the great, great club that all those listeners are in. And you would get monthly bonus episodes this month. We're about to record one called Triple Cook, where we talk about some of our favorite recipes and things that we like to make in our kitchens. And we also have a lot of other monthly bonus episodes that are about video games, but not all of them are triple cook. I mean, it's not like we're just running a parallel podcast called Triple Cook that's just monthly, and it's like a secret bonus feed. The other episodes are not that.

But you'd have to join and find out what all of them are. And I would recommend doing that. So that's a maximum fund.org slash join to go do that. And while I'm talking, I'm going to also say that all three of us are going to be at the same place, at the same time in Los Angeles, California. And I'm really excited about that. But other people will be physically in that place as well on June 8th at 6.30 p.m. At the Terragam ballroom in Los Angeles, we're going to have a triple click live show.

and if you want to buy a ticket to that, it's in the show notes. Yeah, you should come out. It's going to be fun. Yeah. It's going to be super fun. That's in like a week from when we are really soon. That's pretty wild. That's bonkers stuff. Yeah, buy a ticket. I'm very excited. Come check it out. And come see us talk about summer game fest, which is also happening that weekend. But I would say the coolest thing that's happening that weekend is that we're

all hanging out in person and we're doing a live show. Yeah. They're going to be safe to say. Yeah. A lot of people around that we know. That's right. That's right. Yeah, that's going to be fun. So what are we talking about this week, Jason? This week we were talking about lots of things because we are answering listener questions in a segment that we like to call burning questions. Hot, hot, hot. It dates back to 2012. That's right. That was the first one.

Is that right? Cool. Cool. Over 10 years old. This is an ancient segment. Over 12 years. Yeah. 12 years old. That's right. It was, yeah, Kitaku, where we talked to about persona for Kirk and I did like a live blog or a live but like a text podcast really I would call it yeah I would say that yeah it was a text form of what you're listening to right now a text podcast it's the the proto the text proto proto triple click and so yes we will we have a bunch of questions that we've pulled out of the mailbag and just as a reminder you can always reach us at triple click at maximum fun dot org with your own questions remember to keep them short and keep them weird and keep them interesting and we might just read them in the show. All right, let's do this.

First question, Kirk, why don't you start us off? This question comes from OMG, My Heart, who writes, why do you think there are so few pregnant NPCs in video games? It's a good question. Yeah. This is a funny one because when I saw this question, I think it was like in January, I was playing Final Fantasy 7 rebirth and early copy and or must have been in February. And it was, um, it was, like as I saw this question literally the second I saw this question there was a side quest where it was a pregnant woman like giving you a side quest as part of the game right it's like hmm interesting good timing she might be the first ever I feel like I agree with this questioner because I barely ever see it and no sorry this this is disproven now because there was

one you're right what am I saying it's solved but even even then it wasn't like a background it was like a character who that was like part of the story it's interesting I was thinking about this, I think the answer, and this is a little kind of messed up, but it speaks to storytelling kind of tropes in the way we perceive stories in general, I think the answer is that pregnancy calls your attention in a way that would make you think that there is like some grander story purpose to it as opposed to just a generic background character. And in the same way, like you might not see someone who's disabled often as like an NPC because you might think, oh, that person seems different than the other people, I should go talk to them because maybe

don't give me a quest. Yeah, to their quest they're going to give me too. It's almost like they have an exclamation point on their head. And so it would be cool if that sort of stuff was more kind of normalized and we just saw that in the background the way we saw everything else. But I think the reason that you wouldn't see it a lot is because of that. The only other explanation I can think of is just that it's like you have to like do a character model and art assets for like a pregnant woman, which would be more of a pain for a background

MPC or something than it's worth as opposed to just kind of duplicating generic body models. Yeah, but that's also why it's so cool when you have a character who does look physically different in some noticeable way and it helps populate the world and make it seem more like the real world where you just run into different people all the time, like whether it's a disabled character or character who just is really short or really tall or just has a different body for whatever other type of reason, like why, I know it's much more difficult to create all those different models, but that's part of why it's so much more noticeable when a game actually does do that because it makes the world feel real. I'll also say this question reminded me of into the

Spiderverse 2 because there is a character in that Spider Woman who notably she's pregnant in comics and still is like a superhero in the comics while having a very pregnant belly and they included that in the movie. And I remember seeing that movie and thinking that was so cool. And I mean, it is kind of video game like in that she's not the main character. She's like one of the many kind of side characters in that movie. And it's just like part of her life that she's just also pregnant while doing crime fighting. And I was like, oh, this is so cool. They're just like taking this from the comics and putting it in. And when I read this question, I thought of that right away and was like, there's no reason why a video game couldn't do that, especially with like a superpowered

character who's like fine to keep crime fighting and still protecting herself and her baby despite it all because she has like absurdly powerful superhuman strength and all this other stuff. Yeah, God, I feel like you kind of need absurdly powerful superhuman strength to be pregnant in the first place, like let alone to be crime fighting. Having seen my wife go through this twice, it's pretty brutal. Yeah, no interest on my part. Thank you very much. One thing I will say, I mentioned Rebirth at the beginning.

Rebirth is very good at having background NPCs that are a variety of sizes and shapes and colors and human characteristics that you see in the real world. I think that game is really good at that. This makes me think of something is only sort of related, but in terms of taking ordinary lady stuff and just putting it in a game and making it seem ordinary, Lorelei in the Laser Eyes has this fun little detail where you're walking around in the world as this lady. And if you open up her purse at the very beginning of the game, you have car keys and a tampon. And those two things are just in her purse. And Polygon actually ran a story about this. I was going to say this if you didn't.

We actually talked to the developer for this story. I don't know if you read all the way through. It's fine if you didn't, but I'll summarize it. Yes, I read the whole article. I'll allow you to quote it from Polygon.com. Go right ahead. Well, it's, what was cool about it is just that their reason for putting it in there was just like, well, you know, ladies carry tampons in their purse. Like, that's just a thing.

A lot of you do. And they, at least the article implies that there are no puzzles that are solved with a tampon, which I am, I guess I'm taking their word for it on that because I haven't beaten the game. I thought it was amazing. Yeah, I just think that that's really fun. And just kind of a good example of taking something that just seems to, to me as someone who plays a lot of video games, like, oh, that's really unusual, a tampon. You never see tampons in video games. And then, of course, my gamer brain starts thinking,

well, that must be the solution to some puzzle. Like, you must use it at some point to solve some elaborate puzzle. And the fact that you don't is actually a really fun commentary from the developers. So just a little bit of a parallel thing that that makes me think about. Yeah. Well, what happens is actually you get pregnant and then you throw out the tampon because you don't need it anymore for a long time. Yeah, they really killed two versus one stone in that game.

No. We don't know if that happens. No spoilers for Lorelai. We have no idea if that happened. All right, next question, Maddie, read this next one. Sure. So this one is from Ryan, who writes, Hi, Triple Click. I was wondering if you guys have any good party slash group game suggestions. This could be anything from overcooked jackbox or even past the controller type games like The Quarry.

Any game suggestions to pull out at a party with non-gamers is a plus. Hmm. So these have to be video games? No, I don't think so. I think they can be too much. Yeah, yeah, these are video games. This is, that's the fine.

Jason says yes. Well, all of Ryan's examples are video games. That's true. I think that's the implication. Jackbox is a good one for non-gamerers, especially. Mario Party is kind of the old chestnut, and the newest one is actually really good. Mario Party had this kind of, it had this real peak in, uh, on the, in the N64 era with the first three games.

Oh, yeah. It just went like, like, it just totally crashed and it just could not find its footing for years and years and years and years. like kind of hitting its nadir with this version where like instead of having separate icons on the board you were all in in vehicles together I think that was like the we version or the we version or something anyway it's returned to its former glory with the most recent one super Mario party on the switch and so that is has become my go-to like friends are over we're going to play something together game although you're limited to four people so if you

have more than four jackbox is generally a good choice yeah mine is probably going to be just dance, which I think I made a one more thing ages ago. During COVID, I remember I was just hanging out with Dina and her two roommates just pretty much every single day. And like, we ended up booting up just dance, which is also a four-player game and had a lot of fun, just kind of gently mocking each other's dancing abilities, learning the choreographed dances together. I mean, it's, it's an oldie, but a goody. I mean, there's a reason why some of these games have like reiterations every couple years, or in the case. of Just Dance every year.

It's because they're fun. They're really popular for a reason. So it's like, oh, Mario Party. I've heard that name before. Jackbox. I've heard that name before. Like, those games are still really, really fun to just play with three other people. And the Jackbox games are different every year.

So it's like you're getting, when you say Jackbox, you're talking about like potentially dozens of games themselves. Kirk, all your suggestions, more games? Is that one you asked before? It's acceptable if they are. No, no, I can definitely come up with a few video games as well. Those are all great examples. Ryan's example of Overcooked is really fun.

Any of those games like Quop or those kind of fumblecore games, Octodad is a good one where one person is playing, but everyone is kind of watching. That can be fun depending on the group. And a game that I always recommend to people is a game called Space Team, which was originally a phone game that you play with, I think it's 2 to 8. people and you each have the game open on your phone and then your phones all talk to one another. And you have like a variety of buttons that you're kind of that you have on your phone and everyone's phone is different. The idea is that you are the crew of something like the Starship Enterprise and you're trying to like escape a warp jump. You're kind of in the middle

of some anomaly and as the ship is starting to come apart and everything is going wrong, you need to adjust things. So you'll have to call out a prompt that comes up on your phone that somebody else is going to have, there's going to be able to enter on their phones. So you can't do everything yourself. So you'll have to yell like, turn the Garf blaster to four. And whoever has the Garf blaster, we'll have to be like, oh, wait, that's me. And do it before the timer runs out. And if you mess up enough, the ship falls apart. The issues that I've run into that with that game in the past are just that the phones can come desynced from one another. There can be some kind of funkiness depending on your Wi-Fi or where you're playing. And I see here that they have made a

card version of Space Team, a card game version, that I would actually think would probably be just as fun because you probably just play with a timer and kind of play in the same way. But I could see that actually working a little bit better. Plus, you could take it with you somewhere where you're not all on the Wi-Fi and play it. So either one of those versions is probably fine. But I really like Space Team. It's a great icebreaker and really fun party game.

If there's one thing I miss from the days of COVID, it's that you kind of had a built-in excuse to be like, hey, little friends, let's all play. Jackbox are among us and now that feels less common. Whoever was in your bubble or whatever or I guess larger friends group if it's a virtual. Well, I'm talking about over Zoom. Like now I feel like people don't play games over Zoom anymore and so they have less frequent gaming, uh, gaming events with friends because, uh, it, we're not all just stuck at home and nothing else to do every, every Friday night or whatever.

Well, and we played so many games over Zoom and we all grew so allergic to Zoom as well. It was like, we really loved cheese and then we ate nothing but cheese. That's true. It was a little too much cheese. We all got, uh, sad, our arteries were clogged. Her blood pressure is a little too high now. Yeah. Um, all right.

Here's a question from Jeff. Jeff says, hi, when do you get emotionally invested when the game gives you blank slate characters? For example, in Xcom, you can customize your various characters to your heart's desire, but there's basically zero arch or arc or character development for any of them. Uh, yet I'm. very invested in those characters, particularly as the game goes on and I play more and more missions with each. What do you think creates this connection? So I'm going to quibble with Jeff here

that there's no character arc because I feel the same way. I get really attached to my XCOM characters. And to explain to people who haven't played this game, in XCOM you create a squad of soldiers who go and fight aliens. And you come up with the names for them in XCOM too. You can come up with their backstories, their countries of origin, their voice. You can customize each one. And while they are all kind of generic, like they're not your one player character, they are nameless and somewhat procedurally generated. Then you send them out into the field and they can die permanently in that game. So you become very invested in them and watching them level up and get more powerful. And then when they die, you feel this great sense of loss.

I think it's like a huge part of the appeal of that game. But the character arc is what forges the connection in XCOM. I mean, for me, I remember I had a, I think I named all of my. my characters after my friends. Yes. So, like, I remember Luke Plunkett was the sort of hard-charging, shotgun-wielding guy in my party. And my friend Sarah was our sniper. And as a result, so I kind of already had these connections because I was using my friend's

names. I have done this, too. Yeah. Sarah, like, became this amazing character to me. I mean, she came through in the clutch in this can't-win scenario where she just, like, aced four aliens in a row with these perfect critical shots. and she became this total hero. Like I thought of her as, you know, she started as a recruit and she got better.

And then she had this incredible moment under fire where she took an injury and then was out for a while. And when she came back, she was so valuable to have on the team. And then she finally got killed on a really wild, super difficult mission. And I felt this real sense of loss. Oh, man, there's this character, Sarah, who both is my friend and also this character that I've watched to develop and grow and have all these moments that I've shared with her. So I think that the arcs are actually a big part of what makes. that connection work in XCOM. Well, I think when Jeff talks about story arc, he's talking about like a written story.

Like, you're talking about something that is kind of like originally. But is that arguably more powerful, right? No, no, no, no, no. I know. But I know. Yes, I know. I know. But I'm saying, I think he's just using story arc to mean a very specific thing that you're,

and you're kind of, you're talking about a different kind of story. I'm suggesting, I think, an expansion of what a story arc can be because they really are both story arc. Right. Well, but you also just answered his question, which is that, like, the reason that we connected these characters is twofold, and you kind of answered it in two ways. One is that you name them, and whenever you name something, it gives it power. Like, when you name a pad or you name that bird who's hanging outside your window, and then you get sad when they go away, because you're like, oh, I miss you, PDP parrot. Do parrots hang outside people's windows? Sure.

Yeah, somewhere they do. And the other, the other is that kind of that growth from like a little weakling who's procedurally generated to like your most powerful characters taking out taken out four dudes at once and clutch style that's that's the arc that you grow connected to them along the way even if they don't have like writing and and written personality yeah and i i feel like in a game like hell divers too where they're trying to not ever have you feel that sense of connection instead emphasize the facelessness of your characters it can be equally effective and like that game plays it for comedy every time. And we talked about how that works a lot as compared to something like Xcom,

where you really want to keep your characters alive, you name each and every one of them. I know it's like a different perspective because you're not like doing a first person game as you are in Hell Divers 2 where like you're repeating the action each time. And XCOM you're managing your entire squad. But nonetheless, I felt like that was really striking for me in Hell Divers 2. The fact that I didn't feel emotionally attached to my characters by design

and said the overarching story is of like super planet earth and like that's the story that you're following whereas i agree totally like an excom or even when i was a kid playing organ trail i used to name the characters in the wagon after my friends and then when they got you know cholera or whatever i'd be like i have to save my friend i need to rest the wagon and like that would be what would partially motivate me to keep going but it would also just be the p.d. the parrot effect as i've decided to call it where like you named something. So now you're attached to it and therefore you're like, well, I'm rooting for this. And games can either encourage or discourage that based on design.

And I think XCOM really encourages it in its design. Maddie, the difference between you and me is that you name your characters after your friends and then you get sad when they get sick, whereas I name my characters after my friends so they can get cholera and I can laugh and send screenshots of them getting cholera to them. Yeah, also fine. I think this kind of cuts the other way as well, where you can have an NPC or a character that you don't really like that then grows on you because their gameplay narrative sort of forges a connection with you.

Like you start out thinking, oh, this guy's kind of annoying. But then you kind of watch him go through some stuff, and he really comes through for you a few times. And you start to be like, all right, I kind of like him, you know. And then whatever, 12 to 17 hours later, you're like attached to him, and he finally sacrifices himself at the end or something. Yeah, there's a story concept in screenwriting and in storytelling in general that, like, too, one of the ways that you can get an audience to connect to a character is by making him or her or them really, really good at their job.

And I think games are the same way. If someone is, like, really proficient for you, you're always going to find something charming about them. You're always going to find some connection to them, even if they don't have a personality or even if they have an unlikable personality. And by the same token, if they're constantly letting you, down, then that's going to elicit an emotional reaction too that can be just as effective, where you're like, oh, what's up with this? Like, oh, and then when they betray you, you're like, oh. Yeah, yeah, or that, yeah.

That's very true. Or like, you know, I don't know, characters in Resident Evil or in Dead Rising where you have to escort somebody and they keep getting you killed or they keep causing you to fail the mission. I think a lot of times when people hate characters and games like that, it isn't really even the writing of the character. It is, it's just the design of the missions that they're. that they're alongside you on.

Yeah, absolutely. One more thing I'll say real quick is that I interviewed Jake Solomon, who was the director of those Excom games a couple weeks ago, and he was telling me about his new game, which he started a new studio to work on, which is him taking that concept of emergent narrative of these characters that you fall in love with or the course of the game, and bringing that to a life sim game,

like a Sims type of game. And he had some really interesting ideas. We were talking a little bit about kind of like how without combat you kind of have, to find other ways to have these characters grow and create systems out of them. And I'll link the article in the show notes because it's kind of, it's an interesting Q&A I had with him. But he's got some really smart ideas, I think, about like the ways in which it's all set in a small town. And you have to, there's going to be dramatic events that happen. And you have to figure out and navigate them with these

procedurally generated characters. It should be really interesting. Yeah. All right. Next question. Who's up? Kirk, you're up. Oh, I am up. This next question. This next question. question comes from Eric, who is a Max von donor and has loved the show since split screen. Thanks, Eric. Eric writes, you all seem like good friends, but you also operate together in a professional capacity, being the triple-click podcast. What is it like to be professional friends? Can it get awkward? What do you do when someone segues to... Oh, what do you do when someone segues to the break before one more thing, but you still have something that you want to say? The truth is that we all hate each other. The three of us just are. Yes, the word seem here. We don't talk, except we're kind of like the Beatles. We do not talk except for when we're podcasting together. Yeah. Yeah, I guess I feel like it's never gotten awkward.

This would be a weird moment for me to find out that the two of you think it has, but I don't think it is awkward. I guess because we were co-workers first and then became friends, so we already were working together, and then we just became friends. And then at a certain point, you two asked me if I wanted to permanently be on your podcast, which in and of itself is potentially awkward because you two already had a podcast. And then I became part of it. And now I'm a third of it. And so that, I don't know, I think is just an amazing thing. Yeah. I mean, Maddie, I had one kid and then I had a second kid. That's right. It seemed like it might be awkward, but it was actually a natural fit. No, it wasn't because you kept it, you kept it a secret for a while. That was potentially all that. That's besides the point. like that. Yeah, I don't feel like that part's awkward. Things just fit well. Maybe it's also just that we have also had pretty good boundaries.

Like when we were setting up triple click after split screen, we were like our own business. And Kirk was really the responsible one there because he already had his own podcast that was a business. And he was like, here's some ground rules that we should lay out in case any of us ever wanted to quit the show. Like behind the scenes, we have some language for that. And hopefully it will never happen. And we'll be doing this till the day we die.

But, you know, we set up some ground rules for that and signed a contract together, but because we had already all been working together at Kataku before, I feel like that was pretty normalized. But what do we do when somebody segues to the break before one more thing and one of us wants to keep talking? What do we do, Kurt? I don't know if that happens very often. Usually it's a pretty natural stop point. Something that's worth noting about what we do that I'm not sure if people quite internalize is that like the, our kind of professional and personal relationship is, well, our personal relationship is pretty good. I think the three of us are good friends, but our professional relationship is not really

one where, let me rephrase this. So I think that when personal relationships and professional relationships get dicey, a lot of times there's some kind of common issues. It might be a fight over money. It might be a fight over who's pulling their weight in a business. It might be a fight over, like those, things of those nature, which aren't really, don't really come up very honest. among the three of us. And when they do, I think we're pretty good at talking about it and resolving it pretty quickly. But from the get-go, we divvied our load and our workload and made it pretty clear what we were all going to do. And we have kind of regular check-in meetings just to make sure that none of us are feeling too overwhelmed. And so I think just because of the nature of this,

like if we were running a media business that it was full-time for all of us, that might feel a little bit different and a little more challenging. But with the podcast, it's, I think, pretty manageable. And I think the three of us have gotten pretty good at handling that. Yeah. Yeah, I'll just second what both of you said. Maddie, I think that's true that we were colleagues first and then grew to become friends and that that is an important trajectory because friends who then start working together can discover all sorts of new tensions or wrinkles. And be like, oh, working with this person sucks as it turns out. Like sometimes you don't know that when you're friends with someone.

Right. Right. Where if you already kind of know how to just communicate professionally and ask for things and just have that kind of relationship with someone, it's a lot easier to just fit a friendship into that rather than going the other way around. And yeah, Jason, I think I think it's true that a big thing in our show's favor is that this isn't any of our main thing, both for our, like, creative focus and also, or professional focus and also for our. our income. I think if this were a big, like really big company, like we were a podcast that was a full-time thing with like off-shoots and we had a staff and we're hiring all these people and really had to manage a lot of ins and outs. Like staff, a staff makes everything more stressful. Like once you're employing people, a lot of people are relying on you. Money becomes much more important.

There are all these pressures that then can really just become more difficult to work with. And it's not that I think we wouldn't do well. I think we would. It would just require more constant check-ins. It require more talking things out. As it is, our show is very simple and straightforward. Like you said, Maddie, we do have, like, I think, really good sort of partnership paperwork that we all worked out with lawyers. So that stuff is all in place. And now we can just kind of relax and make the show that we like making, which I think is a great way to make something. I agree. I agree. Especially when you're already doing a lot of other things, which all three of us are. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's interesting. Some of the, looking in the industry that I cover,

some of us cover, two of us cover, video game industry. I think some of the most successful creative partnerships and also some of the least successful have been people who aren't close friends but are just kind of like business partners or creative partners

and yeah I think that a lot of times if something is your kind of your full time like I'm spending 40 plus hours a week on this thing it can be a lot tougher to be close friends with your business partners as to a side thing. So yeah, I think that's a good point. All right, let's move on, unless I'm

seguing before the two of you have something to say. Now I'm going to be constantly self-conscious about that. It's an interesting thing that I could talk about more, but let's keep it moving. Maddie, this one is for you. All right, this is from Will, who says, Hi, triple-click question for the show. Are there any genres or games you enjoyed growing up that you no longer enjoy? For example, I loved open-world games. up, but I don't like them nearly as much as I've gotten older. Right off the top, Will, I wonder if that's time related, because that was one of the main things that came to mind when I read this question was like, well, I have a very different relationship with time as an adult than I did as a child. And we talked about that on the show a lot.

But Jason, go ahead. I talked about this a little bit the other day, but I think that what people today might not realize, especially younger folks, is that one of the reasons that people in the 90s loved some of those classic JRPs so much is that playing them was the only way you could listen to that music. You can just go on the internet and find it. And I think that nowadays, replaying some of those games, as you guys have discovered, can be a little bit of a challenge. And also, just the genre can be a little bit more of a challenge because you don't have those same kind of advantages you did that back then of A, not being able to like use the technology back then couldn't actually support some of the like combat ideas or graphical ideas.

So that is kind of a metaphorical thing. And I mean, we can get into a whole conversation about whether turn-based combat is antiquated these days. But even aside from that point, just not having that kind of, oh, this is the only way I can listen to the music. So I'm going to play this and it's going to be awesome. That being gone, I think, has removed some of the appeal of some of something. of those older games and in some ways some of that genre. That's not to say there aren't great J-R-R-Bigees today, but it was a big factor in their favor back then. One of these for me is probably shooters and first-person shooters in particular. I still play

games with guns and with shooting, but I play a lot fewer of them. I never play Call of Duty anymore. And I used to play those games more. And some of that is really just down to the guns, like just the shooting, the sort of audio-visual milieu. of a first-person shooter where it's just bop-bub-p-p-pah-pah-pah-pah-pah-pah-pah! Like just so much of that. And then just the, you know, like Call of Duty, you have this huge gun in your face all the time

and you're constantly murdering people with it. And there really does come a point, or at least there came a point for me where I was like, I don't like this. Like, I don't like doing this. Even when I'm playing, you know, a far cry or some of the shooters that I still like to play, there's just an element to those games

that kind of turns me off. It's just, it's not something I can overlook anymore. I wrote a big long thing about this for Kataki right before I left, just about my relationship with guns and with virtual guns and the ways that that relationship has changed over the years. And I think that that holds true. It's probably truer for me now even than it was when I wrote that, which was, you know, six years ago now, so a while ago.

So that's one for me is first person shooters and third person shooters and especially military shooters, just not for me anymore. That's interesting. Yeah, I don't feel like I have a genre. like that that I'm like, oh, I used to like this and now I don't. And if anything, I have more genres I like now, whereas when I was younger, I was more limited, like really into competitive games. I was like playing a lot of fighting games and shooters and just being like, I like competitive games, and these are the genres I like. And then as I got to college and just met more people who played

games and then eventually started working at the Phoenix, I was like, oh, there's just so many other kinds of games. And it turns out I like a lot of them. And I just didn't try them before. and either couldn't afford them or just didn't have access to them and increasingly did. And that just kind of opened up my world. But also reading this question, I'm like, wow, I just don't ever want to play a game like Pokemon Red ever again, whereas when I was a kid, I did that for a really long time. And just those games where like you're collecting stuff and that's like the whole game. I feel like as a kid I was pretty fascinated by that.

But as an adult, I'm like, I need a little bit more. than that. As a kid, collecting can be its own reward. Yeah, it kind of feels like it is. And I also liked collecting rocks and coins and like other things as a kid. And it's not to say there aren't many adults I know who still really love collecting stuff. And I'll enjoy looking at people's impressive collections. But that was just something that kind of wore off for me.

And now I really don't collect anything anymore. And I really am more minimalist in my style and don't hold on to much of anything. and if anything, I'm more likely to throw something away and wish I hadn't done that. But in a game, even, I'm like, why am I collecting this? And I struggle with games that are about collecting stuff. I have another one, actually. And that's just games with like MMO style, huge checklists. I think something that has pushed me away from Destiny every time I've tried to go back to it since stopping playing that game has been that part of it specifically.

It's not even actually the first person shooting. I like shooting things in Destiny. Maybe because it's aliens and a lot of the guns make weird sounds. I don't know. The guns in real life, it sounds like... Not quite as militaristic. And like, whew! And that, you know.

Right, right. I think it is partly the sound effects. But yeah, I think every time I go back to that game, and I've been thinking about it again because the final shape is coming out. And it'd be kind of fun to just, I don't know, it's this big last hurrah. They're doing all this wild stuff. It sounds cool. Right.

It sounds cool. And then I just am almost certain I'm going to have this experience that I have described many times on the show. which is you go back to the game, you play a little bit, you're like, oh yeah, Destiny is pretty fun to jump around. And then you beat the first couple story missions, and then you have to go talk to some guy. And he's like, okay, here's this thing. You have to charge it up by going to 17 different places and killing this many enemies. And I'm like, oh, right, I don't want to do this.

And then I just stopped playing. So I have kind of just lost, almost entirely lost my capacity to play games like that. but I feel like we're all going to try it. The problem is that the final shape The final shape comes out just as we're all going to LA so we're not even going to have time to really jump into it I'll jump in a little later maybe if people say it's good Yeah maybe I mean then the Eldon Ring DLC hits

So it's going to be hard well Kirk we're going to see our old destiny buddies in L.A so you can talk about whether we're all going to revisit it Are they going to all convince you two to start getting back into it? That's the big question that's the big question All right. One last question we got time for. This is from Eric. Eric says, hi, everyone. I recently started watching Yellow Jackets. And by the time you read this, I will have season two completed. Everyone was really excited about season one. And it was brought out multiple times. We did a beans cast for it. Maddie even lested it at his best TV show of 2022. But there hasn't been any talk of season two. What are your thoughts on it? Well, unfortunately, Kirk and I just both readjusting. in our chair is like, well... There's a reason for that, Eric.

Ooh. Didn't turn out so good. Season two is mega weird and not good is the reason. And it's not good in a way that's not very fun to talk about. Like it meanders. They make some really weird...

They slow down a lot of the story. I was going to say they make weird storytelling decisions, but I don't know if I stand by that. I think some of the storytelling decisions are fine. They're just really slow and kind of told in a weird order. It kind of feels almost like every person working on it doesn't care anymore, which I think is a weird thing to say maybe because I don't know any of these people personally. But it just is kind of how it felt. Like something was missing in season two.

Yeah. But Kirk, did you watch it? You did, right? Yeah, I did. We watched it with a friend of ours. We were really jazz to start it and then wound up just kind of pushing through it because she'd come over. We'd hang out and put it on. And we'd be like, well, let's find out what happened.

And, yeah, I mean, it would have been a bummer to do. an episode or a bean scotch or something on it, just because it would have been a lot of nitpicking or saying, wait, why did this happen? I didn't understand. Because there's a lot of that, especially toward the end of the season. They get all the adult characters together. And then, man, in the last couple episodes, there are just these sequences where stuff happens, people die, just out of nowhere.

I mean, it's very, it's very all over the place. Elijah Wood turns up and is fantastic, and it's very fun. He's good. He's really good in it. He has this musical number. I mean, there's stuff in it that is really lovely. It's all kind of scattered. but I thought that was pretty fun. Yeah.

But totally agree that the feel, like the energy of the show is just completely different from season one. Season one just was like a punch to the face. I mean, the whole season just, it landed. And then you just couldn't ignore it all the way through to the end. And all you wanted to do was talk about it. Season two, it just felt like everyone had arrived. Like, bam, we arrived in season one.

And then everyone just looked around and said, okay, now what? What are we doing here? And there are just so many questions that I still have about, particularly the past, like 90s storyline where they've crashed in the woods, like what is going on there? And where are they going to go with this for, I think, three more seasons is the plan, because they just didn't really tease out anything new. It, like, it didn't go the lost route of introducing way too much stuff. But as a result, they kind of didn't introduce anything.

And I feel like, you know, I actually think they rushed through some of the storylines, too. The whole cannibalism storyline, like, is, it's moving faster almost than I wanted it to. But then, yeah, you're right that sometimes it feels slow. Like the pacing is just very strange. It was really messy. I don't really know what happened behind the scenes with the writing, with the production of it, but it is very like all over the place. It felt like something had happened that we don't know about.

It did. It did. So yeah, just pretty disappointed. What happened was Ella Pernell went like, has the touch of gold. I know. And she went to a new show. That became awesome. I also think the strike happened to for the actors.

And that's going to affect whether the show can continue because all those younger actors are getting older in the intervening years and I think that affected their ability to do. Wait, the strike was after the show aired. Yeah, but like, isn't that going to affect how they're able to do? Oh, you're tight. Oh, I thought you were saying it impacted this season. Like, because they keep getting older. So even at the time, I was like, is this show just going to get canceled?

Like, how could they do this? Yeah, based on the reactions, it felt like season one was so buzzy, no pun intended. And then season two, nobody really talked about. So I don't know if they're really going to stick with. five seasons. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't even watch it. I think because we both told you that you didn't need to.

You're fine. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, pretty much. And also like I like Paramount Plus like you have to get a new, a whole new streaming thing for it. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Kind of a pain to watch also. Yeah. So yeah. I don't know. I can't think of many shows where like they've had such a good first season and then maybe Westworld is another one where it's like an amazing first season. And then maybe Westworld is another one where it's like an amazing first season and then total drop off. Very similar. And I mean, I, the loss comparison, even though it's kind of opposite, I remember feeling similarly about where like the first couple seasons I was

like so high on it. And then I just got so tired of what was going on. I mean, that show has, has a lot of ups and downs. It has its own issues. But, but it is similar in the sense, I guess because all three of the shows that we're talking about, Yellow Jackus, Westworld and Lost are all kind of mystery box type shows and really just shows how different. it is to continue to have weak to week to week tension and unraveling a mystery in that way is just really difficult. Veronica Marr is another one of an immaculate first season and I would say a pretty flawed second season. It happens.

The sophomore slump is a thing. This was a major sophomore slump, I would say. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Veronica Mars another mystery box word.

Yep. The mystery in the first season was perfect. Yeah. The second season kind of a little messier. Although I wouldn't say the second season is bad. Monica Mara's by name of me. I know. You're a season two apologists.

I am. It's not that I think it's great or like tight or anything like that. I just enjoyed watching it as opposed to season three, which is really just putrid. Yeah, I'm still never watched it. Oh, you've never watched season three. Wow. Because I don't care. I watched the new season.

I watched the movie. That was fine. I don't need to watch all that stuff with Pizz or whatever. Yeah, she's in college. I watched it all recently. Oh, my God. She is like the worst boyfriend ever who's just like the worst. All about him.

Anyway, I know. All right. Let's take a break, unless you do you do have more to say? Do I need to say this every time? So much more. Why are you? We're all working about it. How dare you?

We're going to take a break and then we'll be back for one more thing. The greatest generation has been going on for more than eight years. And if you've been Greatest Gen curious but have never taken the leap, we recommend exploring your greatest gen curiosity in a safe, fun environment with partners you can trust. But right now is one of the best. times ever to become a new listener. That's because we just started covering a new Star Trek series. Star Trek Enterprise, one of the horniest and weirdest editions of Star Trek ever released.

This is your chance to ease in to the greatest generation lifestyle. The greatest generation now covering Star Trek Enterprise, the one with Scott Bacula, every Monday on maximum fun.org or in your podcast app. Hey, Sydney, you're a physician and the co-host of Sawbones, It's a marital tour of misguided medicine, right? That's true, Justin. Is it true that our medical history podcast is just as good as a visit to your primary care position? No, Justin.

That is absolutely not true. However, our podcast is funny and interesting and a great way to learn about the medical misdeeds of the past as well as some current not so legit health care fats. So you're saying that by listening to our podcast, people will feel better. Sure. And isn't that the same reason that you go to the doctor? Well, you could say that. And our podcast is free?

Yes, it is free. You heard it here first, folks, Sawbones, Merrill Dura of Misguide the Medicine right here on Maximum Fun, just as good as going to the doctor. No, no, no, still not just as good as going to the doctor, but pretty good. It's up there. And we are back for one more thing, Maddie.

The tradition of old from soft games continues. It's not even that old. Okay, so I put Eldon Ring as my one more thing. I was a little scared to get back into Eldon Ring. So just to give the backstory for the listeners, so I'm sure in a similar boat if they care about Shadow of the Earth Tree. I mean, Shadow of the Earth Tree is set in the middle of Eldon Ring. This is, of course, the new DLC that comes out.

That is upcoming in a few weeks. And it's set in the middle of the game, which is annoying. And there's a thing that From Stuff typically does. And in my case, what I did with Eldon Ring, the very first time I played it was I played it all the way to the end. I spent hundreds of hours in it, just exploring it top to bottom. I got past the final boss, and then I went to the roundtable hold, which is sort of like this resting area for your character. And then if you sit down at the roundtable hold, it will kick over to new game plus.

And I apparently never did that. I just stood there and then I closed my game and then I didn't open it for however long it's been since Alden Ring came out. And then when I rebooted up my game, I was like, oh, great. I never kicked over to new game plus. So I have this like really high level character. I can easily go to where the new DLC is going to start. No problem.

I can just start it right away and I have all my high level gear. Let me just like try walking around and see what I can do. And I didn't remember anything. I didn't remember how anything worked. I looked at my item names. I was like, I don't know what any of these are. I don't know what's going on. I don't know what a spirit ash is.

I don't remember who people are. So I just started it over. I started a new character. And so since then I've played for like 20 hours and I beat Margaret. I'm like in Stormvale. I'm like fully back in. I like have, I have intelligence builds now, so I have magic now, so it's like a totally different build.

And I'm just loving it. I'm really loving Elton Ring. And I think it's a good video game. Turns out. And also, I got over my anxiety because initially I was like, I was scared to get back into it, one, because I was like, what if I go back and I don't know how to play? And then I did go back and I didn't know how to play. So I was like, my anxiety has been realized.

I don't know how to play this video game. Is it your new character, a new game plus? new character. No, it's brand new character. I just started over fully because I was like, if I go over to new game plus, I'm still going to have all my old gear and the game is going to expect me to know how to use it. And I like, like, I didn't remember what the fingers did. Like, there's so much stuff in that game that I was just like, just, I need Molina to sit me by the sight of grace and explain it to me again. I need to meet Ronnie again. I don't know what's going on. And it's really helped me. So if anybody else is in the same boat, I recommend doing that. I'm not sure if my

new game if I'm going to get all the way to where I need to be. But starting it over completely with a new character did really help me remember all the weird terminology in the game. So I'm probably going to continue playing it for a bit. Okay. I have another question. Do you know if, so if I were to do like my current build, if I were to join the DLC on like my, what I think many of us are in where we have a character that's beaten the game and it's just been sitting around. But are you a new game plus? No, no, no, no, not in DLC. I'm saying, so you activate the DLC, which is like behind where Moog was, right?

Like, that's right. So if I do that, would I be super overpowered since I've already beaten the game with this character? Like, is it DLC designed for mid-game characters as opposed to end-game characters? I'm not sure if that is definitively no. We don't know. We don't know. Okay. But given that it's from Soft, it's probably going to scale to your level and stuff.

way, I would guess. That's usually what they do for other FromSoft games. For the DLC? No, it's not. Usually there's just a level. Yeah. Miyazaki said something about leveling that led some people to believe that there may be a whole separate weapons and power systems similar to how Sekiro works. If you remember, Sekiro doesn't have levels, you just power up your attacks at certain

kind of gated moments so you can never actually become super overpowered in Sekiro. I don't remember the exact quote, but I believe some people had drawn the conclusion that this DLC is going to have its own power scaling system that's more similar to that where you start out. Everyone just kind of starts out at the same level regardless of where they are. That would make sense. That would be cool. They haven't really done that before. In the past, yeah, if you go in New Game Plus into DLC, like in Bloodbourne, for example, where I played the old hunters, that's the DLC I'm most familiar with. I went into that in New Game Plus and was getting rocked because they were New Game Plus level enemies.

and I wound up playing it again way later on a new save in just NG, and that worked better. Bing! Kirk here, as I am editing the episode, I was kind of going off the dome when we recorded this, and I know this is something that people are actually wondering about, and there's not a ton of extremely accurate information about it. First, just to distance myself from myself, I'm actually not 100% sure that Frum is approached leveling the same in all of their DLC, because I haven't played all of their DLC, even though I just said that.

It could well be different in some of their games that I haven't played. So I just wanted to qualify that. Second, the quote that I am talking about comes from a Famitsu interview with Miyazaki. It's been translated to few places, and it's got him saying basically that there will be a level-up system in the game that people will understand as being akin to attack power in Sekiro, and that it's separate from the existing levels and is only effective within the DLC area. No idea what exactly that means. I think we'll just have to wait for coverage of the DLC to come out, but I just wanted to give the full translated quote. Okay, back to the show.

I would say, you know, to offer a secondary suggestion to this, if you're playing on PC, you could do what I did and back up all of your saves. I have a backed up save at various points near the end of the game and one, yeah, where I'm sitting right in the roundtable hold. Then you could just back up that save and save it. Then go start new game plus, which will give you a kind of easier on-ramp to just have a whole bunch of stuff and a bunch of abilities and kind of rock your way through the first few hours of the game a lot faster. and remember how everything works. I found New Game Plus to be a good way to remember the story or to catch more story moments

because I just wasn't as focused on the minute to minute of just surviving because I was so low level. And then you can always just copy your old save back over your save slot and then go into the DLC at NG instead of New Game Plus. But if you have a PC and you can back up your save,

there's a lot of different ways that you can do it. It depends on how overwhelmed you are and by which things. Like if you're me And you're like, I just want to start over. That's true. I mean, you can always just ignore the stuff in your inventory. Yeah, it sounded like it wasn't an easy on-ram for Maddie.

Well, only because there's so much going on. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It depends on what you find easy. I totally relate to that, Maddie. No, I totally watch it as an alternative suggestion, but not as a better one. Seven-Duff Hamilton over here has his own way.

I'm terrible at Eldon. Eric, what's your one more thing? My one more thing is a movie that I watched from 1994 as my friend's Sam and I have continued our 1994 Oscars rewatch. Nice. Every movie that was nominated for an Academy Award that year. We're near the end. There's a few that we're never going to watch, like Wyatt Earp.

No, man. I'm sorry, but I'm not going to watch a three-hour Kevin Costor movie about Wyatt Earp. Never seen it, never going to. But one that we did watch is Tim Burton's Ed Wood, which is a fantastic movie that I just wanted to recommend to anybody. Mattie, you would love it. Jason, you would love it. It is an amazing movie. It's maybe my favorite Tim Burton movie, which is a wild thing to say.

say, but it's not like anything else he ever made. And I don't know. I know that this movie is, I wouldn't say a cult classic, but it just widely appreciated film. And I guess I knew that going in, but I didn't go in with many preconceptions. I just, I knew it was black and white. I knew that it had underperformed and I knew that Ed Wood was a real guy. Ed Wood was the director of Plan 9 from Outer Space and a number of other legendarily terrible films in the 50s and 60s. Yeah. even like lower than B movies really. They weren't even in the technical definition of a B movie like the B side or whatever. These were movies that were like stock footage cut together with like unbelievable first takes

where someone like hits a door on their way out of a scene and they just, he just keeps it. So this is a biopic really about him. And then there are a bunch of real life characters depicted in it. Most notably, Bella Lugosi, who played Dracula is played by Martin Landau, who won best supporting actor this year for it and is absolutely incredible. Like five minutes into the movie, we're like, oh, okay, this is why this guy beat Samuel L. Jackson and all these other actors that we've been watching because he is unbelievably great.

So Edward is a really interesting person, a really interesting character. He's played by Johnny Depp in the film, which I understand could be a problem for some people. Like, it's different watching Johnny Depp now than maybe it was in 1994. It is a fantastic performance by him. It is kind of an interesting. period in his career. It's kind of pre-pirates of the Caribbean, but he's doing that kind of really caffeinated, really, like, positive, like, take on this character. And it's just a great performance

of a guy I didn't know very much about. A ton of other people are in it, though. Sarah Jessica Parker is fantastic. A whole bunch of character actors and comedians. She is really good. She plays his kind of first girlfriend. Anyways, I just, I can't say enough good about it. It's so fun to watch. It's such a wonderful mix of like these cheap practical effects with real kind of Tim Burton miniature, stop motion, you know, like you can see all his love of those techniques come out in the movie because, you know, if you've watched Beetlejuice or you've watched whatever any of his other kind of Edward Cisorhands, his other early movies, he loves miniatures. He loves those little tangible practical effects and sets. And there's a lot of that in this movie. And it's a big

ode to filmmaking and to kind of weirdos who form a little creative family together and over time just kind of learn to love and live with one another. Bill Murray is in it playing a real character who is just absolutely wonderful. It's really fun to see him in this supporting role, doing some real acting, kind of playing a character. He has some of the funniest moments in the film, but in a just really wonderful way. I really can't recommend it enough. This is a movie that kind of like heavenly creatures. I just didn't really know much about, had never seen, and then we were just, we loved the entire thing.

So a huge recommendation for Ed Wood, which is pretty easy to find streaming. You might have to rent it, but it's worth the $4 or whatever that costs. I'm going to do it. I'm going to finally watch it. You'll like it. My one more thing is Paper Mario,

the thousand-year door, the new remake on the Nintendo Switch. I've got this installed. I haven't played it. Want to know what you think of it. Kirk, Maddie, this game still rules, 20 years later. So this game, okay, man, so a little quick back story. We all played Super Mario RPG. That was kind of the SquareSoft or Square at the time, Squarespace at the time,

and Nintendo collaboration. Then they parted ways for various reasons. And Nintendo wound up doing their own kind of series of Mario RPGs called Paper Mario. That was on the console. And then they had the Mario and Luigi games, which are on the handhelds. So on the console, you had Paper Mario, which was really cool. That was on 64 and 64. And then Paper Mirror of the thousand-year door, which, like, blew things out and was way, way better and blew people away when it came out for the GameCube in 2004 or whatever it was. And it still holds up extremely well today in large part because the writing is just fantastic as it was back then. This was like the treehouse on top of their game, like really mastering just the way that people talk in the, this silly, ridiculous, absurd Mario universe where just everyone is hilarious and the characters

are all just truly preposterous. If I've one complaint, it's just, it's got that old school Nintendo style of overt tutorializing everything where there's a new tutorial every single time you get a new ability and just endless text telling you how to use it. But it's just so much fun that it's really hard to not recommend that you both play this game. It's a blind. It is so much fun. You play as Mario, of course. It's turn-based combat with button timing. You guys are very familiar with that.

You get a host of different kind of characters who can join you, and then you can cycle between them as like your partners, and they're all, I think they're all, or most of them are based on classic Mario enemies. So there's like a Kupa, Troopa. There's a Gumba, Gumbarella, who joins you. And they all have both abilities. combat and also abilities outside of combat that you use to solve puzzles and get through platforming challenges and stuff like that. And then there's this hilarious concept where every time

you find these chests and inside the chests you hear this disembodied voice who is like, please save me. I will reward you beyond your like dreams, yada, yada, yada. And then you finally find a way to unlock it. And he's like, ha ha ha, I tricked you. Now I'm going to curse you. But the curse is actually giving you like a powerful new ability. So it's like, now you can turn into a paper airplane and use that to navigate these areas. And so you find yourself just being like, hell yeah, he's cursed me again. And yeah, it's just great. It's just a great RPG. You're going around these super wild, colorful characters in towns and there are interludes in between each Mario chapter where you get to play as Peach for a while, which is also hilarious and very

fun. Yeah, just a great game has aged extremely well. And if this is one of the Switch's final games, it's a good one. It's a good one to say, say goodbye. Start saying goodbye to the Switch to as we prepare ourselves for the Switch's inevitable successor next year. Nice. Yeah, I'll definitely play it. Yeah, me too. You guys have both really like it. And maybe we can talk about it a little more in depth if you guys both wind up getting really into it over the summer. All right, on that note, It's time to say goodbye, Kirk. It is. Maddie, I will see you both soon for our Triple Cook bonus episode, which will air pretty soon for subscribers.

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

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

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