Triple Click - Why Do Games Cost So Much to Make?

Episode Date: January 16, 2025

How have video game budgets skyrocketed to the hundreds of millions? What are some good video games for elderly people? And is it possible there's a game as good as Balatro out there, but nobody has found it yet? This week, the Triple Click gang opens up the mailbag and takes some of your questions on all sorts of topics.One More Thing:Kirk: Black Doves (Netflix)Maddy: Steam FamiliesJason: The Roottrees Are DeadLINKS:Excerpts from “Crowning Celebration” by Paul Misko from The Case of the Golden Idol, 2022 and “New Wells of Conformity” by Paul Alexander from Case of the Golden Idol, 2024 Kirk’s new prediction: Death Stranding 2 will feature one (1) of the following people: Sydney Sweeney, Zendaya, Florence Pugh, Timothée Chalomét, Christopher Nolan, Daniel CraigSupport 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

Short, interesting, funny. Am I talking about a great triple-click email or myself? Am I right? Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week we open up the listener mailbag and answer questions about video game studio budgets, at times when game soundtracks can be too distracting, and then a couple other questions about music. I'm Maddie Myers.

I'm Jason Shrier, and I'm Kirk Hamilton, and hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. We should all do that intro where we all just say each other's names. I just think it would be funny.

Right. Like for April fools. Or I'm like, and he's Jason Shrier and she's Maddie Myers. That's what they do on stop podcasting yourself at the beginning. That's like, you know on some podcasts when they say goodbye? Like you know how I just have a pre-recorded thing where I say goodbye? They'll say for Maddie Myers and Jason Shrier, I'm Kirk Hamilton. Yeah.

We could do that. If we wanted to be, it feels kind of classy. It is classy. That feels like an old-school. TV broadcasts. Yeah, right, like a kind of radio broadcaster. Yeah, like good night and good luck. Well, if you like the old-timey radio broadcast vibes of triple click every single week, then have you considered becoming a member and supporting our show? And if you were to do that, you would get access to our bonus episodes. But how might you go about it? Well, you'd go to

maximum fun.org slash join. That would be how you'd sign up to be how you'd sign up to become a supporter. And once you do, for example, this month, you're going to get what we call a beans cast, where we spill the beans, we spoil something. And in this case, it's metaphor refantazio. We all played it, really long, wonderful RPG, lots to say about it. That's going to be our bonus episode in the feed this month. But there's a big backlog of other bonus episodes that you can listen to where we spill the beans about Final Fantasy games and Call of Duty. I don't know why those are always the only two I can ever think of. You should go back and read the list sometimes.

I know, but I can't. I'm incapable of doing that. I can only riff off the top of my head. It's a, it's a real sad thing that I have this wrong with me. But hey, you, listeners, you could go and check out the full list of bonus episodes on the Maximum Fun website or you could just go on ahead to maximum fun.org slash join, become a member, and find all those bonus episodes yourself. and then you wouldn't need me to tell you what they are.

I know it's a metaphor refentazio this month, though. Yes, that's the important one. And we have some other important business to get to before we get to the rest of our episode today. Isn't that right? Yeah, so last week we did our predictions episode and we have to make a couple of notes. First, I have a Mia Kulpa,

which is that I had said that an Xbox game was never nominated for Game of the Year at the Game Awards. But, alas, I missed, and how could I possibly forget Psychonauts 2, which was nominated in 2021, which was two years after Xbox bought Double Fine. So that certainly counts as an Xbox game. So I was wrong that it hadn't been nominated.

That said, I'm keeping that prediction as is. It's still going to be an Xbox Game Studios game will be nominated for Game of the Year at the Game Awards. And then, Kirk, we got to change one of yours. Yes. So I predicted that either, I believe it was either one, of Jeff Keeley or Conan O'Brien would be in Death Stranding 2. And it turns out it has already been revealed that Conan O'Brien, at least, will be in Death Stranding 2.

So we're going to change that prediction to, I don't know, something. We're going to talk it through right now, and we're going to figure out what this prediction should be. Yeah. So we think, I mean, if it was just Jeff Keeley, even Jeff Keeley alone is a little bit too obvious. So my suggestion is that we pick, like, a bunch of celebrities, maybe even based on, like, who Koujima is tweeting about. and then if even one of them is in the game, you can still win this. So it'll still be pretty easy.

But no Keeleys. We're taking Keeley out. We're taking Keeley out. We're going to pick some celebrities. The hardest part, actually, of this prediction will be just trending to making it out in 2025. That's right. So that's really, that's the real prediction here.

But anyway, my suggestion is, let's say we make like a list of four or five celebrities. And based on Kuzima's taste, my guess is that Sidney-Sweeney would be on that list. But Kirk is up to you. Well, let's, let's compile a list right now. I think Sydney City should be in that. Maddie, you got any?

I agree with that. I've got a different tack here. Chris Nolan. What about that? That feels like another Kajima cameo because he loves a director. Oh, man. That's good. I mean, it'd be hilarious if no one was in there. And I also wrote down Daniel Craig.

Kajima also loves an older, hot actor as well. That's good. That's good. Sort of the Mads-Mickleson pick. Yes, exactly. So those two felt like they could, they could happen and would make sense. Same with Sidney-Sweeney. Like all three of them kind of feel like they're on the verge of happening.

So three others that come to mind for me, just because I know that he is very drawn to fame into the kind of hottest actors, are Florence Pute, Timothy, Salomey and Zendaya. Oh, my God. Those three all seem possible. So what if we say, okay, so that's, one, two, three, that's six. Okay.

But Nolan and Craig are pretty out there. I don't know. I kind of like that as six. What if we say one of those six is in the game? Okay, that's fine. Any one of them. Just write them down. Well, John, I'm down.

As you said, Jason, the real prediction is death strenning two comes out in 20. Yeah, I think so too. But that's a fun one. Also, it'll be fun as like everybody's playing through the game to be like, oh, Sidney, sweetie's there. Oh, Christopher Nolan. Yeah. Me and a camera.

Yeah, that's a fun one to be keeping track of those six. Okay, cool. All right. So that's the new prediction for your death stranding two one. And it looks like if rumors come true, by the time this episode goes live, you might have already won your prediction about the Switch to having Switch in the name. Yeah, well, no one way or the other. I'll have won or lost it. If those rumors are correct.

I think it's pretty safely established that it's going to be called Switch 2. But I guess we'll see on Thursday or whatever it is announced. Anyway, let's get to today's episode. This week we are opening up the listener mailbag. reading some questions from all you find folks out there. A lot of good ones this week. So before we get started, just a reminder that you can always reach us at triple click at maximum fun.org. You can send in your questions and comments and so on and so forth. Please send in short questions. The shorter question, the happier I will be is the person

who has to read through all of these every time we do one of these. On with the questions. Maddie, why don't you read the first one? Sure. So this is from Gordon, who writes, mine is not so much a question, but rather a plea to help me understand the economics of video games. Ever since Jason wrote that tweet about the cost of games, you guys have dropped some information and tidbits in the show, latest of which was that DLCs are very expensive to make. Why I found the surprising is because most DLCs are just small extensions of games with not many new mechanics added. And I thought they would be relatively cheap to make compared to the base game. What I would love to understand is how costs are distributed. Is most of the costs spent on engine and mechanics?

If so, wouldn't then adding derivative content should be relatively cheap? Sort of weird wording there, but I'm with you, Gordon. Is it linear with the world size? The larger the map, the more expensive the game. In which case, keeping games smaller would make it cheaper, which I would personally prefer anyways, right? Why are derivative games built on the same engines? thinking Assassin's Creed year over year iteration Spider-Man 2 versus 1, the same price as games that reinvent themselves, thinking The Last of Us Part 2 versus The Last of Us Part 1 here. All great questions. Jason, answer for your crimes, aka tweet. Yeah, it's funny. This is sent a couple months ago, but I actually just published a column about why games are so expensive.

And I think that, so one of the questions Gordon asked here is, is most of the cost spent on engine and mechanics. So let's try to break that down. I'll just kind of give a brief overview, and then I'm curious to hear your two thoughts as well. But no, the answer to sort of, I guess, well, the answer to what a budget is and why a game costs so much is that it's almost entirely the people. You have some overhead costs in there, like rent and kind of other like computers and office equipment and stuff. But when you talk about spending money on an engine or spending money on a mechanic, you're really talking about spending money on the, people who are making those, which means that you're paying for X number of months of someone's salary to work on that. And that is what people talk about.

When people talk about, that's what they're talking about, is paying people's salaries. So one useful way to think of like this game costs $400 million might actually be, well, a whole lot of people got paid fair wages to work on this game, which might put things in a little bit of a different perspective than like, holy crap, I can't believe Activision spent $700 million on Call of Judy or whatever. So I won't get into all the math, but I wrote a piece about this. You can go check that out about the little bit of the napkin math. My focus of that piece was on the mismanagement that leads to some of these budgets climbing and climbing and climbing. But oftentimes it's kind of, it's just top-level decisions that lead to these games being

really expensive. So there might be kind of a baseline of like, okay, let's say we're going to, we know this game should take three years. and maybe we'll give ourselves an extra six months of time on that to allow for iteration and cancel cutting stuff and making mistakes and so on. So three years and six months. That means that my budget is paying X amount of people, Y salary for three years and six months. But then there might be mistakes along the way. Let's say there's a global pandemic and it forces everyone to just kind of totally like overhaul their lives as a result. That might add another year to the schedule,

which means it could add another $50 million, depending on how many people I have employed. If I have 300 people employed, I'm paying all those salaries for an extra year as part of that project's budget. And a lot of times, every single game, I mean, he mentioned some specific games here. It all really, I mean, it can differ so drastically

depending on the project. But Spider-Man 1 to Spider-2 might be a good example because I think those numbers are public. And I think, if I remember correctly, Spider-Man 2, whereas Spider-Man 1 costs a lot less, something closer to 100 million. If those numbers are accurate,

and you look at that game, you look at that kind of evolution from Spider-Man 1 to Spider-Man 2, you might be like, how is that possible? And I think a lot of that is because of the time frame that was involved. The number of people on the time is the answer, generally.

If there's more people on more time, the budget is going to be a lot more. There could be all sorts of reasons for that. If you look at the kind of the technological aspect, Spider-Man 1, from Spider-Wen, 1 to Spider-Man 2, it's not a huge kind of graphical upgrade. There might be some stuff here and there, but it looks pretty similar. It's not significantly different.

There is a pretty big scope upgrade from, or scope kind of expansion from Spider-Man 1 to Spider-Man 2, to has like two new burrows. It has a much longer campaign. It has two playable Spider-Man. So that's a huge expense, all of that, because that's a lot of people that you need to put into that. But also, there were likely other issues behind the scenes, maybe

kind of visions changing, story changing, things getting cut, things getting overhauled, executive stepping in. Who knows? A lot of that can just add to the expense here, which is just kind of one example. So in general, you can say that like if a game

costs X amount, that's because of the people times the time that they spent. And having to throw more people at something, or having to spend more time on something can be the result of all sorts of factors. Could be the result of scope and it could be the result of, in many cases, mismanagement, executives meddling and, I don't know, people deciding, hey, we're a single player studio, but we want to make a game as a service, a multiplayer game as a service this time. And oh, okay, I might take an extra

three years as we all learn how to make that kind of game, but hey, that's what we're going to do anyway. Or a company saying, hey, we want to use a brand new engine and take years like developing that engine. And then we have all these people who are just sitting around doing nothing because they can't work on the game because that engine and that tool set isn't actually in a place, a stable place where it can be developed on yet. Again, that's where money comes from. That's why these budgets are growing so so high is just because of time times people. Yeah. Hopefully that was a sufficient answer. So our DLC is just expensive because it's like, well, tack on another year to the full budget of all of the people who are already employed.

You're assuming you're not laying any of them off. And it's not like it's expensive because you're suddenly having these new considerations, like you're buying new computers for them or new tools or software or something. It's just more salary. Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't say, I don't know if DLC is necessarily like that expensive. But if a DLC takes these days like two or three here seems more likely. And also it's more likely that, well, look at LLC.

Eldon Ring, right? Like that Shadow of the Urtree came out two and a half years after Eldon Ring came out. So that's like two and a half years of development time. You're paying all those salaries for two and a half years. That could be just as much as like a AAA game was 10 years ago. Like that was a standard development cycle back in the day. So yeah, I mean, it could be just as expensive because of that. But yes, that is entirely the reason. It is not like people need to. And when people put together budgets, I should be very clear, it's like you have a number that you're working. with. And some people just work with estimates, like a common number back when I was writing Blood Sweat and Pixels, a common number was $10,000 per person per month. These days it's much higher, especially in expensive cities like L.A. It could be closer to $20,000 a person a month.

And that includes salary. It includes benefits like health care and includes overhead, including like rent of the studio and other kind of miscellaneous costs. So you're typically working with that kind of estimate for your budget that includes everything. But most of it is salary. Salary. And and benefits are most of what you're paying for. And you also have to consider that, like, people take time off. People go on sabbaticals or leaves or mental health days or whatever else. And all of that is just part of the budget. And it's how some of these costs can get so high.

Wasn't the consideration with DLC, not just that it costs money to make, but also that you don't sell as much of it because not as many people buy it? Yeah, that's something we had talked about. I remember Eldon Ring, that one, I think it sold five. million copies or something, which is like an astounding attach rate. I remember, I looked into this recently because I was, the Golden Idol people told me that they had like some crazy high attach rate where like 50% of people who bought the main game, like bought the first DLC or something like that. And I think the it's, the average is closer to 20 or less percent of people who buy a

main game will buy the DLC. And yeah, I think it was five million for Shadow the Earth Tree, which itself was a pretty good percent from what I remember. But yeah, Kirk, that's like why so many people, so many companies, we talked about this in the past, why so many companies have switched to the Miles Morales model of like, we're going to make this a standalone instead of attached to the main game. Yeah, I was mostly mentioning that because Gordon didn't mention it in his email. And it seems like when we're talking about the cost of DLCs, that's a big part of the consideration. It's not just how much they cost to make. It's that you don't make as much selling them, or at least typically you do. Yeah, which makes sense. I mean, even for Eldon Ring,

you can only play that DLC if you're really far in the game. Like, it's pretty unbelievable how well it's sold just in light of that. Yeah, that's why Jason's prediction that it would be standalone was a good prediction. It was a good prediction. Yeah, you know, it's so funny. I feel like that's the only game that can get away from that. Because if you're playing Eldon Ring and you're into Eldon Ring, then chances are you're really into Alden Ring.

Like, it's hard. It's not a game that a lot of people will just play five hours of and then, like, go play something else. Same for Golden Idol, I feel like. If you play it, you're really into it. and you're like, I want another puzzle, please. I'm willing to buy another puzzle for a couple bucks. Those two examples make perfect sense. It's a really specific type of gameplay.

And if you want it, you want the exact same thing but more. Yeah, and the new one, Rise of the Golden Idol, which came out a couple of months ago, the sequel to the first one, had four Gilse's announce that are going to come out this year. So, yeah, I was stoked about that. Any other thoughts from you guys before we move on? Made sense to me. Yeah, I think that that insight, that it's people, that you're paying for, that money equals people, and that that's just how you should think

about a game budget. It's just a helpful one to keep in mind. It's just a good framework, I think. Yeah, and when you hear someone talk about, like, oh, that looks expensive, those graphics looks expensive, like that, that's an incredible, like, set piece in Uncharted 4 where you're driving the truck and all sorts of shenanigans happen, that looks expensive. You're really just talking about the amount of time that it takes to work on that. times the number of people that it takes to work on it. So it could be that like we need to take six months out of the timeline just to work on this thing or it could be we need to hire an entire outsourcing company just to like help us fill in all the art for this thing. Or it could be that

we scrap this five times and so it turned out to be really expensive along the way. Anyway, let's move on to another question. Kirk, you want to ask this one? Sure, this question comes from Justin who writes, hi all, love the show and I was very happy last week to learn that it to learn from the show that Rise of the Golden Idol had actually just come out without my knowledge. I marathoned through it over the weekend and loved it, feeling that it was an improvement over the original in most ways with one key exception, the music.

I adored the music of the first game composed by Kyle Misko and felt that it really helped me lock into the game's vibe. Rises music with a new composer, Paul Alexander, is fine, but it is much more ambient with no tracks that stood out to me while I was playing. I got to wondering, however, if it might have been a don't know. deliberate choice by the creators to have music that stands out less so as not to distract the player while they're completing the puzzles. There were definitely times in case of the Golden Idol, the first game when I switched off

the audio to concentrate better, and I don't think I ever did that in Rise. All that is to ask, do you think that music and puzzle games can be too good or maybe too interesting? What is the right balance to strike in games that require a lot of mental focus from the player? Is Return of the Oberdyn, which had a banger soundtrack, but lets the music fade out while you're getting into deep thinking mode, is that the gold standard, as always. I'd love to hear your thoughts. This is a great question. That's an unfair comparison, because in Golden Idol, you're always in the same mode. You're not kind of moving back and forth between mentalities the

way you are in Oberton. But man, Oberton's soundtrack is so good. Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts on this, actually. I think Justin's onto something when he says that in some ways the music in Rise of the Golden Idol works better. I definitely found it less remarkable than Misko's in case of the Golden Idol. There's a couple of tracks. We talked about this back when the game came out. There's a couple of tracks that are just super crazy. That like sea shanty fiddle one where it's like microtonally like moving through this just like total nightmare soundscape. It's really, really cool. It definitely pulled me out of the game sometimes because I was like, what is happening? But also it was such a strong vibe that it was like a big part of the game's identity. And I didn't

quite feel that from Rise. Though I do really like Rise of the Golden Idol's music. I was going through the soundtrack looking for examples to maybe play behind us while we're talking. And that game also has really cool music, but it takes a very different approach. Bing! Kirk here, as I'm editing the episode, I'm going to explain, you know, in the conversation with Jason and Maddie about some thoughts about these two soundtracks, but I wanted to give a couple of examples going in. So first of all, this is crowning celebration, one of the most memorable tracks by Kyle Misko from Case of the Golden Idol. It kind of starts here, but then eventually it

kind of develops in some very strange harmonic and tonal directions. Like it becomes kind of microtonal in some pretty disorienting ways. So, you know, it's a pretty marked contrast with the music that Paul Alexander did a couple years later for Rise of the Golden Idol. Here's a track called New Wells of Conformity. It's from one of the early levels in the game. And they're not all this dramatic in terms of the contrast between the very beginning and the rest of the track, but it's a good example of the kind of contour.

tour that I'll talk about in a second. So check it out. Here's how it starts. So it's pretty full on, and it's an action-packed scene that it's accompanying. But then very quickly, it fades into the background into something more appropriate for just kind of looking at clues and trying to figure out what's going on. Okay, anyways, those are my two examples. Back to the conversation.

I guess the way I'd summarize it, I want to know what the two of you think, too, but the way that I would summarize the approach is that case of the golden idol, my memory of it anyways, is that the tracks grow in complexity, or at least in strangeness as you go. And you'll be playing for a while, and then they kind of get stranger or more elaborate in some ways. Where rise of the golden idol, each tracks tends to start with a bang. There's like a big melodic idea, and it's kind of like a lot of instruments and maybe a groove as you first take in the scene, and then it kind of fades away. which makes sense to me as a way to structure that kind of music because at the beginning of any level in Rise of the Gold Nightel, you're always looking at a TV station that's on fire, a TV studio,

or whatever, something crazy is happening, and it sets the scene, but then you need to start thinking so the music kind of becomes less complex. And that does strike me as a good approach. I wonder if they actually got complaints from people being like, I'm getting stressed out the more complex this music gets, because I do remember us talking about that with Case and how it just elevates and elevates and elevates

and you're like, I don't know what is going on right now. Yeah, yes. And I guess, like, I want to disaggregate the idea of that possible feedback from the first game from the fact that there's a new composer. I was just listening to, I don't remember, some podcasts where they were complaining about someone not being hired back for, like, a sequel. And it made me just realize, like, we have no idea why Kyle Miscoe didn't come back. Maybe he wasn't available.

I believe he's Ukrainian. I mean, there could be all kinds of personal reasons he wasn't available to do a game. Like, it could be so many things. True. So it's, you know, rather than, I guess, like, I don't really know why they made those decisions. And I would imagine he's a skilled musician. If they had given him that direction, he could have done that. Absolutely.

Anyone who's worked on a project like this, like, they'll give you feedback and be like, hey, can you actually make it so it starts big and then gets smaller? Right. And I think that they, I would imagine maybe that they made that change or made that decision in the sequel for that reason. Yeah. And regardless of the composer, I think you're right that it makes more sense for the structure of the puzzles in the game to have it start stressful and frenzied, because that's when you're taking in all the information and you're feeling a little overwhelmed, or at least I am, because I'm like, oh my God, there's so many clues to collect. I have so many things I can look at in this massive scene. And then as the more you collect, the more in control

you feel, rather than spiraling out of control, you're becoming more attention. tuned to what happened and then you solve it and then that's the end of the level and you progress to the next one. So having a song that accompanies that sensation, I think works really well, although I'd never thought about it at all until this very moment, which I would also say is part of what I like about a good puzzle game accompaniment is something that I don't think about and feel too distracted by. Yeah, this is something I've talked with Matthew Burns about a friend of mine who works on Xaktronics games and has written a lot of really great music for these games, which are typically like, if not puzzle games, at least like builder games, where you're

kind of in a creative problem-solving mode. And he tends to compose with stems where the music layers in complexity. Like, it's always kind of a middle tempo, electronic kind of a thing. And then the more you get going and the more elaborate your creation, the music kind of mirrors that. So it's kind of doing what you're talking about, Maddie. And he definitely has like a distinct approach to that that he uses. And I mean, that's something I found even like writing music for Triple Quest, where you have to write music that kind of keeps out of the way and you have to work with stems in a way, like stems being the isolated part, that allows you to sort of stack up more and more parts and have it grow more complex and then less complex, depending on

what's going on, you know, in the actual thing that you're scoring. In a video game, it's a little more complicated because it's dynamic, right? Like the player is actually controlling that to some extent. Like if you're just stuck on a puzzle in Golden Idol, you might be sitting there staring at the same screen for like 20 minutes or something and like nothing has happened in your mind or in the game. And the music just has to kind of vamp with you there. Kirk, this is actually a good segue to our next question, which is from Jacob. And he says, I've loved listening to the use of music in Triple Quest. And I was wondering if you could talk a bit about how you make it. You say you wrote and performed it. Did you perform all the instruments or use some sort of software to write and output some of them?

Yeah, this is something I could like make a whole video about and might at some point just to go into the sessions and show how I made it. I think Jacob is a little bit like he's hearing me say, yeah, I made all the music. And as a musician himself, I think he said in this email that he's, you know, working on music for his own D&D, his friend's campaign. He was like, wait a minute, you did all of that because there's like an orchestra and there's all these different instruments. Like, no, I didn't like play cello and violin for this. I used a lot of samples. So it's like, I performed it in the way that a sort of modern composer performs music and used a lot of modern tools that are very interesting to make this the soundtrack for the show,

which, you know, was like five hours long and required something like four and a half hours of music, which is a ludicrous amount of music to compose without some of the tools that I used. I mean, it was a ludicrous amount of work even with those tools. It took me weeks to make it, but it wouldn't have even been possible if I hadn't been. either repeating a lot more music or using some of the techniques and the tools that I had access to. So it's kind of a mix of live instruments. There are some acoustic instruments like the penny whistle, some acoustic guitar, flute, some electric guitar. Like there are instruments that I just played.

Like I just recorded the part, especially for like a really important part of the, you know, when like I don't know a certain character, I guess I won't say a day, but a certain character is giving a kind of like impassioned speech. I played that stuff in myself. There's like a sampled violin solo that I like wrote and played on the piano. And there's a piano part that I like played on the piano. Or there's a whole groove that I recorded on the acoustic guitar.

However, a lot of the grooves and a lot of the string parts were done using software instruments that can kind of, you can create your own, like, it's almost like an arpeggiator on a synth, but it's more like a sampled string section. So you really easily can get, like there's a, native instruments plugin called action strings, that if you just like press a button in G, it'll just go like, dun, dun, da, da, da da da da da da da da da da da da da dun, done, done, da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da like that.

And so you're kind of just, you got that to work with. And then it's up to you as the musician, like as the composer, to layer on top of that and turn it into something a little bit more remarkable. Sometimes I didn't even need to because we're talking, people are listening to us in the middle of a fight, they're hearing the dice rolls. That's what is like drawing their attention. and the music can just be underneath that, that's fine.

Other times I would layer my own parts that I'd maybe play on the keyboard or add something on top to add a layer to it. It's a really weird process. I learned a lot while I was making it. And like I said, this could be like a way longer answer with a bunch of examples because there's like a whole spectrum

from like barely doing anything to doing everything by hand. And then all the places in between are actually where it gets really interesting. Like it gave me a new perspective. into what it is even to be a composer in the year 2024, 2025, like in this modern age. Like, there are tools that make it so easy to do some things, but then you have to kind of use your training and your musicianship in other ways.

Like, it's not as simple as just, you know, I don't know, telling the AI, write me some combat music. Like, I suppose you could do that, but that's not really like, I don't think that would get you as good of a result as doing what I did, which was like this weird mix of, uh, uh, of doing things by hand and doing things with automation and doing things with pre-recorded stuff and just layering a bunch of different instruments. So it was a really cool process.

And in some ways... So when are you doing the strong songs on Triple Quest? Yeah, I don't want to do that, but I might... It would need to be a video. I think it'd be easier to show it to people. I might if I have time. I just have a lot of other things to do. But anyways, I think to reassure Jacob

that it wasn't like... I'm not in here in the studio with all these instruments recording everything by myself. There are tools. If you look at native instruments, complete 14 or 15. There's a ton of instruments in there. Action strings is a big one.

And a lot of these sort of pre-sampled things that really can let you do a lot of really cool sound beds that add a lot of really nice texture. So that's the kind of medium-length answer to that question. I hope that's helpful, Jacob. A lot of music talk. Let's take another question. Maddie, read this next one, please.

I can't believe this one is in here. Okay, so Max wrote, Hey guys, if Triple Click had to make a YouTube apology video, what instruments would Kirk and Maddie play to sing the apology? Because we're the ones apologizing. Anyway, Max continues. Would you guys collab or create separate songs? I have so many questions about this question.

So first of all, I thought YouTube apologies were just like a dude like sighing and looking at the camera and being like so. Oh, you don't know the joke this is based on. No, I do not. I'm so jealous of you for not knowing. There is a woman. What is her name? Colleen something, I want to say. She made a ukulele song and it's very long.

And she said her apology to that. Polygon actually covered it at the time. Colleen Ballinger, aka Miranda Sings, is her name. Okay, I do not want to know a single word more about her. I'm sorry, Jason, but you're about to learn. You don't need to know any more, really, beyond what we just said. So, okay, so this is, has this become a genre of like,

YouTube Apologies by song. Okay. Well, I don't think anyone else has done it in seriousness other than this one person. It's all just parading this woman. Roundly mocked afterwards. Maddie, I think that Max asked what instruments would Kirk and Maddie play because you two are the main musicians and I'm just kind of like an amateur guitar.

But Jason can also play the guitar and has his guitar in the frame every time we record. We all do. We all have our instruments and frame. So that's the answer to what instrument. Well, maybe he doesn't need to ask what I'm going to play because he ever knows that's all I can play. That's true. I have a synthesizer collection behind me, and I do actually also play the baritone ukulele, which is a slightly larger ukulele, and it sounds a little bit more like a guitar. So I'd probably do that. If I was really trying to mimic the form, I'd go ukulele. I mean,

if you're going to make a joke, you've got to really go full bore into the parody, I think. I like the baritone ukulele. Jason on the acoustic guitar, Maddie on baritone ukulele. I could either play bass, or the just ukulele, ukulele maybe, because I could play any of those. I'm going to have the full panoply. No, you need to play the saxophone, man. Oh. I think maybe, I think that for a YouTube apology, though,

I don't want to bring out the big guns. But imagine, imagine, imagine the saxophone just punctuating every line of the apologizing. Would it be wailing and sadness? Can you imagine? Just set the scene, right? I am so sorry about the slur. So what I'm what I'm picturing, ukulele, baritone ukulele, acoustic guitar,

and then the solo played on just a saxophone mouthpiece, which would be, I think, on a more appropriately horrible sound for the entire cursed nature of the undertaking that we're describing. I don't think it really deserves like a lush saxophone. I think it just needs a saxophone mouthpiece because the whole, you know,

anything that led to this moment, it would just all be so awful that we might as well make it the most awful version possible. God, okay. Next time we have to apologize. We'll just keep this in mind. Next question, Kirk. This is from Willie.

Willie says, What modern video games would you recommend to older people, let's say 65 plus, who have never played a modern video game before and are newly curious about the medium? Assume that they don't own any consoles but would feel comfortable playing something on a phone, iPad, or a laptop, so long as it's not too fast-paced or otherwise inaccessible to the gaming illiterate. My mom played 80 days on the phone and really enjoyed that. I think anything that's like a visual novel type of game might be a good fit. Yeah.

I will say, I don't know that the age thing is as much of a factor here as just someone who's never played games before because learning how to use a controller is really the hard part of what they're asking, which is why I guess it matters that they're saying phone, iPad, or laptop. something the person already knows how to use is my big tip here, having recently given my parents a switch, they're learning how to use it. It's just there's an uphill climb there. And with my wife, it was the same deal. She learned how to game during COVID, but there was like a climb where she was learning

how to use a controller. That's the hard part of that. That's so fun that you gave your parents a switch. That's so cool. I did. But also, they both like playing games. I've played rock band with my dad and Super Smash Brothers. and I've played stuff with both of them in the past.

So it's not like they're totally gaming illiterate. My mom loves Pac-Man. She's going to be embarrassed that I'm saying this on the show. No, she's going to call you and be like, I can't believe you didn't get us a switch too. Like, we wanted to play at 60 frames a second. I'm going to hear about all of this on our weekly phone call. But I will say, I really think it's achievable.

And if the person wants to learn, you can learn at any age. And really my recommendation, is if they already know how to use the device in question, then just think about what appeals to them. Like Jason said, if the person likes reading, then they'll probably like something like 80 days. Or if they're like my dad, my dad likes playing the guitar. So playing rock band wasn't that much of a stretch. Obviously, he doesn't know how to use a plastic guitar, but he learned. And then we had fun conversations about how different those two things feel. And if, you know, if they like being a competitive person

than they might like Pac-Man like my mom does for example I mean you just have to think about what they like and then cater the recommendation to them and everything else doesn't matter that's what I would say yeah that's all good advice 80 days really is a good

a good pick yeah maybe Balatro like maybe something like that on phones for sure yeah it's using a kind of established literacy of poker which most people know and also kind of feels like playing Solitaire, but then you start getting into it. That game strikes me as a really good one to introduce people to the mechanics of a kind of run-based, you know, game where you build an engine

and try to get as far as you can, just because most people already know how a deck of cards works, you know, and how poker works. Although, yeah, poker hands can be a barrier for entry for some people, at least. Yeah, maybe. I mean, there all be barriers, you know, for anybody, but, like, for the right person, that could be good. And actually, I think that the game that's going to be a one more thing, Jason, might be a good recommendation for some people who aren't super gaming literate. Oh, I'll put a pin in that one. A little bit of a tease.

All right, let's get to the next question. This is from Chris. Chris says, I was super hyped after watching the trailer for Intergalactic during the Game Wars. That's the new game from Noddy Dog. But when I went back and searched for the trailer on YouTube, it was caught by surprise by the overwhelming negative deluge of reactions and comments from the capital G gamers that seem to be obsessed with fighting a culture war at every possible. opportunity. I tried to write it off as a loud minority of opinion, but then I thought about how

Trump just won re-election with a majority worth pausing and noting here, a majority of... Yeah, all three of us were like, waiting, hold on. The voting populace, not a majority of the country. Anyway, Chris goes on, I hesitated to write this message as I don't want to give any oxygen to this toxicity, but it left me wondering, how do you engage with the broader gaming audience without getting disillusion by the level of discourse on display. It's so easy, right? I was thinking about this a lot, actually. I've been thinking about it because, like, this might be a little bit depressing,

but I also was kind of like writing some of the stuff off over the last year as a loud minority, the Mark Kern crew of the world, and the Trump election, and then also the kind of like this see change we're seeing and how people are talking about. certain cultural elements has got me thinking, oh, is it really a minority, this kind of anti-woke crowd? Then again, if you're like, there's kind of a spectrum here and there's people who might be like, well, wokeism has gone too far. But if you're, if the entire backlash here is just based on a black woman with a shaved head being a protagonist of a hero, then you're just straight up racism. You're not kind of like someone who feels like culture is shifting too far.

far. So there is a spectrum there. I also, to bring some positive spin on this whole thing, I was thinking about the West Wing of all things, the problematic show for many reasons. But one thing that I think it captures really interestingly accurately for the time in an interesting way is that there's this one episode where there's this guy and he's a Republican talking about voting against gay marriage and it turns out he's gay. And one of the conclusions he makes about why he's going in this direction is because he doesn't feel like the country is ready for like to accept gay people. And of course, I think 15, 20 years after that, things would change drastically. And we're now at a point where like, I don't really think other than kind of fringes,

I don't really think gay marriage or like being gay is really up for debate anymore. Now we've kind of moved to transgender issues being this kind of big hot topic and cultural social, like cultural button to push. And I think that like looking back at that, it does feel like sometimes it just takes a while for the cultural discourse to shift. And sometimes along the way, you have these kind of, like, the pendulum swings back in the other direction where it's like, oh, people suddenly feel like it's too radical. Now we're going back in the other direction. But that's kind of speaking more broadly. I think just kind of, I think it's objectively true to say that any backlash against,

like, a game starring, a black woman with a shaved head is just straight up racism and poison and, like, definitely not worth giving oxygen. But it. It's depressing to think that there might be a lot of people who think that way. Yeah, for sure. I mean, we've definitely talked about the pendulum swing on the show before, and that's something that comforts me, because I know we've all been doing this long enough that I feel like we've seen some pendulum swings in our industry, and that's part of why I feel confident saying, this is that.

I don't know how far it's going to go in a direction that I hate, but I've seen it before, And I also know that when I was growing up, there were so few games with any content that was even close to this. And then we kind of saw more of it getting added and then like a backlash to it. And then more of it getting added and then backlash to it. But to kind of answer Chris's question, which is like, what do you do about this? How do you deal with this? I think about this all the time because of my job. And I also have the luxury of knowing that many, many, many of our readers,

aren't this way. And I know that because of what they read on our site and what they're interested in and the games they're interested in. And a lot of times I can just look at like the guides they're reading for some of these games, like that, you know, the anti-woke crowd would be like, no one likes this game. And I'll be like, are you sure? Because I know that thousands and thousands of people are playing it right now and enjoying it and engaging with it and getting this far and this far and this far. And I'm seeing that through our back end. And so I have that kind of positive reinforcement every day. So I can kind of pass on that message to the listeners who don't get that every day of their lives of seeing that kind of baseline sense of normalcy. And it is true. You know, thinking about the Trump election depresses me because

I think about how many people in our country are like really disengaged from politics. And that's like another topic, I guess. But I think that probably reflects many people who don't write YouTube comments and who aren't engaging and maybe don't think this way, but just aren't voicing what they do think. And we just don't hear from those people. The majority of people aren't writing comments at all. And that's what I have to remember. They're just reading it. And then they're moving on with their lives. Yes. I think I don't have a ton to add to that, especially Maddie. I think that's really well put that, you know, YouTube comments do reflect a minority only because it reflects YouTube commenters. And like that is not a group of people that you have to engage with. I certainly don't. And, you know,

I don't think that that puts me out of touch with the mainstream or anything. Like, it's just, that's just not a great place for thoughtful reactions to games. And then something that I said back when we were talking about the game awards that I'll just reiterate is that pre-release discourse is among the worst kind of video game discourse. Like, the worst conversations you can have, even with well-meaning and intelligent people, are the conversations that you have about games that aren't out yet that were just announced. So, you know, you're already setting the bar really low, you're setting expectations very low when you're looking for reactions to a trailer to a game that was just announced. All you're going to get is, like, nonsense, surface level, like, kind of meaningless reactions. So to then go somewhere that is kind of predisposed to, like, pretty thoughtless stuff

or a certain type of, you know, audience member who's predisposed to leave a certain type, come from a certain place and leave a kind of unpleasant comment. of course you're going to get even more of that. Like you're already kind of down pretty low when you're reacting to a trailer for a game. So just, you know, it's not all indicative of all a video game culture. It's not all a reflection of like every single game and the way that people feel about everything.

It's like very, very narrow-casted by the time you're in the YouTube comments for a just-announced naughty dog game. So I would say maybe don't let that get to you too much. And then just underline everything that Maddie just said about, like how most people just are kind of out there enjoying cool things and then living their lives. Yeah. Just reading articles and clicking the X button and moving on. That's what most people are doing.

There was like, there's some people getting mad because the Witcher 4 stars a woman and the Witcher 4 is going to sell bazillion copies. Exactly. And it's going to be a great. Like, it's going to be a great game. Hopefully it's great. And the majority of people are going to probably enjoy it. And we will never hear from them about that, you know?

They're just going to like it. Let's squeeze in one last question, if you want to read this last one, Maddie. Sure. This is from Brian who writes, hello, triple click crew. Is there a concern slash consideration among games journalists that games just as good as Bellatro exists out there undiscovered? Is Belacho really as intrinsically exceptional one in a million as it seems to be? Or the exceptional part is that it got lucky and caught the zeitgeist.

I mean no disrespect to Bellatro or local thunk. I don't want to take anything away from what he's built. My question is more about whether or not you think there are other similarly impressive games lurking out there in the depths of itchio. Well, Brian, there are. That's the plight we face every day. And it haunts me in the middle of the night. Are there? I think so.

Well, I mean, the game we're about to talk about it in your one more thing was on itch a.O and I'd never heard of it. Yeah, I guess, okay, so I guess it depends what you mean by good, right? I think it's a lot harder for certain types of games to go viral. Like, it's especially like single player narrative games, games that aren't as easy to share. I just, I don't think that like, like, I think if Bellatro, Belatro had a really good marketing strategy. It was published by a publisher play stack and it had like early, not early access, but like it had betas and stuff. And it got a lot of word of mouth before it even came out. But I think if a game like Bellatro had come out and just kind of came out of nowhere, I feel like someone would have discovered it.

shared it and it would have taken off in some way or another just because it is a game that is like designed to go viral. And I don't mean that in a bad way. I mean like it's so shareable and just kind of like just draws the eye in so many ways. I don't know. I feel like something like that. If that came out of, if that was just kind of buried understatio, I feel like someone might have discovered it.

I don't know. I could be wrong. I think that's true. But I also think that something that's designed to go viral. and is also a good game isn't the same as a game that's good and just doesn't have that shareable quality. Oh, yeah, 100%. Well, that's what I'm saying is that like I'm sure there are a bazillion

single player narrative games, the type of games that don't get picked up by streamers and stuff buried out there on the internet. Or just aren't that fun to share a screenshot of and aren't easily encapsulated in that way or don't have a big ticking number at the top of the screen that makes it clear what's going on the way that Bellatro does as confusing as it is at first. It just has a lot of benefits. Yeah, so that's what I mean by, when I'm just saying that like it depends on what you mean by good because I think good can mean a lot of

different things when you're talking about games. And the other thing is that like a game like Bellacho can be a lot more universally appealing than a lot of single player story games that might be like, I don't know, a case of the Golden Idol is one of my favorite games in recent memory, but that doesn't mean it's going to appeal to everybody. Outer Wilds is very appealing to a certain type of gamer, but certainly not everybody. Whereas Bellatro, I think, has a lot more universal appeal. It's very, everybody loves watching numbers go up. Anyway, I guess my kind of hesitancy to just say, yes, there are, is just in what you kind of consider good when you're talking about this. Because good can mean so many different things to so many different people.

Yeah, I would only add that I think that as time goes on, it's going to become increasingly true that there are actually games that have every single box checked that are, just incredible that just kind of don't catch on because there are just so many of them. It still feels like we get games that are like that are pretty unusual and Blotro I think is one of them where it just it really you play it and you're like this is this is like nothing I've ever played before. Like I have to tell people about it. And I don't know. I feel this way with music now where there is so much music, whatever it is, a thousand hours uploaded to Spotify every 30 seconds or whatever. And like there's so much music. There's so much great music. There are so many great bands just all over the world. And there's just this feeling that you know out there that there

are dozens of bands probably that would be totally your shit that you would love that you'd want to listen to forever. But you just, you'll never find out about them because you don't have time to go and find it all. And you don't even have time to read the blogs or the people who take the time to find it all. And those blogs have all been put out of business anyways. So it's all just a Spotify algorithm and the algorithm kind of sucks that it's not actually going to show those bands to you. So, like, you just can't find it. And that's because music has had so much longer to mature, and it's become so easy to make.

And it does kind of feel possible that games will get easier and easier to make, and this will become even more true, that platforms like Itch will just have, like, so many great games that you just kind of can't keep up. I mean, it feels more true each year. It does. It does. All right.

On that now, let's take a break, and then we'll talk about a game that is little known, and we will bring to virality right now on the show. Hello. Hannah? Yeah. It's Clint McElroy. Hi, Hannah, Red.

Oh, my God. Hello. I don't know if you know who I am. Oh, I do. I love the Adventure Zone. It is probably my favorite D&D podcast. You've been a faithful member of Maximum Fund since March of 2019, and this is them rewarding you as our Maximum Fund member.

of the month. It's awesome. I love it. So what made you decide to become a member of Max Fawn? You know, it was so long ago. I'm not sure what the exact moment where I decided was. I think I've kept it up intentionally because a lot of those different podcasts have been there for me when I felt really alone and sad and just needed something to laugh at. Oh, well that's Hannah. Thank you so much. Thanks for being a member. Thanks for being a Taz fan. Thanks for all the nice things you had to say about me, specifically, and I guess my kids, I get in the back way. If you're a Max Fun member, you can become the next Max Fun member of the month. Support us at Maximumfund.org slash join.

Jackie Cashin, hi, and welcome to the Maximumfund.org podcast, the Jackie and Lori show where we talk about stand-up comedy and how much we love it and how much it enrages us. We have a lot of experience and a lot of stories and a lot of time on our hands. So check us out. It's one hour a week, and we drop it every Wednesday on nexima fun.org. And we are back. Kirk, go first. Nice. So, yeah, I want to talk with you about your one more thing. So I will just recommend a show really quick that I really enjoyed a lot more than I thought I would.

And that's Black Doves on Netflix, which is a new British crime caper starring Kira Knightley and Ben Wischaw. And also Sarah Lancashire, who I know from the show Julia about Julia Child, but who is apparently just like an award-winning. star of everything in England forever and is amazing. So this is a show. It's kind of like the Americans meet slow horses and a little bit like Guy Ritchie, a little bit The Gentleman. It stars Kira Knightley as this undercover spy working for a private spy organization, not actually for MI6 or the government.

And she's married to a Tory politician and is sort of, you know, really deep into a life with him. And then stuff just starts to happen. And it starts, I don't know, it starts out like it's going to be. this kind of hard-boiled spy show, but then really quickly becomes a very charming and kind of off-the-wall and funny show that's very pulpy and ridiculous. It's very violent. It's very heartfelt. It has a lot of really amazing emotional sequences in it. Ben Wischaw, who I knew was playing Q in the recent Bond movies, but who's been in a bunch of other stuff. He is

incredibly great. There are these like long shots of just his faces. He's reacting to things. So anyways, I really just a very quick recommendation of this show. I watched it with Emily's parents when they were in town. I thought it would just be a kind of forgettable spy thriller like some of the other ones that I've watched recently. No, it is fantastic. Like the third episode was one of the best episodes of TV I've seen in a long time. So just a real recommendation for a surprising show that I really loved called Black Doves that is on Netflix. Maddie, you're one more thing.

All right. So for Hanukkah, I got Dina a steam deck because I'm amazing. And what I'm going to recommend to everybody is a little thing called Steam Family Sharing. Now, maybe people already know about this, but on the off chance that you don't, you got to hook up your family with this. So obviously, I've accrued, I don't know how many Steam games, I don't want to talk about it. Too many. But a lot. There's a lot in there.

And Dina can play all of them for free because I've just added her very, very easily. They've even made it easier than it used to be. in the past. They've upgraded it now. It's very simple to add somebody to your account now. She can just install all of them on her Steam deck for free and try them. We can't play them at the same time. That's the only consideration. But most of these I haven't touched ever or in years. But you can both be locked in at the same time. Yes. You can be playing different games in the same. Yes. And both be playing different games on essentially my account. I mean, it doesn't matter. They're her games now. It's it's incredible. So yeah, Steam family sharing.

If you didn't know, you could be giving all of your Steam games to anyone. So yeah, check it out. Steam games. You can just give them to your friends for free. That's a fun one more thing. Okay, we're going to talk about this, a game that I think two of us have played. Maddie, you have not started it yet, correct? Not yet, but I'm excited to hear more.

Yeah, we're about to convince you. Okay, so. It's good. I marathon this game last week. I'm obsessed with it. I can't wait to talk about it more. It's called The Root Trees Are Dead. And a little bit of history is that this game came out for free on itch.I.L.

Huh. Interesting. Given our last conversation. In 2023, I believe. And that version, that free version, it was the whole game, but it had AI art, which I think turned off a few people. And it was free. It was kind of like an amateur, like a side project for this guy who made it. I believe, let me just. Jeremy Johnson is his name.

Yes, Jeremy Johnson. It was a side project for this guy, Jeremy Johnson. I believe he works in games. And so it got some steam. It got some traction. So he decided to do a remade version and sell it on Steam. And the remade version includes human art, so no more AI art. So you don't have to feel weird about purchasing it.

And it also includes a whole new kind of sequel or DLC, whatever you want to call it, a whole new section of the game to complete. Now let me talk about this game and why I love it so much. Yeah. How does it work? Tell us how it works. So the root trees are dead. It's very heavily inspired by Return of the Oberdin, one of my favorite games of all time. It's that kind of crossed with her story or like the operator or any of these other kind of like desktop computer-based games where you have a web interface and you're typing things in. because the majority of this game, instead of kind of looking at tabloes, looking at scenes, looking at footage, or stuff like that, you are looking things up online. So the premise is it starts off by telling you that the root trees are dead, that this family of people, five of them, have died.

And it turns out they're part of this insanely rich and popular corporation called the root tree candy company that has all sorts of offshoots and has a ton of money. and then you are, you, the player, are visited by this person, this shadowy person who doesn't reveal their identity, but says to you, hey, I need you to figure out the entire family tree of the root tree so we can make sure all the money goes to the right places and you will be, like, rewarded mightily if you do so. You will get a generous reward if you do so. So then you are given this family tree and it has a whole bunch of question marks that you have to go and fill it out. And sort of like Oberdeen, in, you have to use your logic deduction and just piece everything together yourself. And the game will kind of tell you every four entries or so, it goes up over time. But at least at first, every four entries, it'll tell you if you got it right, just like return of the Obridun was. And so you get that endorphin rush of being like, oh, got this right. A huge part of the rhythm of the game, by the way. Yes.

It's phenomenal. That was something I'd forgotten about Obruddin that you get, you'll click a thing and then it's just like, bam. And you're like, yes, I did it. And it tells you all the correct answers. You get so excited. You get so happy when that happens. It's great. And so what you have to do, it's set in the 1990s, by the way.

So the internet is very primitive. And so you have to use the primitive internet to find out information about these people. And not everybody is online. So you can Google, at first you can be like, okay, Carl Routree. This is the main guy who died. He was the president of the company. I can look up his name. And then once you start doing that, you might find all these different kind of like branches of information

that might lead you down rabbit holes that tell you all about other people in the film. So at first you learn about Carl and you learn about his daughters who just died, but then you're going to start learning about their cousins and how they're connected and their parents. And you kind of, you start to piece together this entire family tree, which is five generations long and very wide because they're like 60 people in it. And there are all sorts of kind of like clues that you'll find along the way. You'll find pictures. You'll find diaries. You'll find conspiracy theory web pages that take you down. all sorts of wild, wild journeys and rabbit holes. And you have to piece together, like,

sometimes making really tough and really challenging, uh, logical leaps. You have to be like, oh, okay, well, I know these two people are cousins. Maybe they would fit over here on this part of the tree. Okay, I know this person was photographs to this person. Oh, I know this person is actually using this name, but it's not their real name. Also, because it's all one family, they use a lot of names over and over again and the game jokes about that and kind of references that but like there are a lot of people. It feels like Eldon Ring

uh-huh yeah. A lot of people are you kidding? Why did they name their kids? Uh-huh. Yep. Yeah, but yeah, it is. And it's all, it's just such a brilliant ride and along the way you're learning all this really

interesting information about these characters and their lives and they're kind of their relationships. Some of them don't like each other. Some of them have backstabbed one another for the family money or like fighting over the heritage. Some of them have cheated on one another.

There's all sorts of great just kind of gossip. It feels like you're just kind of prying into this very rich family's lives, almost like succession in a way, a little less dark than succession. But like it feels like that. And you're just getting such a, it's just so fun to deduce it all. If you're into Metroidranias, if you're into games like Obridane or Golden Idol, which I know a lot of our listeners are, you must play this. I waited until now to talk about it.

I played it last week, but I wanted to wait until now because it is out on Steam right now. It came out on Wednesday of this week, January 15th. So it is out right now. I also, I finished this and then gobbled up the second part, the second part, which has not been available. So even if you played the free version, you have not played the second part. It is even more challenging than the first part and reveals information about all these characters in ways that you would not expect and would not know before. And it is brilliant and devious and super fun, just as fun as the first part.

So altogether, you buy this game and you get just a ton of like narrative and mystery and deductions to do. I wish I could just erase it all from my memory and play it again. It's so good. Kirk, what are your thoughts on the root trees are dead? I really liked it as well. I think it makes a couple of, there are a couple of really smart decisions that Johnson made in making the game that I want to shout out. One is, so you do a lot of web browsing in this game in this kind of, what's it called, spider search or something? something. It's like an old, you know, Alta Vista era, late 90s search engine. And instead of

showing you websites, each time you search for something and find something, you instead just get a text summary of whatever you just read, which I didn't even notice at first. I just, it was so seamless, it just kind of made sense to me. And then I realized, like, oh, there isn't a ton of web design and art and stuff that he had to do to make all of this, because there's a ton of information on this games on the in-game internet. Instead, it'll just say, you know, you read this site and kind of skim through it. It says some stuff about the candy company, and then it mentions this and this and this, and then he published a book called this.

And then you're like, oh, okay, cool, well, that might be useful. And then you can kind of just select the text and right-click it, and you can just search for that text immediately, or you can copy it and, like, paste it into the periodical search or whatever. Like, it makes it so that the information comes to you in a much more condensed fashion, which is really helpful because you're sorting through so much information. It also probably saved a ton of work on the development side because he didn't have to design all these websites and, you know, risk making the game kind of not so believable

as the websites start to look kind of fake or samey. And also, it allows his voice to come through just in funny ways. I won't spoil any of them, but there are just some really funny jokes where you'll search for something and it'll just come up and he'll just sort of talk to you for a minute, like the game developer, who'd be like, well, this website doesn't have any, useful but here's something that a game developer named Jeremy Justin and like and you know and then it'll just like have a few of his thoughts like a musical he really liked or something like that

yeah that one just come up yeah yeah that's the one I'm thinking of which is and the game is very generous it'll always be like this is not related to the root trees but it's just and that is something very helpful there are songs for example there will be an album that's a clue because there are also clues that you like at which are art and they have the clues are in the images this is also somewhat like Oberdin or Golden Idol, where you'll see that someone is wearing a certain type of uniform and that lets you to do something about their job. But then also, there will be like lyrics and recordings of the songs, and it will say the lyrics of the song contain no clues.

So you're not sitting there like performing, you know, Kremlinology on the third verse of like the disco song that one of the cousins wrote, which is just sort of nice. It helps you direct your attention in the right place. Great disco song. Hilarious. Oh, the folk song is good. hilarious. Yeah, the songs are pretty good. I'm curious how they made the songs that a lot of the music in the game is just sort of musicians who are signed up to like Fiverr or there's another,

there are a couple of these sites where you can just like, as a musician, be like, I play saxophone and I'll just like make you a jazz tune for a hundred bucks. And then it's like that kind of music, which is essentially stock music. Like it doesn't have a lot of cohesion or personality. And at first I was like, ah, like, you know, this doesn't have like the personality of an over a din where Lucas Pope composed those tracks, you know, or like we were talking about with the Golden Knightel games, where it's like they got a composer to write this really distinct stuff.

But at the same time, it's fine because this game really clearly is one guy, like he focused on what he needed to focus on to make the game. Let me interrupt you there real quick. He actually brought on some help for this remake. He brought on a producer,

programmer, and maybe a couple, and an artist also. Worth noting. Right. So a small team. Point being that, like, they, it's not like a really elaborate production, and he kept his scope narrow as narrow as possible in a lot of different respects, and that made it a lot easier to make the game. And that, like, I just totally respect that approach. To be like, here are the things we're doing really well.

It's like the story, the puzzles, the design of the game, the writing, the whole overall experience. We're not actually going to spend too much money, like, hiring a composer and, like, getting a whole ton of original music, because we can just get guys who can. and knock us out something pretty easily, and it'll suffice. And it does suffice. It's like having smoky, tenor saxophone solo going while you're sitting there in your apartment on the internet doing sleuth work, like totally works.

So really in the end, like, they're not really aesthetic gripes. It's just sort of an interesting, you can kind of see the game's priorities on display. And I think he prioritized the right things. Because, yeah, I think it's really great. I finished just the first part. I haven't done the second part. But I really want to. Like you really get so enmeshed in these people's lives.

I don't think, like, there aren't any characters that are really standout characters. It's not that kind of writing. It's a little bit more believable. Like, there are definitely some people you get to know better because they may be published a tell-all book. So you spend more time reading, you know, their words and getting their perspective. But at the same time, like, it's not really about that. It's not, like, larger than life characters. It's just about the kind of the broad reach of this family.

And over time, the, like, feeling of like, okay, I'm kind of zeroing in around this, you know, second generation child and like their kids and those cousins and there's kind of these different groups like it almost feels like a map I guess it is a map because it's a cork board that you're laying out and so you kind of see it like over on the left side there there's like this one family the redheads you know Jesus maybe that's a spoiler or whatever there's like the red headed people are like the the one lady who's in the movies and like her kids and like you start to figure out who everybody is and sort of what their deal is various conflicts that were kind of almost to their part of the map because sometimes they're fighting with one another, but people

weigh on the left side are barely aware of people weigh on the right side. And in the end, you have this kind of a whole... Capistry. You know, you've done a lot of cartography. Like, you have a whole map of this whole thing put together. Genealogy. That's what you're doing, really. It really is a genealogy. Kirk, I will say in the second part, a few characters do become larger than life. So you'll see, you'll see that. A couple of things that I just want to note real quick is one is that it never feels unfair or like too hard in part because pretty much everything in there other than like a couple of tricky things here and there but pretty much everything you can find out like the information you need so the names of people and what they look like

etc through multiple ways so like there are multiple avenues in which you can you can get to people yeah that's true i got the um i like there's a kind of final challenge where it tells you this at the beginning, actually, you're going to have to guess, I think you have to guess two names by typing them in, and it's not going to tell you. And I got that and felt very proud of myself, despite then in the recap seeing that I had missed some major clues. I got books, I think that had a bunch of information because I got it other ways and also used deduction. Like, I just kind of figured out what was going on. Did you get the final picture, too? Yes, I did. Nice. Good work. So go ahead. And then, well, so I was going to, the other thing I was going to say is that, like, each of these, both

of the two big stories lead into this kind of like great narrative twist and like kind of finale, which actually Oberiden was lacking a little bit. I think it had a good ending, but it didn't really have the kind of strong kind of narrative powerhouse moment at the end, whereas both of these kind of parts of root trees are dead, I think have really strong conclusions with kind of like twists that might not be super shocking because you'll probably have figured out what the deal is by the time you got to that point, but still are very satisfying to unveil. The one, exception to the kind of like not too difficult thing is actually the at the end of the second part, the DLC or whatever you want to call it, Routree Mania, it's called in the game. You have to

fill in some blanks yourself and it's actually a little bit too tough and also you don't really get a good way of like a good feedback mechanism for telling you if you're right or wrong at the end of that. But it's not a huge deal and you'll see towards the end that it's still very enjoyable to like see it all kind of unfold. I wound up missing some clues in the second part that I didn't know about. The first part, I caught all the clues. But in the second part, I didn't. But anyway, I mean, both, it's just like an incredible game.

It's already like a game of the year contender for me, like for my top games of the year. And I still can't stop thinking about it. So if you've been convinced, it's called the root trees are dead. It's out now, I believe, just on Steam, which is where I played it. You need a mouse and keyboard, I think. You definitely need a keyboard. It would be very difficult to play on, like, a Steam deck or controller.

I don't believe there is controller support. Yeah, so you need a mouse and keyboard, so you'll have to play it on Steam, but you don't need a graphics card to play it, so don't worry about that. No, no, it's not super demanding. And I wanted to mention related to the difficulty, there's also a very good hint system. Oh, yeah, yeah. It layers questions at you. Like, it isn't just like, here's where you should look.

It starts with like a top layer of like, well, what about what this person said? And then you can just go look in that book and you'll be like, oh, duh, obviously they mentioned this magazine. I should just go look that up. So it's really good at kind of giving you those little nudges. It doesn't actually work during the really hard part in Routremaia, the DLC. Oh, sure, I just meant. In general, for people who might be like turned off of difficulty of puzzles, there's a great hint system. It's very useful because it'll be like, it won't be like, you should know this.

it'll be like, have you tried searching this thing and this thing? Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It's very like old school infocom guide style or like Lucasar guide style. Yeah, so that's the root trees are dead. Go check it out. And that's it for this week's episode. Kirk, Maddie, next time we see each other, I think the Switch 2 will have been announced. So that's pretty great.

It's very exciting. Rumors, rumors suggest. We'll be living in the world of Switch 2 next time we see each other. I'll see you both then. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music.

Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun podcast network,

and if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at maximumfun.org slash join. Find us on Twitter at ClickPod, send email the triple click at maximum fun.org and find a link to our Discord in the show notes. From Maddie Myers and Jason Schreier, I'm Kirk Hamilton, signing off. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network of artists-owned shows.

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