Xbox Leaks And Unity Explodes

When Phil Spencer said he wanted Microsoft to acquire Nintendo, what he meant was he needs a plumber. To take care of these leaks, am I right? Welcome to TripleClick, where we bring the games to you. This week we talk about the news from Unity's bizarre price change for developers to the leaks of Microsoft's plans for the future Xbox. Oh, in an Nintendo Direct? Whew! I'm Maddie Myers. I'm Jason Shryer. And I'm Kirk Hamilton and hello. Hello! Hello, everybody. It's us again. Back for another week of video games. And boy, I just have to say, thank God our emails didn't leak the way Microsoft did. Well, thank God we did leak our own email. We didn't upload them anywhere. Thank God we didn't upload our secret planning document. Every day I wake up and I make sure not to press the big red button that says leak all TripleClick archives and messages. Maddie, why would you even code a button like that? I just... It's just for fun. It's really risky. Yeah, I had some questions when you were doing that. Just because I really want people to know how many times in the past Kirk and I have tried to convince Jason to watch various movies and he just ignores the messages over and over again. I would have to read it into the public record. Yeah, people need to know about that. But speaking of which, why would I be talking about forcing Jason to watch various movies? Well, I have something important to get to right off the top, which is that we, as a podcast that's part of the maximum fun network, we participate in the tradition, the tradition of your, of releasing bonus episodes to anyone who, who dames us a lot from our heads there. That's right. To anyone who dames to go to maximumfun.org slash join and become a member, if you partake in that grand tradition and you become one of us, then you get to listen to monthly bonus episodes from us and also bonus episodes from other podcasts on the network. And the one that we're going to release this month is about two of my favorite movies that are also both about the topic of AI and they are the movie Hurr and the movie X Machina, which are both, well, Hurr is like a romantic drama and then X Machina is like a romantic drama that is actually a horror movie is maybe how I would describe it. Yeah, I know. They're kind of opposite movies and a lot of which I think will be two good polls for our conversation to Orbiner and, and yet I would say that they ultimately have very similar ideas about AI in the end. Well, we're going to get into that or do they, or do they, um, but yeah, it'll be, it'll be a great conversation. I love those movies and Jason's never seen them before much like say die hard, which we also watched for one of our bonus episodes and the Mario live action movie, which we watched just just a little bit. No, that I had seen, of course, yes, I didn't mean to lump it in in that way. I was just listing other movies at that point, but it's just listening some movies. Yeah, just listening movies, um, movies, let's remember some guys, let's remember some movies we've watched for Triple Clip bonus episodes, but yeah, Maximum Fund Dollar X last show and you can listen to those episodes. We do talk about video games on there too. We do. More draw off in the knot and that's what we're going to talk about today, at least from the news perspective, uh, Jason, I'll, I'll kick it over to you to lead the app. Yeah. Well, so there has been a lot of news over the past week. So we're going to do a news roundup today and get old fashioned news roundup. Yeah. Yeah. Can you say that? I can't wait. I can't wait. I can't wait. Sure. I'll come up with something. Yeah. We're, we're walking in through this, this, this, the swinging double doors and. Oh, okay. You want, you want like a record scratch, the piano player stops, everybody turns and looks to this. I thought we wanted like a whip crack. No, yeah. I was thinking the whip crack crack. I was running. Yeah. We're running up some news. Yeah. Way more fun than what I was picturing. But Maddie, but I do like the saloon idea too. We'll save that for another, uh, as we're doing Wild West clichés. I'll do them both and we'll save the, the second one for, yeah, yeah, for some time. All right. All right. So yeah, there's a lot to talk about. Let's start with the big controversy that started last week, which involves the video game technology company unity, unity, uh, was caught at a fire store in last week. So let me give the kind of short version of the headlines and then we can get it into it from there. So short version is that unity put out a new policy that is essentially a price hike that says, Hey, if you have, uh, if you have a game that is made with the unity engines starting in January, if you hit a certain number of installs, if users of your game install it, a certain number of times pass a certain threshold, we will charge you per install. It was, uh, 20 cents per install for the lowest level. It kind of changes. There's a lot of complicated aspects of the policy, but that was the gist of it. Charge the developer of the game. We should. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And now after all that matter, the leaders of the Unity games, no matter what. And it was just kind of, it felt like a bunch in the face, it felt like, uh, a violation of their terms of service. There were a bunch of things left unclear that unity then I have to clarify it and subsequently days, it was a communications disaster, like, potential Harvard business school study and like how to not communicate a new policy. And where we're at now is yesterday, so Monday. were talking about potential changes, which they haven't yet officially announced, but one of them was like a cap on the number of, I mean, amount of money that you have to pay to do due to the new policy. Another one was that the policy wouldn't apply retroactively, so like installs would only start counting in January, but it's all just become one big mess. We've seen a lot of people get mad about it, a lot of people switch over to different engines or threaten to leave the Unity Engine, which is a complicated thing, especially if you have a game that's like, years in development on Unity at this point, and it's just been one big disaster. And the long and short of it is, this means that Hollow Knight Silk's song will once again be delayed another 40 years. Maddie, why don't you kick us off? What did you see this controversy? What was your take on this whole series of events? I find this to be a shocking policy to implement from a Unity's perspective and I completely understand why game developers would be upset by it. Even though from a financial perspective, I understand the logic. It's the kind of decision that, where I, for some reason, put in charge of Unity, I wouldn't make. Obviously it's expensive from an energy standpoint to install video games. Like that is the logic here, the cold calculating logic is, yes, the more people install a video game, the more energy is used. And that transaction, and that is how Unity is thinking of it. But the result is that you're making game developers feel like the more successful their game is, the more they'll be punished for that, which is a pretty dicey proposition for kind of indie devs and also kind of double-lay developers who are dealing with like a pretty risky financial situation in terms of how much they can actually put into their game and in continuing to develop it. We've talked about that quite a bit on the show in the past, like how close to the line some of those double-lay and single-lay developers are in terms of financing. So I just, like for example, Cult of the Land, which is any game that we talked about on this show, they did a joke post about how they were going to delete their game. And people immediately believed it because the situation was so fraught, like that reactions were so high that people were like, oh my god, I'm not gonna be able to play Cult of the Land anymore. And they had to like put out like a long TikTok where they were like, we were kidding. We aren't actually deleting the game. However, I think it made a juice sales. I mean, I don't know if that works. That'd be interesting to ask them, but they did have to be like, listen, we wrote a joke post on the internet. We aren't deleting a game. However, like the Unity decision is going to really impact developers like us and developers of our size and also switching to a different engine is extraordinarily expensive. So yeah, I just, I don't know what's gonna happen next. This is like the most I've had to talk about Unity at work in a while, though, I feel like we don't often think about reporting on game engines and like a lot of them don't have name recognition in the headline, but Unity sure does now. So there's that, I guess. Yeah, we're studying Unity and public in 2020. And since then has been just stepping on one rake after another under CEO. John Riccatello, who was formerly the CEO of EA, where he oversaw the company under its whole worst company in America award-winning years. And really oversaw the era of like microtransactions. And I think he once said in a investor call or something like that, some video has them on tape saying that they should charge players or they could charge players per number of bulliedly use in the shooting game. Another great idea. Yeah, just throwing it all around. Kirk, you are not as in touch with the gaming news world. Is Vanny and I are these days, but have you seen the Unity controversy? What have you kind of made of it? Yeah, I didn't hear about it when it happened and then was talking to some friends who mentioned the discourse and I said, oh, what's going on? And it's always a wonderful sort of less feeling for me when someone mentions the discourse and I have no idea what they're talking about. So then I got the short version of it and was a little bit in disbelief that this was really happening. I think maybe it would be helpful for our listeners for me to ask the two of you for some clarification on how this works. Because I think I understand it, but also the specifics of it are worth really understanding. So my understanding is that you pay a license. You used to pay for a license to use the Unity engine to make your game. And then you release the game and you sell it. Is that correct? Well, okay, so it's a little convoluted because Unity, like everything these days, has different tiers of membership. There's like personal pro, whatever. And so it really depends on what scale of game that you're making and what sort of category you're in. Let's say pro, your cult of the lamb or something. How does that work exactly? How do you pay Unity or when do you pay Unity under the old model? So yeah, I mean, essentially if you are making a game under Unity, you are paying a yearly or a monthly fee to Unity. And I believe that Unreal, which is Unity's biggest competitor, is a similar thing, but Unreal also has a form of revenue share. And this is kind of Unity's way of doing its own form of revenue share, except in a way more convoluted, way more potentially exploitable way. And I think that like one of the reasons that the cap on potential money that Unity can take from this thing is going to be the solution that malifies people or to the best that Unity can at this point is because it doesn't in theory, like it makes sense to do some sort of revenue share agreement because that's what the precedent that Unreal has set, is it's just that the way that Unity announced this and rolled it out was just so ham-fisted. It was just like people immediately have the question, what happens if you're part of Xbox Game Pass and people download it millions of times, like you're charged for those downloads, like the idea of installs, sorry, installing millions of times, the idea of installs like translating to revenue doesn't make sense because it doesn't, especially in the free-to-play world, where a lot of people can just download games and install them and never pay a time. So immediately it just didn't really fit. And a lot of people were like, why didn't you just announce a revenue share instead of this whole cock-a-me-me scheme? But does that answer your question, Greg? Well, that, yes, more than I need it, because the second part of the question that I think is just something that people should keep in mind of the important distinction is the one you're talking about, which is per install. So they're changing it to say, the number of times the game is installed, you then pay us some amount per install rather than revenue sharing, like Unreal does, where you just pay us some percentage of your income. And that does strike me as just, I don't really understand why they're doing it that way, because that would freak me out. I'm thinking like the closest thing I can think of from the world of music, where I'm a little more familiar with publishing, would be right now you pay a licensing fee to use Pro Tools if you want to record with it. You don't have to pay a licensing fee ongoing if you recorded your album with Pro Tools for it to remain up for sale, so that's a little different already. But this would be like them saying, okay, now instead of paying, I don't know, some percentage of your revenue for us allowing you to use these tools, you have to pay per play. And if there's just bots, auto-playing or something, or you get onto some Spotify playlist, you would immediately be scared, because you'd be like, oh God, I'm about to get millions of plays, and that means I'm gonna be on the hook for a lot more money. Yeah, that's not exactly the comparison, because it's not per play of the game. It's for like most games, you just install it once. Like that's not a direct, the bigger issue, I think is that there were so many questions, like so many holes in this, like what happens if I am part of a red upper grade, and I wanna like go after you, and so I have everybody like, I'm gonna install the game and then we install it. Deliberately to harass you. Well, I'm right, what I'm getting at is not that the two things are directly comparable, but the approach of saying you're responsible for something other than just a percentage of your revenue, which is basically how revenue sharing has worked since time immemorial, it's very easy, because you can just look at the amount of money you made, and say, okay, well, we're on the hook for this percentage for licensing this software. Like that's really straightforward. The minute it's something that's like plays, or installs in the case of these games, it's something that's out of your control, in a way that just seems to me as a developer, or as a musician, or as whatever, as a person creating things, that is a really scary and really stressful proposition, and seems to me to be the fundamental problem of this whole thing, just from the outside, when I first heard about it, I was like, that seems like the problem. If they wanna make more money off of their engine, cool, they can come up with some way to do it that doesn't have this fundamental unknown factor that just seems like it introduces a lot of chaos. Yeah, 100%, no, I think you're spun on. Again, punishes success. There's even a different way to message it that is fundamentally the same thing that makes it clear to people that when you have, when you are making enough money from your game, at that point, we're gonna take a bigger cut, and maybe the way that they would calculate that would be functionally very similar, but by describing it in a way that they did, they've made it seem terrifying for anyone to install your Unity game, which is like the opposite of what you want. Right, well, I mean, installs don't equal revenue, like they're not the same thing. Right, yes. They're typically punishing for success in the free-to-play mobile space, which is where it's gonna hit the hardest. I mean, lots of the lamb, like a game like that, you're not really, maybe you install it on multiple machines, but that's so rare, like realistically, this policy isn't gonna hurt them that much, but I think the bigger problem here, and then we'll get on to the news story, but at least in my opinion, you guys can offer your takes, but the bigger problem is that they've just torch their brand because they essentially said, we care about you so little, we're just gonna throw this policy out, it's gonna be half-assed, it's gonna change everything you know, it's gonna affect already existing users that are trusting us to go with the Unity Engine here, and it's just immediately they lost all trust with so many people that I'm not sure they can ever get it back. And then practically, I don't actually think that this policy is gonna financially hurt that many people if it hurts anybody, really. It's more that they just completely bungled the rollout in the messaging, and the entire execution of this so badly that it just feels like from now on, Unity will just be associated with chaos and John Riccatello, like trying to steal people's wallets. Yeah, I will say that my reaction when I heard this was that is never gonna happen, that was the first thing I said. Yeah, I was like, when are they gonna undo this? Well, it is gonna happen just with extreme like caveats and like- The thing people are describing, though, is not going to, just seems very unlikely to me that this like apocalypse is gonna happen to every indie game. Or if it did, then every single developer would stop using Unity, which is like pretty much what the reaction was to the news, which would cause it to cease to exist. Like those are kind of the two outcomes, it's like either Unity goes out of business for making the work decision ever, or they come up with some other more logical way to approach this, and implement some changes that actually makes sense to people. Which will probably happen. Speaking of big corporations stepping on rakes, let's talk about what happened to Microsoft this week. So early on Tuesday morning, late Monday night, a people discovered that Microsoft had accidentally uploaded a treasure trove of documents to the FDC court record website and that they were all public and could be downloaded by anybody. And suddenly on Tuesday, it became Xbox leak day and so many different emails and PowerPoint presentations and slides and all sorts of delicious corporate shenanigans leaks on the internet. Yeah, it was fascinating. I mean, some of the highlights were hardware plans for the next few years, which included an all digital version of the Xbox Series X coming next year and like some next gen console in 2028 that is like hybrid with cloud stuff and who knows that we're talking years away now. So unlikely that it'll actually be what's on paper right now, but still also a more advanced Xbox controller with updated halftax. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Try to compete with the Dillsense. Well, the halftax are pretty cool. That's like the dual, the new PSI controller is cool. And I thought the most interesting part other than like some Phil Spencer emails and seeing how he talks to his team in private and exchanges with other executives that thought that was interesting. But the other interesting part was the Bethesda lineup, like the entire lineup presented Max games over the next few years, which was a little out of date. I think this was from like 2020. And so a lot of the years were totally wrong. I think they'd start feeling coming out in 2021 or something like that, physical year 2021. But still, it had some gems on there. Dishonored 3, an oblivion remaster, a Fallout 3 remaster. It's like they listened to our episode from a few weeks ago and we're like, hey, we should remaster those games. Hey. They didn't hear the part where we said oblivion was boring and we're in this room. Yeah, they were probably reading the triple click discord in which there are many oblivion linkers. For Garles, clearly they're very up to date on triple click just everything. Yeah, we can fairly assume that. And also it was, they time travel back to 2020 to create this presentation. So split screen. They've been listening to split screen. You know, few times is out there listening to split screen. Definitely is. And then like a bunch of codename, some of these I believe were canceled games. Some of them are not going to happen. Some of them are going to happen. Like there's a game in there called Project Kestrel that I believe is the Xenomax Online Studios, the makers of Elder Scrolls Online. Kestrel is their new game. I believe that it might actually be called Kestrel. I guess we'll see about that, but the codename is definitely Kestrel. And yeah, a bunch of other stuff. I mean, Project Hebeke is on there. I believe that is High-Fi Rush, which already came out. Yeah, so what did you guys make of all these leaks that you read through any interesting Phil Spencer emails? Did you see anything about that? Yeah, he wanted to find Nintendo. Wasn't that an old Jason Trier prediction of years gone by that Xbox that would buy Nintendo or attempt to have Nintendo in its coroner? I feel like there were a lot of them. Maybe, it sounds like one of the, when we did the bonus wild predictions. One of the crazy wild predictions. Yeah, it was. I think it was like, you're right. You're a super outlandish one. I was interested to see that one. But yeah, mostly I just, I mean, what do you guys think about the old digital Xbox? Like, talk about the Xbox thing that will never die. It really has me going back in time 10 years and thinking about all those arguments that we all got to have about digital-only consoles. Like, it's common now, you apparently. Every conversation I've had with like, some people who know things that game companies are like, you would not believe how few people are buying physical nowadays. It's like, I wouldn't believe it. I wouldn't believe it. Yeah, okay, you guys didn't believe it. But like, the numbers are like, it's even, it's like, the digital transformation has come much quicker than a lot of people anticipated. So it doesn't shock me that they would be going all digital. Like, I think that's, I think maybe it's, it's probably less than 10%, or less than 20% of people are buying physical these days. I know, I just also think that that's happening at the same time as everyone realizing that we've all made a horrible mistake because our digital libraries are deteriorating and often not as comprehensive as they might have been if we'd been collecting blu-ray discs all this time. And I'm really sensing that pain like seeing games either get delisted or like, I mean, obviously we're not, we're not talking about Netflix here. We don't need to get into that. But goodness knows a lot of things that used to be available to me easily 10 years ago in the golden age of streaming where everything was cheap and easily available. It's not so these days. And I just, I'm feeling that anxiety already of like, if everything goes digital, then what's gonna happen to video game preservation and the actual ability to play the games that come out in that digital only era, but like 20 years after that, you know, assuming we aren't, you know, busy with the water wars and everything at that point. Well, we'll need a distraction when it's playing. Right, exactly. And if only we had them on disk because at that point, we'll have left is like our deteriorating PS5s. Yeah, well, the internet infrastructure will be totally dissonant. Well, exactly, right. Exactly what I'm saying. We need the disk for the post-apocalyptic wasteland that we're going to be entering into. Yeah. I do wonder if video game collection is gonna become kind of like vinyl collecting. I think it is. I feel like I can already sense that because a couple days before this leak happened, well, I guess it's not a couple days. It was only on Monday. This has been such a long week already. On Monday, one of my coworkers was talking about how he doesn't have a blue ray player because he had bought the PS5 that doesn't have a disk drive because he was like at the time, I just figured, you know, well, get whatever PS5 you can get. And now he doesn't have a blue ray player and he's like, I don't know how to watch blue rays. And I was thinking of him when I was reading about the digital only Xbox and I'm like, well, what about people who want to watch movies and they actually look really good or people who want to play games that aren't off of subscription services and the games actually look as good as they can look? I mean, I'm not even just thinking of the preservation angle but also just the fact that sometimes you want something to actually look good and that's where the vinyl record of it all comes in, Kirk, where I'm like, yeah, I think that collector sensibility does matter when it comes to things actually operating as intended and installing and running off of the disk, you know? So my question is, are the future, like the physical game collections of future people, like Jason of your kids, when they are, you know, and it's the hip thing to have a physical collection, the way that we have vinyl collections now, is it going to be the same as vinyl collections these days where everyone has the same, like 16 Joni Mitchell record and the same kind of record when it's very like, because everything is from the 60s and the 70s when records were mass produced. So basically everyone will have like the 2008 Prince of Persia for the Xbox 360 on the physical copy. But like, no one is going to have, I don't know, bloodborne or cyberpunk, like there will be no physical copies of cyberpunk. And it's interesting. I will say that one thing to Xbox is credit. They put all their games on PC and if you want to preserve things, PC is the way to go because like, ultimately other than online only games are games like heavy DRM, you could ultimately play anything forever on PC, like you could get emulated roms for pretty much anything from 30 years ago. And while I'm not pro pirating new games, I am very much pro preserving games that can't be bought anywhere else. And so I think that two Xbox is credit. Unlike PlayStation and Nintendo, which release games only on their consoles. I think releasing everything on PC helps in the great preservation wars. But yeah, so when the internet goes offline and we're all lost forever, then that'll change things. We're just carrying hard drives around. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You just gotta make it for a grand sponsor where we got like a huge trove of every copy of PlayStation All Star. Right, so after the water wars, it'll be like, just gotta make it all the way to the Eastern Seaboard and you'll find the guy who has the hard drives. You can finally play Battle Tows again. You can play Raps Online. I have a couple of other thoughts on this Xbox leak. One is just that I'm excited that Dishonored 3 is gonna happen. I hope that Arcane is allowed to get back to making those kinds of games. That'd be cool. Cause that's what they're really good at. And I'll play the hell out of that when it comes to that. Yeah, I wonder if that is, I wonder how real that is. I guess we'll see, but I wonder. Yeah, it was just exciting to hear that. Yeah, no, I know, I know. So what I do know, Oblivion Remaster is definitely is 100% real. That's a little sooner than later. Just on or three. I don't know. You guys heard it here, Jason Trier says it's 100% real. That's not really I think 70% Jason, are you sure? You gotta say I'm viral. That 100% real doesn't mean like it won't be canceled. It just means it's really happening. Yeah. All right. Last thing is just, there have been some headlines about internal descriptions of Baldur's Gate 3 by Alie Salfton, how they underestimated that game. I think that this was something, this was like an interesting news story that I've been a little bit aware of over the last couple of weeks is just these small indicators that Microsoft misunderstood how big Baldur's Gate 3 was going to be. So there's this second story that's unrelated to this leak, but that's that Baldur's Gate 3 did not come out on Xbox when it came out on PlayStation. Not for any exclusivity deal, but because Larian could not get the split screen working on the Xbox Series S, which is the less powerful Xbox. And as a result, because Microsoft has a requirement that there be parity between the Series S and the Series X, Larian wasn't going to be able to release the game because the Series S is the less powerful, it couldn't do split screen co-ops, so what are you going to do? So the game came out on PS5, this massive game, one of the best games of the year when the greatest RPGs I've ever played, just finished it last night, by the way, amazing ending, really great game. And it's not an Xbox. And that really, it's one of being almost compounded by the fact that Starfield is an Xbox exclusive and also Starfield got, let's say, much more mixed reviews than Baldur's Gate 3. And so it's turned into a weird proxy, not a proxy console war, but like a false console war. We're like, because so many times, like critics who just played Baldur's Gate 3 will say something about Starfield, oh man, they're writing and this is nowhere near as good. And then people get mad who are feeling that kind of console loyalty about a game that's not on their console, even though the reason it's not on their console is because Microsoft was being inflexible. And then Microsoft changed their policy for Larian to allow the game to come to Xbox so they can get this massive hit out. Anyways, all of that is to say, there is some language in here that could be interpreted as Microsoft, basically predicting that Baldur's Gate 3 is some niche bullshit that no one cares about. So specifically, so the context here is that there is a, a chart essentially that is like, how much Microsoft would expect to pay a publisher, how much a publisher would expect it to ask for for Game Pass day and date. And it's like Star Wars, Jedi survivor, $300 million, something crazy like that. Assassin's Creed, Mirage, $100 million. Baldur's Gate 3, $5 million. $5 million. $5 million. And then the description of it is like, second run, Sadia PC game. But yeah, I can't. Second run, Sadia PC RPG. I read that and they were not in a fire of mojis to add to it truly. I can't believe. I mean, Portman, after the Sadia employees who had to read that news today, like they're out there being like, what's funny is that so when we were at Kotaku, things have changed. But when we were at Kotaku, back when traffic stats were public, you could really, you could get a lot of info out of like, how many people were looking at articles about specific games. You could get an indication of how well those games do. And I remember lots of Baldur's Gate 3 stuff doing extraordinarily well. And that was the closest thing we had to Nielsen ratings was the big board. And we really did tell you how. Oh, this game's got heat. People care about this game. It was a good way of knowing that. Yeah, I mean, it's not public, but even at Polygon internally, we knew we planned for that. And we were like, oh, Polygon's Gate 3. We're going to have to gird our loins. Yeah, it was all that came out this year, but whatever. Get rest up kiddos. We all got to get it on Baldur's Gate. So like, I don't know what Phil, I don't know what he was doing. You also have to gird your loins because it's a really horny game. I don't know. You've got to decide what you're going to gird your loins with. Especially free patch. You heard they patched the horningness out, right? They de-hornified all of your party members. One more quick thing before you move on. Phil Spencer put out a statement on Twitter. We've, sorry, on X, the website format. Yeah, what are you saying? On what? That's for you, Kurt. We've seen the conversation around old emails and documents. It is hard to see our team's work shared in this way because so much has changed. And there's so much to be excited right now. And in the future, we will share the real plans when we are ready. The real plan. We've seen the conversation around old emails and documents. What a sentence. Anyway, let's keep moving on. There's some other headlines to get to. First, real quick. Final Fantasy VII rebirth gets a trailer. Man, that looks so sick. Oh, it's such a good trailer. Everyone just, it was there. That was cool. An official trailer for fanservate. Everyone's behind the back of a sentence in that trailer. But yeah. Well, there were a lot of, there were so many snapshots. I remember when Tifa and Eris and Yufi were on the trade together, that was great. And then Clouds on a Segway. Well, there were so many little shots that are like, oh my god, that's Cosmo Canyon. Oh, that's because of Dilsol. Like just little moments. Oh, there's a joke about racing. Oh my god, the boxing mini. This is Valentine in his crypt was the moment for me where I was like, wow, this is just going to have it all. Just phenomenal stuff. One quick note, the developers say that the game will end at the Forgotten City, which is, I believe the end of disc one in the original PlayStation release. And so it remains to be seen how they handle the finale. But I am very excited to see what they do. It's so funny. Like after playing Remake and the twist ending of that game and the revelations of that game, this really feel like I'm so excited for this. Me too. More than I ever thought I would be. I'm even more amazed by the people who have only played Remake and don't know the plot of the original game. And to each and every one of those people, I just have to hold both their hands in mind and be like, at least look it up because you're just going to get more and you can see this. You're just going to be confused, honestly, sure. Yeah. Well, no, I think you should, because this is essentially a sequel to Final Fantasy VII. Yeah, exactly. Like it's not, despite the name, quite a remake. Yeah, that's why this is Final Fantasy VII. Rebirth. That's right. That's right. So you got to know the original story and whatever happens. I may have immediately downloaded Final Fantasy VII remake on my PC to replay it in preparation for this. Understandable. I'm just a cool trailer. There's also an Intender Direct. Some cool stuff got announced. Princess Peach Showtime. So it looks great. I just watched this trailer that had missed the Direct. It looks so fun. Yeah, so this is a game for anyone who didn't see it, starring Princess Peach, where Princess Peach is putting on a show at a theater. The whole thing it takes place on stage. That's right. In classic Mario format, it's on stage in this version. Yes, yes, yes. Like Mario 3. And a baddie shows up and takes over and she has to save the show. So the whole thing is like costume changes for new abilities. And it's all staged with like set design and lighting and props and everything is moving around and shifting. So it's got this kind of really incredibly cool look. I was amazed by that trailer. That game looks really, really fun. Super cool. I'm really excited to play it. Paper Mario 1000, your door is getting remake. That was pretty cool. That's a great game that I think you guys will enjoy when the game comes out. That just topped some poll I saw online of the best Mario story by a mile. Like some reader poll and that made me excited because I've definitely never played it. It would love to. There's some good stuff in there. A lot of cool side characters. There's this hilarious kind of like series of, I don't know if they're like inner missions with where you control Bowser or you control Peach. No, Bowser. You control Bowser trying to go after Peach. And then the funniest thing is that you run into Luigi at every city and he just talks about his adventures. And they're just like increasingly like wild and more far. You never see anything. Yeah, it's all off screen. It's fantastic. I love that. And then there was a video game called Unicorn Overlord. I watched the trailer for that. So this is from Vanilla Ware. And it's another sort of classic, classic RPG. It's a strategy game. Yeah, well, it's a strategy. It is funny that it's called Unicorn Overlord. Yeah, what are the names? I would have thought that'd be like a devolver like a semi-era. Yeah, it doesn't get semi-era. Unicorn Overlord. The indie game where you have an Unicorn army that you have like a farm and you're reading them for combat and the Unicorn Overlord. But this is 100% serious. Like what about Unicorn Attack, I suppose? Unicorns are a kind of ironic instrument. In that like Lowlcats, sort of 2008 era way. So watching it live, they didn't see the channel until the end. So the entire trailer is like two minutes of them talking about this like high fantasy stuff, dead serious dead band. And then at the end, Unicorn Overlord. And I just cracked up when I heard that. You expected to be called like Fields of the Magisterium or something. Yeah, something like that. Yeah, but like Magisterium is in all caps. And then there's a colon. And it's like, remember the Titan beginning. And then there's like another colon. And then it's like Prolog. Maddie, you know your JRPGs. Yeah, Prolog, Prolog 5.6. Prologues. One thing I'll say is that like Vinalore's last game, 13 Sentinels, I wasn't super hot on that game, but there were some good parts. The one part that wasn't good was the strategy like gameplay stuff. And the same thought. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I was like, I was into the story, but not into the game part. I was the worst part of it. And so for them to make a strategy game. But you know what I mean, it looked cool. I looked gorgeous. And it could be totally like different people designing it. But what about the title 13 Sentinels? That's what I thought you were going to say wasn't good because the full title is also really here. Ageous rim, is that right? Ageous rim, yeah. Anyway, it's fine. I don't know. Unicorn Overlord. The Sentinels on its own is a fine name. Yeah, it's a unicorn overlord. It's a 13 assessment. It's not. I mean, there's so many things wrong with it. First of all, it's hard to say. It's like so many, a name shouldn't have so many syllables. Unicorn Overlord. I think it's memorable though. I'm going to say that it is a memorable name. Unicorn Overlord, I'll remember that. Yeah. It's got that going for it. It's like some games are just not memorable. That's their problem. I think it's fun to say Unicorn Overlord. There's something about like the O at the end of Unicorn going leading into the O. It's a little bit of a world-error. Yeah, yeah, exactly. The world-error, nice. Couple more headlines. These two are kind of connected layoffs everywhere, despite this being such a humongous year for games and game sales. And Embracer falling apart just a couple of years after it bought up the entire AA games industry, it is laying people off, shutting down studios, shut down Valition, the makers of Saints Row. It's trying to sell or spin off Gearbox, the makers of Borderlands, just a disaster, like trashfire of a company. And layoffs, I mean, Immortals of AVM, that game, speaking of titles, that game came out like three weeks ago under EA. And I guess it sold so poorly they laid off half the studio like within less than a month later, which is just pathetic. Imagine like working your ass off to ship this game and then you get laid off before you can even like see how it does in the long term. Or have a chance to potentially update it or like make any change to it in response to it happen or anything, yeah. God, what a disaster. But yeah, it's just a lot of bad industry news alongside all the exciting stuff, unfortunately. It's just one of those years. And I know this is kind of a worldwide problem or at least countrywide problem with the economic, I don't know, is it a downturn? Who knows these days, but a lot of problems, a lot of turbulence in games industry is no. No exception, it's a bummer. What have you guys been making of all this? Yeah, I mean, it is confusing in light of just how many incredible video games have been coming out this year. Like just from the coverage side, I feel like it's been hard for us to keep up in a good way. Like it's nice when there's a ton of really great stuff to cover and that's always exciting at work. And then to have that be also juxtaposed with like, oh, there's an economic downturn supposedly and then also to see all these layoffs, it's confusing. Because I'm like, really? Because I feel like everyone I know is buying video games and playing video games and talking about how great they are. So I don't understand. It always just feels like a mismatch to me, but I'm not an economist and I don't know what money even is. So that would be hard. What is the economy? Who knows? Yeah, I don't know what I get that feeling too. That feeling that there's a disconnect between the reality on the ground. Yeah. And it's just that disconnect between the logic of the real world and even the logic of the market that we engage with as consumers. Yeah. You want to buy good things and you buy them and the market of investment and Wall Street and the stock market, which is just a totally different logic that works on a different, just a whole, it's this weird alien thing that just doesn't really make sense. So then you see stuff that doesn't feel like it should be happening. And we're seeing more and more and more of it because acquisitions are getting bigger and bigger the people holding people buying companies are motivated by increasingly abstract. It's perplexing to me as a civilian. Yeah, motivated by watching the line on the graph go up into the right, just the eternal chase regret. Right, and just the things that require that to happen are increasingly arcane. It seems to me. It's not as simple anymore as just, I don't know, make a cool thing and like sell it to people. It's like so far beyond that that it can be really hard to get your head around. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's nutty. And like even the companies that seem to be fine are like laying people off. I heard last week that you guys on the company probably monsters, they have a lot of big investments. They're like a game company. They were started by Harold Ryan, who was the CEO of Bungie for a while. No, okay. They're like a semi-publisher. They operate a few different game studios. They led off a ton of people a few days ago. All the big publishers to K, EA, EA laid off a bunch of people a buyerware a few weeks ago. I mean, buyerware, like one of the most recognizable studios. And especially like that was especially tragic because buyerware of course made Balder's Gate 1 and 2. And here's Balder's Gate 3, this smash success. And like the company also known for making great RPGs. It lost 50 people, including some of the people who have been there for two decades. Like it's just, it's really, it's really just. I saw some of those notes from the narrative folks at buyerware who got let go and that sucks. That just seems like a terrible people to lose at game studio that's known for these great stories. And that has been sort of suffering in the story department lately. Who knows why they did that? Yeah, ridiculous. And you know what happens when you, like the layoffs, not only do you lose people, the people who are remaining have survivors killed. They're not gonna work as hard. They're not gonna be able to function of full capacity. And they're expected to do the jobs so the people who got laid off in addition to their own jobs. It's just like, it's so short-sighted. And I mean, anytime a big company that can afford to not do layoffs does layoffs, you know, is almost, it's like always just shooting themselves in the foot. And like hurting the reputation, hurting morale, hurting people, it's just, it never makes sense. Like layoffs in general just don't make sense. Unless you're really like an independent studio that is funded by like your owner's pockets and you literally cannot afford to keep paying salaries, but still it's, or to introduce that twisted Wall Street logic. It makes sense in a way if you can demonstrate that by cutting that cost, you're gonna increase your projected revenue. And then that allows you to get to some kind of goal that you're trying to reach. Like in that investor logic, the sort of thing, like those considerations, those longer term considerations don't always apply. And that's kind of how we wind up watching these things where we're like smacking our foreheads and being like, I don't get why you would ever do this. Yeah, it makes sense in a world where all that matters is the next fiscal year, instead of the next five fiscal years. That's the fundamental, like long and short of this is just like the most shortsighted. Because executives are incentivized to only think about the short term. Like you can't, it's like being a GM of a sports team or something like that. Like you're on the hot seat if you can't make winning moves in the next two years. So why would you think about five or 10 years from now? It's all just like this perverse system that we all got to live in. I suppose that's the late stage of the process. I don't know. I mean, we kind of talked about those with tears of the kingdom a few times. We're like having a game where a lot of people who worked on it have been there for a while. I can actually still be pretty financially successful. So like it would just be nice if like maybe a couple of these executives would just give that a little ponder at night. Talk about it. Yeah, just think about it. All of you out there listening, give it a thought. Well, we know these executives are listening. They're all listening. They're all big triple click listening. I do assume, yeah, I'm guessing that at least one C-suite executive and a major gaming company is secretly listening to triple click. Right in, triple click. The one who plays gaming, like the one C-suite executive actually plays video games. So it's our show. Bobbiotic, really? OK. Yeah, Bobbi, get a little bit of me. Why don't we take a break and then we will come back for one more thing? If you need a laugh and you're on the go, try STO PPO, DCA STI. Are you trying to put the name of the podcast there? Yeah, I'm trying to spell it, but it's tricky. Let me give it a try. OK. If you need a laugh and you're on the go call STO P, P-P-A-D, I will never fit. No, it will. Let me try. If you need a laugh and you're on the go, try STO P, P-P-D-C-O-O. Ah, we are so close. Stop podcasting yourself. A podcast from MaximumFun.org. If you need a laugh and you're on the go. I'm if you want to wait in the host of Maximum Film. I'm Alonzo D'Aralde, also the host of Maximum Film. And I'm Dre Clark, yet another host of Maximum Film. Every week, we host Settle Up. Usually with an illustrious guest and we talk about films. We have film news. We have film quizzes. We answer your film questions. It's like the Maximum amount of film talk. That's why we call it Maximum Film. Maximum Film. Maximum Film. The movie podcast, that's not just a bunch of straight white guys, new episodes weekly on MaximumFun.org. And we are back. Kirk Maddie, it's time for one more thing. I want to mention mine. Thank you. You can go first. OK. I'll go first with a book that I am reaching the very end of that is a fantastic book that a lot of people probably know by an author who will never be mentioned again on this podcast. No. No, just kidding. Maybe he will be. This is Killers of the Flower Moon by David Gran, also known as the author of The Lost City of Z, a previous one more thing from Jason Shryer. And I had heard of Gran. I haven't read Lost City of Z, but I've I knew this was a good book. My sister actually just gave me her copy and was like, dude, you have to read this book. It's incredible. And also, as it happens, Martin Scorsese is adapting it into a film that's coming out next month. Yeah, as it happens. So it's with Leah DiCaprio. Yeah. Yeah. A stacked cast in that, of course. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. So this is a great book that I'm sure a lot of listeners are familiar with. It came out in 2017. It was a real sensation. And yet, I had not read it. I would imagine I'm also not alone in that. I didn't start reading it because the movie is coming out. But I would guess there's a lot of people reading it for that reason too. So I really do wholeheartedly recommend this book. And it would probably be a good one to read before seeing the movie. Because I'm definitely going to watch the movie. Because I think it'll probably be really good. So this is the story. The full title is, and I'm forgetting the full title. But it's basically Killers of the Flower Moon, the Osage murders, and the founding of the FBI, something like that. And it's the story of the Osage people, a Native American tribe in Oklahoma, who were forcibly relocated, just like so many tribes, over the course of the 19th century, and had their land kind of whittled away and taken away. But who managed to advocate for themselves in this one very specific way, where they established that their reservation, the land couldn't be divided up into parcels the way that a lot of other reservations were. So they owned the land and crucially, they owned the mineral rights, and basically everything under the land. The government didn't really care at the time. They were like, whatever, fine. They basically had moved, of course, moved them onto the rockiest, crappiest land in Oklahoma, and were like, all right, whatever, fine. So then, of course, they strike oil, and it turns out to be the richest land in the whole country. And for a period of time, the Osage people are the richest people per capita in the world, I think. I think that's the statistic. And then, of course, the story from there is this like story of just injustice after injustice, after injustice. It's just infuriating story of the government finding all of these ways to come between people and money that was legally theirs, according to a agreement that the government entered with them, the United States government. But, of course, when lawyers start getting involved and you start finding ways to trick people, you can kind of start just essentially imposing your will, just like people did taking their land from them by force. It was the same kind of thing. That is the backdrop for this story. But we get to the 1920s, and that's kind of where this story starts with a rash of murders, that becomes a kind of a true crime mystery story, and that's the hook of this story, is you're watching as people are being murdered, Osage tribe members, who have what are called head rights, which means they, like, because they were born into the tribe, they like own a certain percentage of the money, of the oil money coming in every year, which is a lot of money, so they're like very, very wealthy people, and they're being killed, or they're dying under mysterious circumstances, and it starts to appear to be some sort of a vast conspiracy. So, as a result, the Bureau of Investigation, before they were the FBI, this is under J. Edgar Hoover in the early 1920s, they send in an investigator because they have jurisdiction over Native American land. They don't have jurisdiction over very much, because there's no like federal, like the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the way that you can be charged with a federal crime, that kind of didn't work that way, but this is kind of the beginning of that, and it's Hoover sort of organizing the FBI into this new law enforcement apparatus. He sends this guy, named White, I forget his first name, but who's basically this old cowboy who's become an FBI, out to run an investigation. So, the middle part of the book is just the story of this investigation, and it's a real page turner, like it's a really interesting mystery, but it never loses that edge, just the edge of this sort of horrible injustice that this whole thing is built on, of course, that our whole country is built on, and then it winds up really taking some surprising turns toward the end as Grant himself goes and researches the full scope of what was happening, and the kind of, like it really winds up just inditing all of America, like in this thing that, of course, America should be indicted for, like this original center, one of the original sins of America's founding. So, it's a great book, it's like, it's a book that I think all high school students should read. This is the kind of thing that I just wish I'd known about. When I was in high school and was learning American history, it's similar to the Tulsa race massacre that we've talked about at least, you know, talking about Watchmen, or, you know, its depiction on TV shows, when Watchmen showed that, it was a similar thing where a lot of people didn't know that this had happened, and it's kind of a similar story where a minority group accumulates a lot of money, and then just a bunch of white people basically decide that's not okay and just start killing folks, and like that's what happened here too. Oklahoma, man, got some history. Yeah, but I mean, and it's Oklahoma, but of course it is America. But yeah, a lot of bad stuff happened in Oklahoma, and so it is a great book, really just like an essential historical read, and I really just well put together well-written, well-researched, just an absorbing historical tale. So I really recommend it, and I'm looking forward to the movie. So that's Killers of the Flower Moon by David Graham, a very easy book to find, and a worthy one to read. Well, as it turns out, David Graham, he's got some chops, because my warmer thing is The Wager by David Graham, which I finished a couple weeks ago. Welcome to the Grandcast, folks. Welcome back to the Grandcast. Yeah, David Graham, he's quite a writer. So this book, this is latest book, it actually came out earlier this year, and it is another just riveting nonfiction story that has written like a novel, because he just so heavily researched it and kind of pinpointed and recreated scenes from history and early astonishingly interesting. He's amazing at that. It's really incredible. Yeah, and something he does, which I really appreciate, a lot of nonfiction writers will recreate scenes with fake dialogue and put thoughts in their character's heads, and I hate that. None of that happened. People did not say it this way. This is not what happened, and the way David Graham does it is not like that. His quotes, when he quotes things, they are from primary sources, documents, and logbooks, and whatever, and they are things that are actually that actually should be quoted. People's thoughts that they wrote down. And he's very artful. He's very artful in the way that he evokes a scene or describes someone returning home and driving across to land and the sun is setting a certain way, where he's not saying what happened, but he's kind of saying this is what it was like there. And so he isn't going so far as to paint a, you know, actually narrativize in a way that doesn't add up. It's really clever. He's a very, very thoughtful writer. Yes, and that's a great, I thought about that a lot, because I know that was the thing that bugs you. And now when I read nonfiction, I pay attention for it. Yeah, it's something to pay attention to. There are some books, I want to name names, but there's some books that are just egregious about like totally, like they shouldn't even be allowed to calm down fiction. I mean, like, I guess I will name names. There's like Ben Mezzarix, right? Like, like, I only think of this because that movie dumb money just came out based on the Wall Street story and Ben Mezzarix, it's based on a Ben Mezzarix book that was totally fictionalized. Anyway, the wager. So the wager is the story. The wager. The wager opens up with setting the scene by saying that, like, this little town in Chile, these people, they see this like little, like, flot, flotsome, like, come by. And a bunch of people come off it and they say they're survivors of a shipwreck that landed like miles and miles away. And they all are returned to their home in Britain and kind of are returned to their families. And then six months later, another piece of wreckage comes by and some more people get off and they're like, hey, those guys who came six months ago were, were mutiners and they, like, rebel against their captain. And that's, that's setting the scene for this book. And so the book is about a ship called the wager, that is part of this questionable name for a ship. I gotta say. It is. It's called part of part of this fleet of ships that is a British expedition. British is fighting this war against Spain in the 1700s. I believe it's 1730s or something like that. And they send this ship to go and steal treasure from a Spanish galleon in a mission of, like, a stealth and subterfuge that wanted to be totally, they want Spain to be caught on our wares. And along the way, they went into also to problems catastrophe and the wager, the ship, winds up shipwrecked on an island where they have to spend months, like, in true hell, like this island that has no food and total awful weather conditions and they, like, have to build a life out of it. And so the book is kind of sent in the scenes of, like, first you see the ship and you learn about ships and then you learn about the voyage they took and then you learn about what happens on the island and all the drama that goes in there. And then the third part of the book is what happens when they return and the kind of the court hearings they had to face as a result of their actions. They had to deal with the consequences of their actions on the island and on the ship. And the reason it's so riveting is because David Graham found these logbooks from a handful of characters, three main ones, including this one guy, John Byron, who would be the grandfather, a great grandfather of the poet of his name, Byron, Lord Byron. And so these logbooks managed to tell each cast, each of these, like, crew members version of the story and also create them as characters because by reading these logbooks, David Graham could figure out like, well, they were thinking of what made them take. This is a real over a dinship. It's very over a dinship. Do you think that David Graham has played return of the over a dinship? I don't know. It's a great question. But yeah, it's fascinating. It is a fantastic, fantastic book. And it's nice and short. It doesn't overstate. It's welcome. It just zips through stuff. Really, really interesting book. And to your point, Kirk, and kind of similarly to Killers of the Flower Moon, it does what the best nonfiction stories do, which is it tells a story that's about, that's greater than the events that just happen here. And there are some themes. Not heavy-handed, but he does talk about this a couple times about the colonialism of the English and the problems that that caused and the reasons that they, like, how this all played into that and the imperialism and this belief that all of the sailors had that they were, like, on this crusade and this grand mission that was greater than them. And even on the island, they, like, ran into some natives from nearby who, like, knew how to survive the harshness of that land and could have potentially helped them. But I won't spoil exactly what happens. But yeah, I mean, British colonialism no good, but this story extremely good. The age of David Grant, I recommend both books. I have also read Killers of the Flower Moon. Both books are fantastic. So go read them both. Maddie, what's your one more thing? What's your one more grand? So Lost City of Z by David Grant. It's not Lost City of Z. Imagine if it happened. That would have been great. I didn't know we were doing this. It could have happened, honestly. It could have happened. It could have happened. It could have happened. It accidentally all picked books by the same guy. Sadly, no. Sadly, I read a book by Zakia Delilah Harris, which is called The Other Black Girl. The reason I read this is similar to you, Kirk, in that there's a movie coming out about the book you read. I don't know if that was part of what motivated you. But there is a... No, I didn't even know. A Hulu show that is already completed, because I think they just put up all the episodes in one go, called The Other Black Girl. And I saw the trailer for it. Great trailer. Haven't watched the show. I just watched the trailer, and saw that it was based on a book, and I was like, I think I'd really like this book, actually. So I'm going to go ahead and get this book, and see if I like that before I watch this show. And then I devoured the book in two days, because it's a thriller. It was a good sign. And so I don't... I don't want to spoil the book, but it's pretty simple, and that it's kind of similar to The Stepford Wives, and that it's like a science fiction premise, where you kind of have these marginalized, this marginalized class of people, in this case, it's specifically Black women, who are working in a white-dominated publishing house, in New York City. This is a very New York City kind of a book, and much like The Stepford Wives, one of them becomes very suspicious of the other one, and like a science fiction type of way, and is like, what is really going on with this person? And the book is like, so it just sort of unfolds from there, and that's the kind of sci-fi premise that I really love. I talked about the clone tyrant on this show, and how much I enjoyed that movie, and I think The Stepford Wives, like the original stories is wonderful. Any kind of science fiction, where there's clones or people are getting replaced, or like Rainwash or something, I'm always fascinated by, because it's always sort of evocative of like real-life social parallels, and like why we do and don't trust other people. And so this book's very fun in that regard. I will say, probably it's only flaw, that I would say is still something that makes it extremely fun to read, just that it's very focused on New York media personalities, be they bloggers, writers, publishing houseworkers, that whole world. So the most interesting people. Yeah, most interesting people in the entire universe. The people who maybe you might create a sci-fi conspiracy about in order to rule the world, for example. There is a piece of it where I'm like, would anyone actually care to do that? I'm not sure. Would they maybe instead do something like this in Washington, DC? I don't know. The book doesn't quite get into that territory, because it's like a little too light-hearted for that. I think to its benefit, because it's just kind of like, look, it sucks to work in these kinds of knowledge jobs that are like really high-stressed, tons and tons of hours, super hyper-competitive, especially the few marginalized people who get these roles end up being inter-competitive in ways that are really toxic, and that's very much what the book is about. That's the title. Yes. Of course. Yeah, exactly. This is the one other person at the job. Everyone's going to mix me up with, et cetera. And that's like really what the point of the book is. But yeah, I think maybe you enjoy it a little more if you're a writer who lives in a major city in the United States. But maybe you enjoy it if you're not one of those people. But yeah, it went down really easy, and I thought the ending was really fascinating, and I'd like more people to read it, so I could talk to them about it, especially since I've already read, because I'm the kind of person who does this. The Hulu show changes the ending. Oh. So I'm like, great. Everyone needs to read the book and watch the show, and then we can all discuss it. My wife loves the book. You can text her. Yeah. Okay, great. I'll contact her. No surprise. I feel like, in her case, she'd be like, well, why wasn't this book written about competitive law firms? Which was the thought I also had reading it. I was like, surely. Similar. Yeah, very similar. Very similar. That girl. Really cool book. Except for the pay. I know. She's in every way, except the one that matters. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess so. But yeah, that's my own more thing. Cool. Awesome, right? Well, that is it for this week's episode. That is. Thank you all for listening. Kirk. Maddie, I will see you both next week. Yeah, see you both next week. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreyer, 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 TripleClickPods and email the TripleClick at MaximumFun.org and find a link to our discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximum Fun, a worker-owned network of artist-owned shows supported directly by you.