How to Hack a Poker Game

Michael Calore: Yeah. My favorite indiscreet product placement was in the show Entourage from HBO. It was on TV, I don’t know, 15 years ago.

Lauren Goode: Oh, I remember it.

Michael Calore: And the characters used to say to each other, “I’ll BBM it to you.”

Lauren Goode: No. Time capsule.

Michael Calore: Yeah. Which is like, even if you had a Blackberry—

Lauren Goode: Yeah, you never said that.

Michael Calore: Nobody ever said that.

Lauren Goode: No, it’s so true.

Michael Calore: They would text it to you.

Lauren Goode: Incredible.

Michael Calore: But no, I’m going to BBM it to you.

Andy Greenberg: Just the fact that we even know what BBM-ing is just kind of means it worked.

Lauren Goode: Or maybe it’s more, “What is that, guys? I don’t remember that. I’m too young.” All right, Andy, give us your WIRED, TIRED.

Andy Greenberg: Well, I am not a video game reporter, but I did buy the—everybody has been talking about this game Silksong. It was $20 on the Switch. I bought it for my 9-year-old son, and I thought that I would play this cute little game and I just cannot believe how fricking hard it is. Nobody is talking about the fact that this incredibly popular game—it makes you want to cry. Like me, not my son, like me, the adult. I cannot stop playing it.

But I have been more frustrated playing this game than I have been maybe in anything else in my life or work for years. This is my extremely amateur video game trend watching observation that for a while all these games got really easy like Candy Crush and Farmville and Angry Bird stuff where you just basically can’t lose. And people seem to love that and games got incredibly easy. And now it feels like we’re in this era where games are just absurdly hard, including these—what look like casual games for kids are in fact some of the most challenging things you will do in your life. And actually I think it’s great. So yeah, I would say TIRED are easy games and WIRED is games that are ridiculously hard and making me want to cry.