Inside the global computer crash
01:18:55 Share

Welcome to the verge cast the flagship podcast of configuration changes. I'm my friend David piers, and I am in my basement, as always, doing a shipping day. So i'm going on vacation at the end of this week and to spend two weeks in the outdoors, just like staring at trees and not screens, it's going to be amazing.

Can't wait. But what I was scared before I go vacation is just like gonna get stuff together. There's nothing worse than coming home to like mess.

So trying to get everything cleaned off. And mostly, what that means in my particular network is just shipping things. One of the great things about this job is you accumulate a lot of gadgets.

And one, the annoying things about this job is you have to shift them all back. So right now, I have like, I have a bunch of tablets on my desk. I have a case for a thing.

I don't even know what the thing is. I have, I have to a watch boxes that I have to go back. I see one, two, three, four, five phones that I have to do something with.

I have some A R glasses. I have these amazon echo frames. I have a camera and I have a vision pro.

And I have all, that's another phones, that six phones. I have the human A I in that I keep meaning to send back. I have two rabbits.

They sent me too, for some reason on the way. I don't want any of them. Uh, so basically, what has going to happen here is I have a very carefully organized thing of packing tape in the utility room.

Move there, and i'm going to spend all day shoving things in the boxes and then i'm going to load my car. And as I do four, five times year, i'm going to dump thousands of things into the U. P.

S. Office all in once. And then it's going to feel like a jig antic has lifted off my shoulders. I both hate this and kind of of how IT feels at very end.

Anyway, lots to do on the verge cast today we are gona talk about the crazy thing that happened on friday when thanks to something happening with crowd strike and windows computers all over the world just went down and broke and IT felt like everything from airlines to just fell apart all at once. We're going to talk about what happened, what that means that that can happen, and where we go from here. We're also gona talk about one of my all time favorite apps called zombies run.

And we're going to talk about what that APP means for fitness and when IT gets right about how we think about quantifying ourselves and tracking things in game fiction and everything that feels toxic and wrong with the way that our devices work. Now why that that feels like none a bit. We are super fun time talking to one of the creators.

It's a really good interview. We also have a fun hot line question about handle gaming, which we've been talking a lot about on the show recently. So let's to get to all that is coming up in just a second.

But I just this second realized that I don't have anywhere near enough actual boxes, which means I have to go, I think, to like home deepo and pay a bunch of money for a bunch of boxes to then pay a bunch of money to ship to someone else. It's a process. Anyway, this is the verge cast.

We will be back. Support for the verge cast comes from strike. Strike is a payments in billion platform supporting millions of businesses around the world, including companies like uber, B.

M W and door dash. Stripe has help countless startups and establish companies alike reached their growth goals, make progress on their emissions and reach more customers globally. The platform offers a sweet specialized features and tools to bash track growth like stripe billing, which makes IT easy to handle subscription based charges in voices and all reoccurring revenue management needs. You can learn how stripe helps companies of all sizes make progress at stripe, that com, that striped out com to learn more strike, make progress.

Looking back, alright, so obviously I should have mention this up top. The biggest news happening right now, at least in the united states, is president to by dropping out of the race for twenty twenty four, endorsing ing his vice president commoner Harris.

It's just pure chaos in the american election season right now, and we're going to spend a lot of time over the next few months covering this, but right now just didn't feel like the right moment. So we're going to come back to this will probably talk a bunch about IT on friday's show. We're going to talk a lot about politics and policy and all of this for the next several months.

Keep an eye. The version I come for right now, I want to talk about something that happened on friday, which is that a lot of the world woke up to computers that didn't work. Banks were having trouble.

Airlines were having trouble. He felt like all at once, the whole world just kind of crashed. And IT turns out this was something that happened because of a company called crowd streak on windows computers. And IT has made a lot of people feel a lot of feelings about what that means that we are so reliant on technology and not just technology, but very specific things from very specific companies. And all of IT feels so important in infrastructural, but IT all also feels fragile.

So I want to talk about what has happened over the last few days, what we've learned and where we might go forward and how we think about computers and how we use them for the most important things going on in the world. Tom morning on our team has been covering all of this all weekend. I think didn't have a weekend by the sounds of things. So we're going to get into IT time.

Hey, good to be back.

So you have like an I, T, H. Background a little bit. Is this like the confluence of all of your interests?

These last few is, yeah, this is like, i'm so glad I got out of a more than a decade ago kind of incident. Yeah, definite.

yeah. Seems right. So let's rewind back to friday morning.

You're in the U. K. I'm in the us. So you woke up a few hours earlier than I did and got online like described to me the scenes of friday morning as you were getting up and .

getting online chaos. Now I work couple later and about seven, eight. And I had like a couple of people when I used to work with. And just a good friend is like, very technical message.

Be saying, if you seen this in australia, what what's going on out there? I was like, will sell this and I I look to like the reddit fred was like, those of decide means complaining. And usually that's a good sign of any sort of major sort of windows allergies or anything related to that is ready.

People getting angry, I think, is a good yes. So I saw that. And then there are some light media reports out of australia about banks being affected to supermarket airlines, you know, all the issues, the stuff we've seen, but then it's started to spread, right? So I turned on like the T.

V. I caught past seven to watch the sky news, and and they weren't running the news. And I was like, this is weird. And then IT came like one of the tech persons tweet saying they were offline because isn't take issues. And then he started to like escalators, like some of the airports warning of the initial flights start around about at that time.

The day like seven items is at the early flights um of delay and stuff and I was like, K I got figured was going on here um and oversee we saw the strike thing and they all kind of just started spiring like you just saw more and more. But at the same time there was a much soft a year cloud out, each going on OK a huge one. Yeah, IT was a huge one, but small. So it's not IT out with, like everyone blame my. So basically for this outage to staff.

yeah, how quickly did by the time I was online crowd strike was kind of already in the conversation IT was there was a lot of like, right? When I became aware of the story, I was kind of at that moment I was like, okay, this is, this is a crowd strike thing. We hadn't quite got ten to here's just going on yet. But how did how did focus figure out the crowd strike was the issue here?

Yeah I think mainly because on read the people that were posting that this and means were posting the stuff from crowds rike support, which was he had to be a cwd strike customer to access IT, wasn't available publicly. And then IT was like, okay, this is what's actually cause this is obviously not a windows problem, because not everyone's waking up, but this is like a select amount of machines, but enough to obviously causing a problem.

And they would see the issued this update. I think he was like around about like five M U K. time. And then I think he was like an hour and twenty minutes, also near enough when they pull IT. But that was that time when I was like middle the afternoon or something in australia, like the peak time for people to all have their machines on with crowd strike can installed and never see have a quite big install based, I guess, in australia. So they got hit the hardest like initially.

I think of that. That was like you see the companies that do mainers or software updates or whatever and they always do them. It's it's almost always overnight in the U S.

right? So then you're describing like five day U K. time. That's middle. And I in the U S.

Yeah ah I had never occurred to me before this, but that's got a suck. If you live in one of these time lines, that is like opposite the U. S.

And all of these things are happening in the middle of your workday all the time over and over. So like australia just get screwed by software updates left and right here. I never really thought about that for, i'm sorry, australia.

I think they got hit the hardest because I think just all the machines were online, right, to get this update. So if any of was the european machines are a lot of these machines will be just, you know, people leave the officers and turn them off, for example. These are also critical systems that this is usually installed on.

So they pretty much always online. So that's why there was like eight point five million machines in total affected. We saw some. I feel like there was less in the us affected in terms of like the stuff that we saw in australia at the supermarkets and people not able to get groceries and all like affecting hostile with if I think there was a little bit lest of that in the us.

The biggest thing that happened in the U. S, at least in eddi, was the airline stuff. Yeah yes. And then there was think the graphs that you could see if the plants in the sky was pretty incredible for a few hours was .

usually only happens like they going the grounds, right? That many flights usually when is like something terrible happens, right? Yeah but that still not going to think delta actually said yesterday that still canceling flights and canceling some today. Um so that's I think theyve been particularly like worse hit than than they ever at major of airlines in us. But yes, so that's still the stupid full out guy.

So with a few days of hinted, that seems like we have a pretty clear sense of what happens. So just back all the way up like what what happened here, what broke and I can start with who is crowd trike? Because I think most people reasonably do not and should not have to know. Yeah, crowd strike is. So, like, start all the way to beginning what went wrong here.

Yeah, they probably the only time you have ever heard a crowd track is, is that they sponsor cities which formed.

The one then may be, I know knew I had her that name before that so funny OK.

that's and IT was that picture of the windows machines that crashed at the Mercedes es. If one garrett, yet when they were doing the testing and they had crowed to on the t shirt is that is just but IT on friday morning, crowds right issued what they call like a content update to their system and crash joke is a third party security. Um that just think that basically is anti virus.

Um she's a lot more sophisticated than that because of cybersecurity. These places, as advanced for a bit, is a cloud based solution that pushes updates to machines and that pay for this software. I think it's around about fifty box machines is not cheap like to to protect your your system with this stuff. So it's usually on critical systems. So that's why you saw such an impact yeah .

and you mean critical systems in the sense of like super secure government computers or just .

like computers that can't afford to go down screens with all windows machines and they are kind of critical for communications. The passengers is is not not critical in the security side potentially, but more the infrastructure. I got things yeah so yeah they issued a regular update, uh uh, thinking about five U K time around about them and which is about midnight this time. And all the machines start collected that update because that is the way that this system is designed so that you get these updates, you'll protected against the and any emerging threats, right?

Like you get and sound like a button and you have to click on the computer to update. Like this is one thing that I think i've heard some focus having trouble understanding. Like this is not an update that appears and you click a thing in your computer ribon. This is like, and it's designed to happen in the background all the time, is the kind of the craft icc is constantly.

if I yeah does this, like if not early, like daily. So you know, like these are pretty frequent update. So the way that the system works explain that is that IT runs at the very highest level of windows.

So basically in the kernel, which is like a privileged area of windows, that most apps touch, shock or go there is like your anti ap systems for P C games or see, this security scanning software is allowed in the a microlight allows that. And so they have a driver that runs at the boot of windows to protect the system. And then they have these content delivery updates that sort of like the rules and regulations around how this driver functions and how to detect stuff.

And it's that sort of update, not the driver that caused the issues. And there was basically corruption in the update. The drivers also know what's happening, crashed and in windows has gone.

I'll know what's happening blue screen and in rebow. And then it's keeps doing that every time because IT keeps reading that latest content update. And so they ve managed to fix IT on some machines because you can keep me boat in the machine.

And if you're lucky, the network's stack will initialize in windows before crowds. And then you get the update all cross trike starts. It's like scanning, so you get the update, the latest like dictionary definitions actually before eight questions.

So so some have been able to recover from. I'm not i'm not sure the percent craft like really sort detailed there. And they're also working on some of other mediation, some mastery ous remediation that they've been testing apparently over the last twenty four hours. So maybe get some more details about that.

But that essentially what happen IT was like seventy eight minutes of precious forty ty update out of machines and only see there's a bunch of the virtual machines this that just machines are always on, like talking about the airport and stuff, so they would just sort grab b IT. If you ever see, had a machine that you turned on once they pulled the bad update, you ouldn't been affected. But I still hit eight point five million devices, which sounds like a lot as well. And IT is but Michael s point is like it's one less than one percent of windows machines. But this is the .

important point. This that's the thing, right? I think it's like the percentage of microsoft computers that have crowd strike is by definition, going to be a very percentage of microsoft pes, right? And those matter a lot that they key running.

So this idea that like you know, the surface laptop my wife has in her office sub stairs didn't crash is like I don't know if that's the Victory for microsoft that we're hoping for, but IT is useful perspective. I didn't yeah and I think microsoft is trying desperate to say like this isn't windows. Like this is not a windows problem. We didn't .

yeah don't but imagine if you had been ten percent. Like no he could have been like, even like a lot, a lot, lot worse. Yeah, he was obvious ly, very bad.

But just, yeah, they could have been really bad. And I just kind of shows you like there are reliance on this stuff. So you've been .

tracking kind of the different versions of the fix that have been going on here because I think, yes, walk me through the way we've been because of the very beginning. If I remember, one of the big problems was the fix was super manual. You had to let go into every airport key OS computer reboot IT in safe mode, do a thing, do another thing and then I would work again and it's like fine for your computer at home but that doesn't work for every airline and airport and bank around the world like that's just not a good yeah so but that seems like IT even just a few days later. There's a much Better track for getting this effect to .

walk me through that little bit yeah kind of yes and no because obviously talked about the rebow thing .

is what cloud rides been recommended and that's that's .

working on some up to fifteen times. Rte is not working for everyone. So there's still a lot of menu intervention going on.

So you still have the option of doing IT manually where you you'd have to start the machine is safe mode, which requires physical access and keyboard. This machine go safe and then you need apin rights to actually delete the footy file. This is quite a lot of you know a lot of intervention.

There is not like to send an update click button in an update, is there the ever option is much created recovery or which can solve that process? But the only problem is a lot of these machines, because they are critical and they are out of in airports and stuff they might be, look down by bit lock, which is description. So in that all can do that without you having a recovery key, which are unique for the machine.

And then you have to type this long is long. It's like a windows key and product key that you put in that all links to then about you access. So there's a lot there's still a lot of manual intervention going along. Seen videos, pictures of light, people gain ladder in airports and stuff just really plug USB in the light these machines just like is yeah there's a lot that is still going on.

So i'd love to know what the percentage of ones that were fixed by rebooting multiple times verses here, menu mention, and also just do I T M means just go in just blasted thing away and make sure that machine fixed mood on to next unit. It's a choice is in IT for every business as well. Do you want to sit? They try to rebuild or you just wanna fix IT in the time out of time that you could say that rebow IT or twenty times.

So I think is a choice. But yeah, there's lots of more tools. And in like we said, cw strikes potentially do something that had come with these act warning a IT. It's like some cloud based solution that they think they might have got this fix somehow. But i'm not sure how it's gonna.

You cover microsoft for us? yes. I feel like over the last seventy two hours, this is gone from being a microsoft disaster to not really being a microsoft disaster. This is it's kind of a microsoft to Jason disaster, I would say.

Ah but what is your sense of of what a kind of how this looks for microsoft and B I give your microsoft in your your a complete obviously, IT is responsible in some ways for yeah these kinds of crucial machines and the way that these systems work. Is your sense that anything anything changes here? Is this just like a bad thing that happened and we all recover and move on? Or does this feel like IT might change things?

Yeah, I feel like I might change things. I think there's a lot going on here. Obvious ly crowd ate, which is for party vender, they get privileged access to to be able to to run this of that.

which is not a big thing to body, especially access. Yes, it's like being inside of your computer .

in a very real way. Yeah and my soft allows IT. And I think that there is a statement where mx sof said that essentially that they have to give this access because of a ruling by the european commission in two thousand and nine, which I think is like, yes, tuber also, you know they they could they could possibly do what apple have done and and create an architect where they have their own E, P, I.

Set and and vendors plugged into that. But yes, I don't know. I need to look into that more fully to see legalistic on that. But yes, they do have to keep their internal open. And essentially, it's not nearly that they have to keep the kind of open each is that they can't privilege their own security software over other vendors seen as anti competitive.

And they tried to lock down windows a bunch over the years, got to sort secure things up and they always do get you been where's like for really dumb ways like s mode or you know some more ways like tpm chips on winning eleven. But is always, this also gave me a push back, because people see windows is this open system, and they do not like IT when Michael tries to look IT down for whatever reasons they might be doing. But I feel like this, my trigger, some sort change there.

Anything is that the mac like way of doing IT hasn't been perfect. I actually sometimes the security software wednesday does cause panic errors on on mats. So there's no like perfect way of doing this.

And I think max was kind of stuck in his ways situation where is like they kind of should take some of the blame here because should we say if there's a driver that's fort and is stopping windows from booting or or crushing IT at boot, why does windows not unload that after its done that like five times or whatever I have longing, you will save, you should be intelligent, would have to be late, something weird going on because as a human on, if something is crashing, you just stop IT when you and be like, let's see, was going on here. But IT just allows that behavior to happen. So I feel like they need to address some of that to stop this sort of thing happening in the future as well.

But again, it's not their update. So that wasn't dear foot, but they can help if I mean so yeah, but I think it's it's going to triggers a lot of conversations around this. And it's just interesting because crowd strike oversea competes with mike soft.

A mixup has its own important stuff, like in june that IT sells to customers and competes with crowdin ke on the cells teams and the C E O. Crowd trike riglar goes on T, V, broadcast and in interviews and bashes marx's security record, which was sea has not been great yeah the past few years. So it's all there's a lot stuff going on here.

And I think there is something about how there was an incident that happened to you in twenty ten when mccarthy set IT out an updates similar to the crashed bands of windows X P machines and a crowd shite. CEO was the co at my cafe at the time. So it's like, yeah, there's there's a lot of history between security inventors and Marks, often all the stuff where they they want you to be open much just like, yeah, but you should trust us and then everyone's like, well, look what's happened. You trust trusted you for the past couple of decades. You like, I think this going to be a lot of conversations around that.

Yeah I mean, it's such an interesting microcosm of both sides of the debate here, right? Because I if you want to argue for the closed ecosystem is so that things like this don't happen. And if you want to argue four of the open ecosystem is the mostly things like this don't happen, right? Like yeah, part of what so interesting about this to me is it's IT is, on the one hand, sort of remarkable that like to make happy thing was in twenty ten and this is this year and these things don't actually happen all that often. And yet when they do, they literally .

like .

set the world on fire, right? Like IT, yes, is catastrophe.

right?

And we're so reliant on this stuff now. And I think IT comes to where and like you said, nobody is perfect. I don't think there is a version of this that is perfect and IT just makes you wondered, like, okay, how do we how do we even think about our reliance on this stuff as people, as businesses, as like society, like the fact that would amount to you, like a security update to your computer could prevent you from flying to your vacation is just like a weird to think nobody thinks about. And I I, I have spent now a lot of time thinking about IT, and I still don't know how to sort through IT because it's not like. Get rid of all the computers, pen on paper or fix IT is like that's .

clearly not the answer, but i've seen some some people to like maybe people should use in points in in like point ourselves devices in supermarket should be ipads. You know it's like, yeah but that's that's expensive for supermarkets can't .

afford that what I know that has like famously perfect to know what yeah.

there's so many different solutions. But I think I think really what I should highlight is that these companies like crowd strike and much of need to definitely work a lot closer together, 嗯， rather than being this competitive force against each other because it's no good going on TV and bashing you prepared as is definitely both do IT. So it's like that.

I think in cybersecurity in general, the moment that needs to just definitely be a larger focus on the joint customers. Who knows what that happen, but yeah that the fact that this sort of stuff can take down so much stuff and he was only less than one percent of windows machines that that should be a major inflation like if this was tempco outputs, you know, who knows if if he was a windows update, they have done this as well. Like that I was going to say.

like you, okay, that nobody's security records perfect. Like if if this is something microsoft had pushed and and there's not necessarily a good reason IT couldn't have been microsoft had pushed IT. Ah the scale would have been dramatically different like part of what I think and you you've probably seen more of this than I have. But to me at least, IT seems like the question of what went wrong at crowd strike that allowed this to happen is going to be the big question.

Why was IT tested right .

like that right? Or like, was this the kind of thing that they do a million times a day? And so somebody got slappy.

Was this a failure of process? Was this, did you follow the process? And you know, sometimes bad things, happy.

That, to me, feels like the kind of core piece of this that we still haven't really seen is like what what or who screwed up that this could happen? And is that a thing we can fix? Or is this just like a thing that's gna happen every once in a while and we have to figure how to live with IT?

Yeah, I think what IT, what IT create IT is like a basically sort of memory panic. So he was like, this file calls the driver to be, like, try to write to a part of memory that they shouldn't be. And then windows is also see, like, no, you can't do that.

This kill this driver or or the driver crashed and killed winters with that. I think when IT comes to like this is going to be obvious ly pointing fingers and who who takes the blame for IT. But I think is definitely windows should do a Better job of this, but is also crowd strike should do a Better job.

Testing is up date house that gone out to eight point five million devices and not being spotted. Like why didn't they ultimate testing or something like that should just give me questions about how that actually happened. But yeah that I think might takes per light. I know ten twenty percent of the blame here or something.

And I just hope that they both look at IT and come up with a solution that stops this from ever happening game because I don't think the solution is rip these guys out the kernel because mixer doesn't do a ton of innovation stuff with windows at the moment. So allowing people to have corneal access allows for some innovation and some like crash ripe pushes that security innovation where might also might not take IT like into the exploit back in the day. If just that might define the web, we would have had crime. We would have had all that competition says, like, I don't want to see IT swing one way the allege is want to see CoOperation really? Yes, never happens again.

Well, and especially in these moments where, uh, these things are not allowed to fail, right? I think part of what was so I opening, I think about this whole thing was just realizing how much of the world runs on windows computers uh, yeah and not not even different windows computers, just windows computers that like the the science you see at the mall or just windows computers and and I think you go to an A.

T, M and take that cash is probably .

windows yeah and so I think to me, this question of, okay, we have we have these Operating systems. We have this software. Do we need to think really differently about the ones that are like modern infrastructure in a way that isn't just functionally a windows computer? Like, I don't know.

It's just the fact that it's basically just a bunch of like crappy little PC boxes that keep our banks running. Uh, is one of those things. I think a lot of people sort of elections, no, but is actually probably not how IT should work.

And I don't know. This is right, getting like way over my head on how all the technology of this actually works. But IT does feel like we are at a point where there is a set of computers in the world that just cannot fail and that may be having them be just computers is not the right way to think that.

Yeah I know what the alternative is .

that that's the things .

that they they just cheap, right is cheap er for them. What is the alternative ruling like they not going to go back with? They could do linux, but then that could be complicated .

like this yeah that .

has done yeah so it's like, I don't know it's no I think that's the biggest problem is that there is that human oly here a play with with windows and that was husband. It's like that there isn't really a good alternative and the alternative to security things are now calling issues is like, yeah like where where do you stuff at but I mean, maybe the alternative might cause a down. I think they done similar stuff in the past. The problem there is that then you get complicated apps that want to do stuff on these. And did you have that the same things like, okay, well, we just need to give them windows.

So and you get to the point where there's is only two people on earth and one venture that know how to service these things, and that is the one problems and it's a tough thing. But IT feels like I I wonder if this moment ends up being a kind of a blip on the radar or if people start to talk serious ly about, like, okay, how do we make these things work the way that we need them to going forward? And I I have no idea what that look like, but I think that would be fast.

The fragility of the situation just reminds me. I used mean, we we literally had like a ticker that would go around the international wolf and IT was powerboat bitchy and excess pretty. And I input data into IT myself and maintaining. And if if I put them something wrong, you'd crash the whole chicken like flashing and crazy. I just I just start the perfect his ample of hell. You see this stuff out out in the world like the screens at airport and just don't realize the usually it's some crappy often are and just the most basic stuff power in nothing yeah probably from like ten, twenty years ago.

I I keep thinking about for whatever reason, the I think that was when open hyper was out and there was that picture somebody posted of the IMAX thear with a with a palm pilot powering IT. And we went, found somebody who ran the fear and they were like, look, IT works. Nobody touches IT.

It's been there for years like no one understands IT. It's just this weird little thing that keeps the plate spinning so we keep IT running. And I feel like more of the world works like that .

than any of this would held to give up by string to not going to poll from yeah.

So IT seems like most of the worst of this is, if not over, then kind of on the way to recovery.

Yeah, I think so. I think because if you're IT am in the business, you're going to prioritize all the people and systems that matter the most first of and get back up money.

And there are a people who worked all weekend and to all folks listening, we love you yeah that's that's a tough one.

especially went on friday. You feel not cheer friday, you feel the weekend.

What fallout is left here? What are you keeping an eye this week?

And definitely not on the delta situation because they seem to be the most impacted by this mean, in terms of airlines, hospitals because we have seen people not going to get their appointments and stuff to see because in schools, I guess as well though in the certain europe, in the U. K, I A lot of kids are at school now. There's on the whole days.

So is where there's T, B, P, less investment in infrastructure. Where is where I kind of matters like schools and and and hospitals and stuff, where they just turn on the budget. So he will be interesting. Y where those go and with this, still some of lingering issues today and tomorrow, but I think we're here less about this as as the week as on for sure is definitely yeah it's get Better Better in some sense .

like they got that happened on a friday and not unlike a tuesday morning and we would felt the full effects of this front like a couple IT is in middle the week yeah say yeah.

yes is on its way to fix now.

And yeah, here is, as always, computers are terrifying, fragile tics. The funniest thing .

about IT that was like one one of my test fixes that was like, each, have you turned IT often on fifteen times? unreal. It's the mean coming true. IT really like IT .

is the standing how much of the world is just unplugged and plugged back in again? And I mean, he goes back to the same thing, right? Like the these things are are fragile and simple in in so so many ways that we would like.

Maybe it's scary that they are that fragile and that simple. But right, tom, thank you. Is .

voice right?

We got to take a break and then i'm going to come back talk about fitness. But like in fun way, i'll be at that.

Support for this show comes from the aclu. The acl u knows exactly what threats a second Donald trump term presents, and they are ready with a battle tested playback. The aclu took a legal action against the first trump administration four hundred and thirty four times, and they will do IT again to protect immigrants rights, defend reproductive freedom, safeguard free speech and fight for all of our fundamental rates and freedoms. Join the aclu today to help stop the extreme project twenty twenty five agenda. Learn more at a lu dot org.

We're back. So Victoria song at the virt, we all are we has been on the show a few times recently talking about wearables and rest is on the apple watch. And one of the things that i've discovered in talking to her over the last couple of months is that g and I have really similar ideas about fitness and the quantified itself in the idea of tracking yourself, which mostly is to say we have very conflicted relationships with these things.

The idea of having these streets and leader boards, and you should always be aspiring to be in the elite athlete, it's just a lot. And another thing that v and I have in common is that our journey as runners, hers much more successful than mine, started in the same place with that. That called zombie is run.

So what he and I are going to do at a couple of different points over the rest of the summer is talk about what i've come to sort of tentatively call the super chill exercise system. Basically, he and I have both been expLoring ways to exercise more, do Better, get in Better shape, keep track of how you're doing without all of the stuff that feels game fied and toxic. And like it's always pushing you to do more and incentivising you to go do crazy things when IT might hurt you, where you're sick or like if I just have the apple watch yell at me for not closing my rings when i'm sick one more time, i'm gonna lose my mind.

I an so to kick off our discussions about the super chill exercise system, real name pending, we'll see. I wanted to talk to the person who made zome run. So V N.

I called up israel han, who is a writer and developer and storyteller, and worked on zombies run from the very beginning until very recently. He spent more than a decade writing this game. And zome run, if you've never played IT is, I know how to describe IT exactly.

It's an exercise fitness APP that is also narrative. So when you're running, it's tracking you and it's aware of what you're doing. But IT leaves the story and basically it's a zombie politics.

You're in a place called apple township and you are a runner. That's your job, right? You you go out into the bear in wasteland of the post apocalyptic world and you do quests.

You have to go find something where you have to go rescue somebody here. You have to go to another place and learn about something. And it's all incentivising you to run and be active and be out.

But the idea is to make IT fun with story, right? You're picking IT up every morning to see what happens next, not to not break some steak. This APP worked really well for me, just having a thing that pushed me out, that gave me something fun to do while I was running.

Sometimes it'll just be like a nose zombie, and you have to run faster. IT was awesome. Like I ve always been A A person who like sports more than I like just running, because in sports, like there's something to do.

I have a purpose for why i'm moving fast. This felt like that. And IT, it's kind of like immersive in the way that listening to podcasts is immersive.

It's sort of distracts you from running while also having you run. The story is great. You get to know the characters.

There's just something terrific about this game, but I haven't really seen replicated elsewhere. And Adrian was one of the people who built this thing from the very beginning. So V N.

I called up irian to get a sense of how a game like this comes together, why it's hard to do and what IT took to really pull that off. And we just started that to be getting. We asked him basically, you know, over a decade ago, you're thinking about building a fitness game. This is like the early days of the iphone. Where do you even start?

I am Adrian。 hm. I ran six star and cofounded IT for seventeen years. Um and so we made zombie run. I'd left about three months ago, four months ago.

So that's probably the most well known thing that i've done um made zombies run and also wrote a book critical game fiction could do so that's fun. So you know what came up with the idea is on this run IT was myself and novell's nami old men. And I had just kind of like really gotten running at that time.

And I had a garden, four runner, two or five, two or one. So if if you remember, this is a massive like chunky y, it's not a watch. I mean, it's like a four on bracelet. And you could track you by GPS. And I got this as a kind of way to make myself run more, and actually did work because I was as cool to see like, and to see that I was getting Better every every day, every time.

I an and I had this thing called, I think is like the virtual ba, virtual runner, which is like what that sounds like it's a ghost racing in in marika what you're rating against yourself so you can go go for a and i'll show you yourself reverses yesterday yours and IT was kind of really cool to see myself like there's a very proto game fiction thing getting Better each time. But then there was a moment where I stopped getting Better and I started getting worse. And like my past self started beating myself.

And I like this sucks, like this is not motivated to anymore, because that only works on the way up. You like IT doesn't work on the way down or when you play out of your ill. And so then the iphone came out, and then the apostle came out, and we had one.

There were even some smartphone winning games. Actually, there is one called cash and seek made by korean developed, I think, and the ideas that you'd run around your nights hood and you see a map, they'd a little treasure and is actually like multiplying because other people can leave treasure for you. And I started playing that.

I was like, I actually just don't want to run to these places are telling me to run to cause it's like not very safe or IT IT doesn't look nice. And so we started thinking about what how could we make a good running game? Uh, because people are trying to make these running games.

I think one of the problems of a lot of them actually was you have to look at the screen when you're running, which I think for people who have not learned for um that sounds cool like that sounds like a good idea and if you've ever run, then you you're like this is not just terrible from a kind of safety point of view, but also if you stop every like two minutes to look at your phone and then stop running again, like how you really gonna that like that, that's not really practical. So the idea kind of came from, look, we have this amazing piece of technology, which is like a set of the hand hell computer, which is brand. You really, it's got internet connection, it's got GPS, it's got sound. People are used to use in their headphones. What can we do with this to make a game? And so that's a lot of constraints, but IT is also like interesting from a game design point of view.

Well, and I think somewhere in there, you are also having to make a lot decisions about like the mechanics of the game, right? Because you're talking about I like I think about all those early games and there were all those early running apps and a lot of them, we're just like track your run, right? There's yeah subset of people who just like I want to know how far they run.

But then like you're saying, there were others that they're starting to play with this, like how do we get you to run more? And this is when everybody was starting to experiment with all these new ways of game fiction and leader boards and all these different things. And I feel like from the very beginning, you can when the other direction of a lot of that.

yeah, there was a lot of, you know, to the extent that they really thought about motivation, I think that was basically competition, right? So IT was like we have a leader board and can you get to the top of the leader board? So like I was using the fit bit at the time and everyone was trying to get to the top of the lead board.

And then the leader board will never move each week because you'd have the people who like up in europe and they walk everywhere, and you have the people in america, the bottom, who drive everywhere. They don't time. And it's this is not really motivating anyone.

Actually another aspect of that kind of parallel that there be these territory capture games where you'd have that you divide the world up in texas ans or square, and a bit like, can you go capture enough space? And that's kind of like a leader, board wets, just whoever runs the most you can know or has the most three time wins. And again, for some people, that's really motivating.

I don't really think there is anything beyond that, not even kind of exploration. And so we want to do something completely different, which was story telling. Basically, he was a role play which I didn't have been done before in that aspect.

Um but IT really came from the idea that people are already like listening to broadcasts and back when they running. So we weren't asking people to do anything new. And I think I still have this idea game. So feel free to steal if if you want.

Which was um the bit in the born automated when a Jason born is goat, this person through water station and these are okay, turn right now, turn left here, okay port of five seconds and born goes and murder ism. Oh that kind of really that that's a very look interesting like dramatic thing, which is just entirely voice based basically. And I H we could do something like that where where you have this audio story, which is telling you basically to run and when you're running, crucially, you don't look at the screen, you don't tap on anything.

So not it's not really interactive um game. You are just choosing or or able to run federal slower and the story in the game can adapt that the zombie came into IT because um a nami my cocreate or SHE h had just joined this running club and they had said, why do you want to run and some people wanted to lose weight and other people wanted to get fat. And one woman said he wanted to survive the zombie pocalypse.

And I was I going funny then like, sick of zombies at that point. This was like two thousand and eleven and two thousand twelve and we had the walking dead and we had, you know, twenty eight days later, and I kindly thought zombies were over, which which was wrong. They're still here.

But from a story telling point of view and from a game play point of view, especially for running game, that that's actually really nothing bad that we found the zombies. Everyone knows how they work. You just have to kind of move faster.

But also the great thing of zombies is that the most zones don't actually run. So you know your classic zombies, you none twenty days later, zombies they um just walk or they and so that was a kind of a really clear thing, ross, which was you don't actually have to run in zombie run. You can just walk if you want and the game will not give you hard time for that that there is nothing gated in zombie run based on your distance or your pace.

So if you even want to do IT sitting on account, you can do that like, and some people do like doing chores or whatever, and the most people do round of a joke. And so the crucial thing there was we're not measuring your performance, but you can measure your performance. We give you steps and things that that, but actually, we're not rewarding that in a way, what we're doing is we're saying we're just gonna IT more fun.

You know, we don't want to make IT like we don't reward you for doing a run. We want you to be rewarded while running, which is a really important difference and I think gets so like what makes a good game fiction. Like good game fiction means where you're having fun while you're doing IT, not after you ve done IT, which is really hard to do.

I actually, this is my my running journey began with zombies run because I, I, i've been running for a long time, but I was not a natural runner in any form. I was the person who was very much like my natural form is a couch potato. You could, you would have to be chasing me basically for me to run. But I was was a type of thing. I was like all I have like a meta lic thing I need to actually run.

Running is one of the cheapest ways that you can exercise, but IT is quite miserable when you're starting out yeah so like I think the thing that really resonates with me here in turns of like just talking about the chillness of things is like actually having fun while you exercise because I think with fitness tech and like with the game fiction of IT, I don't know why, but we just decide to invite so much anxiety into the process. Like leaderboard. I feel terrible about myself because I ve not number one.

And then if I am number one, I have this intense pressure to stay number one. And so then that's that's not fun anymore. I've turned the exercise into work.

And then also, just as you said, like IT really kind of resonated with the whole idea of the virtual runner. And you're running against your past self who is Better than I am at that stage. Because if you cw.

IT long enough, if you do IT long enough, you are going to play out. You are gonna have a slump. You're just not you're just you age, you know, as you get older, you're not gonna quite as fast as you are when you're Younger. So I think with the game, you want people to keep playing. So how like what were some of the things that you tried that you just realized was like, oh, this is actually making the game less fun or, oh, this is making the game more fun?

Yeah I mean, you know, people come into of different like motivations and different expectations. So we did this kick start ride at the beginning, and there were kind of two strings to IT one walls. There's going to be an amazing story by an amazing story teller. And for a lot of people, possibly even most people, that like the big motivation, which is I got a run, it's kind of told like in first person, so the to you as if you are like in a real person, it's not like an order, a book. If IT has amazing characters, it's got like is at the end of every mission. So so you kind of want to know what happens next um and for us that a big thing where IT was always you know we want you to get up on a rainy sunday morning and actually be excited to find out what's going to happen next rather than be is there any excess I can use not to go to work?

So I I just want to push back on one piece of that, that I think is that you said, which is the the idea that you can like you could just sit on your culture and play game and IT would still be very fun, right? I think that there's probably some truth to that. But also if if that were true, you would have just made a game that you can play sitting on your.

And part of the reason I think this is a thing via I keep talking about, is like game fiction. When it's like monopoly, go trying to get your money. I have pretty unconvicted problematic feelings about, but this one is so different, right? Because the thing that you doing creepy things to incentivize people to do is like a sensibly, a good and healthy thing.

And so you're in a position of saying, like here, we built this cool game that people like because it's a game, but they also like IT, because IT makes them exercise and because that makes them do thing that is good for them and IT makes that thing more bearable. Like does that change the baLance of just like if the goal was to just get more microtron actions from people, you would play IT one way, but when it's like, okay, we actually want to have you do something that in moderation, even at greater innovations than you're currently doing, IT is a good thing. Like is that change you think about that baLance.

Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know but by trying to design in the way we did, we left money on the table like, you know, we could have had more engagement if we send people notification saying you going to everyone in your basis is gonna die if you don't give a run tomorrow, right?

I mean, that's what like most games that have done, you know all we would say like if you go do like a three million now, then you'll get double like you know supplies right? Do a link style stuff and and that all the stuff is a really well documented and IT does work like in terms of increasing engagement and and conversions. But I think that that the nice thing about earning you a company and having having a small company is that you can just say when they're onna do that because we don't think that's gonna a good experience of people in the long term.

So we would get people saying, oh, but like some people just cheat and I said, yeah, people can cheat about anything. Like, people can cheat in dance, dance revolution, right? You can cheat a good here.

You can cheat all these things. And it's, if you GTA cheat done sense revolution. Don't play dance sense of revolution, like no one's making you do that IT doesn't really bother me as a designer.

A calls IT just shows that you you kind of need to do a little bit differently. And and I think that you know the other thing is I see is a kind of accessibility mode mostly rather than like people cheating. So you know we don't know what situations people are in are in terms of their ability to move.

We call IT like simulate running when we do this IT might be that you, uh, can't use your legs, you know that you are going to do another exercise while you're doing this. And so we've had many of people say, you know, I D like IT that we offer these options. So having said that, like most people do actually run.

so it's it's a it's a really interesting thing to me because I IT really just hit home with the whole one. Size does not fit all, but especially with fitness, because we all have different capabilities, as you mentioned, with our we have different skill levels, different circumstances. But I find a lot of times I burn out when testing wearable ables and fitness tech because they are just kind of pushing you towards more.

And that sometimes does feel like part of this is late stage capital because they need to make money off of this thing and they need to keep user bases. So they need to get us addicted to these platforms, like keep your stress going. Sometimes that really does feel like stress can be insidious just because, like, oh, I know you're getting me addicted to this, but actually what my body is saying as I need to rest, I actually so like is a tRicky thing, right? Because if you want to stay injury free, you can constantly do more.

You do have to take days off and that's good for you as well. So um I think the big metric with game fiction and fitness is stress. And I was just curious like what you're about process was towards streets and like dear feelings towards that I hate them.

person. I, yes, I like, I hate them. I don't like them. I I mean, you know you will see people talk about how in sort of if they do like nothing you know novel writing month. It's like nice to have a streak where you're writing for thirty days in a row or you've got like a calendar you like market with ex every time you you know do something useful.

And so I always kind of think it's about like how can you get the incentives aligned correctly, right? And so I think that the issue with like fitness is you know you see this, for example, what you sit with patton in particular, there a lot of stories about palmy people just completely burning out um and like really injuring themselves. I just don't think this is like the way to the good health and fitness.

Actually, a lot of these companies, along with like trying to get you addicted, they are trying to sell this idea of you becoming IT like an lateral elite athlete. Like as if like that is like a good thing to be like if you want to be the athlete, that's fine, but it's not really a good idea. Thanks for most people.

Like most people have got jobs and they have got families. And it's very hard to like maintain that you know can be IT can actually be quite, quite damaging. And I see that with a lot of the marketing.

I mean, theyve changed that a bit now, but like nike and a lot of these other apps where y've made by people who used to be athletes or who just incredibly fit right until labor, like, well, you're gotta go breaks with the pain barrier. You gotta to do all this. You don't you don't actually need to do that, but you're just saying you have to do that.

So I don't I don't like streak. IT can be done in a way that's a less bad, right? I think that when I look at the best games and the best maps out there, like an intendo doesn't like I mean, intendo does actually have streets and animal crossing, but like it's very small, it's really small stuff and IT doesn't it's not punishing at all.

If you don't if you don't match IT, like you know, there are streets in some video, gatsby, you play l and then you're play in lands and elder. That's not like a streak for playing for two days in a row. They don't need that because it's a really good game, right? And so I think it's just you know it's an excuse um for not making something that is as target or as interesting sing for people.

It's very difficult because you know if you're running a company, like I do have a lot of sympathetic people like we didn't take investment when we started and so I like or we have very little investment, so they would like really patient. They were not giving us a hard time. You know people will call us like a lifestyle business, I guess.

But that does mean that if you take investment and you kind of have to take investment, if you are start up because others SE, you'll just be outgone by all the other stuff that you take investment, right? You really have a choice. They need to see the line go up. And one of the easiest ways of getting the line to go up is by adding and streets is by adding notifications and making people feel bad about not using IT. So you know, I can't blame individual like, you know, design is here, but it's it's like they're enormous trace IT does feel like .

a much harder bar set for yourself though because especially where are describing is that instead of punishing me for not doing the thing that you ve already giving me, you have to keep giving me new things, which is a lot of work for you. Like IT is much easier to just yell at me for not closing my brain. IT is like, like you mention elden ring. Like people play elden ring because it's a great game. Like it's really hard to make a great game and it's much easier to build a mechanic that requires me to open the APP every day or my little character dies, then IT is to keep building .

a great game for eleven years yeah, that's that's really true. Yeah, it's definitely not easy. I mean, when you make A A fitness game, there's a based around that narrative.

You just need to keep on making more narrative, right? And so we turn from being a sort of tech company almost into like a content company. And if you open up like zombies around that, rex, now I can have a look IT. Like netflix, like IT has these carousels of vows. And you know, you can like choose different stories, which is shows how the company could have evolved over time from a triangle, these different game play mechanics, some of which worked themselves, which didn't into okay, what we are doing is we're creating a process to try make as many the consistently good stories as possible every week. Multiple, multiple store is a week.

And so you ended up up like right test rooms and just sound design is and you know that its games as a service, as software a service and a lot of companies try and transition for making like a one of game or one of tech product into making content content and is is really difficult to do, especially when you're making like specialize stories that are like about you running. Yeah, I like that. That's a different kind of story telling. And you know, the team did IT really well, but I think that that's actually not something that tech companies are really set up to do.

IT reminds me of patton because they too have become a media company without, I think, necessarily intending that. yes. So you know is is this just in the chAllenge of game of flying fitness? Because I don't know, like I don't have an answer, but it's just like I constantly have to find new ways to motivate myself or sometimes just like let myself have permission to be bad at fitness, which is opposite to what all these devices are doing, which is to optimize yourself to be the best version of yourself. I feel like there's conflicting narratives here where I like I think David and I just wanted to like, be slightly healthier and not keep ourselves while doing IT. But then, you know, these watches, these ringings, these games, not earth, but some of these games are just like, here's how to be the best version of yourself with metrics and numbers and get you addicted to IT.

So how do you like, I mean, sort of creating goals for you that maybe you didn't have when you began, right? Which is like, you know, the longest i've ever long is a half marathon. And everyones like, so what did you do? Like a marathon? I like, why would I do a marathi don't want to do marathon that that seems like that seems like a bad time for me.

I love IT. I'm glad for you if you done a mouth. You know I know someone who did and not from more than you know, she's great, but like it's not for me and so I think when you start, you know these applications, it's all games. It's always like to watch your goal and you just got these massive goals right like, oh, do I really want to do that or do I just wanted do something else? Just be a little bit healthier.

So a big part of IT is, you know, again, I just come back to like, how could we make IT fun? How could we make IT a little bit more bearable? You know, you mentioned the like when you start out running, you know I was the same for me.

It's just horrible. It's like it's so painful like sweating is just like you know you get a stitch. I just can't like bear IT.

But then you know the thing is when you've done that a lot, you get good at running. And now I don't need like a game to go running. I just go out running to music cast and actually pretty easy for me.

And so that can we get people into that situation where they don't need us anymore? Of course, like from a business point of you, you know you want people to keep on playing and I hope you fun enough, but that's why you wanted get people do because it's the same. But like a lot of stuff, when you get to a enough point is actually becomes way easier to maintain IT.

I do think it's gonna be a chAllenge to a lot of game fied fitness apps like because you just need to keep on providing the content, like some of them you know will just become basic gym instructor classes like like palet on, you know or like a lot of VR stuff, you know some of them would just be a constant competition like the cycling, you know, things and strapper. And that's fine. You know, if you like that sort of thing, you should do IT.

I do think there are still more room for companies special as A R that becomes more thing to do, like even more um ways of making like sports and the competitive of sports and CoOperative sports. I I really want to make like a CoOperative fitness game, think you would be like so far to do that. So yeah like I think there's a lot we can do that like the kind of region or game of fitness is just playing like soccer. So maybe we just do more of that, but I can make a IT more peent.

Are there any fitness apps or just like services out there that you see in your like L I kind of jg what they're doing then because we have seen so many of them just kind of take the same leader board and competition approach to IT. Is there anyone out there that's doing IT in a way that you're like out that that actually seems like that's a cool way for us? Anxious people out here, I have my list, but like as anxious people out here to actually take a step back and like build the foundational habits and get to the point where you are saying like you actually don't need IT because I too met the place where and I go, i'm a week without a run, I feel bad. I need to like actually go out and do IT.

I actually just use like the apple, like fitness APP and the health APP a lot to go track my stuff. You know, the particularly things like sleep and the hard recovery. So these like more, more kind of technical like things I don't like a third party APP that I use a track that but IT IT is useful because i've noticed that does corporate.

Actually, we've like when i've got more energy and I do use I use of a platform stuff because I just integrate tes the best. So if i'm going for a run or a swim, I just use whatever on the apple watch, which is boring. But um I kind of don't want to i've sort of seen pass a curtain, I guess what for a lot of the stuff.

And I got a bit i'm a bit worried about what people would I try and do to my experience if I let them. You know i'm quite vulnerable to game unification like I like extending streets and if you really do IT, but even though I know it's not good for me and so I try and actually stay away from from a lot that stuff. So going for the more vanilla abbott stuff is, is what I tend to stay on.

Do you think about things like sleep tracking and we're getting to these smart rings and all this up and what we're getting to a point where there is this kind of like second by second twenty four hour long ability to understand how you're doing. And i'm like, somebody is going to make the next version of zombies run that is not like an episode thing that you put on headphones and listen to while you go exercise. It's going to be like a lifestyle game and part of me wonders if if that is super cool or totally disobey and and the idea of like i'm going to get a thing, you two A M that's just like zombies because understood that i'm like in the right sleep zone for IT and like this is coming. We have the data to do this now and IT feels like it's coming and I can't decide that's good at bad.

Um people keep on trying to do this and we we try to do with a with a game called the walk, which was kind like a all day like you know working pommel kind of thing. And I think in practice, it's quite hard to do because um people we found don't really likely be interrupted with the game play in story. Um it's kind of annoying and and so.

The issue is a third party developers, germany, do not have enough contextual information about like what the person is doing to make sure that the interruptions work. But of course, you want to interpret people like if you're like a lying goes up business person, so but then that usually gets too annoying. So we did try and and make two or three times ago, make these these games, which would be kind of ambient.

And I think at the point at which using A I or using just more sensors that have the ability, then you will see more of that stuff. And I think I will actually end up looking really interesting and looking more almost like role playing, right? I'll be like an even Victory experience.

And I know that people actually want to play these sorts of games where they are kind of born into IT. At the same time, I think people probably a little bit like nervous about what that means because you know that it's really good. I just actually takes of your life, right? And so do people really want that just to get fit? I don't know.

as you look around this space right now, do you see any other things that that feel kind of spiritually similar to zombies? run. I we've all at the virgin using this up called stompers, which is basically it's like it's a sort of silly panama ter game. And I think IT has hooked a lot of people in the same way that it's it's not even accurate, but being accurate is not the point. Like do you do you see anything that feels like it's sort of doing the same thing a similar way?

I mean, like one of the other things which I know these things about what was the whole fantasy hike thing where and like you know and like before that I was just a direct rip off, you know nor of the rings where you're like walking from the shire to like murder. And I think actually ever the start, you would just type in like how far walked into like a red page and then I worked out and that got slowly more more interesting and that cool like Better fun thing. People have done very things like that.

There's A A website or on an APP called the beautiful walk, which was kind of sink up to to your you know fitness apps and and would do that spirit ally like a lot of the VR stuff and A R stuff I think is interesting in the sense of, you know I I come back to I want people to be having fun when they exercise and so um I used to play like holo point a lot um which was as old a steam like five game and that was like an r three game and basically you you are just shooting you're just shooting and place in virtual reality you know every with artery and the cool thing was because the arrows kind of that moved slowly. Then you can dodge them like you can't dodge bullets in real life, right but I can super hot with other games. You can dodge these.

And so you always just like rolling around the floor and jump up and down and and like, is is so energetic in a way that that you could never get me to do that real life like if you told me, okay, going can fall over sideways and then go scramble and roll back and jump up. It's i'm not doing that but you put in are and there's a errors commit me and on the shooting, people of like this is the most fun I ever had but I don't have room, friend so I compare that wall so that kind of the problem but I think and and I do see like the in a beat saver for X I on things up that seems bit boring to me here. I wants something a bit more involved than that first.

Well, how dare you was amazing that .

that was Operation. But no.

I am glad you actually mentioned superhot because superhot is one of those games that i've found to be like accidentally a surprisingly good workout. Like time only moves when you do is i'm doing a ton of like very deliberate intense movement and like i'm sweating at the end and it's all right, this is what i'm going for. This is like a fun thing that made me sweat, not a thing that bullied me in the exercising, which feels very different.

I think when we get the glasses, you know, which we all won and not the the we had, this is gonna the way people exercise. It's gonna be amazing, but it's so cool. That is just not that the moment that could just to like, I don't know, it's like sweat, like I know people do use these things, but it's like the most people IT IT doesn't seem to be good experience. So I think that can be great. I think can I make believe and like role play and sports like that, one of the best ways of getting fit.

I think giving my self permission to do the fantasy, fantasy hike, to wake my editors with baseball bats in stompers has really just kind of made IT easier to be like, oh, it's okay. If I am not so fast, it's okay. You know what? Just give yourself the participation trophy.

That's the only real badge that you need. It's okay. Maybe it's because i'm a millennial, but the participation trophy is good to know well.

IT. I mean, you know the way we put IT in on this run is as long as you can book faster than a slow shamble, then you know you're good for us. So keep on trying things until you find something that's fun. And and if it's not fun that it's not just it's like a well booo, it's more like if you find something fun, you are going to keep up with IT and it's gonna work Better, like in the long run and there might be something really wide which people don't talk about, you know, or or might be kind of more sport, but like you all finds something that you like eventually and then you should do that. Maybe listen up for that as well.

We ve got to take one more break and then we're going to come back and we're going to take a question from the forecast will be back.

Support for the show comes from crucial moments, a podcast from the koa capital. We've all had turning points in our lives where the decisions we make end up having lasting consequences. No one knows this Better than the founders of some of today's most influential, incredible moments.

Let's listeners in on the maker break events that defined major companies like dropbox, youtube, Robin hood and more told by the founders themselves. Tune in the season two of crucial moments. Today, you can listen at crucial moments. Stop com wherever you listen to podcasts.

Right right back, let's do the verge test hot line. As always, the number is eight, six, six, verge one one. The email is verge cast the verge dot 点 com and the side your questions， we try to answer at least one on the show every week.

This week we have a question about hand games later. This is kept from seattle, and I just listen to be and held episode. And I am about to have a baby.

And so I am thinking about, what am I going to do for the endless hours sitting in a nursery with a child possibly on me um and I ve been thinking about a hand hill, but i've also kept myself from buying one because I think about the possibility of just using my iphone with a book phone or my ipad with the next box controller um is there an advantage to having an and held over that situation if i've ready got something like again ript. thanks. Appreciate that.

I should say, by the way, before we get started, thank you to everybody who responded about our segment last week about gaming handheld. I got a tone of good ideas from people. I got a lot of people who, just like, felt my pain about wanting to play fever and not having a good device to do IT on.

People are mad. D A. I'm also mad. D A. Thank you to everybody who reached out. I have a lot of gadgets to try.

I haven't bought anything yet, but i'm committed to answering this question for real at some point very soon, and i'll get back in touch. But thank you to everybody who reached out with suggestions and ideas and commiseration. I appreciate IT.

My other for this question is actually pretty simple. I just went through this recently and I initially I just went through this recently. My kid is a year and a half at the beginning of twenty twenty three.

I was in that like sitting up at night for four hours while a small child sleeps on my lap vibes. And you're like, what do I do with myself? I tried all the things for a while.

I was Carrying switch around with me that I would use in those moments. I had a couple of like, tester things. I got one of the slightly sketch things from amazon that you can buy that have a million retro games on the I think the answer is just your phone.

And I think this for a couple of reasons. One, and this is the key one, your phone is just there with you all the time. One of the things that happens when you're a new parent is that you just suddenly find yourself frozen to a place because your child just fell asleep.

And you can plan ahead to some extent, say, like, okay, i'm and leave the switch in the room with the chair where i'm probably going to be while the kid sleeping or whatever, but your phone is just dramatically more likely to be in your pocket, right? And IT also has a lot of retro games now especially, which are really great to play a on silent and b for a couple of minutes at a time. When you're in those moments, really like I don't know how long i'm going to have to do this, you can just quickly fire up delta or one of the other emulators.

And I played A I say, maybe an alarming amount of, like old mario games a few minutes at a time, with one thumb on the joystick and one thun on the buttons, kind of rapped my arms around the kid I was. It's a, it's a scene, but IT works. The other thing is it's really valuable, which I like, right? So I have a backbone controller, which I like very much.

And when I was able to sort of plan for IT, I would use the background. I would bring the background with me, I would plug IT in, I would have the full Better controller and network. Great works really well with a lot of games on IOS and android.

Highly recommend a backbone as a sort of addition to all of this. But when you don't have that, you can just use your phone, right? And so having something that you're not stuck because you forgot one piece of IT is really helpful.

Uh, the other piece of IT is that you will find yourself needing your phone for all kinds of other things, right? Maybe you are going to a be one of those parents like I was who has a spread sheet of, like every time your kid eats and sleeps and goes to the bathroom and having that with you at the same time that you have you're like thing you wanna play games on, super helpful if you are the type of parent who is going to be like texting your partner or taking lots of pictures or whatever, again, your phone just becomes like the center of your baby universe in a very real way. And so not adding another device to the equation is sort of useful.

There are good reasons to get a dedicated device like I i've talked to a lot of people who bought a switch, put like Zelda on IT and then left IT in the baby's room and that becomes the like, I am in the baby's room. This is the thing i'm going to play. There's something to that.

But I think for me, having fewer batteries to worry about, having the thing that's probably in my pocket be the thing that works, and having kind of the one device to rule them all wound up being really helpful. Also, there are a lot of games that I played that I would call like deeply boring, repetitive games that are actually perfect for mobile because you're in this headspace when you have a newborn where you are just exhausted and like, okay, I want to play a game. I don't want to use my brain at all and i'm going to need to play this game for somewhere between one minute and five hours.

Games like hold down, which is basically it's like reverse snowed. You shoot a ball downtown and you try to remove all the stuff down at the bottom and the further you go down, the more points you get. Enlisted, reputable games.

I probably played a hundred hours of that game, and it's a perfect little mobile game. You can play IT with one hand, which is another Victory. Given baby sleep situations, having something you can do with one hand is pretty helpful.

I did a lot of like crossword kinds of things when I was like OK. I actually need to use my brain a little bit. I did a lot of those like temple run kind of endless runner games because, again, super easy, super repetitive, doesn't require any brain power.

Those are the kinds of games that I ended up playing way more than I expected. I was like, oh, i'm going to a play a lot of like fun old P S. Two games because now I have all this time to kill.

And I ended up playing like infinite hours of holland because it's just what happens in those moments. You're tired, you have one hand despair while there's a human sleeping on top of you. And that just says what that is.

So I think the answer is probably either a switch for the games or your phone with a backbone or some other kind of controller. But I would I would start with your phone because there's a lot of games. It's super easy.

It's super accessible and azar. It's gonna right there with you, which is pretty important. I hope that helps.

Let me know. And again, i've gotten tons of really good handheld recommendations over the last couple of weeks. And if you have good ones for me or for getting here, please let me know right. That's if for the verge cast today. Thank you to everyone who is on the show.

And thank you, as always, for there's lots more on everything we talked about from the microsoft crowd strike chaos to views great reporting on wear arables and rest days in the apple watch to lots of stuff on gaming handles on the verge dot com. Well, I puts the links in the shootings, but also read the first dot com. There is a shocking amount going on right now for IT being like late july.

So keep on out on the website. And as always, if you thoughts, questions, feelings or gaming handheld, do you think I should buy e, mail us at verge, cast at the first dot com, or call the hotline? It's a verge one.

One keeps sending us questions. We've got lots more self to talk about this summer. Please keep all of the questions coming.

And like I mentioned last week, I want more like tiny, tiny, weird tech mysteries. So if you have a ti tiny, weird tech mystery, senators can way to hear that. This shows produced by intramural am James and will poor.

And this episode was edited by sander atoms. The verge cast is a verge production in part of the box media podcast. Now me, I alex nail will be back on friday to talk about more of the microsoft cloud strike mass, some A I news, some new gadgets, and lord only knows what else between now and then we will see them.

Support for this episode de comes from A W S. A W S, generate A, A, I gives you the tools to power your business forward with the security and speed of the world's most experienced club.