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What defines the Maturity of a Game?
286 Plays2 years ago
In this episode, Adam and Satsu are joined by Craigy C from the Beer and Chill podcast to discuss what defines the maturity of a game. From cult classics such as Papers Please to the less subtle Duke Nukem, no stone is left unturned as
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:00:05
Speaker
Welcome to Chatsunami. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of Chatsunami. I'm Satsunami and joining me today is of course the one, the only, the mature, Sandwich Adam. Adam,
What Defines a Mature Game?
00:00:30
Speaker
welcome. Hello, hello. Good to be back.
00:00:32
Speaker
And for this episode, you might have read the title and thought two podcasters probably isn't enough for this topic, so we have brought through a very good friend of ours, the one that when you might have heard his voice on the Be There and Chill podcast, it is Craigy C Craig. Welcome back. Oh, thank you very much. It has been a long, long time Sabine, so I'm very excited. Yeah, when was the last episode?
00:00:58
Speaker
Not to put you on the spot around. I did do the Dungeons and Dragons short for you back in November. And apart from that, indie games what? Yeah, probably something to do with indie games. That seems likely. Oh Craig, talking about indie games. That doesn't sound like you.
00:01:17
Speaker
So yeah, speaking of indie, getting now more look in, we're not going to be talking solely about indie games, although, I mean, you are the indie game aficionado. I was going to say, I do believe that is the only reason I got brought in to talk today was to talk about mature indie games, so I know my place.
00:01:33
Speaker
You were told that there would be indie games and Sony discussions, something which neither Adam or myself can cover. Perfect. I guess my Nintendo Switch knowledge won't be needed today
Adam's Views on Mature Games
00:01:45
Speaker
though. As you can see by the title today, we are going to be talking about quite
00:01:48
Speaker
an interesting subject that of course being what defines the maturity of a game. So what really makes a game mature? To start it off quite awkwardly I'm of course going to turn it on Adam because it's tradition by now. Adam how would you first of all how would you define a mature game?
00:02:08
Speaker
All right, I'll take the first bite of this apple then. To begin this, I decided to try and see if I could define maturity. I thought maybe that was a good place to start. So for me, maturity kind of equals responsibility and like an understanding, you know, that your actions will have consequences, which is kind of, you know, as you grow up to be an adult, it's kind of the things that you're supposed to focus on. And as you move beyond childhood and, you know, reckless abandon, you have to understand that, you know, your actions are going to have consequences.
00:02:33
Speaker
Looking at that, for me, that's what really makes a game mature, is having this understanding that you're responsible for your actions and they're going to have knock-on effects. And I kind of looked at the differences. I think there's kind of two major categories of mature games in my mind. You have ones that have this kind of what I call surface level, mature content, which I suppose kind of focus on usually things like violence and sexual content, things like that.
00:02:57
Speaker
And then games with a more mature sensibility, ones that deal with more complex issues, real world issues, but again have this balance of responsibility and consequences. Which is something surface level mature content really shies away from. In Mortal Kombat, for instance, there's really no consequences to Sub-Zero ripping Liu Kang's spine out, because Liu Kang will just come back for the next match. While other games, there's a much more cause and effect relationship.
Craig's Perspective on Player Expectations
00:03:22
Speaker
kind of way I approached it but there's a very subjective question so I'm interested to hear how you both kind of look at this issue. So I'll move it on to you next just so I can copy your answer Craig. How would you define a mature game? Yeah well Adam said definitely a good start and then the other thing I considered was a maturity in terms of expectation of experience
00:03:42
Speaker
so to speak. So one thing that a lot of games especially sort of jump to indie games already, but especially indie games like to do, is they assume that you've played other games and they assume that you have a history and they assume you're a certain age and I think there's like impurities of that. So the obvious example is things like Undertale, which is an RPG which takes the mick out of other RPGs but also kind of relies on the fact that you've been playing games for a long time for you to play them, if that makes sense.
00:04:09
Speaker
I think there's a lot of that in gaming. My wife doesn't play a lot of games, so seeing how I'm to play new games, you can tell which games rely on this sort of maturity where she will be playing something and has no idea what's going on. I'm like, oh, it's really obvious. It's just that green thing there. That's the third element of maturity that I thought over there. But yeah, the other two, like Adam said, you've got 18-minute content and then...
00:04:27
Speaker
you've got actual maturity in terms of the story and cause and effect and so forth.
Evolution of Gaming Maturity
00:04:31
Speaker
And I do agree with just kind of touching something Adam said about the idea of kind of consequence in games and that is something we're just about to touch on but it's the idea that kind of as games have evolved
00:04:42
Speaker
there's obviously been more of an emphasis not for all games of course but for a particular few there's that idea of incorporating consequences into the game and it's very interesting again it could be thematically or it could just be how the game's programmed how not only the players going to react to the choices but like how the game is going to present itself in that way and obviously depending on the audience and their
00:05:08
Speaker
target demographic of course it would kind of display whether or not the game is going to take as Adam was saying they're like a mature take on this story that they're going to present or if it's just going to be very surface level and just say haha blow up everything here which is pretty much half of the Call of Duty games I would say but yeah fortunately this is not going to be a Call of Duty episode so you can both sigh with relief. Also only half of the Call of Duty games? Okay three quarters.
00:05:38
Speaker
Look, being nice is one of my New Year's resolutions, OK? Yeah, big dummy. Kind of just moving on from that. One of the things that we kind of need to touch on is, I suppose, the change in the gaming landscape. What I mean by that is, of course, you'll both know being gamers yourselves is that when gaming started
00:05:59
Speaker
it was very much focused on really just being a pastime. It was like being this kind of thing that you played for a couple of hours, you thought, oh, that was a fun game of Paul, I don't know, Super Mario, that kind of, or not Super Mario, even before that like Pac-Man and things. And then as technology kind of developed and got better, there was like
00:06:18
Speaker
a bigger scope for storytelling. Craig I'm quite curious to hear what you think of this but would you agree with that that the more the gaming landscape has changed the more this idea of maturity kind of came along with games? It's a funny one because I think like there's
00:06:33
Speaker
comes in quite quickly and leaps and bounds and then sort of comes in peaks and valleys I think. For example you mentioned like Super Mario but the time the Super Nintendo rolls around you've got things like Final Fantasy 6 which its entire plot is to do with like effectively a terrorist winning the fight. That's like the entire plot of Final Fantasy 6 as the bad guy wins and takes over the world and destroys half of its spoilers.
00:06:54
Speaker
Oh man. Oh man, it's a 30 year old game. And then you also got quite raunchy games as well coming up around that time, but obviously it's like pixel art, you know, but you get like quite a lot of like quite gross and quite raunchy games at that time. It's funny and then like I think when the PS1 starts to come out things kind of they wiggle round, but we mentioned, we were chatting earlier about Leisure Suit Larry. I mean I mentioned this on our own messages earlier. Not because that's the game I want to totally talk about.
00:07:19
Speaker
But more just because it's an example of like a super early, not early, but like it's like that raunchy 90s game. So you have a lot of stuff at Adjunct Newcomers, which we'll probably talk about a bit more later. But yeah, in terms of like the story maturity, it comes in leaps and bounds as well. I think they were trying a lot of things on like the PS1 era. You had things like Deus Ex off the top of my head. And that was PS1, Final Fantasy 7, not to mention, not to always mention GRPGs, but really it's like for me, the PS2 is not as serious. Someone's going to correct me on that one, like Metal Gear Solid 2 or something.
00:07:47
Speaker
I think it's not really until the PS3 era where The Last of Us comes out. For me, that's where gaming changes.
Humor and Learning Moments in Gaming
00:07:53
Speaker
The Last of Us is a shift for me where it's like, okay, this is now where games are now. This is a better story than most films are coming out with now. It's actually getting made into a TV show. But there you go. That was kind of my take on the timeline for it.
00:08:04
Speaker
I can't believe this is a place I've learned that there's going to be a Metal Gear Solid TV show. So thank you for that. No, no, what? Is Eregan's Last of Us TV show? Oh, Last of Us, sorry. Last of Us, even. I dare you get my hopes up this. I knew something I didn't. I'm sure there's a Metal Gear Solid movie coming out. Is there? Metal Gear Solid movie, yeah, directed by Jordan White Roberts with Oscar Isaac. Wow. OK, I know we'll be here reviewing next once it comes out.
00:08:27
Speaker
I was going to say, I think it's due out for a long time. OK, Chatsunami is officially going on a hiatus until this film comes out. I'll give you a chance to play the games, Sassy. Jesus, no. Yes. You might get a quarter of the way through Metal Gear Solid 5. Between playing that, the Persona games, watching Citizen Kane. You know, I've got a backlog, Adam. I've got a big backlog. One of those things is not like, you know, Citizen Kane is like, two hours.
00:08:57
Speaker
Well, I mean, yeah, there's not a Citizen Kane game as far as I know, I don't. So anyway, moving back onto the maternity of games, just to cover my own tracks here, so I don't have to talk about Citizen Kane. No, before we live on Citizen Kane, running time is one hour 59 minutes. No way you'd ever be able to watch that. No, it's too much now.
Does Genre Influence Maturity?
00:09:20
Speaker
I mean, there's no Ben Hur.
00:09:23
Speaker
Every time we talk about something, Citizen Kane always comes up. But yeah, going to you Adam, what are your thoughts about the evolution of the gaming landscape in correlation with maturity in games? Yeah, Craig said lots of really interesting things there. As well, one thing I thought
00:09:40
Speaker
about like kind of when gaming started it kind of felt there was a technological limit on you know what you could obviously accomplish so there wasn't really any scope to do any kind of you know quote-unquote mature content through like the 70s and kind of most of the 80s and sort of into the kind of early 90s it was interesting to hear it was interesting to hear about like are you saying great about like kind of switch to the super nintendo and i'm not very well versed in the final fantasy game so it was interesting to hear that kind of take on them taking a more kind of mature storyline
00:10:06
Speaker
One thing that I thought it seemed to be in the 90s, we seemed to get this reaction against on the surface with quite a kid-friendly mainstreaming gaming market when you had things like Doom and Mortal Kombat, Wolfenstein and Duke Nukem all came out and they seemed very much against the grain and really leant into that sort of mature ideas, which was really very much surface level, whether it be Demons or
00:10:27
Speaker
or Nazis or whatever, you know, kind of excessive gore. That really kind of seemed to be the rise of that sort of surface level kind of mature content. And then, yeah, as you say, especially in the 2010s, it seems we got games that tried to actually tackle kind of serious issues, especially things like The Last of Us. And that kind of kind of made an interesting comparison almost to the kind of what happened to the comic book market in the 90s, where basically after like titles like Watchmen and stuff, the comic book market became obsessed with trying to be really serious. And that's where everything was kind of geared towards. And it kind of felt that after things like The Last of Us,
00:10:56
Speaker
video gaming kind of fell into that as well, that everybody wanted to try and do that. I mean, the Tomb Raider reboot came about the same time, which went for a really kind of gritty edge to it, like very different from the kind of old ones. So yeah, it did really seem to be that 2010s was that kind of turning point, as you said.
Indie Games and Mature Narratives
00:11:10
Speaker
It almost feels as if it's a question of like, not if they could, but should they?
00:11:15
Speaker
isn't it? Or rather as you both said, the fact that the technology was so... I don't want to say primitive but it was so early on in like the 80s and 90s and as it kind of developed it was that kind of scope. You brought up an interesting point Adam and it's especially the case of games like Duke Nukem which don't worry, I know you'll get your say on it but it's that kind of idea of
00:11:38
Speaker
because the game like Duke Nukem didn't exist or I suppose like Mortal Kombat and things like that they were kind of the trailblazers of the genres so they were just like yeah let's do it and that's what we got. Yeah without any further ado because I know Adam you're chomping at the bit to get into ripping the part Duke Nukem, that's one. Well we'll just dive right into it. Let's go for it. And we will be back right after these messages.
00:12:02
Speaker
Welcome to Chatsunami, a variety podcast that talks about topics from gaming and films to streaming in general interest. Previously on Chatsunami, we discussed Game of the Decade, Deadly Premonition, the romantic thriller, Birdemic, and listen to us get all sappy as we discuss our top five Christmas films. If that sounds like your cup of tea, then you can find us an anchor, Spotify, YouTube, and all good podcast apps. As always, stay safe, stay awesome, and most importantly, stay hydrated.
00:12:33
Speaker
We are Beer and Chill Podcast. Podcast where we review TV shows, games, movies and whatever else takes our fancy. So what are you waiting for? If you're a cool kid like us, you're gonna listen to the Beer and Chill Podcast. You can get it anywhere from Spotify all the way to your grandmother's radio. My name is Jan. And I'm Craig DC. And we are Beer and Chill.
00:13:08
Speaker
one of the main questions of this topic which I thought about was what actually constitutes, so what's the difference between a quote-unquote mature game
Marketing and Misleading Maturity
00:13:19
Speaker
or a game that displays maturity? What is the difference between a good example of that versus a bad example? Craig, I'm gonna give it to you first. What would you say is a good versus bad example of a mature game? I'm gonna be a bit of a walking stereotype for this one and go for good
00:13:37
Speaker
and go for the Witcher series. It's like the most obvious ads that I think when it comes to this kind of thing. You know, multi-branching storylines, a lot of characters to juggle, it's kind of, you know, a bit of a competitive game of Thrones, but in terms like the number of characters and stuff like that. Actions have consequences and your actions have
00:13:52
Speaker
particular have consequences on the characters around you and how they react to things. I think we always think that's really powerful. Ages have gone beat and chill, Jan and I had a discussion about the best RPGs of all time, one of them that always comes up in our discussions is Mass Effect 2. Very similar, it's like these games are quite mature or not because it's like an 18 rated game but because your actions are having direct consequences, the things that you do affect other people and this makes you stop and think about that. The bad example I think though
00:14:16
Speaker
is when you get the games that are trying to be overly edgy to try compensate. We used to watch a lot of bad movies together. Usually what would happen in the first, if it was a bad film, where they would turn overcompensate, they would do like sexual assault or something. That's usually what happens in the play. They open two scenes, they establish a story. And you get that a lot in games, but it's like, you get like the details that overgo. But not in like a fun way. I don't know if I'm talking myself in circles here, but like Doom, for example, the reboot of that, it has very fun go where it's like these demons explode and stuff like that. But there was that game that came out, I think it was called, was it Agony it was called maybe?
00:14:45
Speaker
and it got absolutely panned on Metacritic and all that and it was like it was just like the edgiest attempt that a game ever made and I think that kind of thing was very shallow and you can see right through that but something like Doom it uses to go to add to the sort of carnage and chaos of the ridiculousness of the whole situation you get this other kind of edginess which doesn't always work as well I think that's my sort of good and bad for that yeah I'm kind of very much in line what Craig was saying there kind of looking at good examples
00:15:11
Speaker
Again, I heart back to the games that make you make decisions and make you responsible for it and then force you to kind of live with those consequences. So I'm going to stray into Craig's turf here and talk about an indie game and bring up Papers, Please, which for me is one of the best games to explore this kind of mature content and has such a great mature sensibility, because it's a game that asks you to basically define your own morality and define your own kind of ethical framework. And what are you going to do? So for those who don't know, Papers, Please,
00:15:41
Speaker
play as a border control officer in a fictional communist country and it's your job to check people's passports, work documents, visas, all things like that to see if they're allowed entry to the country and you know you're given you get money for every person that you process correctly, money's documented when you don't process correctly. At the end of the day you need to get enough money to you know pay your rent, feed your family, you'll heat your home and everything like that so it's a very tense game
00:16:05
Speaker
the mechanics and everything but it also adds in all these different things so people will come to you and a husband goes through at one point and says he's able to go through and be like oh my wife doesn't have the right documents but can you just turn a blind eye and let her through but you know if you do that you're going to get docked money a guard will come up to you at one point and say like oh like I need you know I'll give you extra money if you get people detained so you know you can make the decision that even though this person's done nothing wrong you can throw them over to the guard you'll get a bit of extra
00:16:28
Speaker
money, there's a resistance group going on who want your help to fight the regime and there's all these different things and you have to juggle what you think is right and who you're working for and everything and it really makes you responsible for everything you do and make you really think and then you have to live with those consequences and it's just a fantastic game. So for me that's the one I'd hold up as I think the best example of a mature kind of game. For bad examples, to be honest there are so many
00:16:51
Speaker
pick like it's so difficult to pick but there are so many for me it's games that both kind of use mature issues for shock value they don't treat them with any kind of respect so there's a very infamous scene i think in GTA 5 uh which have you both of you played GTA 5 yeah yeah so i do remember there's a torture scene in that where yeah
AAA vs Indie in Mature Storytelling
00:17:09
Speaker
as you play as one of the characters and you you have to undertake this torture of the suspected terrorist and there's no real point to it at all it's really for shock value and it's
00:17:18
Speaker
you know it's kind of the point seems to be oh isn't torture bad oh but here's some pliers now pull this guy's tooth out oh isn't this awful now go waterboarding and there's no it's there's no discussion at all it is just pure shock value and then there's just those games are just ultra crass we've circled it out before but the Duke Nukem series for me is just the ultimate example of this just ultra crassness for for crassness sake in that way of trying to be cool and it's yeah i don't know it's it's just the games are the games can be fun you know to play but honestly just their attitudes to especially towards women is
00:17:48
Speaker
It's just despicable, to be honest. It's that way of trying to wear a mature coat, but you pull it back and it's just puerile sensibilities. It's just horrible, to be honest. So that's the one I'd hold up as just bad examples of quote-unquote mature games.
00:18:06
Speaker
out of curiosity, kind of just going from what you were both saying there, because obviously you both have picked very good games like The Witcher, you know, The Witcher's a fantastic example by the way, and Papers, Please where you are given these kind of branching decisions and things, but have either of you ever played a game where on the surface level it looks
00:18:26
Speaker
quite or rather it presents itself as being mature and on the surface it looks very immature but as soon as you kind of go into it it kind of shows itself as having a bit more maturity. I've got a couple of for that. Undertale mentioned that already, that's maybe the prime candidate for that but I think everyone's spoken about that so I'll talk about something else. There's a great game called Disco Elysium which is a sort of text based RPG and stuff and you can get that on I think older consoles now and it's not that
00:18:53
Speaker
it presents itself to be immature but it's advertising and sort of promos you'll see for the game are very much ha ha you're playing this wacky cop who is drunk all the time and you have to try to solve the case before he blacks out and it's basically got that sort of bojack horseman element to it where it's like ha ha look how wacky this guy is actually you should probably be more introspective about how terrible a person you are
00:19:14
Speaker
It starts off being like quite funny and it's got a bit of a joke to it and then the game quickly sort of takes lots of sharp turns because it's quite introspective. It's still funny the whole time but there's a definite like, I don't know what a switch it gives because it's not, never a switch it gives but it reveals itself quite slowly to you. Maybe one I feel it gives of all time because of that. I'd recommend it very basically but yeah if you're watching the trailers it's all quite comical but it does really get you to sit back and have a think about really what you're up to and how your actions have affected other people.
00:19:43
Speaker
crazy for a game which is basically made by a bunch of like 20 people. Probably for me it's probably spec ops the line because on the surface it appears as basically your kind of bog standard third person military shooter and it basically plays like that for basically the first nearly the first half of the game there's not really there's a kind of interesting story but there's not really anything that kind of differentiates it and then you hit a certain point in the game and it
00:20:06
Speaker
kind of flips and it becomes this interesting like discussion of violence and war and the nature of killing and it kind of makes you think about what these things far more than basically I think any shooter that I've certainly played has ever done so that was a real surprise. Also as well Wolfenstein The New Order has that very much that same kind of surface level mature you know kind of campy fun that the old Wolfenstein games had but you dig into it and it's really a tale of
00:20:33
Speaker
broken people you know in this horrible situation who are just fighting this perpetual war and it kind of talks about what that does to a person's psyche and it really comes out of nowhere and it's really surprising. So those are the two games for me that really kind of caught me off guard and that they didn't look to be particularly you know have particularly mature sensibilities but they actually ended up having
00:20:51
Speaker
quite profound ones. The only reason I bring this up is I was having a discussion with a friend the other day and of all things and you might think I'm crazy for bringing this one up but we're actually talking about the Gears of War series. Don't get me wrong like obviously in the outset it is just like a big
00:21:06
Speaker
bunch of beefy men who have chainsaws in their guns and they're gunning down the aliens. That is obviously the core part of the gameplay, it's a third person cover based shooter. But one of the things that really caught me off guard, the only reason I got into the Gears games was because by chance I picked them up in a game shop pre-owned and I just thought okay, I'll give them a go. So I tried the first one, the first one was great. And
00:21:30
Speaker
then I tried the second one and I was blown away, there's a particular moment, so going back to some music rig, I know it's like a video game but spoilers, there is a scene in that where one of the characters is of course looking for his wife and she's been kidnapped by these you know aliens and things and you have to go down and rescue her and without kind of giving too much away the scene where they reunite is just absolutely, it's one of those moments where
00:21:56
Speaker
for a game that does portray itself as this kind of huge bombastic action shooter game, it's something that really got to me. I kind of thought oh my god and there's a scene even before that where you rescue another fellow soldier and initially the main character throws him a gun and he's like oh yeah let's go fight them and you
00:22:17
Speaker
And I rolled my eyes initially. I kind of thought, oh, great, it's another one of these shooters where the guy just shrugs it off. But then literally two seconds later, the guy blows his head off. Well, blows his own head off. And it's that kind of idea that there's like maturity kind of interwoven, even though the gameplay might not be as mature.
00:22:35
Speaker
or it might not present itself, there's definitely like a hidden moment, or not hidden, but you know what I mean, there's kind of those moments within the narrative that you don't really expect out of a game like that, that you kind of play and you think, oh god, what have I just sat down and played?
Immature Games with Mature Themes
00:22:51
Speaker
And it's the same with something like
00:22:52
Speaker
And I'm wondering if you guys will agree, but do you remember Red Dead Redemption? Not the sequel, but the original one back in the day. I remember it well. Don't get me wrong, it's a Rockstar game, so obviously there's going to be the stereotypical Rockstar humour. But towards the end of the game, you both remember how it ends, don't you? You've got to bring the tear to my eye.
00:23:13
Speaker
Yep. It's that kind of, like, as I said, there's all the kind of silly, crude moments, but throughout the story there's kind of this underlying theme of almost inevitability and that kind of futility of despite what he's been doing throughout the game, no matter how, you know, honourable you become throughout the game, you're still gonna meet the same ending. And, well, obviously, unless you turn the console off before that. Yeah, it's kind of like a game that I have to admit I knew nothing about it.
00:23:43
Speaker
when I went in to play it and obviously by the end of it I was just blown away. You could probably say the same thing about the sequel but yeah for me definitely those were the two kind of like hidden gems or not gems but like the hidden mature games or ones that as I said they didn't present themselves as being mature but you kind of found it the more you played through it.
00:24:04
Speaker
But that kind of brings us onto our next point, and Adam I'll let you lead off on this one. Do you think the role of the type of genre of the game is important depending on the maturity level? I think yes and no. No in the sense that I think any genre can tackle mature content.
00:24:20
Speaker
because I think gaming as an entertainment medium is uniquely suited to exploring mature issues because it gives a level of control to the player, which always makes things a bit more impactful. And that's the case in any kind of gaming genre. However, yes, because it's quite clear that some genres really struggle. And I'll narrow in on shooter games here as a genre that I think really struggles.
00:24:44
Speaker
with this issue. I think a lot of shooter games don't bother. They will just go for that surface level, mature content, you know, your dooms, a lot of kind of early Wolfenstein's, Quake's, things like that. There's not really any kind of attempt to have a kind of mature sensibility to it. But then there's games that do try to do it.
00:25:00
Speaker
And, you know, for every Spec Ops Align, there are numerous Call of Duty Modern Warfares. And I'll narrow on this, the Modern Warfare series has tried several times to kind of examine and explore more mature issues. Honestly, I don't think they've ever really done it well. Whether it be Modern Warfare 2's no Russian mission, or whether it's the kind of the reboots attempt to look at
00:25:24
Speaker
the impact of war on children and aspects like that, they've never been able to land. It's always felt more shock value than it has felt an actual true exploration of that. While other games have succeeded in exploring the effects of war, there's one called This War of Mine,
00:25:41
Speaker
is a survival game and basically you take you take control of a group of survivors who are trapped in this kind of war-torn city and they have to scavenge basically to survive and get by until the end of the war and that presents you with a lot of a lot of different kind of moral issues as well in that you know how ruthless are you your scavenger is going to be and taking from other people and you meet around yourself and you know your survivors can get kind of a lot of emotional baggage that comes with the actions they do and everything but yeah so
00:26:05
Speaker
Any game genre should be able to, I think, has the ability to tackle mature content, but I think just history has shown that some just really struggle. One thing, Craig's probably more able to speak on this than I am, but it seems to me that the indie gaming sphere has proven more adept at kind of dealing with these and presenting mature sensibilities, and I think AAA gaming sphere has. I don't always think that the AAA industry is comfortable with, you know, making players responsible for, you know, kind of maybe the more serious actions they undertake.
Genre Approaches to Maturity
00:26:34
Speaker
as well shooter games are probably the most affected by this because as you said it's like for every Spec Ops the line or even Gears of War 2 you know you'll get a shooter game that even when we were growing up as it's safe to say that the shooter genre was kind of I don't want to say look down on but it was kind of considered as like that demographic for teens and edgy teens
00:26:59
Speaker
I definitely think so because, again, I think that's the way they kind of presented themselves. It was very much, you know, it was very much the violent for lack of a better thing. Violence is cool. You know, it was very much that, you know, it was the kind of thrill of the combat and everything. And, you know, there was no real kind of exploration of the actions and the repercussions of the killing. So in a way, they were looked down on, but I think partly it was their own kind of image because that was what they kind of focus on, especially in the kind of 90s and 2000s.
00:27:25
Speaker
because I'm just thinking back to an example and don't worry Adam, like I know we've talked about Halo over the last couple of episodes so I wouldn't do it when this were too long but there's a particular example that springs to my mind that of course being Halo ODST. Now Adam you might be thinking I'm going crazy right now but basically in that game I was actually really shocked so I played through it you know it's your standard oh you're a soldier and this
00:27:51
Speaker
space army. You know I'm being very reductive here but to kind of cut along so short you know you have to fight through the streets and you have to defeat these aliens and get from point A to B essentially. But something I didn't realise was there's actually a substory which coincides with
00:28:08
Speaker
the main narrative of this and obviously this is kind of a thing that you have to go and hunt for. It almost seems as if it's like it's obviously rewarding you for hunting out like these terminals and it gives you this very, very, quite possibly one of the darkest in Halo, this really dark story about this woman trying to find her father.
00:28:26
Speaker
getting chased by corrupt policemen, getting shot at by looters and things. It's very interesting to see how there were more attempts back then. I'm generalising, but you could see more attempts for there to be more mature takes on certain series, whether it be Halo Gears or even to an extent Call of Duty, which I will admit it seemed to have begun
00:28:50
Speaker
probably around Call of Duty 4, when the first modern warfare, they presented it as very, you know, mature, you know, it's the next evolution of warfare, and then it kind of descended into that immaturity sphere. And I think you're totally right, I think maybe it is just like a kind of shifting of
00:29:08
Speaker
I don't want to say perception but you know it's like just the way games are kind of made nowadays where it's trip away companies are maybe trying to appeal to like a wider audience so they're not willing to take that chance whereas maybe indie companies because they've not got the same restrictions then they're allowed to kind of express themselves more freely. So speaking of indie games I'm gonna hand it to you Craig because I know you're of course very well versed in this one.
00:29:34
Speaker
Yeah, it's a funny one because especially when you mention genres as well. The indie games recently have been doing a lot of stuff with genres you wouldn't expect them to do it, trying to just see some maturity as well. So you've got Off Top Ahead Hades came out a couple of years ago, which is a roguelike action game, good old button masher. Effectively the triple A equivalent of it was like, I don't know, Devil May Cry or something, maybe the triple A equivalent, which is very not a joke in terms of it's plotting a lot. More Hades
00:30:00
Speaker
ends up telling a pretty good plot with a lot of emotion dragged through it and it won a bunch of Game of the Year awards but it's just purely based on the plot side of it but it's interesting because I think with the indie games this year I think you get more indie games that are willing to try push these boundaries I think
00:30:15
Speaker
I think a big part of that is because they're not in development as long. So I think indie games are allowed to try more risks. But also I think like triple A games are under a lot scrutiny now with this story. And I think for example you look at the backlash that Last was 2 got as an example where it tried to tell a story that whether you wait or not was a bit different from
00:30:33
Speaker
what games usually tell, and I think that was quite interesting what they tried to do with that. It didn't work, ultimately, but I think, typically, titles are obviously going to be risk averse when these famous games get, you know, kind of shit on for the story. But yeah, just in terms of the genres and stuff as well, I do think every genre now has a chance. I think Hades proved, I think, this game's at a like spirit fair, which is effectively a, I don't know what you'd call it, a lifestyle farming game with an extremely mature story now.
00:31:00
Speaker
There's like Metroidvania games with like mature stories and stuff. So it's like the end of the scene's proven that anything can be given a deep story if it wants to. And then you've got Kind Words. Then you get something like that, which is almost no game at all. But it's an extremely mature concept, which is very fun. I don't think that it's the end of AAA games trying to do mature storylines. We've got things like Eldren Rings coming out this month, the New Horizon game. Both of them will probably have pretty mature stories. So we'll see where it goes. But yeah, AAA games are always going to be Riskaverse nowadays. Part of me thinks that as well, sometimes of a game
00:31:29
Speaker
goes for a very mature sensibility. It's not always the most fun to play, and I'll go back to Papers, Please again.
Examples of Mature vs Surface-Level Games
00:31:36
Speaker
I love Papers, Please, but I'm going to be honest, I didn't have any fun playing it because it's heart-rending and it's grueling and it's taxing. But that's kind of what it's trying to be. That's what it's trying to do. That's the thing of having responsibility and
00:31:51
Speaker
have to deal with consequences while a lot of other games with kind of more surface level mature content are still fun to play you know the Doom games are fun but they're not there's no there's no kind of real sensibility to them there so probably wonders as well for like a AAA market you're obviously wanting people to enjoy your product and stuff so maybe that's worrisome they're gonna shy away as well
00:32:09
Speaker
So do you think there's an importance then to try and find that sweet spot, that kind of balance between a game that's obviously mature but also fun to play? Because I can totally see what you mean, Adam. It seems as if it's almost as if it can be like one or the other. It's very hard to balance both. I mean Craig, would you agree that
00:32:30
Speaker
like something like The Witcher could be classed as both fun and mature, or would you say that would lean more towards one or the other side? I think there's a stress element to it, I think is what the unfun element of it all is, isn't it? It's something that you can do more. Another good example I think of though is borderlines.
00:32:47
Speaker
where it's like, I'm going to switch my brain off and bash some buttons and murder some enemies and this is going to be a great time. The other example is I'm playing the Witcher, I'm having a great time and then all of a sudden I'm getting put with a storyline about this man whose unborn son's coming back to life and all this and it's like, okay Jesus Christ.
00:33:05
Speaker
there's something that's a lot more stressier than I was expecting and I think there's that level of stress and I think that there's a fun to it you know people watch horror films which is the same kind of stress I think just as another example these guys you've got games that are like not games at all in terms of the gameplay you've got things like um telltale walking dead game which is like all stress and no no game but there's no very enjoyable games so there's definitely a I think it obviously depends on who you are as a person but I think there's definitely a whole load of enjoyment to be had and I think ultimately games
00:33:34
Speaker
in general think of pushing this boundary about what is fun for a game and what is an experience, and I think you get a lot more games doing that experience, style things like Papers, Please is maybe the greatest example of it, but it's like there's very little actual game in there in terms of, you know, you're not exactly running about having a good time.
00:33:53
Speaker
But no, it's problematic on that. Yeah, I think there's definitely a cross, but there is a lot of stress for these mature games. I think that's part of what makes them mature, is that you feel the responsibility, you feel the stress at all. That's sort of the way, it's that way of having something that maybe it's not fun to do at the time, but it's something that you really look back on. And, you know, so that's what I've looked back on papers, please, so much more fondly now than I did when I was playing it, because I'm like, I feel kind of enriched for having gotten through that.
00:34:18
Speaker
you know it made me really think a lot about kind of myself and you know and everything so it is that balance to it as well you know it's it's the kind of long-term reward versus maybe the more short-term the short-term kind of reward you did raise an interesting point there Craig just kind of hoping and wonder the word she used there you said it was more about the experience as you said there seems to be more of a over emphasis on really like would you agree there's more an emphasis on what provokes the best reaction because obviously the best like
00:34:46
Speaker
kind of marketing as word of mouth of people saying oh this game's scary or oh this game is the best game ever because one of the ones I'm thinking is more in terms of the genre of horror games let's face it I feel as if next to shooter games horror games are probably next in the chopping block for ones that don't really handle their topics very maturely you've got your Outlast which is just a gorefest you've got your Five Nights at Freddy's which is just a
00:35:16
Speaker
You know, it's for kids, even though it's a game about kids getting killed. It's still a game that kids will probably gravitate more towards. But what do you think of that story? That's a great show, especially because the games that are horror and story-driven are quite revered.
Mishandling Mature Content
00:35:33
Speaker
I think that maybe shows you how rare they are.
00:35:35
Speaker
Off top of my head, obviously, Alan Wake. That game's what? 10 years old now? Maybe more? 15 years old? And people were absolutely boonsing when the remake of that got announced. And then there was the other sort of the... Oh, what's the name of that game? Adam, what was the game that you played at our friend's house with the horror story element to it knowing how characters get killed off? Oh, Until Dawn. Yeah, Until Dawn. That's a great example as well. Notice how that's a bit of a mature game, but it leans a lot more on the story element than something like an Outlast, which is just like, ah, who's just a whole bunch of go have fun?
00:36:05
Speaker
But even thinking back to some of the playthroughs that Adam and I have done in terms of, you know who I'm going to talk about, Adam, the one, the only, Monsieur Cage. So yes, for anyone who doesn't know, David Cage is the man, the myth, the legend responsible for games like
00:36:24
Speaker
Indigo Prophecy, Heavy Rain, Beyond, Cool and Two Souls and of course Detroit Become Human. Those games are very heavily marketed as being these games that it's a very mature story and it's all about your choices matter and things but there is a lot, it's almost, I wouldn't say it's as bad as like
00:36:45
Speaker
Duke Nukem, but I wouldn't say it's too far off in some regards, especially in regards to things like the way women are treated in the game, in the sense of how there's kind of this thin veil. It's something I said to you guys before we started recording. It's like
00:37:03
Speaker
the re-immature games in a mature trench coat. It's not an actual mature game, it's like all of these things that should be mature, but because they're written by someone who probably doesn't have the best grasp of it. So for example, and this is going into kind of sensitive territory, but
00:37:21
Speaker
when Adam and I played through Destroy, Become Human, there is a scene that basically features domestic violence and it's all within a game that is about robots getting freed and things like that and it just didn't seem like the right place for this to be in and it's that kind of overstepping of should a game have these things included? You know, like not this thing in particular but you know, should they be pushing themselves to be more mature?
00:37:50
Speaker
or should they be you know drawing the line and saying no this really isn't necessary because again I told you that Adam in our Heavy Rain episode where in Heavy Rain there's a very famous scene where or infamous as it were where a child gets hit by a car and in the finished game you actually see
00:38:09
Speaker
you know you don't see the child getting hit by the car it kind of cuts away but when you actually read about it you learn that David Cage thought that it might be better for there to be an actual scene where the child gets hit and kind of thrown in the air and it just seems unnecessary but I mean that was in the promotion wasn't it? Not that child getting hit by the car but the domestic abuse in Detroit
00:38:31
Speaker
Yeah, they really pushed that. I think if there ever was an individual who should not be allowed within 100 feet of mature content, it's David Cage. Just going back to the domestic violence scene, I think what's so egregious about it for me is two things. Number one, it's used as an event to move the plot along. That's really all it is. It's so reductive and it's
00:38:54
Speaker
It's again, it's just one of these shock value things that it's just, it's quite insulting really to reduce, you know, something as serious as that to basically a stepping stone for
Marketing's Role in Maturity Perception
00:39:02
Speaker
the plot. And then number two, it's also used as a way to judge you, the player, by your reaction to it. And so I just find David Cage is so reductive in the way he tries to tackle issues, which is what really kind of grinds my gears about him and his seeming fascination that he feels he can tackle these sort of issues. So yeah.
00:39:19
Speaker
I don't know. As much as some of the games are fun, the things he does in them just really make you dislike him and his approach to handling serious issues. I definitely feel as if that is probably one of the worst examples.
00:39:34
Speaker
the other example of course being in Pinkett's Beyond Two Souls where there's another not really domestic abuse scene but more in terms of assault and it's going back to what you were saying Craig when we watched bad films and don't get me wrong this wasn't in the first few minutes or anything but it's one of those scenes that much like in the bad films we watched it was in the game but it was only there to kind of
00:40:00
Speaker
be a plot point and it doesn't come up again until much later and I think the worst thing about that particular moment in that game was that the game doesn't kind of hint and say okay if you're feeling uncomfortable you get out the door it just it kind of gives you that illusion that oh once you're in this level that's it you can't walk out the door or go to the bathroom or something and kind of mirroring what you were saying Adam yeah David Cage shouldn't be allowed to touch this particular area of gaming
00:40:29
Speaker
But one kind of last thing that I want to touch on and that's something we have talked about is the idea of marketing within games. As I came to say before, that particular scene in Detroit Become Human for some weird, weird reason was chosen to be the promotional material and
00:40:46
Speaker
another example and I don't know Adam if you've seen this or you Craig but there was one particular moment in the I think it was Dead Space 2 some marketing and basically it was they got like I think the first one they advertised it as you know like a typical horror shooter game that was perfectly fine but in the sequel they caught like people's mums
00:41:08
Speaker
in a room and they got them to watch like the glorious bits of the game and then they were like oh what do you think of this game and then they were like oh this is disgusting this is terrible and literally the tagline was something along the lines of so gruesome that your mothers don't like it or something like that
00:41:26
Speaker
and I think the same can be said for a game like Call of Duty because like the first modern warfare that was definitely a game where it presented itself as being a lot more serious and down to earth and conventional warfare and your finger wagging of don't violate the Geneva Convention there but then as soon as the sequel came out you had the bombastic music, the huge set pieces, Eminem
00:41:51
Speaker
actually signed over the trailer, that's how bad it got. But I'm curious to hear what you guys think of that in terms of marketing because I don't know if it's different kind of in the industry or Craig is there any like particular games you've seen where either it's a good or bad example of how marketing is portrayed the maturity. It's funny it's something that video games have always
00:42:11
Speaker
struggled with historically is how do you do marketing and there's always been that edginess to video game marketing you know you think back to like the old pictures and magazines and stuff and it was the all the kids got out of the when the Sega Mega Drive and they're all exploding and freaking out and the parents in the background like ooh those games suck or um of course there's um i forget the name of the actual name of the game now but it was John Romero's about to meet you his bitch
00:42:34
Speaker
There we go. Just as an example, I mean that was what? That was the late 80s early 90s was that? I can't, oh well it was 2000s wow. Just looking it up. Video games have always struggled with like how to market themselves and I think we've always been talking about like stealth maturity and through games and different
00:42:49
Speaker
trailers and stuff and you've got things like Borderlands was quite like that when it first comes out. I'll look at the Go Fallout, is it not? Maybe the example we've not spoke about as much as well. Like the trailers for that were always very like, look at the shitting and look at the war and look at this. And it's like, I actually know there's a lot more going on here than what we're showing, but I guess it's hard to advertise these things. And you do end up with a lot of things like Call of Duty making deals with monster energy or whatever. It doesn't really
00:43:11
Speaker
and things like that and video games have always struggled especially like 18 rated games how do you advertise yourself correctly and even I think on the indie scene it's difficult always for indie games to advertise they rely on good reviews people spreading it by word of mouth you're never gonna get indie games or that people
00:43:28
Speaker
absolutely blown away by, unfortunately. Apart from my title, Goose Game, but that's a different story. But, like, I think games have always so advertised. Another thing that's going to change, frankly, it's not like films where it's two hours of content that you can just distill really easily into two minutes. You're talking about something that's huge and players having influence on it. Yeah, that's kind of all I've got to say on that. I guess it's even on the indie circuit is you don't get a lot of trailers nowadays. Like, oh, that's not true. You don't get a lot of widespread trailers, so it's difficult to
00:43:52
Speaker
games like that. I do want to give a shout out to Elden Ring, which is out this month as well, in terms of a show of games. They did a great thing of plugging the fact that they were working with Joey Dora Martin to try to get a bit of a bit of real world clout. I don't know what you'd call that, but by the way, we're people that actually like fantasy and books and stuff. We've got one of those authors too.
00:44:11
Speaker
One other thing I will say before I run this topic though is video games are getting more accepted in the awards sphere. Back in the PS3 era Journey won a BAFTA for the best soundtrack and in the game and in his other tons of games since then have won various awards across different
Marketing Strategies and Game Success
00:44:25
Speaker
filmmaking rights and so on and that I think that's a
00:44:28
Speaker
acceptance towards mature gaming as well and I think that'll be something that will hopefully carry on and that'll be almost a secret way of advertising. I think Hades won a really specific award as well, like a Tony or something, I don't know what it was but it won a typically film award as well so these kind of things will help promote that kind of maturity in games I think.
00:44:47
Speaker
it's funny it's funny just talking about things like Daiketana because honestly reading my video game marketing is fascinating just for like the number of things they've tried and almost the quote-unquote mature marketing techniques are almost more fascinating sometimes than the game's actual mature content was it God of War 2 that Sony brought like a dead goat out
00:45:03
Speaker
During the E3 promotional event, I was just reading there about Splinter Cell conviction, hiring an actor to dress as an enemy from the game and then take a fake gun into a bar in New Zealand, wave it around and nearly get shot by the police. You go like the old company Acclaim and all their bizarre marketing strategies saying that if people put an advert for their game on one of their deceased relative's tombstones, they'd pay the funeral costs. It's bizarre, it's just a fact you're totally right about how they've struggled.
00:45:31
Speaker
struggle to market themselves, particularly if it is a quote unquote maybe more mature game. I think as well there's been a trend of deceptive marketing about the actual mature content of a game and I think the most infamous example of this is Dead Island. If anybody remembers quite a forgettable game I think and obviously one of these
00:45:49
Speaker
small open-world zombie games. But the CG trailer for this game had this gut-wrenching story of a father trying to save his child from the zombie outbreak and everyone was like, oh my god, imagine the storytelling of this game and the game itself turned out to have nothing even close. That kind of mature depth of storytelling, it was all again surface level, mature content.
00:46:11
Speaker
The first Gears of War, I don't know if you remember this Satsu, or maybe it may as well Craig, but for the first Gears of War game there was a trailer that had the song Mad World, you know the one that was made famous in Donnie Darko, and again it was a pre-rendered trailer and it was like the main character was kind of running through these deserted like streets and he was finally seeing like you know things left behind by people as they escaped from the Locust invasion.
00:46:31
Speaker
And it was like there was no there was no other sound to it apart from the song and it was this kind of emotional emotional kind of mood to the trailer. But then the first Gears of War game to me is like the Starship Troopers of video games and it has virtually no plot and absolutely no character development. So it feels like there's a kind of been a deceptive marketing to try and get more buzz about a game by making it seem that it's quite emotionally mature and deep when actually the fact that the end product is nothing even close to that at all. Because you could say the same about a game like
00:46:57
Speaker
Halo 5, to be more precise. I feel as if that is definitely the quintessential deceptive marketing example, especially when it comes to FPS games. The way that when that was brought out, you know, Halo 4 was kind of brought out to the lukewarm acclaim. I think people enjoyed it relatively so, but when the fifth one came out, they advertised it as being like this kind of mystery game and
00:47:23
Speaker
or not mystery, but this particular Spartan was hunting down the Master Chief and there was this whole, whose side are you gonna choose? And it was like this very, again, it was kind of deceptively portraying itself as having this maturity of where will your allegiances lie? Will you side with the character you've always loved growing up? Or are you gonna take on this new character? At the end of the day, it was just another linear pew pew fest in very scientific terms.
00:47:53
Speaker
Yeah, I do agree with you. Dead Island is definitely a prime example of that though. Was it Dead Island, and correct me if I'm wrong, but was it Dead Island that had a promotional thing where they had like body parts? And let me emphasize, yeah, fake body parts, but was it fake body parts that scattered across the city and people had to find them?
00:48:15
Speaker
I think it might have. I don't know if that's one of these urban mythings but I think it did. The marketing for that game was bizarre though because it ranged from as you say that to that like the other extreme was the CGI trailer and then there's just if you look at some of the memorabilia they released for the collector's editions it's a very very quote-unquote mature in all the bad ways. What is that the bloody torso? Yeah that's the that's the the the busty woman naked torso with no arms and legs. Or head. Yeah or head quite the collector's piece for your mantle piece.
00:48:45
Speaker
It's kind of a head scratcher because you wouldn't imagine someone putting it beside the like Master Chief helmet or like the thing from Gears of
Indie Games as Artistic Advancements
00:48:54
Speaker
War. I don't quite get, well sorry, I kind of do. I think it's more the idea of they're just trying to drum up as much controversy as possible to be like oh buy our game. Would you say that marketing and by extension that first impression makes or breaks a game in terms of like how people perceive it going in?
00:49:12
Speaker
To an extent, yeah, I guess it's that way of kind of setting up false expectations. And that was the thing that killed Dead Island, is that people really expected something very different to the end product. But again, I think that was the marketing. I think we were almost doing that to probably to mask the fact that it was a bit of a sub par, but it's not that it's a bad game, but it's nothing special.
00:49:32
Speaker
at the end of the day so it was almost the marketing was trying to make up for that by all their kind of you know ridiculous stunts and also their you know attempts to try and mask the true nature of it. Was it cyberpunk the same? Well yeah I suppose and they said it was going to be a finished game. Yeah but never mind mature we're still waiting for it to be finished. Leaving my cyberpunk bash in a side here because I feel as if it's been a while because you've got to bash Atari in the last episode Adam. The Biles building up for us both we need to we need to get out
00:49:59
Speaker
I know Cricus or anything you want to lash out against before we wrap up. No, I'm actually in quite a good mood today. I don't have her. I guess it's because I'm not on here every week. I don't have a stockpile of oil. I do want to mention something a surprise Aaron didn't bring up, but just way back to one of our earlier questions. Games that are stealthily mature, sexy, brutal. Go play that.
00:50:17
Speaker
Good point. No, I totally agree. The actual, a proper mature game. Good boy, sexy Brutale. I have yet to play that game. Both of you have been telling me for ages to play that. It's on the backlog, as I said, next to Citizen Kane and the Persona series. What a night that's going to be. So on that note, are there any kind of final points you want to bring up about this topic? Supporting the games.
00:50:40
Speaker
Go buy some indie games. They're doing lots of cool stuff and AAA games are going to get more and more cautious about what story they reveal. So this is the best place to get games that are going to push the boundaries and the boundaries deserve to be pushed.
Conclusion and Support for Indie Games
00:50:53
Speaker
Not always by certain people, like maybe David Cage isn't the first person to be pushing these boundaries, but the boundaries of gaming should be pushed like any art style. So it deserves to be critiqued as art and it deserves to be presented as art. So yeah, keep pushing those boundaries because I want to see what happens next.
00:51:07
Speaker
Yeah, I think I would just say maturity is it's a very subjective thing like what you consider to be a mature game or mature content. But yeah, I would just say maybe look for maybe look for games that do challenge you to an extent, but also maybe make you take a bit of responsibility. I think it is a good as much as perhaps maybe they're not as fun as other ones. I do think they are important in the day. So
00:51:28
Speaker
Yeah, you know, as Craig says, support indie games, don't support David Cage, support the Duke Nukem series. Yeah, there we go. That's my top tips for the day. Can we get that in like a t-shirt or a poster? David Cage's face and then Duke Nukem together. That just says no. Don't you say just all those words, like, support this, don't support that, don't support this, like, who picks this t-shirt?
00:51:52
Speaker
It's going to be like, you know, one of those t-shirts you see on Instagram where it's like the massive coats, but they like put it on bit by bit. Yeah. I am a podcaster who was born in July. Don't mess with me, David Cage. I guess an indie game bought me this t-shirt.
00:52:12
Speaker
So I know what I'm getting for my birthday. A bit no, I would totally agree with both of those. Just one final quick thing to jump on what you said, Craig, about games getting taken more seriously. I don't know if you saw this in the news recently, and I know this technically isn't maturity, but did you see the thing about the Commonwealth Games for this year? Or I don't know if they're this year, but it's the Commonwealth Games where they're starting to include esports?
00:52:38
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's one of the... I don't think it's this year. I think it's the next future one, but I'm not sure. Yeah, but either way, it's pretty incredible. And definitely, as you were saying, it definitely shows a kind of shift in perception, because I remember I was watching it with my family, and all of a sudden, as soon as that popped up, they all looked towards me, of course, me being the resident gamer of the family, and they were like,
00:52:59
Speaker
look at that and I had to tearfully look back at them and say I'm not nearly good enough to qualify for any type of esports except for um salty rambolins but it's like a category in the olympics I think even if it was mate I think I was gonna say I think I think you'd be surprised just how salty something did we get some star wars fans in there ah shit or pokemon fans oh
00:53:24
Speaker
Or David Cage fans, even. Or David Cage himself. The thought of him winning awards. In fact, no he has won awards. Right, okay, I'm ending the joke. But in that note, thank you both for coming on the episode and discussing maturity within video games. How very mature of you both. Those are mature gamers. That's true. You've got the t-shirt and the poster on your wall to prove it, Adam.
00:53:50
Speaker
And I have the Greyhairs. Yes. Jesus. The Greyhairs are playing always mature games. As always, before we wrap up the episodes, Craig, where can these lovely people who are listening at home find your content? They can find me at Bead and Chill podcast or on the various social medias. And as well as that, if you want to find me and my ridiculous journey in the world of pro wrestling, which is something I'm known for, you can find me at Martyn McAlister on Instagram. Yeah.
00:54:19
Speaker
That's the best places to find me. You might not hear as much of a voice as you used to, but you never know. Oh, so sometimes I scream on Twitch at Craggy Beyond, but that's a very, very sometimes. And yeah, that's all from me. Thank you for the invite. No problem at all. It's always great having you on. We should really have you on more often. It is a lot of fun. Yeah. We've actually got our next episode planned featuring the yellow demonic tic tacs themselves. Clearly Adam's favourite topic, of course. I've been pushing this for years. Oh, exactly. Yeah. Pretty sad scenario.
00:54:50
Speaker
Let's make a podcast just to discuss minions. Was that Adam's original pitch? I'll talk about Sonic for the rest of the years. Please let me do this one. Oh, I see how it is.
00:54:59
Speaker
yeah on that note trying to like run away from that topic as fast as possible. If you want to check out more of the chat tsunami content you can check us out on anchor, spotify, youtube, itunes and of course all good podcast apps but until then thank you all so so much for listening to this episode and as always stay safe, stay awesome and most importantly stay hydrated.