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S3 Ep279: Gaming Inertia
87 Plays2 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they talk about a distrust of clowns, amongus in the workplace, the zoom roundtable, and deep dive in why it is so dang hard to finish games in this week's episode!
Intro:
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Intro:
- Silvagunner - Critical Stop
- Silvagunner - BGM #14 - Doki×Doki Sasete!!
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Transcript
Introduction and Humorous Antics
00:00:45
Speaker
How's it going everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake, and I'm joined by my co-host is always Dave. How's it going there, Dave? I got the zoomies. You got the zoomies. I've been booking around between opposite ends of the apartment at frantic speed. It's just me and you, and Zaboomafoo. Come along, let's see what's doing. And what's your actually waiting for you?
00:01:09
Speaker
I was going to go through the rest of the course, but that was smart to cut to the end. That's way better for pacing. I didn't remember any of the other pieces. Weirdly enough, when I was driving home from PT, I had Pendulum in, and this is the Hold Your Color album. Yes, right. Me, as I said, this whole context of
00:01:32
Speaker
But I was listening to, I don't remember the name of the song, but they used like the sample from, uh, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. And when they go on the boat, there's no earthly way of knowing which direction we are going. And I was like, I remember a surprising amount of lyrics from this one thing. And I'm like, Oh, so I heard this song a million times.
00:02:00
Speaker
It was also a pretty disturbing scene. I mean, that's kind of the nature of older films, it seems like. They would have something that was vaguely PG all throughout and then just throw in one Mind F scene where it's like, why is this there? Because I don't know if you can remember that scene specifically, but while they're on the boat, it's like flashing images of gore and stuff.
00:02:25
Speaker
I don't remember that part. I know it is very like... Yes. Chromatically trippy. There's like maybe images. I just know it's like beams of light. Yeah, there is a... So if there was an actual gore, then my brain... My brain generated it. But there's articles online. I'm looking at one right now where it's just like, yeah, traumatized a generation of kids. I don't know exactly what they did, but...
00:02:54
Speaker
There was some messed up stuff there. And this is why the Johnny Depp version can never compare. Yeah. Oh, so so one of the scenes here was millipedes crawling over a person's face.
00:03:11
Speaker
So yeah, I didn't want to see that. Definitely not a lighthearted candy candy show, but no, it's tough. It's tough. I was going to joke though. You obviously got arrested because how could you possibly do the speed limit listening to pendulum? Well, funnily enough, the few times I have ever really sped a one was listening to tarantula by pendulum specifically.
00:03:40
Speaker
off the same album but I just like it was like late night driving back and then like you got the vibes going the drum and bass and you're like oh I'm speeding it's 80 uh-huh in a 55 I know I know a friend of the show and guess Justin's like cool that's cute mm-hmm rookie number he's got to pump those up
00:04:04
Speaker
Yeah. But glad you survived the trip back and hopefully, uh, we can, we can work through the zoomies there in this episode. It's usually a very active podcast. It's gone. It's already gone. Okay. Okay. We're good. Good. Cause that was a lie. We mostly just sit here. Um, that's fair. I always sit here. I tell people I do other things, but I really just, I'm constantly in this chair.
The Fear and Humor of Clowns
00:04:30
Speaker
To be fair, you really don't ever see me out of it. And most of you don't even see me.
00:04:34
Speaker
So how would you know? We don't have the video format of the podcast up yet. We're waiting for our angel investor to come along and provide the funds. You provide the funds, we'll provide the fun. And I can't do birthday work anymore. Yeah, for some reason, no one's picked up. No one's looking back for children's parties.
00:05:05
Speaker
Man, it's got to be weird to be in a career where you get booked for children's parties. Traditionally, I would think of clowns, but I can think of nothing I would want to keep away from children more than a clown. Probably somebody who will dress up as a character.
00:05:22
Speaker
Yeah. Like, oh my God, Spider-Man came to your birthday. Spider-Man's fair. Yeah. Maybe you have a magician. Does it be fair? Like, that's going to wow the shit out of kids. If I can't figure it out as an adult, what do you think it does to a kid's mind? Like, what? That's crazy. A magician would be good. I guess I could focus to a particular bias against clowns, actually. I feel like everyone shares that bias. Yeah. They're weird and creepy.
00:05:51
Speaker
I think it's just it's the meta distrust of someone who would want to be a clown, right? That's in its own way a little bit more disconcerting than the actual act of putting on face makeup and all that stuff and looking like a clown. Like there's a human behind that. Those cold dead eyes. Yes. That rotund nose, right? Like somehow.
00:06:16
Speaker
I don't know. It's just something about that uncanny valley where it got to be creepy. I'm not sure exactly what it said in. I feel like maybe before or around John Wayne Gacy. I was going to say John Wayne Gacy. Yeah. I was going to say the same thing.
00:06:35
Speaker
Really did just just mess up that entire career It's like kill a couple kids and it's fine. Whatever all clowns have but once it's like 18 people or however many victims he had That's the entire career down the drain. There's nothing left. Do you remember? I know we talked about this again at some point way back I feel like it was like 2016 there's just a bunch of whole like
00:07:00
Speaker
clouds being creepy and showing up places for like several months across the United States. This is like a thing. Oh my gosh. I probably blocked this from my head because it sounds troublesome. It was weird, but it happened and it was very awkward and tense for a couple months and then it just disappeared. Hmm. Well, that's good.
Workplace and Social Dynamics
00:07:27
Speaker
Yeah, I don't recall exactly, but I want no part of a clown flash mob. Dude, I would lose my shit if that happened. Would be legitimately scared.
00:07:41
Speaker
Like, I know we talked about this on Discord a little bit, but now that Chucky's being added to Dead by Daylight, growing up, that was like my primal fear. A small doll coming to life and stabbing you and stuff. Like, not about it, no thank you. And again, it's around my height and can like get behind furniture and stuff. No, no, no, no. No thank you.
00:08:04
Speaker
But now I can probably like watch like a clip of something and be like, oh, that's kind of like a dumb silly joke thing. Right. Whereas you can do anything. We were the clown. I'll be like, pass, pass on that. It's just very unsettling.
00:08:23
Speaker
They really just didn't break through into the acceptable territory of mimes. Mimes seem like artists, clowns seem like perverts. That's basically what I see. It's because mimes are French. Maybe that's- Which actually-
00:08:41
Speaker
Maybe I'm giving the French too much credit. I don't know. Definitely, I'm giving the French too much credit. Yeah. But like when I've seen short little videos online like YouTube or Reddit with mimes, like they're usually doing, I mean, obviously like the Olamina box where they're doing like some lighthearted comedy type thing for like a crowd. Right. Like I saw one where like a
00:09:04
Speaker
a guy was trying to take a picture of something at like a sea park and he had his phone out and then the clown took his phone and then was walking away and then was kind of like dangling it over the water and accidentally dropped it in, but it was a different phone. It wasn't the guy's phone. He had like a fake one. Yeah, it was at a mine or a clown. It was a mine.
00:09:27
Speaker
Okay. I'm gotcha. Gotcha. So if it was a clown, like that's just the clown's going to get beat up immediately, right? There's a certain level of inherent trust we would have with a mime, right? Like a mime is going to mess with me, but they're not going to harm my person, my property. It's part of the implicit agreement. You see a clown and it's like, that's statistically a serial killer. So yeah, it's just, it's not a good look. No, it's rough. Hard to make it back. Um,
00:09:57
Speaker
So I never talk about work for the podcast, but I'm going to briefly, because it related a little bit to games this week. We had a Codenames tournament with brackets and everything. People had their teams. They were playing against each other. I don't know. Have you ever played Codenames? Are you familiar with the game? It sounds familiar. I know I've played it before, but for my sake and for the audience, could you remind us?
00:10:23
Speaker
Yeah, if you did know, I was just not gonna provide any clarification for the audience. So this is a move song. It's a better way to do it. The gist of it, the really short is there's two teams and red and blue teams. And one person is gonna try to give clues about the words that are on the board. And their team has to use those clues to select the words. And usually it's by association. So if you saw like,
00:10:51
Speaker
tunnel and say car or something like that. Your clue might be like road to. Okay, two things that are related to roads are probably what we're looking for, right? That's the game. It's pretty cool. You can play it online. It's actually absolutely free.
00:11:09
Speaker
Um, which I'm a big fan of, but I got, uh, pinged on the side. They're like, Hey, do you want to be our, our e-sports commentator for the grand finals? Um, which is probably because I suggested there should be an e-sports commentator for the grand finals. I didn't know I was volunteering at that, but, um, I was like, yeah, absolutely. Let's go. I've had a podcast. I can do this. It was a fun time. It was enjoyable. Um, so for everybody out there who needs to spice up their work life.
00:11:38
Speaker
for somebody to just do all of the work for code name brackets. We didn't have, it was just single elimination. So we didn't have a losers bracket, but that's the way you could do it even better. And we, it was best of one all the way to the grand finals. We should have had best of three for grand finals. Yeah, you definitely should. I'm sure it was best of one for most of it, just for time sake. Yes.
00:12:04
Speaker
It was to get every game done in half an hour. Like, at most. But, I mean, what are you going to do? Work? So, that was pretty good. Do you want to work? No, no, no. Then play this game. Alright. We're doing team building for four hours today. And it was entirely off. Have you guys heard of Among Us?
00:12:28
Speaker
Oh no. Find out the person that's not actually completing their work items. Oh my gosh. I've made a lot of progress today. I haven't up through the poor equipment. It's him. I saw him vent. Oh man. Other people just, they vanish throughout the workday and so their items are not completed. He's killing them off. They said they had to go to lunch. Why did they tell you that? Uh huh.
00:12:57
Speaker
I'd like to call a meeting, emergency meeting. Is it about like our work, the stuff we're getting done? No, I think someone's killing you guys, actually. Tom, I told you, my counter's blocked off between these hours. This is dedicated meat.
00:13:15
Speaker
but it is not for everybody and you gotta have, it's gotta be opt-in, because I completely get people not opting into workplace. Workplay. Workplay, yeah. Workplay obligations, right? Yeah, but it can be fun.
00:13:31
Speaker
It can be with the right people, but it definitely isn't like it's innately an awkward setting Yeah, because it's like hey my professionalism being thrown out the window temporarily How many swear words am I allowed to say? Yes in the same thing
Gaming Fatigue and Concise Experiences
00:13:49
Speaker
And for the legacy culture at the company I worked for, that wouldn't have been a big deal. Swearing was not a big deal, but now it's like, that would be very weird. People just pop off with vulgarity or something like that.
00:14:08
Speaker
I'm just imagining it's like a first-person shooter because they have like browser-based first-person shooters and someone's just swearing up a storm. Every time they die, they're just losing it. This kind of fucking rounds the corner. Do you guys even have sights on them? No, you're too busy picking your asshole. You're like, all right, dude, chill.
00:14:26
Speaker
This is DPS diff. Also, we should talk about that item that's coming up. No, it's it's pretty absurd. I will share a story because I specifically will not tell anybody at work about this podcast. Right. I think once asked like, oh, you have a podcast. I'm like, yeah, he's like, oh, what is it? Like, no, it's just like we're not doing that. It's New York Times.
00:14:56
Speaker
We're doing pretty well. But I think one year for Christmas, they're like, this is when COVID was more so in full swing, because it's completely gone now. And they're like, hey, everybody, let's all go on a major Zoom thing together, and we'll be on a call for two hours. Everyone has to have their cameras on. Everyone has to be present. You can go make yourself a drink if you want. I think I was still drinking, or I had alcohol in the house. And I was like, dear God, do I need some?
00:15:25
Speaker
and it was like the most generic middle-aged white people shit and it was all mandatory like if you want to do that and you want to have people opt in I'm sure a lot of people would love to do it and they would get enjoyment from it let them do it but I don't know you people I don't like you people I'm there for work and then our our transaction is done you're not the people I socialize with so it feels so weird and bad
00:15:53
Speaker
It's also just pretty odd to have like a single room, like a single chat for something like that. Right. Cause in one of these social situations, you're probably going off, you're mingling with different people, you know, catching up little side chats, things like that. But this is literally, everyone is standing around exactly one table. Yes. Taking turns chatting. Like it's not, you're going to have like two people that want to talk. Nobody else needs to talk. Right. And that's just, it's such a crappy atmosphere.
00:16:24
Speaker
yeah that's why i hate when there's like 20 people online on discord like there are times where like maybe it's a friday night and it is just popping off and everyone's having a good time and it is kind of like everyone's a part of the same thing cool right but if i'm coming in as the 11th person i'm not assuming that that's what's going on i'm like oh it's no it's too much ramp
00:16:49
Speaker
No, I'm there. I'm there with you. Um, to a certain extent, if it's like a background noise thing and I'm doing something else, that's fine. But yeah, past the point, there's you're statistically less likely to be involved in whatever conversations happen. Right. Just by the number of participants. So yeah. Yeah. But that's okay. What about involvement in video games?
00:17:14
Speaker
I like being involved in video games. Next question. Okay, we'll see what else we got here. Who do you prefer to date? No, I'm just kidding. So this topic, as predetermined by the cards, was about inertia in games, trying to finish games, and reasons maybe we don't do that. Both personally,
00:17:42
Speaker
Us. And then also humanity as a whole. What are those weaknesses that God built into us that keep us from finishing JRPGs, right? So that's basically what I think we should, what we should talk about again, according to the cards. So where do you want to jump in?
00:18:02
Speaker
I think an easy contributor can be when you're not really into a game. Like you're kind of semi-interested, you're trying it out, you're giving it a fair shake, and maybe it just has really poor writing. And you're like, Jesus Christ, this part's bad.
00:18:22
Speaker
Now, as much as I enjoyed playing Remnant 2 with you and Ian, I did not have the same deep love and depth to like go play as much solo. And I thought the writing of the game was dog shit. So like for me, I was doing it because it was a multiplayer thing and I enjoyed the multiplayer aspect and doing all that together. But as a single player game, I do not think I would really
00:18:51
Speaker
It would have taken me a lot longer. I might have even put it on hold for a bit. Yeah. Because I just kind of got checked out. I think that's fair.
00:18:59
Speaker
I think for me, we each probably had a little bit different of a take there, right? Like you were going for completion and playing with friends. Ian gets really involved in story and lore and stuff like that. And I get really involved in like mechanics. So I'm just like, I want to see certain things done. I want to accomplish something and then I'm good.
00:19:21
Speaker
And that game, I agree, just did not have the story to hold it. It did have interesting mechanics and it had some cool world building, like theming and stuff like that, but not a way to make it cohesive. So I'm with you. If we didn't have some group goal to push forward to finish that, I probably wouldn't have finished it solo.
00:19:45
Speaker
But I realized it's kind of weird to say it, right? Cause I was also spending time on it on my own. Yes. So that might not be a good example for you specifically. I think it could be though. Right. Cause they've actually been games where I put a bunch of time into it. And then I was like, I'm not going to finish this, which is crazy coming from Jake. Cause he'll sometimes pick up like what I consider to be like steam dumpster diving. And he's like, well, actually, and then he'll play it for 40 hours. Yeah.
00:20:16
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. My go-to example for that was graveyard keeper, where it was an indie game that I put, I believe over 40 hours into. And then once I finished it, I was like negative review. Like it seems absurd. And I know sometimes people do that as a joke, but sometimes you don't know how much your time was wasted until you're looking in the rear view mirror. Right.
00:20:39
Speaker
Um, and that, that can, that can definitely be a problem. I think for this list, um, in order for us to not complete a game, you probably are looking ahead through the windshield and you see that this is something that you don't want to engage with. Right. That's why something would get hard dropped. Um, is there, is there a game in particular you can think of picking up, but not finishing that you want to single out for a case study?
00:21:10
Speaker
Um, that is usually uncommon for me, but I'm sure I have an example. You want me to take one while you look?
00:21:19
Speaker
Yeah, if you have one of mine, go ahead. Yeah, super brief. So Rockstar is a game development company and I can't finish their games. Not since like San Andreas have I been able to finish a Rockstar game. And I think it's literally because there's so much crap in them. And the part of my brain that is like, you must do side things wins out over the part of my brain that's like, we must finish this. And then I just get exhausted doing side things and I don't finish the game.
00:21:49
Speaker
Um, like Eric, uh, special guest, Eric, um, called me out on this specifically for Red Dead, Red Dead Redemption 2. Cause it's an amazing game. It's excellent. I freaking can't finish it. It's so long and I get so distracted on every, every little thing that I get tired of the game before I return to the main story. I feel that for a lot of open world things where you're just like, Oh,
00:22:20
Speaker
One thing I really liked about...
00:22:25
Speaker
Far Cry Blood Dragon. Okay. It was a relative, it was still open world, but it was relatively small compared to other open worlds. So it didn't feel like it was using my time for a whole bunch of repetitive stuff. Like, hey, here's kind of like the over, under what it is. And we're not going to pad it out too much. Have fun with this aesthetic. I'm like, okay, I did. It's a good time. Probably need to play it again on stream sometime.
00:22:52
Speaker
Yeah, that's that's such an excellent example. I like that you pick that because you're right. This is the this is the antithesis of the Red Dead game, right? Red Dead or GTA or whatever. Hey, Nico, let's go bowling. It's all just a ton of side activities that tons of effort development time has gone into. They want you to spend hours playing poker, all of this crap.
00:23:15
Speaker
Blood Dragon is a small island, right? Like it's technically an open world game just because there's not really loading screens, but you could just run across the entire thing. And there was almost no collectibles. And the main attraction was always just the story. And I freaking loved it because it was an open world game in being open and allowing you to like decide how you want to attack or whatever. But it was pretty much a linear game by the amount of content that it provided.
00:23:46
Speaker
And that was great. It's concise. Yeah, it doesn't need to have all this extra stuff. It is nice when it exists and you want to have it. Elden Ring, pretty much open world. But for me, I was very much in it and I had enough time to go through and sift through all this stuff.
00:24:07
Speaker
So it was fun. Whereas something like Horizon Zero Dawn, I enjoyed it enough to play it, but I didn't have the drive to go through and complete everything. There came a point kind of earlier rather than later where I was kind of starting to get burnt out or like a little checked out on it. I'm like, well, I want to beat the game. Actually, that's one I never actually beat, not realizing. I think I didn't do like the last two missions.
00:24:37
Speaker
That's very close. That's kind of sad. I ended up watching it on YouTube or something because I think we were going to have an episode on it. Yeah, I was just done with it. I just wasn't feeling it anymore. It doesn't feel good to push yourself past it if you're not actively enjoying it. Right.
00:24:59
Speaker
Cause I mean, all of these games, they're not just here in a vacuum, right? Where we enter a game abyss and it's like, time has stopped until you finish Horizon Zero Dawn. Like you're going to be competing with other games that come out. Games that your friends want to play.
00:25:14
Speaker
other things theoretically, this is theoretical. I wouldn't claim to know that this actually exists, but something outside of computer space, right? I'm not trying to wrap my head around that one. Yeah, that one, it's theoretical, right? I think it'll be disproven, but it's theoretical. And you're constantly evaluating this, right? While you're playing the game, is this something that I want to keep spending time on? Or could I just go back to like Starcraft and do co-op, right? It's tough, it's a tough comparison.
00:25:45
Speaker
What's funny about Horizon though, is I think I actually agree with the people who get tired of Horizon. It kind of plays itself out well before the end, as far as like gameplay mechanics are concerned. But the story was super engaging for me, particularly like some of the DLC stuff.
00:26:03
Speaker
Um, and that was the, the jet fuel basically to get me to finish the story. Um, and that's what's absent for some of these other games, right? Like remnant, we got to the ending of the game and it's like, I'm glad that it's done. Right. That's not, that's not a resounding appreciation for the game. What's your favorite orange like fruit?
00:26:31
Speaker
I mean, an orange obviously. Clementine. That's not the... Clementine, yeah. Unless you've literally played the game, it's completely meaningless reference. But if you did play it, it would be great. You probably won't appreciate it either. It's fine. Yeah. You might have forgotten just because that's how forgettable that game kind of is.
00:26:55
Speaker
But yeah, it's not something that's as cut and dry as I wanted to finish this game, so I finished this game, right? And sometimes the quality of the game isn't a big factor. I think time can be a big one. Especially if you know it's long, and you want to block out something. Because it feels weird. Perfect example of being like Baldur's Gate 3. I don't think there ever, nobody in existence is ever going to be like, I only have an hour. I'm going to do some Baldur's Gate 3.
00:27:24
Speaker
It's like, no, no, no, I have four hours. I'm going to do a session. Like you get into it because it's such a big world. You want to be immersed as you're doing it. You can't do that. And like, you can't just like dip yourself and then run off to your meeting or an appointment. Right. Exactly.
00:27:43
Speaker
Yeah, it's, that's a good example. And like, if a game requires that, it can be harder to get back into, which I think is part of the issue with like RPGs or something like that. Um, where you're like, okay, I just loaded back into the town. I know that there's 20 things to do. I can't remember exactly what I was last working on. It would be a lot easier if I just queued up for another game of insert competitive game here or something like that. Right. So the path of least resistance.
00:28:11
Speaker
Um, can sometimes lead to game abandonment as well, for sure. Yeah. Like I started playing some more Talos too last night and I was like, ah, yes, hustling. And then I get an invite to play Dota two and I'm like, I should be social though. And then I just, I mean, I do come back to Talos. Um, yes. But if somebody is saying, Hey, do you want to do a social thing? Like I would like to be social and play games with people. I can make time for this later. Um, right.
00:28:41
Speaker
And in that example, Talos has the benefit of, it's kind of got these, these segmented payoffs where you solve distinct puzzles, right? And so if you finished a puzzle, you want to take a break, you could. If you are in the middle of a puzzle and you want to take a break, you could, and then think about it, right? But there's an incentive to kind of come back and pursue it as well as all of the storytelling that's going on, which is very strong in those games.
00:29:08
Speaker
yeah it is strong enough that i have actually slowed down on reading the logs um which is big which is big for dave it must be said i i i know that you are in the um the filthy guild of tech skippers so if you're paying attention to it then it's good not all of them um i am still skipping some simmers like
00:29:36
Speaker
It can go through like so, I'm not a faster reader. Maybe you have some dialogue with an NPC or two, something else is going on. You read like three audio logs. Sorry, three text logs. Let's do an audio log. You're like, okay, cool. That was 25 minutes of non puzzle. And I want a puzzle, but I don't want to like, this is on the map. So I'm like, go slap hand on thing and then go off to my puzzle.
00:30:01
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's entirely fair and I'll actually admit that I also joined that group, particularly for really verbose RPGs. There was a time in my life where I could play Dragon Age Origins and be like,
00:30:17
Speaker
Man, this is another lore entry. I'm gonna read every single one of these But I'm pretty much my attention span is degraded to the point where I need like a tooltip With some sort of text coloring. I'll be like, okay, these are the important things. I was supposed to look at here, right? Thank you pyre, right? Even when we were playing remnants we'd like open and close the book and then we'd come back to like do we actually have to read this for this puzzle that
The Burden of Game Lore
00:30:41
Speaker
OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK
00:30:59
Speaker
I feel like Bethesda games are the best example of that, where the writing tends to, occasionally it's important to what you're doing, but it's so very infrequent that unless you're in the mood to literally read a book, in which case, why are you playing a video game? There are people who specialize in writing books and those are better, right?
00:31:23
Speaker
um why are you spending all your time in the game reading the lusty argonian maid that's a joke question obviously we all know the answer to that one but like there's a bunch of other crap there that is so skippable literally my go-to now for this type of game is open the book close the book and if there was some sort of like quest thing just tab through the pages as quickly as possible to hit whatever trigger is necessary for the game to think that i know what's going on
00:31:53
Speaker
Based on your reading of page 37, you know that so-and-so is looking for Cassandra at the town next door.
00:32:01
Speaker
Uh-huh. I wouldn't say I read it. I looked at the pages. I just absorbed knowledge. It is easy for me. But no, that would be nice. It is hard when like, you know, there's going to be a time sink and you want to get immersed for those larger games. That's part of the reason why I've been avoiding Persona 5 forever. And probably will continue to do so.
00:32:25
Speaker
that's I was actually gonna bring that game up if you didn't mention it for for being on this list because because they came out with persona five royal or royal I don't know and that's the that's the the best way to play the game it has like the most content it has extra stuff they increased relationships with the characters whatever it's basically like the complete game the game of the year edition everybody releases right
00:32:54
Speaker
But I put like 110 hours into the vanilla game for PlayStation. And I know that a lot of that content wouldn't be until later the stuff that Royal would introduce. And I don't want to go through like 20 to 30 hours of stuff that I've already seen to get to the stuff that I haven't seen. Yeah, it's.
00:33:19
Speaker
I don't know. I think there are some people who can experience something. They're like, wow, that was great. That was grand. I would like to do it again. But I follow the law of diminishing returns. Once I've experienced something, it's never going to hit the same way again for me. For a lot of things, not everything. There's some things like morning dew on grass or
00:33:48
Speaker
sex or good pizza like these are all things where it's like oh yeah down for that one doesn't matter um but if it's like watching a movie i'm like oh i watch that was good the second time you kind of know where it's going the third time you're like oh yeah it doesn't have that same there's not that sense of wonder and discovery yeah
00:34:09
Speaker
That's a good example, because I'm there 100% with you. I think I could count on half of a hand the number of times that I've been to a theater multiple times to see a movie. If it was something like a DVD or to age myself a little bit like a VHS, absolutely, because it's what was available. But I've only done that once, I think, when Watchmen came out. Do you remember the movie?
00:34:37
Speaker
You say Watchman or Watchsmith? Watchman. Watchman, yeah. I mean, if you had to pick one, it's not a bad one to watch a couple times. I knew nothing about it. It was very well done. It was long. But it was very cool. It was also late high school. So it checked all the boxes for me. I was like, well, that was badass. And I had just seen it with somebody. And so I was like, hey, we're going to group people to go see it. Do you want to go see it? I'm like, uh, yeah. Uh-huh.
00:35:08
Speaker
That really did two points on that. I think that the that's a great movie to actually watch again. I would say like that one or another movie that has layers that like normally something that has time travel or something involved. It's got like a little bit more. You can glean from it if you watch multiple times or like traitor characters or something like that. You can look for more information.
00:35:34
Speaker
But that was also, the other thing I was gonna say was that one really was so far ahead of the game in years as far as this like superhero arc that pop culture went through. Cause we like, everybody was all on board for Marvel and all of that stuff. And he had in-game and infinity war and all that stuff. And then they're like, we're tired of superheroes. Bring in the anti-heroes with the boys and everything like that. And it's literally just coming back to Watchmen, right?
00:36:04
Speaker
It's so so far ahead of the game Yeah, there's nothing to do with our topic but no it's um
00:36:14
Speaker
Yeah, if something feels already kind of played out, it's definitely hard to go back into something like that. Unless maybe that is the incentive for, I really did enjoy this, I need a reason to go back. Maybe the game does that DLC and that does it for you. I will say it's a lot easier on something like a roguelike than it is for a large RPG.
00:36:38
Speaker
But again, it really depends on your taste. Because I can say these very wide opinions about something and then I can throw it out the window for something else that I'm personally attached to and get a lot of enjoyment from. It is weird how that works.
00:36:53
Speaker
I mean, it makes sense though, because roguelikes are optimized for literally reducing the inertia to start up a new play through,
Game Mechanics and Challenges
00:37:02
Speaker
right? There's a couple of roguelikes that have longer runs, but for the most part, they're shorter, and they're not gonna put you through, to reference, I guess, the meme basically, like the Skyrim intro, where it's like, okay, nope, we're back on the cart, right? Welcome to Skyrim.
00:37:19
Speaker
and I think that that one's not it's not super long I wouldn't say that I've like avoided playing Skyrim or starting new saves because the intro is kind of long but it is pointless once you've done it literally once and Roguelikes forgo that entirely it's like no our design is to keep you starting over right
00:37:41
Speaker
makes it a lot easier to get into it. And it's definitely freaking impossible if you're looking at replaying the JRPG and it's 20 hours of stuff you've already seen to get to the new stuff. Yeah. And as many save slots as they gave me in Final Fantasy VII, I never went back and loaded a save.
00:37:58
Speaker
I didn't have any guilt about my decisions or anything like that. I think it was just in the off chance that I softlocked or a save got corrupted, but I did it. But it'd be so weird to go back into something of a different point in time and not having that context. I think there was only one enemy I can remember that it really mattered to go back. I think if you're trying to get all of the
00:38:28
Speaker
Is it mimic, manipulate, something like that? There was some way you learned enemy skills. Maybe it was called enemy skill. But there's an enemy that was bugged so you'd only ever encounter it once per save. It was like in the final area and I think it was like pretty far away from the last save point. I think it was like a zombie dragon or something like that.
00:38:49
Speaker
But yeah, there was literally a bug in the code. So you would only ever have a random encounter with it once and then it would just like take itself out of the eligible pool. Old game code. Did Pokemon do that with Mewtwo as well? Or sorry, not Mewtwo, but like the legendary birds. It's like you can get one bird and then the rest will never show. Okay. Yeah, that's pretty brutal. Well, what's a game for you that maybe it's not an issue of going back to complete it, but it's an issue wanting to start it.
00:39:19
Speaker
Hmm. I have a list. Yeah. Wanting to start in the first place. So you're talking a game that like I have interest in playing, but I haven't started. Yes. Okay. Yeah. You can go first. I'll think about these are, this is the list for you. Oh, the list for me. Gotcha. All right. Yeah. Well, you can do armchair psychologist. I'll, I'll try to justify my actions or lack thereof. All right. The new paper, Mario.
00:39:50
Speaker
That's fair. I think honestly, this is kind of the problem with playing games is it's kind of like a first in first out priority for me, not an actual queue, right? For people who haven't studied computer science data structures, what that means is in a queue,
00:40:13
Speaker
The first person in the line is the first person that gets served, right? And at the point you join in the line, no one behind you is gonna be served before you. But this is kind of closer to a stack where it's like, oh man, a super cool video game just came out and I'm excited to play it right now. So I'm just gonna add that to the top of the list and that will immediately be served, right? And that really is the reason some of these fall back, right? Like I never finished,
00:40:41
Speaker
Yakuza, um, like a dragon either. I was having fun with it, but I didn't even start Paper Mario. But I do think that is a valid thing because like, I still want to play more Ghostrunner 2, but then Talos 2 came out and I got Ghostrunner 2 kind of late. I was like, puzzles, yay. Uh, and I just haven't been back to Ghostrunner play yet.
00:41:09
Speaker
Yeah, that one I think, that one I think will be done. I have hope for that. I have less hope for the games Dave has loaned me. So to get to them, but yeah. It's pretty much a joke at this point. It's like, it's on the list, right? Like that's what you say about a game that you're never going to play. You'll age out before the game sees playtime. I like age as a term for dying. Just got too old.
00:41:39
Speaker
There was a number overflow. We had to shut him down. Uh-huh. Right. He's too powerful. I know I started Killer7. I had heard good things about it. Like, oh, it's pretty cheap on Steam. It's discounted. It's like $5 or something. Like, oh, yeah. Definitely check this out.
00:41:59
Speaker
I got like 20 minutes in. It was more like two minutes in. I spent 18 minutes trying to do the first thing. I don't know if it's map controls. I don't know if it's just the game itself. But I was not sure what to do, what they wanted me to do, how to do it. And it comes to the point of like, hey, the barrier to entry is you might need to look something up outside of the game. You might need to remap controls or fix your controller.
00:42:23
Speaker
And I'm like, I don't care that much. Like it's not been, not like everyone's like, you have to play this. There's people like, it's good. You should check it out. So like for me, like having that issue really, really bars entry. I haven't gone back to Dark Souls because there's a screen resolution issue that's been present for like two years. And I look at it once a year has spent two hours and very frustrated. And then I don't look into it anymore. Yeah.
00:42:53
Speaker
That's very, I think you isolated two there that I think are pretty good to talk about. Like the first one is gameplay as barrier to entry where it just does not click. And if you don't have a hook and the game starts confusing you or something like that, there's zero reason to continue. There are all these other games we want to play and this isn't our day job, right? So.
00:43:21
Speaker
I mean, maybe you give an anime three episodes, you give a game, you know, 20 minutes or something, if you're generous. And if it's not paying off, then you got to back out. I've definitely also used gameplay as like a barrier to entry for some things that are on the list, right? Like I bought Dragon Quest, I think 10 Ultimate Edition or whatever the crap when it was on sale, because I was like,
00:43:45
Speaker
If they made 10 of these, it's gotta be a good game. But no, I mean like actually Dragon Quest had pretty good reviews. It's like it's a good classic RPG and all this stuff. But I don't want to learn another RPG system. Like, so I legitimately haven't launched it. Yeah. Or like Dead by Daylight, right? I've watched an absurd amount of content for that game by comparison.
00:44:13
Speaker
And I've only ever launched it to import a free resources code from like Amazon or something. Um, cause I don't want to put the time into learning how to play it. Yeah. I think a lot of people know who they are as far as their gaming preferences and what they like to do. But there's always this thing of like.
00:44:35
Speaker
But maybe I'm not that person. Maybe I could grow. Maybe I could change. Maybe I could do something else. Maybe I could try this game. And then you buy it. You play for 20 minutes and you're like, I am that person. Fucking stupid. And then it sits in your library or it sits on your shelf for a very long time. And then eventually you sell it off or you give it to somebody or it just sits there forever. Um, because you tempted. That's the reason to get.
00:45:04
Speaker
It's the reason to get physical copies. So if you give up, it can just be a thoughtful gift for someone else. It's true. Be like, I got this years ago planning to give this to you. That's nice of you. Why did you wait two years? Well, I was holding on for the right person. Or if you've known this person for a while, you say for the right time. It's just too much a good time earlier. You mean during COVID when I had tons of time to play games? Was that home all the time?
00:45:33
Speaker
I didn't, I didn't want to make presumptions about how desperate you were, but yeah. Yeah. Like I, a perfect example of this for me is there was a game growing up that I think we got. There's like a two part CD where like that is like a double jewel case. So it had two games in it. One was Christ. I'm not gonna remember the name of that one. Oni.
00:46:02
Speaker
Okay. It was some very old third person shooter PC, like not great. Uh, the other thing was septera core, which looked kind of cool. Right. Um, and it was like an old polygonal RPG, very janky. I'd never got too far in it, but I just picked it up for the nostalgia. Um, and nostalgia does not outweigh how janky that is. And I refuse to go and learn that again. Um,
00:46:32
Speaker
But yeah, again, I spent money over the hopes of, oh yes, this. I'll definitely go back and play Zoom Beanies. I mean, I did actually complete two campaigns of Zoom Beanies, 108 minutes, what up? Yeah, that's a humble brag. You should be in a humble bundle, honestly. It's a cute, nostalgic game. But after you play through it once, there's not really a reason to play it again.
00:47:00
Speaker
unless your true goal is to move all the zoom beanies. Yeah, it's definitely, I think when purchasing games it can kind of be a case of, it's very similar to like,
00:47:15
Speaker
What is the expression? It's like your eyes are bigger than your mouth is or your mouth is bigger than your stomach is. Some bodily organ is larger than some other bodily organ, but it has to do with like the food looks good. So you get the food, you put it on your plate and you're like, but I have a little baby stomach. I can eat two pea pods and then I'm good. I've never had this problem personally, but I think other people have. Jake is eating all the pea pods.
00:47:40
Speaker
Yes, exactly. I think the, I just remembered the, the like helicopter, Exfil helicopters, Pequod, and MGS-5. I'm just like, even that thing, even that thing.
00:47:57
Speaker
But I do that with games sometimes too. I think I have more ambition until it comes time to actually launch it. And I was like, ah, let's play it safe. Yeah. Um, I think another, but the other, your turn. I just said something. I was going to say another big blocker that I've seen in other people and myself from time to time is game difficulty.
00:48:20
Speaker
this is actually you can just hit a fucking wall and you're like , I'll come back to one not taste about it on makes must be a bit as you just now have the memory of something taking her as you go like you will play games have fun so if your memory of going back to play the game is like on stock is one thing to kick my ass I'm not having fun getting my ass kicked but I want to see more stuff past it it can be a
00:48:52
Speaker
Do you know what my go-to example for this is? It's kind of an older game. But I've had multiple opportunities to try to beat it. I think once on the original console it came out on. And now I own it for some sort of virtual console on Steam. But Comic Zone. Yup.
00:49:11
Speaker
Because that game is like, okay, I'm struggling a little bit at the beginning. All right. No, I started to get good. I understand it. I get the mechanics, whatever. And then you get a couple of levels in and it's just like, this is the part where we just consume the entirety of your coin-based currency. I'm like, this is a virtual game. You don't have to.
00:49:31
Speaker
Literal cheat codes also don't help you because I got to the point where I could do that. And it's like, oh, the part where the panels are burning and like you have to outrun the fire or whatever. If you fall in a pit, you don't die because you're invulnerable, but you're still stuck. Yeah. So it's pointless. Um, freaking hate that. That was comics. Hard as shit. Even on the first level, like it's rough, but it definitely expects you to be like frame perfect later.
00:50:01
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It's absolute pain. But I will say I will always appreciate that game and Kid Chameleon because I played them on Zs and that's way back and they just had a cool vibe. I mean, Kid Chameleon is an actual good game. I don't know if you could say the same, but for Comic Zone, it just has cool style. It has, it has a cool opening. Oh, it's got an excellent opening.
00:50:28
Speaker
Was it is his name sketch turner was that right? Yeah, it's the it's the most comic book arthur author name imaginable and he he's also like very 90s because he has like a sleeveless Gene jacket he has I think he has like a blonde ponytail. He's got biker gloves. He has a pet rat. Uh-huh Yeah The rat was great
00:50:53
Speaker
the other route with a great mechanics to go open things for you so you have to like take pointless health damage of going through a fan blade
00:51:02
Speaker
It would find hidden items like in the comic and then it would also like Try to bite enemies and stuff and the enemies would actually like fight back.
Peer Pressure in Gaming
00:51:12
Speaker
I felt every time I felt bad every time the rat fell off the screen It's like oh, no, they killed her I'm a terrible rat owner. Oh An example of that for me of the difficulty and needing to come back a long time afterwards. It was weirdly psychonauts
00:51:30
Speaker
During like the last fucking platforming section before the final boss the meat carnival in the meat circus Having to climb up all the stuff is like the waters rising
00:51:45
Speaker
I don't know if I had a controller or keyboard and mouse or whatever I was doing, but it was impossible for me to jump off the coiling mesh onto a high wire to then do something else. And I tried it so many times consecutively. And I just got so pissed. I was like, now we're done. And I didn't play the game for like another three years. I was like, why did I ever stop playing this game? I love this game. And I got to the section like, oh, now I remember. But I was able to complete that at that time, which was nice.
00:52:15
Speaker
Just like War Flash, but all of it rushes back to it once. Literally just the first level.
00:52:24
Speaker
Yeah, I think I think that's fair. That definitely falls under difficulty. We talked about technical a little bit too, but sometimes there's a mix where like games are harder to play on modern systems because like maybe the engine is tried to the frame rate or something like that. And unless you have like very specific emulation, the game is just legitimately really hard. Right. I don't have great examples of that because I haven't played many games like that recently and DOSBox has fixed so many problems, but
00:52:55
Speaker
That's another consideration. That's where technical and difficulty intersect.
00:53:02
Speaker
I think, actually I do have an example of that. Those are the old XCOM games were like unplayable without configured emulation because they were attached to like the frame rate and every enemy would just take their turn instantly. Like you wouldn't see anything that happened. It would just become your turn. And you'd look around and be like, several of us are dead. I guess they got shot probably or something.
00:53:28
Speaker
It's absurd, but it's crazy. Any game has ever done that. Yeah. Yeah, it was a different time. It was a different time. Any other reasons you can think of? I think we've covered a lot of the big ones. Have you ever been peer pressured into or out of a game? More so into than out of.
00:53:56
Speaker
Can you think of an example where it started, but then you didn't care, didn't finish it. Cause that would, that would link it back up to our topic here with gaming inertia. Right. Astroneer. Astroneer. Oh, interesting. People are like, Astroneer is so fun. So cool. I'm like, Oh yeah, I'll play with people. How do I do this thing? People are like, go watch the tutorial. I was like, okay. Yeah. And then I, my enjoyment from that moment on just quickly dropped off and I'm like, I'm going to refund this pie.
00:54:27
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's fair. I kind of think that's fair on all sides because the tutorial for that game pretty much is mandatory and there's not really a better way to learn those things, but it also is an. Like enjoyment interrupt to quit out of a game and go do a single player tutorial, which is kind of just, I guess, kind of poor game design on their part. Maybe they could have made some things more intuitive.
00:54:55
Speaker
I was going to volunteer Marlow Briggs or something like that for you though, where I just bought you like a garbage game and I was like, Dave, you have to play this. Um, what's the other one? Uh, just ninja or shadow or something like that. It just had a three in it. Oh, is this the one that like you tried to get, uh, myself and Dan to play? I think that was correct. Yeah. It's like shadow warrior three.
00:55:22
Speaker
That's what it was. It was shadow warrior. Yeah. I think we played it for like half an hour. Then that was about right. Yeah. Remember what happened after that? Well, we didn't like, let's take a break and then no one ever brought it up again. Um, I think that fell into the, uh,
00:55:43
Speaker
this game wasn't actually that compelling scenario sometimes you wanna you wanna give something a try because you don't know and maybe sometimes just because you are playing with friends it might just elevate the experience enough to it doesn't matter if it's a shitty game or it's not that fun to play it's just fun to have interactions with people
00:56:02
Speaker
I think I also bought it for you guys, if I remember correctly. It was like very inexpensive. I think it was like 10 bucks or less. Like the cost of one cheeseburger, but like, uh, yeah, even I was like, I'm, I'm fine if you guys leave this at 15 minutes played forever. Um,
00:56:26
Speaker
Sometimes it's just the way it goes. I'm gonna check my Shadow Warrior time. If I can find out which year it was played in. Shadow Warriors 2, 2016, 55 minutes. Okay, that was a lot more time than I thought we'd put into it. I also thought it was three, so I was wrong in many ways.
00:56:50
Speaker
There's definitely been a couple games I got pulled into and then ultimately didn't really stick with it. The Rising, I think is my example. Where it's actually just pretty much the same example you gave. I joined and I was like, it feels like I'm kind of already behind and everybody else has a pace set.
00:57:11
Speaker
And I don't really know what my place is in this game. So I dropped off and then I didn't come back to it. Even when, even though I'm kind of interested in it because of technical reasons and because like they don't tell you what the setting should be recommended for single player play. For instance, there's so much stuff that's configurable and I'm like, I don't want to set up a sandbox. Give me a difficulty setting. Right. Like, so I'm there with you on that one.
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:57:40
Speaker
It's hard to know if you haven't jumped into it, if it's going to match or not. Because sometimes you just got to take the leap of faith, jump into something, and maybe be pleasantly surprised. Or maybe if it sucks, you'll have a funny storage chair later. I'm not saying do this all the time. In general, stick with your gut. But sometimes you need other people to push you outside of your boundaries to realize you can actually expand your boundaries.
00:58:10
Speaker
without it being painful. I'm going to take that one as the life advice for the end of the episode. And I'll avoid making some Assassin's Creed joke, which immediately came to mind when you're like, leap of faith. And I'm thinking about video games.
00:58:29
Speaker
i think it was i will make the joke it's not even a joke it's a reference uh they had an homage to that in witcher 2 where you can see like a white robed assassin who has died after jumping into a hay bell but there was like a rock in the hay bell there's just a corpse thing i think garyll remarks something about it why would you ever jump into it it wasn't even though uh-huh like this is absurd
00:58:55
Speaker
I also saw like a recent clip for, this is entirely off topic at this point, but Assassin's Creed 2 I think, like SEO, where the person was doing a leap of faith, but they came close to like an outcropping.
00:59:12
Speaker
or like a board or something like that you can normally climb on and he just straight up grabs it he's dropping like terminal velocity and just grabs this board with his hands full stop and it's just like Ezio's grip strength or something like that was the title it was it was excellent gotta love those games for that oh uh-huh oh I have one more for difficulty
00:59:36
Speaker
Sure. Yeah. And game that I was having an okay time with, but it just got progressively harder and I stopped caring about the nuance mechanics. Um, honey pop to double date. Mm. That's fair. Yeah. I can't really comment on that, but we'll take a word for it. Um,
01:00:00
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, that's that actually I can comment on that. That's the nature of like connect three games and things like that. They need to increase the difficulty and make it harder to achieve success to keep you invested in it. Right. Yeah. I just, and I'm not a big fan of games or it's like infinite difficulty scaling, right? Like failure is presupposed. It must happen. So maybe it was, that's why I lost. Maybe that level was unbeatable.
01:00:31
Speaker
Maybe. I don't know. But if you guys in the audience have advice for upping our honey pop gameplay, you can send that into soapstone podcast at gmail.com. Prima strategy guide, anything like that. Any help we can get. Um, or you can join the honey pop fan base on Facebook at facebook.com slash soapstone podcast. And as always.
01:00:58
Speaker
We'll see you in the next one. Be sure to get your multiplier up before you start going for points.
01:01:40
Speaker
you