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An Alternate History of Video Game “What Ifs?” | Windbreaker Podcast
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On this week’s episode of Windbreaker, Yahtzee, Marty, and JM8 go look back at some of the biggest "what ifs?" in video game history, including Silent Hills, Starcraft: Ghost, and the Nintendo PlayStation.
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Transcript
Intro & Game Maker Sponsorship
00:00:00
Speaker
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Windbreaker Podcast Introduction
00:00:59
Speaker
Hello everyone, welcome to the Windbreaker podcast. I'm Yahtzee Croshaw in case you've forgotten with me being missing for a week and oh goodness things have changed around here while I've been away. I'm joined by Jay and Marty. Hello. And this week we're talking about video game what ifs the video game universes we almost lived in but don't. What are ah things that we were promised that never actually happened.
00:01:25
Speaker
And what world would it what kind of world would we be living in if they'd actually happened? Our our sliding doors
Video Game 'What Ifs' and Kojima's Influence
00:01:31
Speaker
moments. Yeah, and this was ah originally sparked by yesterday was the 10th anniversary of the ah stealth drop of the PT demo, which overnight ended up obviously ah confirming that it was a Hideo Kojima, Guillermo del Toro, Norman Reedus, Silent Hills.
00:01:47
Speaker
game. ah so that And then also overnight the news broke that Krafton, the publisher and owner of PUBG, has acquired both Tango Gameworks and the rights to HiFi Rush from Xbox and they are fully bringing back the entire studio. Everyone who was laid off is coming back, assuming to make a HiFi Rush 2 and other games. ah So I feel like this would be and also several years from now, if that studio ends up blowing up, we could be like, wow, what if Microsoft didn't drop the ball on that?
00:02:15
Speaker
Yeah. Yes. what ah Let's be uncharacteristically optimistic for now. yeah But let's start with the big one on the thumbnail. yeah What kind of game do you think PT would have been? Because I think one of the things that most characterizes PT is that it is very much a playable teaser, as it says, in that you couldn't really stretch a whole game out of it.
00:02:41
Speaker
You go down a corridor, like a million times, and then a ghost lady nipples your bum. So what if Kojima had to funnel his Death Stranding Energy into a full-on Silent Hill game instead? i As someone who loves PT, loves Silent Hill, and loves Kojima, there is no way the game could have lived up to kind of what we've built the legend up in our head. yeah I feel like it existing not only just as a demo, but as a demo that got removed, it's like a symbol of like counterculture and cool, which is again, silly coming from a multi-million dollar, you know, tech demo created by the biggest video game or tour plus a giant director in gamma del Toro. um
00:03:25
Speaker
So I do feel like for the actual legacy of it, it is probably best that it never existed. ah However, I would still love to see what Kojima, and I guess we're seeing that a little bit with that OD project he's working on for Xbox, that he's bringing in a bunch of horror directors like Jordan Peele and everything. um I'm i am curious what this thing would have been. like I assume it would have been first person, right? But it's Norman Reedus, so you don't cast a very famous Hollywood actor in a first person game, right? That would be silly. Yeah. Well, it would be very cut scene driven, right? I think, um, yeah, Kojima's possibly. Yeah. i guess Yeah. Kojima's never had a problem with pulling the camera out and and taking control away from you.
00:04:06
Speaker
Yeah, there's been lots of codec calls where the camera pointing right at Norman Reedus the whole time. I believe in Hideo Kojima's ability to make horror. There's plenty of horror moments in his Metal Gear Solid games. but I don't really have much faith in his ability to make subtle horror. And that's for some until we're strong. So yeah i'd I'd like to see a horror game by Kojima. I'm not sure I'd like to see a Silent Hill game by Kojima.
00:04:35
Speaker
yeah I think it kind of lends it to it, right? it's I think it would be a mess if this game was ever made, but a beautiful mess. And that's what I want from Kojima games. Like I want it to be kind of bombastic and trying to say more than it kind of can.
00:04:54
Speaker
ah he didt say his Did you see his teaser trailer for his Silent Hill game that he put out? It was just like a collection of weird disquieting imagery and then a giant dude chases the first person protagonist down a corridor. Remember that? Yeah, it was like a Junji Ido, right? the The Japanese artist in mangaka. um I have one of his books right there. I won't run off the door every time. He was going to be working on on some of the spookies and that. um Yeah, it was ah it felt like a very relentless horror experience and I felt the same way about the prologue in Metal Gear Solid 5. It was horror in a very sort of relentless, keep moving you idiot or you'll die sort of way. yeah which is um by Which isn't necessarily Silent Hill, you know.
00:05:42
Speaker
yeah Also, like even with Junji Ito, if anyone's read or knows of any of Junji Ito's work, a lot of it is slow disquieting stuff that builds to a climax rather than relentless horror. yeah I want my horror to make me think and worry rather than be scared, if that makes sense.
00:06:03
Speaker
Yeah, if you know John Giotto's writing, it's very rarely people running away screaming from things. It's people like not quite realizing things are fucked until it's too late. in yeah disease and stuff And it's horrific. Yeah. And it's like, ah yes, we're still living in our small town where all this horrible shit's happening. Christ knows why, but we are.
00:06:22
Speaker
via yeah the The other interesting thing about Kojima being attached to this is ah ah for all the guff he gets for, why doesn't he just make movies? He just makes movies. He's also one of the most like playful game designers. like His his ah creativity when it comes to mechanics and weird shit that is like completely unnecessary but really adds to the texture of a game ah makes me think that he would add a lot of that, which we don't see a lot in horror games. Horror games with like super, super deep mechanics.
00:06:51
Speaker
Tell you what I was rewatching the other day was the at a compilation of what Otacon says in Metal Gear Solid 2 of all the random things you can take pictures of in the starting chapter. You can take pictures of like hunky blokes, yeah hunky bloke posters, and he goes, ah, well, this explains a lot. I'm glad i'm glad you're coming to terms with it. but We kind of need the pictures of the Metal Gear now. Yeah. Amazing. ah i think Yeah, I think it could work. I i would really want There's a lot of times with Kojima games and you see a lot of this in Death Stranding where
00:07:26
Speaker
Sometimes you'll encounter a narrative moment or a conclusion of a story beat and you're still left going, what? Like, what does that mean? And to lead on into the next beat and to give you another hook. And I think that could work in horror. I'm always questioning what's happening, questioning reality. I think that could lend itself really well to a Silent Hill experience. I always thought that of Silent Hill too. I always thought that every cutscene in that game Well, it doesn't explain shit. Every cutscene in that game just sort of raises further questions, and it only, like, makes revelations very, very reluctantly. Even the big revelation that I won't spoil, because there's a remake coming out, is presented through very grainy, poor quality VHS footage, so you only sort of half understand what you're watching until the characters talk about it afterwards.
00:08:19
Speaker
I think Kojima could pull that off, but from that trailer you just described, is that what him and maybe Guillermo del Toro's vision was for for that experience? How do you translate that to gameplay is the question.
00:08:33
Speaker
i he Resident Evil 7 sort of jumped into the shoes PT left vacant. I think that's what, its ultimately, you've probably been like, I completely, especially the first, ah you know, the the first half, like before it kind of becomes an action game against a bunch of mudmen in in like caves and stuff. ah Yeah, yeah, stuff in the house, I think very much. It feels like inspired by PT. And at the same time, i know I believe it's been reported before, and i've I've heard from some folks who are kind of in the know in the Japanese scene that he was, that Kojima was very much toying with some weird experimental technologies um that included like
00:09:12
Speaker
like bizarre Yulez you had to sign to where the game could interact, the game and the console could interact with things in your house. So say that you had like lights or sound systems on Bluetooth or on the same kind of like wireless signal as your game, that the game could interact with like physical objects in your house. ah Like the game could send you messages, could send you texts, could send you Xbox messages, could send you um you know, those kinds of things, which definitely feels like the kinds of things Kojima would be interested in, right? It's like really pushing that boundary and and like pushing the bond between the player and the game forward. Very gimmicky thing.
00:09:52
Speaker
yeah whether Yeah, whether it's something that would be entertaining, that remains to be seen. It's a stone it really works once it doesn't it it's like that those ah sanity effects in eternal darkness where it pretends like you're sitting on the remote and the volume's going down. That only really works once as a horror as a horror tool.
00:10:10
Speaker
and even mans right yeah Yeah, exactly. Even you brought up the opening of Phantom Pain, and I would argue that that scene is really effective the first time. And when you replay it, you're like, oh my God, I'm still fucking crawling. Just get me to the gameplay. What are we doing? um Which, yeah, I don't know if that's a pro or a con if something is really impactful once or if something is replayable. I think it is. I think it's a ah pro because think about how replayable a lot of horror games are.
00:10:40
Speaker
Have you gone back and replayed a lot of your favorite only ones? I like truly love and I'm there for just the entire atmosphere, not for like getting spooked. Yeah. I played Silent Hill to a million times over. That's because you love it, right? You like like that. You like the world. You like the characters. Yeah. Yeah. I like the vibes. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And maybe if this game came out, he would still be with Konami. Konami wouldn't be a ah quasi laughing stock. Bloober wouldn't be making Silent Hill 2. Yes.
00:11:09
Speaker
I think what would have probably happened is what happened generally with Death Stranding. ah Some people were kind of confused by it, some people made it as a kind of a cult hit, and then the world moved on. And now he's making another Death Stranding that's, if anything, going all in on the weirdness again.
00:11:29
Speaker
Yeah. And like you've said with stuff like Star Wars before, like what is, at this point, what does it even mean to be a Silent Hill fan? Like, you know, there's, there's four really good games. There's four pretty mediocre to bad games. There's weird movies. There's remakes. Like there's a lot of milking of the IP.
00:11:47
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So, um, it feels like a thing that's kind of sprawled out. So people are just fans of certain sections of it, not like, Oh, yay. A pyramid that's coming to do that kind of thing. If, if any two creatives could push Silent Hill in a different direction while still honoring what people love about it, I think it is Kojima and Guillermo. Yeah. Um, but it's,
00:12:11
Speaker
It's too lofty. Sometimes I think in life, things are too good and a higher power just smites it because it's just, it's like, no, that can't, that can't be. Oh, no, this, flip we will refuse to let this exist in this imperfect world. Yeah. It's too, it's too good.
00:12:26
Speaker
and But my my I love Guillermo del Toro as a writer and a director. My problem with him is he has been attached to a million things that have never happened, including several games. There was that game with THQ called Insane. There's this. um He is someone who gets very excited and puts his name on something. And then most of those things never exist. Yeah, the Hobbit movies, Frankenstein. Yeah. I think once people get too used to the whole routine of, hey, we're going to recreate this great thing you used to like in the past, it becomes more a game of, um,
00:12:56
Speaker
They always talk about trying to recreate those things, but the most powerful ah uh, sequels, that sort of thing would were always things that found new directions for it that didn't feel like, uh, the same thing again. I mean, I, I was thinking of Silent Hill four. I mean, Silent Hill four feels unquestionably like a Silent Hill game. It's one of my favorite Silent Hill games, but it's so fundamentally unlike Silent Hill two, my most favorite Silent Hill game. And if you, I don't think
00:13:28
Speaker
anyone trying to recreate Silent Hill in this day and age would consider ah something like that. Yeah, and it's a game that is like, when when I did my Silent Hill replay last year, Silent Hill 4 is probably the one that stuck with me the most, just because of how like anti-player it feels, you know, in a really good and effective way. um Like just the back half of that game feels fucking relentless, ah which um works really works really well. Like I think about that back half, especially when they take your safe spot away from you and you're just running back through all of the levels and the things are getting weirder and weirder. And it's just like, I mean, the cools coming at you don't know what to do. And the whole central mechanic of returning to the room is almost like a precursor for the recursive time loop focused, even like the PT looping thing that has been so effectively explored in recent years.
00:14:26
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. The apartment in PT and the apartment and in silent of the room, like feel in conversation with each other and how it degrades on, on subsequent loops. Yeah. Speaking to what Yahtzee just said about, um, you know, trying to recreate.
00:14:41
Speaker
and experience that people that's beloved, like with Silent Hill 2. I think with Yelmo, a good example is The Hobbit and, um you know, the Peter Jackson or the Rings movies. ah Why people were excited was because it in a way, nobody could could imagine anyone else doing The Hobbit other than Peter Jackson and, you know, Weta and stuff like that until they pulled in a singular creative who would 100% have a unique vision and spin for that. And that's why people were so excited um for Gilmo. And I i know for interviews he's done one of the reasons he left the project, which I think he spent like three years on pre-production for before it was because he wanted to do some weird shit and the studio wouldn't let him because they just wanted Lord of the Rings again. Three more Lord of the Rings
Industry Partnerships and Market Impact
00:15:30
Speaker
movies. Yeah. And um I think that's why PT
00:15:35
Speaker
is so exciting is because it's a combination of two unbelievably unique creators taking a franchise that um had kind of stagnated because of it trying to capture just, you know, this one thing after, you know, four and onwards.
00:15:51
Speaker
And that's what made it so appealing and so interesting. And like you said, Marty, it can never live up to the idea of itself because it's just too... It's too good. Yeah. we wouldn't We definitely wouldn't be still talking about it like this if they actually had produced the game. Nope. It would probably be better than half of the Silent Hill games. We're probably not as good as the other half of the Silent Hill games. Yeah. let's so Let's switch to a different What If. What else do you got on your list there, Marty?
00:16:16
Speaker
ah I think one of the big ones with which flinters off into ah different places is the the fabled Nintendo and Sony relationship of the early 90s. Ooh, that was the background on that one.
00:16:28
Speaker
Yeah, in the very early 90s, shortly after the Super Nintendo released, ah playstation who and who was or Sony who were a technology and and hardware manufacturer. They were not a video game manufacturer. ah They approached Nintendo because they wanted to get into the video game space and they agreed to make a thing called the Play Space Station. There was two separate words, PlayStation. It was going to be a console that could play both Nintendo cartridges as well as CD-ROMs, which was becoming sort of the um a format du jour that most people believed in. Nintendo obviously didn't believe in it at the time. ah But at the 25th hour, before they were going to sort of unveil it to the public at CES, the Consumer Electronics Show 1991 in Chicago, Nintendo got up on stage and announced they do not actually are not partnering with Sony. However, they're partnering with Philips, which was a a European company on a thing that would end up becoming the Philips CDI, which is known as the notoriously bad ah like the the the only other console that Nintendo games have appeared on with their bad, uh, bad Mario games and bad Zelda games. Uh, and it, uh, I don't know if the reasonings ever came out, but they've said that Nintendo kind of didn't trust that Sony wasn't using them to sort of get a footing into the games industry, which I think they were. Um, but and you know yeah there was such a thing as mutual usage. Sure. Yeah. Symbiotic relationship. um And I think that provided sort of gasoline for Sony to be like, all right, let's let's go at these people now. And then, you know, cut to four years later, the PlayStation comes out. That ends up as a lot of, you know, Nintendo centric developers from the eight and 16 bit era like Konami, like Capcom, like Square end up being like, well, the experiences we want to make
00:18:14
Speaker
we think we need this technology, CD-based technology to to fit a game like Final Fantasy 7 or Metal Gear Solid or whatnot on it. And so Nintendo loses so many of their Japanese third-party partners on the Nintendo 64 and never fully recover until the, you know, until like the, I guess the Wii era and the Switch now. Like now, obviously, Nintendo and and everyone are in bed together because everyone wants some of that Switch money. um But that is an interesting what-if of of If Sony and Nintendo had been a partnership, would the PlayStation have ever come out? What would that have meant for consoles going forward? If Nintendo had just kind of swallowed their pride and ah understood that CD-ROMs were the storage device of the future and not cartridges? Well, theoretically, they might have completely monopolized the industry, much as Nintendo did in America in the 90s. Could Xbox have competed with a that combination and that power?
00:19:11
Speaker
Yeah. all but Right. And it even spreads beyond that because a Fox D brings up a great point. I believe it was Fox. Oh, no, maybe it was Devongs that the PS2 was primarily like one of the biggest contributors to the rise of DVD as a movie medium um because the PS2 was far and away the cheapest DVD player, especially as it went on and especially around the world. So like without the PS2, it feels like DVD as a whole. might have ah had a hard time ah yeah like really catching on, which then that that those those echo across just the entertainment industry as a whole and not just the not just gaming. Then again, when you think about it, the whole deal broke down because of a fundamental difference in vision between Sony and Nintendo. And even if that was skirted around initially,
00:20:02
Speaker
I'm sure that might have led to schisms further down the line. Nintendo have persisted in pushing their IP as the family friendly ah option.
00:20:14
Speaker
Whereas Sony ah very effectively initially focused ah on a new audience of teenagers and young men. Yeah.
00:20:27
Speaker
Whereas Nintendo were going for much for the broad appeal. Yeah. Even like Sony's big, uh, quote unquote kids game in Crash Bandicoot. Like he had a little more attitude and edge than Mario did. He was for like the cool kids. And then you would have your final fantasies, your metal gears. I mean, Sonic was shooting for the edgier crowd, but, uh, as for the rest of what Sega was doing, Christ knows what their vision was.
00:20:53
Speaker
ah the crushianberg Yeah, it's it's funny cuz that was an era Nintendo um they They they I feel like they got they got knocked down a few times and then they Refused to let go of their things like one of the big reasons was PlayStation wanted like ownership over The the actual physical format and plays in and Nintendo or Sony wanted that and Nintendo didn't want that but then also at the same time like the the what if branching out from that is that was right around the era where Nintendo was like okay we will allow our biggest franchise to have a Hollywood film adaptation and the Mario movie came out and was a a critical and commercial failure and Nintendo was like no one will ever touch our things again we will not make a movie for fucking 20 years 30 years almost yeah took a while to get out of that mindset
00:21:41
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And it just feels like now we're starting to get to that period where they're like, okay, they're trusting folks with, with their movies. Everyone's always like, why don't they let other developers take a hand at their games? Like, you know, they've, they've done that before with Capcom making some Zelda games and stuff, but like, what would ah an indie take on Mario? Like ah find a, find a, a great indie developer and like, what would their take on Mario or Zelda or Metroid be? you do so sort of it Something like Paper Mario.
00:22:11
Speaker
Yeah. Something in that area. Yeah. Just like with their movies, they do it with their games. They just need to find a team that will stick to a very strict set of rules. So Illumination is known for just churning out movies that aren't offensive, that aren't, you know, taking any risks. I really like the Mario movie. Don't get me wrong. Like i I thought it was fantastic for what it was.
00:22:38
Speaker
But Illuminations is that kind of safe bet from an ah animation house that is going to you know stick to your vision. And I think they do lend out some of their IPs to um smaller teams that can have proven that they can you know stick to Nintendo's strict set of rules.
00:22:54
Speaker
yeah it's just interesting Yeah. Interesting times, with like Cadence of Hyrule is always a game I find interesting. That was the Crypt of the Necrodancer team's Zelda game set in that kind of world. And with those rules, that's always so strange to me because I thought that would have opened the floodgates and been like, oh man, they're going to allow their Mario and Zelda things to be like, what can fit into this? And it just didn't.
00:23:16
Speaker
Uh, and so i' I'm always like, uh, I dunno, always, always confused by that. If like Nintendo saw that as a failure or whatever, because it seemed that's not my type of game, but it feels like folks generally like it. Um, so yeah, I dunno.
00:23:32
Speaker
Um, let's, let's do a third one. Okay. Um, do you want to do, uh, do you want to do Blizzard and what would have happened if world of Warcraft when I guess these are sort of two in tandem to me is Blizzard and, uh,
00:23:48
Speaker
Rockstar are both developers where it feels like they had a game that became so huge
MMO Evolution and Player Engagement
00:23:55
Speaker
and such a like a massive source of of revenue that it became one of the only things they could focus on. yeah And that's with World of Warcraft. when it like It's easy to sort of poo-poo that now, like but it is crazy how big that game was. And it's still really big, but like what a like genuine sensation it was.
00:24:16
Speaker
at the time and then the same thing before. Absolutely. Yeah. And then the same thing for Grand Theft Auto Online with Grand Theft Auto 5. Rockstar went from a developer who was releasing ostensibly a game every year with stuff like ah Bully and Ellie Noir and the Warriors and Table Tennis and and offshoots. And then all of a sudden we get GTA 5 slash GTA Online and it takes them almost 10 years to release. ah Red Dead 2 and then another five years to release, five, six years to release GTA 6. So um it's it's the what ifs of what if they had continued to sort of instead of being infatuated by these like unlimited potential profits um stuck to just making smaller creative games.
00:25:00
Speaker
I mean, arguably the success of World of Warcraft is sort of the precursor to live service as a concept. 100%. Every little thing that people hate about live services, chances are it started in World of Warcraft in some way shape or form. Yep.
00:25:14
Speaker
And um addiction loops ah with loot and um how you distribute that, it all began with, well, not necessarily. It was popularized by World of Warcraft because of its mass appeal. So it was after World of Warcraft so did so well. The next Diablo game they made was Diablo 3 in 2012, which was the start of turning that into a live service. yeah that stra and know real money Auction house, Yeah.
00:25:42
Speaker
Yeah, one of the problems there was just because ah Blizzard at their overlords saw how much money WoW was making and just started diverting resources to being like, you're working on a thing that isn't a surefire bet, your team has to work on WoW. like It was sort of like, let's take all of these resources from all these other projects and put them on WoW because this is the thing that can, can there's there's no too many developers on this. Even today, WoW still makes a unbelievably horrific amount of money. yeah um But that's only because it set a foundation in an industry that was really young, the and MMO space, and ah set this bed for them to see the success they have. And this is why we see a lot of MMOs just failing. um Because I think um Josh Streckhase has mentioned this before in the sense of
00:26:36
Speaker
in the effort to make to how much money they make kind of scale. MMOs are not very cost-effective because they require so much more work than most other games. And they make good money, but not as much as if you have a, you know, a microtransaction riddled free mobile game that makes a billion every month or something, right? So they they're making that money because they have that space.
00:27:01
Speaker
Blizzard weren't unsuccessful before World of Warcraft. no They had a bunch of very strong IPs. Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo, ah the Lost Vikings. yeah Yeah, they've they've always been successful, but in the same vein, like Marty was speaking about with Rockstar, they they were churning games out and trying to get into different markets. And then they saw so much success in one thing that everything got diverted to that, um like to the point where where's the next Starcraft?
00:27:32
Speaker
Yeah, they were kind of, they were experimenting for a while. Blackthorn was one of the very early ones, which was like a realistic platformer for on the 16 bit consoles. But they certainly were settling into a groove of strategy stroke, so isometric RPGs.
00:27:51
Speaker
sort of areas. Yeah. And they, they, they tried branching out, you know, there was that Starcraft ghost, which had playable demos at a E3 that we're going to meet itself, isn't it? That was hyped for decades. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm always curious of like, well, this game ever Like, because they've, you know, in in the interim, like Blizzard has made a shooter, a very popular shooter in Overwatch. so like clear And that was, Overwatch started from a, they wanted to make the next WoW, but have it be kind of this like ah utopian superhero MMO, where like by day, you almost did an Animal Crossing-ish, like, oh, you were living like a normal life and doing normal things, and by night, you fought crime as one of your original superheroes. um
00:28:34
Speaker
It's the thing is, is i I like to think of it from a business perspective and a creative perspective in the sense of with ghosts, StarCraft ghosts, can you blame them for not diverting resources to that when World of Warcraft makes more money in a month than that game could ever hope to make?
00:28:52
Speaker
Sure by itself. Right. Well, financially, you can't really justify it, but, uh, you know, we're not all creatively. Yeah. I mean, certainly. Well, and there was no, there was no, like one-to-one that a third person shooter is something that would attract the Starcraft fans, right? Cause Starcraft fans like the game for it's being an OTS or bla yeah or like syria being an e-sport and Starcraft ghost was not going to be either of those.
00:29:19
Speaker
I mean, it would probably have been a syndicate situation where ah you try to appeal to a new audience with an IP that's used to one thing and end up appealing to nobody. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, a real who is this for? it's World of Warcraft has led to a lot of malicious practices in the industry being so prevalent. But I don't necessarily think, and I'm i'm extremely biased because I've been playing WoW consistently for 15 years, but I don't think it is inherently malicious. The amount of content they try to deliver um is always there in service to keep people playing, but also to give them content um that is meaningful um to their audience.
00:30:00
Speaker
So I don't think them diverting resources and trying to keep their World of Warcraft audience happy is something to look down upon. I think it's just a different priority system and it could have been different. We could have got loads of really cool single player, maybe more RTS, ah more genres from them. But would the industry be the same because of that? I think not. I think if we don't didn't have WoW, I think we also wouldn't have some of the best games we've had in the last 15 years.
00:30:29
Speaker
Well, if it hadn't been WoW that started live services, I'm sure it would have been something else. Yeah, would have been POW. POW. On Pond of Warcraft. But MMOs were a thing before World of Warcraft. I just never took off. There was EverQuest, there was Ultima Online, so someone would have found the formula.
00:30:49
Speaker
yeah make it accessible is the formula and appealing to a wider audience. The cartoon new nature of wow and vanilla was the thing that made it appealing. that's ah There's there is a handful of ones where I do feel like so if it wasn't for them, someone would have done it later. Did Minecraft... in minecraft yeah I'm sure it wasn't the first, but it did did it sort of normalize early access?
00:31:14
Speaker
Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. And so like paid early access, like you could pay ah for the game now, but we're going to, it's not done. We're just going to keep making this. And if that was in what, 2009, 2010. And then that is a norm now, right? Like,
00:31:28
Speaker
Every time a new game pops up on Steam, we're like, Oh, is it out? And then we click, we're like oh no, it's out in early access. Um, yeah that kind of thing. Like it's just become, and not just from unproven developers, you know, you we get stuff like Hades in early access and that ends up being a, you know, game of the year material. So, and again, if it wasn't Minecraft, someone probably would have done it. Yeah.
00:31:50
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, but Minecraft, it was a sort of necessity situation because it was a small team trying to fund the development of an experimental idea. yeah So it made sense for them. Yeah. And obviously with no having no idea of how big it was going to become like, I think most of these things, when people make these decisions, when these paths, uh, when these sliding doors moments occur, uh, the parties involved don't realize that they're making either historic blunder or a yeah industry changing success. You know, like, you know, cause wouldn't be interesting if they did. No. Yeah. If you, if you could just open the book and know what was going to happen. Um, yeah. One of the other ones I had written down was, uh, you know, Fortnite was originally announced as just a power defense game.
Fortnite's Evolution and Market Timing
00:32:35
Speaker
Build up your base by day and then little goblins attack it at night, which everything was ultimately a mode in Fortnite when it was released, but that was just a game.
00:32:45
Speaker
that was the That was the paid version. There was like a free to play version and there was a paid version and the paid version was the ah fortress defense aspect and the free version was battle royale. Yeah, which is a a bit of arse backwards with a bit of economizing that's Uh, they probably were kicking themselves over at some point. Yeah. A weird relationship with fortnight and watching it change for its development. Cause I won a game jam years ago and got into the like friends and family, like Alta for it and played it very early on and was like, this is garbage. Um, like even as like a base defense tower defense kind of game, it was very middling and not very deep.
00:33:28
Speaker
and then saw it come out wasn't really impressed and then seeing what it's become today is crazy and just in general i think epic epic games should be commended in how they pivot in all aspects, another example, not just from Fortnite, but with their game Paragon, which is them trying to break into the MOBA scene, which is a third-person um action MOBA with lanes, um very creative. I actually really enjoyed it. um I spent a lot of money paying for, you could buy like a founder's edition and you would get multiple keys to give to your friends, because it's 5v5. And um they kind of fucked up with the development. They kept trying to change it too much to the point where they realized, just like with WoW, they needed to focus on Fortnite.
00:34:12
Speaker
So what they did is they refunded everyone who had ever bought the game all of their money. So they gave me like 200 quid back and we're like, thank you. Um, and also all of the assets from the game, we're going to put them up on the asset store for free and you guys can do whatever you want with them. Yeah. And that is one of the most legit business practices I've ever seen. And I think people overlook that stuff because they go all fortnight bad because it's popular. And I think people should, you know,
00:34:41
Speaker
look deeper some of some of the some of the actual positives that have come from it. Yeah, it's super positive. Yeah. And like a lot of these things, Fortnite blowing up, I think was also the product of a right time, right place and technology being at the right place with yeah social media and streaming and everything.
00:34:57
Speaker
PUBG was the, of course, the first Battle Royale that got big, but it was so fundamentally flawed in so many ways. The yeah the seat the seat was open. The niche was right there. Make PUBG but good. It's the same with WoW. It's the same thing that happened with WoW, like with Ultima and EverQuest, there were MMOs beforehand that were flawed and niche and for a specific audience. And WoW came along with its kind of more cartoony art style and tried to appeal to an audience and specifically children.
00:35:26
Speaker
And that is exactly what Fortnite did. They just swept in, made it child friendly, made it free, go. And see also Five Nights of Freddy's. Yes. The key angle. Yeah. Now we go to Super Chats. I'm sure there's lots of itching to bring up.
00:35:42
Speaker
Yes, for some reason my monitor turned off, which is weird. Yeah, you just went all dark. Oh my God. Well, I think my power strip. I'm gonna hit something. Just go super check. Okay, let's start. Your 37 gives 50 Danish chrono and says inspired by the condiment discussion two weeks ago ever tried Danish style remoulade. In my opinion, superior to oyster sauce on fish and chips, sweet, sour and crunchy.
00:36:10
Speaker
That's the, um, like pickled onion kind of diced stuff. you you off get Give me the rundown. Have you tried Rummelard? Yours? I don't believe so. Marty, have you tried, um, Danish Rummelard? Danish? No, I've had Rummelard as like, uh, is Rummelard the thing that you have on like a po'boy?
00:36:36
Speaker
essentially. It's like a sauce, like a slightly, like you're from a space right now. Apollo boy. That's what you have in New Orleans.
Console Innovations and Sega's Transition
00:36:43
Speaker
Well, originally a French sauce made with green. Louisiana Creole cuisine. Capers, pickle. Yeah. Horse radish. It's kind of like a spicy meal. Yeah. So no, I have not had that, but it does sound nice though. Yeah.
00:36:59
Speaker
Alex Armstrong gives $5 and says what if Sega had decided to partner with Sony or Silicon Graphics? No PS or N64, sure, but the Saturn would be good and Sega would still be making hardware. Ah, but whence would come the good games? Alex Armstrong. Sega games are kinda shit.
00:37:15
Speaker
Yeah, se because I have a of a real fun love for the Dreamcast, which only lasted about two years. um But ah it it felt like it was just a few years too early in that it didn't adopt dual analog sticks right before the industry was getting ready to adopt dual analog sticks for all games. ah It had online capability, but it was only 56K.
00:37:40
Speaker
um Where you know we were gonna start adopting like actual cable internet and it also like went Heavy into arcade ports at a time when like the arcades were kind of dying as a source for new exciting games um And and so the dreamcast had a ton of really amazing games ah in only two years with stuff like Power Stone and Soul Calibur and skies of Arcadia and Shenmue and ah Marvel versus Capcom and everything. um And then it's interesting because obviously they didn't, they only lasted two years. And so many of those franchises and games when they went third party ended up going to Xbox. And that's why when on Xbox suddenly we had the new Jet Set Radio and the new Shenmue and the new Panzer Dragoon and everything. um And then Sonic started whoring himself out everywhere. I like that hedgehog though. go be asked You know what I bought?
00:38:32
Speaker
This weekend, I bought a copy of Sonic 06 for the Xbox 360, because I've never played Sonic 06. OK, well, make sure you do it on stream and catch any reactions in real time. You can't be that bad, right?
00:38:45
Speaker
He kisses a woman. Any game where you kiss a woman's gotta to be cool, right? Okay. Cut out. Can't be that bad. And when you we make shots of your streams of Sonic 2006, we'll just cut in you saying, can't be that bad. We'll go back to in my one my darker room without the light and I'm just chain smoking cigarettes.
00:39:04
Speaker
Look, I was so young, so naive. Little did I know that I was dashing into terror. Oh no. When I would kiss that woman, I would also be a hedged hog. Oh, a hedgehog, what? Anyway, FoxD gives side dollars and says, what if the moral guardians had won their battle and gotten violent video games effectively banned in the US, especially by their loose definition?
00:39:29
Speaker
Well I suspect you'd have seen something much like what happened with the Comics Code Authority when they effectively banned all violence in comic books and the end result was ah the silver age of superhero comics that were all incredibly toothless and ah ah written for children.
00:39:48
Speaker
And then it would probably have had the knock-on effect of creating a vibrant indie scene earlier than ah the indie scene for video games did actually come up out. Yeah.
Gaming Controversies and Olympic Games Challenges
00:39:59
Speaker
I don't know if that indie scene could have existed on the internet though, right? Like those feel kind of... Well, the Amiga owners were all about disk swapping parties back in the whole of the internet. That's true. Are those like key parties? Are those different?
00:40:14
Speaker
Sort of. Yeah. How bad that would make it so naughty though. Like no vi and video games, but you're doing Kelly deals to get your mall combats and yeah and your vi game. Yeah. I mean, it is so a quaint to look at the games that they thought were over poisoning our youth's mind with Mortal Kombat and with like Night Trap. Like it just feels, it just feels quaint compared to everything that exists now everywhere. Oh yeah. Yeah. The Night Trap controversy was just, you know, politicians repeating what certain parties had just told them about it. If I had time, if I could time travel, what I would do is I would take Bayonetta 2
00:40:55
Speaker
to the eighties and let these guys play it and just watch the violence and just like sexual sexual references just blow their minds. The funny thing is like the eighties felt more fine with having that in movies, right? there was There was never a like a violent video game controversy with PC games, which I always think is interesting. These games were as violent as all get out. I mean, just look at something like Space Quest.
00:41:20
Speaker
ah blood and guts all over the place when with all the deaths in those games. And it was almost like done in a sort of wholesome, not really understanding that anyone could be offended by this kind of way. Is that because of the kind of demographic that PC was and still is mostly marketed towards? Well, that's true. teenager Yeah. PC gaming was always like, uh, marketed more at board office workers and, uh, students, i kids. Yeah. Whereas his console games was like, Oh, it's Mario. Everything's Mario. So you can't have anything more than Mario. That's no too much.
00:41:56
Speaker
No. I mean, he does jump on Goombas, which has got to be pretty traumatic. He merges so many of them. He merges so many of them.
00:42:06
Speaker
ah Alex Armstrong gives $5 and says, speaking of Sony, what if Nintendo didn't backstab them at CES by partnering with Philips? Again, no PlayStation, but at least the Zelda CD-i games wouldn't exist. Well, we covered that. It's the Zelda CD-i.
00:42:21
Speaker
I feel like having a couple of bad games doesn't ruin everything. The Zelda CDI games existing is fine. Think of it as ah ah ah like a nice learning opportunity for Nintendo. Never again. I mean, if they might have been more open to third-part working with third parties, had they not existed? Yeah. Maybe we could have gotten... I don't know.
00:42:44
Speaker
ah Sonic and Mario the Olympic Games like 10 years earlier. Did you know there was no Olympics video game this year because the Olympic committee only wanted NFT games?
00:42:55
Speaker
What? and blocking boarding Man, this everything I'm hearing about this Olympics feels like it's been very mishandled. The Olympic committee fucking sucks. I'm gonna be honest. It fucking sucks. They underpay the athletes. They put them up in shitty like twin beds. They don't allow them to bang out even though all they should be doing all week is banging out. They give them gruel for meals. so I assumed like timely video games had just stopped being a thing just because video games take so long to make and have such unpredictable ah release dates now.
00:43:24
Speaker
Yeah, that's and another note I had written down is like, what if, cause we had it in the eighties and nineties, every big movie and TV show got a video game tie. And even if it didn't make sense, like home improvement. you say shit recently row Home alone, getting a game tie in, although a home alone game would be very cool. um Whereas we just don't get that now or we get sort of cheapo ah mobile games because like you said, games take fucking five years to make and movies don't.
00:43:51
Speaker
Most of the Olympics, the Olympics, right? You would, you would finish it and have that game release during one Olympic cycle and then immediately have to start making another one because yeah you've got to have it ready for the next Olympics, right? Yeah. yeah Let's just do what Madden does. There's no new countries, right? yeah might be but but yeah but There might be fewer, more or fewer countries four years from now.
00:44:15
Speaker
I mean, Ukraine might not exist. Yeah. What a mess. What a mess. Ah, ah gives 199 and says, Yahtzee, I hope you didn't get COVID.
Health Issues and Gaming Technology Speculation
00:44:25
Speaker
I do too. Ah, i i look I want to say I just had a cold over the course of the last week. You said you felt a little sick beforehand, right? So it's not like you went on vacation and then picked something up. No, I had to like a sore throat like the day before we left. So I guess I gave a lot of people a cold while I was on vacation on the beach.
00:44:44
Speaker
just gobbing in the sea like it ain't no thing. I got, I got hit with COVID last week. So I had, I had the COVID turrets all week. It was terrible. No one wants COVID. Yeah, cheerful. Uh, Hjort87 gives 20 Danish krona and says, what if 3D had never happened? How would 2D be now? Much like the 2D games are on like indie games, which are still mostly 2D if you'd notice. I feel like, I feel like that's almost,
00:45:09
Speaker
That's one that we could see. Nintendo still makes 2D games. you know we still have ah you know Mario Wonder came out last year. The new Zelda game coming out next month is top-down tilt shift. um and Then, like you said, indie games are carrying the torch of... I feel like the indie space as a whole feels like a what-if ah alternate universe.
00:45:29
Speaker
it For me, it's analog sticks. If analog sticks never existed, we wouldn't have the 3D games that we have today. We would see a lot of um potentially 2.5D games and using the 3D medium to visualize specific things, but we wouldn't have the traversal and camera controls that we would currently. On consoles, maybe. The mouse and keyboard helped make 3D work on PZ. Very, very true. Yeah.
00:45:53
Speaker
But then for mass producing those games for such a niche market back in the day, not entirely viable. But yeah the joint, you know, being able to then port them because there's analog sticks. um may a tc game PC, gaming and niche markets. Surely everyone has a PC. Yes, it was. It was a niche market back in the day. Fair enough. It is funny. and my My first episode of the archive is going to be about um Mega Man Legends, which was a 3D action and adventure game, ah third person ah built at a time when the Dual Shock didn't exist yet. And so it was you were you were controlling a 3D character in a 3D space with a decidedly 2D
00:46:38
Speaker
Input method and it came out the same year in the u.s Within two months of ocarina of time and then playing those side by side is just like oh my god like I I feel like mega man would just be embarrassed afterwards Playing playing ocarina time and being like, oh, this is how you move in a 3d space. They did it. Yeah Well, uh toffee's having a good morning, oh no, you should enjoy your toffee lesson Uh, Joel Rowe gives two euros and says, what if Metal Gear but without Kajimbles? Well, without Kajima's trademark little touch of madness, I very much doubt anything interesting could be made out of a game where you play a soldier who goes and beats up some enemy terrorists and blows up their weapon and then gets out again.
00:47:23
Speaker
Because there's a million of those games and they're not interesting. And it's it's Kojima's weird little eccentricities that make it interesting. I mean, mentioned um the main villain of Metal Gear 1 is called Big Boss, which for anyone else would have just been like a throwaway, just generic ah Bond villain sort of name. But Kojima insisted on sticking with it. Yeah, making games where you play as him, learn the origin of the boss. Learn the origin of the name Big Boss.
00:47:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:56
Speaker
Uh, Alex Armstrong gives $2 and says, what if virtual boy was good VR tech accelerates? Well, it would have needed to have accelerated before the virtual boy was any good. Alex Armstrong. Cause everyone, the whole thing that brought down the virtual boy was that the, it was trying to do a tech thing way before the tech was viable. It didn't have like head tracking is like the important thing. And it didn't have that. You just had to mount it on a desk.
00:48:21
Speaker
and crouch down and stick your eyes into it. It's funny because Nintendo, it feels like Nintendo does that a lot. They arrive a little bit early and sometimes it works out like the original Game Boy to me feels like a thing that arrived a little bit too early, but people fucking loved it.
00:48:38
Speaker
And then obviously it was iterated upon and then with the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance, it became you know of something that almost everyone owned. Whereas ah with with virtual reality, it feels like they they got there too early. Then with motion controls, it still felt like they got there too early, but it didn't matter because people were like, I can bowl with grandma in my living room.
00:48:57
Speaker
and so You know, VR's just cursed. It's a vicious cycle of nobody's making games because people don't have the headsets and nobody has the headsets because there aren't any games on it. I mean, saying that my mum bought a quest free
VR and Motion Controls in Gaming
00:49:12
Speaker
like last week and I was playing it with her yesterday and she's been playing like horror puzzle games and beat saber. And she's, I'm just like, fuck yeah, mum, get it.
00:49:25
Speaker
Interesting. Get in. She saw an advert on TV and was like, where someone was like, Oh, I'm gonna go for a run. And they went outside it and it was raining. And somebody was like, Oh, yeah, I'll join you. And then put a VR ah headset on and did like a workout. And she was like, that's fucking awesome. I want one. So I'm really proud of her. Tom Cassidy gives side dollars and says one of my biggest what ifs is Blizzard picking a different business partner or staying independent always seemed weird. They went with Activision.
00:49:51
Speaker
Yeah. What were Activision doing at the time they merged with Blizzard? but um I shouldn't wonder. No, I mean, yeah, it's, I think they just had, were flush with cash and, and they were like able to, to, yeah, that partnership always felt like, li like Blizzard always felt like a developer that was, will release it when it's ready kind of thing. and Whereas Activision is like, you will release it annually every year. It does not matter if it's ready. Um,
00:50:21
Speaker
you know, we will make money every year on these things. And, uh, yeah, they just, they, they truly feel at odds with each other. Uh, TM 558 gives $10. What if motion controls never took over the industry after after the success of the Wii? Or maybe a better question would be what if the Wii was never successful? I think it's, I'd be hard pressed to call the Wii retro successful in retrospect. It was successful at the time. Hmm.
00:50:49
Speaker
Yeah, it was financially successful and yeah people loved it at the time. Yeah, in hindsight, no one's like, man, that Wii library, one of the greatest game libraries of all time. no one's as an As a node on the tech tree, it was kind of a dead end in my view.
00:51:03
Speaker
Yeah. And the worst thing about it is, that's a good way to put it actually. And the worst thing about it is everyone else followed because they were like, you know, everyone, I'm sure everyone's boss was like, you need to make, you need to do things motion now, whether it's for the Wii or, or connect to your PlayStation move or anything. Um, yeah, said that whole phase of gaming, like sort of put gaming on hold for a bit before everything got back to normal. Once everyone got over that particular disease.
00:51:30
Speaker
I don't know. I mean, the Wii, I mean the Wii U best not thought about now. But then once we had that out of the way, we got the switch and now everything's back on track. Nintendo is such a unique company in the sense that we have seen them absolutely peak and then nosedive to the point where they're like, if this next console doesn't do well, we're fucked.
00:51:50
Speaker
Like with the Wii, they were like, we the Wii has to succeed, right? like Because of um the failure of the GameCube and stuff like that. And then, wow, the Wii's done great. We're on top of the world. Oh, fuck, the Wii U. If the Switch doesn't succeed, we're fucked. Oh, the Switch is the best-selling console of all time. So it would be interesting to see with the Switch 2, whatever they do, if it is also going to be a weird nosedive when they try to push the technology too far. They have weird VR controllers or some bullshit.
00:52:18
Speaker
Yeah, we use another example of Nintendo jumping the gun a bit, trying to merge the handheld and living room console experience before the tech was viable. It finally makes sense though, because their handhelds were always successful. Even with the slow decline of stuff like the N64, the GameCube or the Wii U, the handhelds were always beloved and sold really well. Whether it was Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, DS, 3DS. So kind of marrying those two tracks finally with the Switch and whatever the Super Switch will be, I think made sense.
Nintendo's Console Journey and Frustrations
00:52:54
Speaker
I'm really excited to see what this switch is. I feel like we're very close to seeing what it is, and I'm just very excited to see what it is. Alexander Strong is $5 and says, game design question. You guys hate holding down a button to confirm things, but what about, are you sure pop-ups either prevent accidental pressing? Qualifiers.
00:53:11
Speaker
um ah you ah In certain situations, yes, for actions that can be regrettable, I think. They yeah they should be there, like quitting. should be a thing. Yeah. It's when the whole down button is for absolutely bloody everything in like every single contextual interaction, every single ah switch of a menu screen. That's where it gets up my nose.
00:53:34
Speaker
And also with qualifiers, it's where, where do you start? Is the automatic pop up? Does it but start on yes or no? So if you spam, if you're spamming, does it bring you through it? That would be exciting. How was the question phrased? Uh, did you get that or do you want me to repeat that? Um, did you get that? Yes, I got it. Do you want me to repeat that? Yes, I want you to repeat it. So like,
00:53:56
Speaker
We did this when we trained Earthbound. I was really upset about, um you would try and get through the dialogue and then they would say, I can't remember what it is. You'll probably remember like, yeah do you want me to repeat that? And the qualifier begins on yes. So me trying to get through the dialogue, we'll just restart the dialogue. Yep, yep. Oh, yes. My made up time does that. It's like, yeah. That's the classic Ocarina time example. It's also the problem of like controllers, just it'll be like hit B or A, and depending on what you're playing on, those might be different buttons where they are, yeah like playing on Xbox or playing on, yeah. Names not fits, welcome to Tip Jar. ah Dr. Thiog is $5 and says, hey, Yats, what's a video essay you recommend? I know you enjoyed them a long while playing, so I want to know one you enjoyed. Well, I get asked that a lot, so let's just... Take off.
00:54:48
Speaker
Maybe just ah look at what I've been looking looking at lately.
00:54:55
Speaker
Mostly weird the viral source filmmaker movies looks like. I get bored very easily. my ah ive i've I've watched a lot of those. Of the source video ones? Yeah.
00:55:11
Speaker
I've recommended this on a few different podcasts, but my favorite video essay from the past probably a couple months is this Any Austin video about um where do the rivers in Hyrule go and come from? and He did a similar video about Skyrim. and He does these sort of like weird um quasi-educational, but very entertaining and well-made videos about weird topics like that. So he takes tears of the kingdom and breath of the wild and uses actual like river science. There's got to be a word that's not river science, but he uses river science ah to figure out what's going on with these bodies of water. River science, eh? River science, you know, science of the river. There's got to be like a fancy word for that. Like some psychology. Riverology?
00:55:57
Speaker
What's the Greek word for a river? What is the study of rivers called? Hbomagai. Go watch him. There you go. and hydro Hydrology. Hydrology? that's what i That's just water, isn't it? it just water it's Hydrology, the study of the movement of water and its occurrences on Earth is called hydrology. Okay, movement of water, that is. And their effects on the landscape is covered by geomorphology.
00:56:25
Speaker
Huh. So I guess if we just major in both of those, rivers will get covered. You've got a master of water and earth. Yeah.
Kojima Productions and Metal Gear Series
00:56:34
Speaker
Anyway, permafrosted 79 member for four months in tip jar, thank you very much. And then Kusta gives $10 and says, my personal what ifs is if Metal Gear Solid Rising had come out. Despite loving Metal Gear Rising Revengence, the original was being made by Kojima Productions, what was given to Platinum.
00:56:51
Speaker
Well, Platinum certainly put their own ah sort of sting on Metal Gear Rising Revengeance. And I remember saying at the time, it doesn't feel like Kojima's brand of weirdness because Kojima's brand of weirdness is to take itself completely seriously throughout. Yeah. And that's clearly not what Platinum were doing with Metal Gear Rising Revengeance.
00:57:15
Speaker
Yeah. And that's also one of those, like, if Kojima had to to fully devote himself to directing Rising, then he wouldn't have moved on to Ground Zeroes and Peace Walker and Phantom Pain. So that's like the end of Metal Gear Continuity Rising. That's the last checkup we get on these characters.
00:57:38
Speaker
Turns out Otacon became a ladies man. He did. He was always the ladies man. yeah thought You know what ladies like? Dudes who piss themselves when they're in lockers. Well, you know, the girls like the sensitive man. Also girls who love otaku conventions. What are you guys on about? How are you picking up ladies? Pissed myself at otaku conventions. Yeah. yeah ah I owned a bar and one came in.
00:58:06
Speaker
Also, there's a ways to do it. Shit dog player. Holy shit. That's how I'm at. That's how I met my wife. What a great story. Yeah. Lost a lot of money on that bar, but got an awful lot of tail.
00:58:24
Speaker
yeah pe like The American dream, honestly. a yeah ah Diane Spencer gives 20 pounds. and says, welcome back, Yahtzee. Thank you, Diane Spencer. I missed you all when I was on the beach having a paddle in the Pacific Ocean. Yeah, with your family, your wife, kids. Yes. Look at this old little video, Yahtzee. Look at baby Yahtzee. What are you doing over there? Oh my goodness. I still have that circle beard thing. You look AI. You don't look real.
00:58:57
Speaker
Yeah. And somebody's made this to like a discredit you. He's old AI arts. He's going to, thanks. If I had my bold spot, then
00:59:07
Speaker
The MacIntyre gives $5 and says, Tim Walds endorsed a high school Valorant team and his wife used to have us to have to steal his Dreamcast.
Gamers in Society and Game Definitions
00:59:17
Speaker
Any thoughts on having a gamer in the White House? Well, I have to know what he was playing on the Dreamcast. What do you think he was playing? out Typing of the dead? I suspect he was all just sports games and Sega Bass fishing, you know?
00:59:29
Speaker
Yeah, you just wanted to work at the docks real every man. I mean he was he's like a sports coach He was just in it for the football games. I think now now we've got to get into the difficult question of how do you define? a gamer because lots of people have these weird opinions where If they know true Scotsman argument coming on. Yeah, like I say might I will like this it's do i think that anyone who plays games is a gamer but a lot of people think that your mum who only plays candy crush from mobile games on her ipad or you know frat boys who only play madden and you know nba games they aren't gamers they're just you know sports fans looking for that's the right isn't it I mean, the fact is everyone plays video games basically these days, even if it's just, you know, the New York Times crossword on their phone. I think using the term gamer is a little bit reductive these days. I agree.
01:00:25
Speaker
I think there should be a classification for people who are in the hobby, as it were, hardcore gamers. Capital G gamers. There's no word for just movie watchers. Everyone watches movies, right? Well, true. Do you think there should be a cinephile kind of turn? Cinephile. Yes. Movie buff. Buff. I think core gamer works for me. Not necessarily just hardcore. Core gamers as in the core audience for games.
01:00:55
Speaker
For me, it goes like Candy candy Crush, and NBA, 2K Jam, fucking nerd. And most people I know are in that last category. And then one level blowout is unhealthy. It is your total identity. Please get another hobby. 100%. Final Fantasy is my life.
01:01:15
Speaker
There you go. Alexander Trump gives $2 and says, what if Dark Souls never became phenomenal? Phenomenal. Phenomenal. Phenomenal. Yeah, that'd have been interesting. Under what circumstances would it have not become phenomenal? Because this was you one of your ideas, wasn't it? What if Dark Souls hadn't tried to be multiplayer as well? Because we think that's what sort of made it stand out.
01:01:39
Speaker
Well, if, like, if, if, say after Demon's Souls, the Fromsoft just never didn't follow that track, because before then they were very, Fromsoft just felt like very
From Software's Evolution and Steam's Impact
01:01:52
Speaker
scatterbrained, right? They would do in a game like Cookies and Cream, and a game like Echo Knight, and a game like yeah Armored Core, and they would take, like, work for higher projects. um And so,
01:02:04
Speaker
It feels like if they hadn't stuck with it and been like, let's try to refine this with Dark Souls 1, which ends up blowing up and and kind of becomes a cornerstone for... ah a lot of reaction. It was, I mean, it wasn't Dark Souls, one big, but Demon Souls, I remember I had a pretty big release that a lot of people were excited about. Yeah, but I feel like if it weren't for it, it wasn't because we didn't start seeing the games like heavily inspired by the Souls formula until stuff like Lords of the Fallen, which wasn't until 2015 or something. So that wasn't
01:02:38
Speaker
inspired by Demon's Souls, that was inspired by Dark Souls. And so I just, yeah, I don't know, you know, what 3D, maybe more games are pulling instead of pulling from Souls formula or pulling from the Arkham formula. It does feel like there was a time when a lot of people were going to be doing arkame combat. um There was, I also bought this weekend the Captain America game for the 360, which was based on the first Captain America movie, which is just very much a blatant Arkham Asylum ripoff. yeah Like the combat is exactly the same. And so I feel like there is a world where in the same way that, ah you know, a Far Cry or a GTA 3 kind of just laid the groundwork for what those genres were going to look like going forward, that every game just had Arkham combat, that it was just this kind of rhythmic combat that you that you do with a bunch of goons surrounding you.
01:03:31
Speaker
Yeah, there's lots of there's lots of elements of souls that has been replicated to a degree that has been positive for the industry. And the question we were po posing before this stream started was how much of an influence did the fact that Dark Souls had multiplayer impacted its success because I was mentioning that I believe a lot of people can only get through Dark Souls while using the multiplayer. And a lot of the times when they play the the series for the first time, they need that multiplayer aspect, either summons or getting in co-op partners, to be able to defeat certain aspects of the game. And if it didn't have that, how many people would have been turned off from the first area? And we've spoken about it before, I think I mentioned it last Windbreaker, I was on with
01:04:18
Speaker
I played and wanted to play Dark Souls when I was you know younger and I couldn't get past Undead Asylum or the very beginning of the game when I was dumb and didn't realise what the game wanted from me. So if multiplayer wasn't there, if that buffer wasn't there, how many people would actually see its completion and you know recommend it to their friends and such? and most certainly would not have finished the Shadow of the Year tree DLC. Because I do the right spots, about five tries, and I'm like, all right, I'm calling homies. I'm calling in some some random homies who are better at this game than I am. FoxD gives side dollars and says, what if Steam never happened and broke the door down for indie solo devs to reach a huge audience like Stardew Valley, Undertale or other indie hits?
01:05:00
Speaker
I suspect it would have been another case of if it hadn't been them, it would have been someone else. Because, you know, I mean, the inevitability of digital streaming ah was in more than just the video game industry. Video, for example, Netflix and all of that, that was all coming. Sound, you know, video games have always been at the forefront of tech. So I think some other distribution service for digital only video games would have been an inevitability.
01:05:30
Speaker
great I do think about what would have ah what would have happened if Steam had been a little more um vigilant with their curation or had any kind of curation to begin with, um because there was, what was the Steam green light? Yes. It had to be voted on by the community.
01:05:54
Speaker
Yeah. um Very easily circumvented though. yeah yeah But I'm just like wondering, like what if Valve, you know instead of having their entire studio work on games that never see the light of day, ah you know had a like a robust curation team. and And when you went to Steam, it was like,
01:06:14
Speaker
the games we're allowing through are the games that like we've given our seal of approval of and not 10,000 clones of whatever the next big hit is um that you have to wait in order to find something cool. You'd have needed to throw a lot of resources at a more in-depth curation system. Yeah. And no one does that. Like, Swinton and Dender doesn't do that curation. Because if you go to the new, like, people on the the Switch online store, if you search by a newest game, it's all just like,
01:06:41
Speaker
clones of of fucking suite and puzzle games and games that are normally $20, but on sale for 99 cents because they'll always appear at the top of the, Ooh, what's a good deal right now? This piece of shit that isn't even worth 99 cents. Popular tabs are a benefit to them and us as consumers in the sense of.
01:07:03
Speaker
When thousands of games a day get put up on Steam, ah that the only the ones that are selling well will go on the popular tab. And as far as I'm aware, most people use the the new and popular tab rather than the new releases to browse for new games to play. So they kind of do the community themselves, in a way, are voting with their wallets and doing that filtering for free. um So then Valve don't need to pay for that. And it's the same for Nintendo or any other storefront where They're just going to move moment push the popular stuff. Yes. And then the charts are just full of porn games because people got to have their wank. Yes. Got to get a wank off. Got to get their wank.
01:07:42
Speaker
Sonic kissed a girl in the school. My daddy game makes me where Sonic is as a girl. what time you know yeah down Well, it's I think the fact that this topic of wanking brought you to that tells us more about you than we really wanted to know about it. yeah I'm just saying I'm just saying what none of you are brave enough to say.
Successful Movie Tie-ins and Game Accessibility
01:08:00
Speaker
Moving hastily on Peter Parker SL gives $5 and says what if Batman Arkham Asylum was at the Dark Knight movie tie in game that it was originally planned to be? Would it have still been as successful?
01:08:11
Speaker
Yeah, that was, I mean, that would have probably been the best movie tie-in game. Well, no, it wouldn't have. because they was stu yeah there was a There was a planned Dark Knight movie tie-in game that was being developed by Pandemic Studios in Brisbane and ah the bottle sort of bottom fell out of that and it never happened.
01:08:29
Speaker
but So, movie tie-in games are made specifically to attract a wider audience to a specific game to make money. But what was the state of movie tie-in games back then? Because for as long as I've known, I know that a movie tie-in game is going to be absolute wank.
01:08:44
Speaker
it's a It's like a constant of of space and time. I mean, Arkham Asylum was a tie-in game. It was Batman. Everyone knows Batman. Yeah, Batman, but it's not a movie tie-in, right? It feels like, on a certain level, a tie-in with Batman the Animated Series.
01:09:03
Speaker
I take that i dig down even some of the voice casts and everything yeah yeah ah think specifically because it's not tied to a movie, it kind of did what they would want a movie tie-in game to do, which is appeal to a wider audience. And people who enjoy that IP, you think, oh, this isn't just a one-for-one recreation of the scenes from the movie with shit gameplay in between.
01:09:24
Speaker
it you know, an exploration of this character I like in a new environment doing something new. And I think that makes it more appealing. Yes. I mean, that was the Escape from Butcher Bay success story, wasn't it? Yeah, exactly. yeah The one tie-in game that's good that everyone always brings up.
01:09:42
Speaker
Well, there was a couple more. EA, who would go on to make the Dead Space Team, did those two Lord of the Rings games that I thought were really good for the two towers and for Return of the King. Spider-Man 2, of course. But in Spider-Man 2, the game, the plot of the movie kind of falls by the wayside for a lot of that. yeah I would argue like oh ah a weirdly ambitious one was Michelle Ansel's King Kong game.
01:10:04
Speaker
What a game. I love that lovely my game. Yeah, it was probably my favorite launch game for the 360. It literally just arrived today for me, but I had a weird weekend. I had a weird weekend. I got sad and I bought a bunch of old 360 games. Wait, how many hedgehogs kiss women in that game? We have to find out. How many Adrien Brody's kiss? How many Naomi Watts's? Oh my God. but If you stream that, if we do it on second wind, I would love to be there. you know You're going to be my King Gonk, the movie, the game. Fuck yes. You can be my Naomi Watts.
01:10:32
Speaker
ah Tsunami Duscher gives his idiosyncratic no text super chat. Thank you Tsunami Duscher. Thank you Tsunami Duscher. And then alex Alex Armstrong comes back with $2 and says beat starstruck vagabond. Loved it, especially Melinda. Love hearts. um Do you have a favorite waifu in the game that you created of the waifus you made? Well, if it were me, I'd always want to re romance Cassandra Kairos. He's my favorite.
01:11:01
Speaker
ah ah Yes, that's right one. It's good. Check it out. It's still being updated. I'm currently working on an update that will add dyslexia friendly fonts that Jay has been kind enough to consult on. Yes. I should have a build for you to look at pretty soon, Jay. Beautiful.
01:11:19
Speaker
Is it too complicated to ask what makes a font ah dyslexia friendly? Just more readable than my horrible pixel are. Okay. Dyslexia fonts are a whole thing. Um, we mean, you're talking about this, like I'm probably a prime person to talk about this one being dyslexic and also taught, uh, mentally handicapped and dyslexic children for years and use these techniques to teach them. Um, it's a whole thing. There's no one cure all for these kinds of systems, but there are definitely directions I could advise and suggest.
01:11:50
Speaker
to to make them a little bit more readable. um good And the thanks Yahtzee is out to go to actually make that a thing because of the ways GUI works is, you know, crazy. And it should be appreciated. So yeah, you'd all but better or bloody appreciate it. I want to see some negative reviews turned around after this.
01:12:11
Speaker
ah Jonathan Griffin gives $10 and says been listening to old ZPs and thinking about puzzle games that make you feel clever and was wondering if Yahtzee's played Opus Magnum or the like. Been playing it lately and it's very much that. I don't think I know that one. Opus Magnum is the alchemy, alchemy game. yeah Yeah, that's the one that looks like a bunch of marbles. like Yeah, they like turn into each other and stuff. It looks like the Final Fantasy X sphere grid.
01:12:37
Speaker
The upgrade. Yes, that looks very complicated. Yeah. No, I don't play that. I'm sure it would make me feel clever. Or dumb, you don't want to feel dumb. There's a thin line between clever and dumb. I know I kind of like feeling clever in a more story based setting. So I can there be characters who can go Oh my goodness, what a clever boy and pat you on the head. You should just stop playing porn games.
01:13:04
Speaker
Yeah, just send a message to the slack that says I solved a tough puzzle and we'll all say what a clever boy.
01:13:13
Speaker
so us tech I want to be a detective. I don't want to be a fucking whatever the fuck you are when you play Opus magnum. An alchemist. alchemist I want to be like a hard boiled Cigar smoking and Tresco wearing detective like Bob Hoskins in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Yeah. Just play murdered soul suspect over and over. The only weird casting, but I think it worked. ah Yeah. my bo time yeah I just like the picture of Robert Zemeckis walking into a studio and saying, hey, I want to make the most expensive fucking film to license in the universe, and I want it to be a neo-noir ah ah set in the 40s, with the main character, a grizzled, and stereotypical American cigar-smoking private eye, being played by a short, fat British man.
01:14:03
Speaker
um There's nothing I respect more than someone releasing the biggest movie of a decade and then having carte blanche to make the next thing and the next thing being batshit. Like him using his, this one's for me after ah after Back to the Future, like that's a great use of it. Beautiful.
01:14:20
Speaker
oh um
01:14:26
Speaker
SVS Guru 2000 gives five euros and says, if you went back in time and showed the devs of the original Mortal Kombat the newest iteration, I wonder if they would approve the excessive gore. Yeah, you probably traumatized anyone making games in the 90s. You'd be like Oppenheimer at the end of Oppenheimer? Yeah, all Kombat games now.
01:14:41
Speaker
What have we done? Yeah. Yeah. Dr. Theo gives $5 and says happy 10 years to FNAF four days ago.
Horror Games and Streaming Culture
01:14:48
Speaker
Makes me wonder what would modern horror games look like if that franchise never existed. Much the same Dr. Theo, because what that was doing was carving out the niche of mascot horror for kiddies. Yeah. And that's still... I don't think it's much of a design of horror games, in my opinion. No.
01:15:03
Speaker
I do think, obviously, this is just removing technology altogether, but what genres would and wouldn't exist and would be popular and would be popular if ah the proliferation of streaming didn't happen.
01:15:16
Speaker
Yeah, yeah i think those types of horror games very much at the stream bait thing. Yes. Sure, sure. And even like something like Fortnite, like when when Ninja and Drake streamed it or whatever, that sort of had it hit a new a new Zenith. And so again, if that didn't exist, what would have what would happen there? Acoustic Ursa Major gives $5 as Yahtzee on Wordle. What's your opinion on words with multiple letters used such as a few Wednesdays ago, Penne?
01:15:47
Speaker
Uh, yeah, it's fine. Just be smart enough to consider that might be a possibility because you guys are major. I'm sorry if you're not smart enough. I will almost always burn a few guesses before I try the same letter though. Yeah. I can't spell my own name. Hmm. Jay. Okay. That's yeah well, it's pretty easy. It's just one letter. Oh, shit. Thanks. the letter One letter word. You said my name and I still fail it. Yeah.
01:16:18
Speaker
Uh, your 87 gives 20 Danish Corona and says mayo, cabbage, onion, pickles, curry, mustard, et cetera. Oh, that know that what la but sounds like big Mac special sauce. That absolutely does that. That is what it is. Yeah. Hang on a sec. I'm just checking. Today's word was. Today's word was remoulade. I got today's word one four. Oh, I haven't done today's word yet. Bear with me.
01:16:43
Speaker
ah with a yeah okay what start with boys that the first move of a cowardice the first made the coward well using the word a do a ie because you burn a bunch of the ah vowels and so you can then start with what the what the vowels I'm sorry, you hate winning, Marty.
01:17:04
Speaker
Okay, the S is right and the I is right. It does not shock me that ah Jess says she uses the word death every time. Death is actually a pretty good one. Having E and A and a T, like that's ah that's helpful. It's missing an S, almost all my first words have an S. Jess's is even death or kill.
Indie Game Challenges and Market Saturation
01:17:25
Speaker
Just something. It's not a good move to use two letters, two of the same letters in the first word.
01:17:35
Speaker
Nearly there. Bear with me. and You're doing great. We're all very proud of you. Yeah, don't worry. We've got nothing on. Yeah, no one has anything better to be. You know what? I feel bad for the people listening to a podcast right now. So for those of you listening to a podcast, to to sort of paint a picture of what's happening, ah we're sitting here and Yahtzee's looking at his phone and he's trying to solve the world for the day.
01:17:58
Speaker
Yeah, I've got an S and an I in the first and third place, and there's a K that goes somewhere. But I don't know, it doesn't go in the last space. ah Let me see, I'm pull i'm pulling mine up. I'm not giving you any answer or anything. I literally don't even know how this fucking game works. So I can't help. I guess the question that prompted this was prompted today for a reason. Did you get it? Yeah.
01:18:28
Speaker
Yeah. I got it. It was a skiff. Oh, right at the buzzer. No, I have one guess left. Oh, I didn't see the bottom row. Yeah. As in the boat. Yeah. Sorry if I spoiled that for you, everyone. You know what? You didn't spoil sign a little too. So that's a lot of this point in the day and you haven't done your word or what the fuck are you doing?
01:18:51
Speaker
I know. i usually I'm usually done it by today. I usually do it when I'm having my extremely regular morning dump, but I guess I forgot today. Extremely regular. ah Dr. Theo gets $2 and says, what if Cave Story came out today? Probably go pretty unnoticed, Dr. Theo, to be honest, because that was like that was the first indie pixel art retro style platformer, and it basically had the market to itself. Yeah.
01:19:16
Speaker
That's why I think about certain early ish indie hits. Like ah we saw that ah they they announced that the the Braid remaster that came out a couple of months ago, apparently bombed. and And I think it's because like when Braid first came out, there was really nothing else out there like it. um Whereas now like a 2d puzzle platform with some time manipulation and a story that that really, really makes you think it feels like one of those gets released every week. Right. So it's, it's much harder for it to stand out.
01:19:47
Speaker
But also, like the the games that pushed the industry forward, because Bray did push the industry forward in a way, um but games that do that from huge IPs like Ocarina of Time are remembered because of the long-lasting franchise they are attached to, not specifically because of the mechanics.
01:20:04
Speaker
Sure. They introduced and stuff like that. And I think that's something that in these myths, instead of doing stuff like, wow, or, you know, Nintendo doing where they're attaching themselves to these IPs and trying to bolster that and make that their thing, they tend to go and make one offs repeatedly. And that doesn't lend itself to to repeated releases, in my opinion. So they should have made it Braid, Acarina of Time? Braid to Electric, Time of Bolillo. There you go.
01:20:32
Speaker
Weird side question, ah going back to Wordle. Do you think that'd be mileage in a podcast or extreme of me talking to someone while I do the New York Times crossword?
01:20:44
Speaker
Like talking about the crossword or like trying to interview someone separately. And we put, and we put the crossword up on the screens. Everyone can see me solving it. And, uh, we could just talk about whatever topics come up as we solve. Let's just do that. thing
01:20:59
Speaker
i kind of like that It's just like, uh, uh, like a casual morning dream yeah stream. It only lasts as long as it takes you to do the prosper puzzle. Yeah. ah they like the email channels There's probably YouTube channels of people who just do the New York Times crossword on camera. Yeah.
01:21:19
Speaker
Anyway, SFUSGO2000 gives five euros and asks, what if internet speeds never exceeded 56K stroke ISDN?
Game Design and Franchise Longevity
01:21:28
Speaker
Would we have been spared all this live service, always online microtransactions nonsense? You wouldn't be having the show right now. No, we wouldn't be streaming. Everyone would still be reading web comics that load very slowly. Yeah.
01:21:44
Speaker
streaming video would still be like little postage stamped low resolution videos in the corner of the screen.
01:21:53
Speaker
Yeah, I just I don't imagine what that world would be like because then there obviously wouldn't be ah you wouldn't have smartphones. We wouldn't have yeah we will be staring at the walls. that' will be recognize in the like Oh, we should make like a, it should be like a steampunk thing, like a sci-fi world, but where everyone's on 56 K modems. 56 K punk. Yeah. or him fifty seven people
01:22:18
Speaker
ah ah Let's just go 2000 gives $2. It says essays to watch, uh, anything by per run. P E R U N thank you for the recommendation. Let's use the other 2000.
01:22:32
Speaker
ah Name's Not Fits gives 200 Swedish Corona and says that there are some franchises that should have been a... That fucking thing jumped ahead on me. Oh no. There are some franchises that should have been a single entry and some games that deserve a sequel. Any games you guys can think of? Overwatch 2 and new COD games should have just been an update. I really want a Portal 3. I wonder where there was left to go. I mean Portal 2 was just, you know, let's just have more fun with portals for a while.
01:22:59
Speaker
I think they sort of got as much mileage as they could out of the concept, frankly. Unless there was a significantly different gameplay physics introduced. Like what if you did a portal game set in zero gravity? Oh, that'd be interesting. Like just a complete overturn of ah physics. Or have some real, some real weird time travel shit in it. Yeah. Or underwater. Yeah. And you had to deal with buoyancy.
01:23:29
Speaker
I'm always thinking about buoyancy. I want an Okami too, not Okami then. Oh my god. And they said they're making it until Ducky Kamiya left. And now I'm not sure what's happening anymore. I'll blame someone. Just point me at someone and I'll blame them for not having an Okami too. It's like my younger navel too. It's never going come out. Blank, member for eight months in the green gang, asks what if Mario had loot boxes stroke battle pass? For like lives?
01:23:57
Speaker
and like yeah Yeah, there's a Mario mobile game infinite a runner, isn't there? Yeah, Mario run. Yeah, and I actually don't know what the monetization of that it's like.
01:24:12
Speaker
I think it's just a one time payment actually thinking about it. a ah Well, who the hell knows blank? That would have to be a world where Nintendo or a completely different company, I suppose.
01:24:28
Speaker
Oh, Mario runs. This is just a Yeah, one time back. There you go. yeah Yeah, there you go. Fox D is $5 and says I'll see your what is a gamer and raise you what is a game? If you play a pi simulation platform, are you playing a game in the classic sense? Oh, don't get us started on that Fox D. albetically I mean, technically, it's only a game if like two people are competing against each other, like in chess.
01:24:54
Speaker
Yeah, and then you get into the question of fail states and ah there being a winner. I've spoken about this in a really old anatomy episode on Stray and whether Stray could be considered a game. um The conclusion was yes, but getting into that definition is incredibly fucked up. Well, it's ah it's what I tend to term a walking sim stroke ghost train ride.
01:25:20
Speaker
you I think it's only a game if the prize at the end is that your anthropomorphic animal gets to kiss a woman. My God. Okay. Yeah, fair. Imagine if the censorship bureau had gotten that rule in place. but Every game, every game was in some way end with an anthropomorphic animal kissing a woman. It's a world I want to live in. That's a censorship I can get behind.
01:25:47
Speaker
with can Brad gives $5 and says, everyone takes pictures and has for decades, but photographers are professionals or hobbyists. I think a gamers can live in a similar space. Perhaps. I mean, I like to think of myself as a writer, even though technically everyone writes, everyone can write. Well, you're acting like photographers is like you're engaging with the creation of something. So, photographer would be like a game designer, right? Not just someone who enjoys. way Usually when we qualify a specific thing, it's usually in terms of it being a profession, right? Gamer is just a kind of general hobby. it's like what tv yeah We can only call someone a gamer if they're in an esports league.
01:26:32
Speaker
or us because we are paid to play games. yeah I just don't want to be called a gamer. So whatever I need to do, I'm putting on your gravestone. you Don't call an art critic an artist.
01:26:46
Speaker
shit
01:26:49
Speaker
you got there Let's get out of semantic bollocks. Andre Dreyem gives 20 R dollars and says, jama and ludo you plan to make a video discussing final bosses in many games i've played the final boss is often not the most difficult as the peak difficulty usually occurs in the middle And then he goes out and gives a second part of it, the next one.
01:27:10
Speaker
Oh, there's another one. Oh, yes. Another one where he gives 50-yard dollars and says, however, I've noticed a trend in Souls-like games where the final boss is incredibly challenging. By the end of a game, I'm ready to wrap things up, but an overly difficult final boss makes me feel stuck. What are your thoughts on this shift? Yeah, my exact the best Souls example for me is Blue, Ice, White, Grandad, which is the final boss in Sekiro.
01:27:31
Speaker
um he's He's incredibly difficult um and is everything turned up to 11. I like it. I can't remember what episode I spoke about this in, but it's the idea of RPG progression and they always have to end up with you fighting God at the end because they have to give a narrative and mechanical context for why things are progressively getting harder.
01:27:56
Speaker
And I like my last boss to be incredibly challenging, but speaking of Shadow of the Entry, that can go a little bit too far. So pre-patch, I will not say what they are because it's spoilers, but the final boss of Shadow of the Entry DLC was someone else, to the point where I was like,
01:28:16
Speaker
I'm done. I'd done everything else. Got every item, done every boss and got to that boss and was like, I don't need to do this. So there's this balancing act of how you do it. Um, yeah, I think it's a good idea. I think there could be an episode in that. So I'll add it to the incredibly long list of this post patch too.
Gaming Definitions and Identity
01:28:33
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Uh, acoustic as a major gives $2 and says phenomenal. Do, do, do, do, do. Phenomenal. Do, do, do, do.
01:28:47
Speaker
Phenomenal do doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
01:29:11
Speaker
bucking london twenty twelve but like that one I said, uh, can damn well-organized Olympics, even if we can't organize a country very well. It's playing crew city Kings, um, four with a friend last night. He's trying to onboard me onto liking ah RTS games. And he said, oh, before we start, I've got a question for you. And there is a correct answer England or France.
01:29:33
Speaker
I said England anyway, correct. And we moved on um because mechanically, they're just better. And apparently in Crusader Kings four, if you play the French, apparently you'll look down upon not because they're French, they're just mechanically really like horrible and bad. So but what if you're so sure of your skills that you purposely choose that character? it's like having arm time atron Yeah. Can I beat Crusader Kings three as the French? French.
01:30:05
Speaker
Uh, Dr. Theo gives side dollars and says, France has oh done that one. Whitticism gives side dollars and says, what have you gotten hired on at Valve back in the day yards? Do you think you'd still be there given how few games they actually release? I often wonder that myself, Whitticism. I was ah interviewed by Valve back in 2008, but I was still a partially formed person then. I was ah only in my early twenties, very naive to the world and sort of star struck by ah all game designers.
01:30:33
Speaker
ah So I was a very anxious place but they were impressed by my ability to improvise creative solutions. ah Could worked at a place where like like Valve currently, where your creativity can sometimes go years and years or decades without being seen by the public? I mean, seeing Valve what they are now, I definitely don't think I would be keen on working. and I think what I found is that I'm happier as a solo hobbyist to dev solving game dev challenges by myself, not having to wait for other people to get shit done. Sure. That's what makes more creatively fulfilling for me. Thank you.
01:31:10
Speaker
I've heard um a lot of stories from Dev friends on how Valve works internally as a game dev company, and it is simultaneously a utopia and a hellscape. I i like it i get that impression. I mean, they make it they make you very comfortable while you work there, but then you just everything you make just gets thrown in the bin.
01:31:32
Speaker
And also, apparently, it's very you jump from project to project based on your popularity and like stuff like this. And but they all pick teams at the start of the week. yeah It's very clicky, um apparently. Yeah, allegedly, you know. But I'm not really excited because there's an image loading in like 56K that Eric has in the corner and it's just loading line by line.
01:31:59
Speaker
but I don't know why that was loading so slow, it was just very funny. That's 56k world. There's a glimpse into it there. but ah FoxD gives $2 and says, I use players like you love on Steam. No one's like me though. Although I would hate someone like me. I don't want to be a part of any club that would have me as a member.
01:32:23
Speaker
Uh, wasn't that, uh, Mark Twain quote, believe so. Or Woody Allen. Also famously, famously witty person. Uh, Hawkeye goth gives 50 Swedish Corona and says, what if monolith made a third, no one lives forever? I'd sell a kidney just for a chance to get another one. I also bought no one lives for forever one on PS2 this weekend. I bought a lot of weird games. Where did you go to get all these? Yeah. you suppose i want even Did you go back in time in a time machine? No, no one lives forever. No, we call it. Well, the PC versus absolute better, but doesn't have a cool box. I could buy myself. So think about that. You guys did you guys play time splitters? Yeah, I love time splitters. Perfect. I never played time splitters. I played second sight, which I was, which I was very impressed by, but I never played any of of their time splitters games weirdly. very time sorry So good.
01:33:18
Speaker
A lot of former rare folks. o ah Ham anarchy gives us a 69 Norwegian pronoun says happy 30th birthday to Marty. Thanks Ham anarchy. 38 months ago. Aside from that, I appreciate it all. David Brown gives $10 and says, what if the first final fantasy had flopped? I don't want to think about that. What if the first final fantasy had flopped vertically?
01:33:47
Speaker
What if it was titular, the titular final fantasy? Uh, I don't know. I don't want to think about that. This is when our, our thought exercise has gone too far and I don't want to live in a world where final fantasy didn't exist and thus give us things like ground on trigger and respond. and Well, dragon quest would have been sitting fucking pretty. That's true. That's true. We just be, we'd all be fighting slimes all day which all perverts. And we would have never gotten the chocolate bow music stuck in our heads. Hmm.
01:34:15
Speaker
so about ah a little joke um heard hosting gives $10. It says it would have been interesting to see MVC I infinite. oh Okay, without all the licensing issues that prevented Capcom from using xmen and Fantastic Four characters. It feels like a doomed project from the start.
01:34:34
Speaker
Yeah, it was sort of Disney and Marvel as a whole. We're only like, oh, we are only going to promote characters that we have full control over and thus able to show in, in movies. Uh, consolidation why the internals were created. Yeah. Yeah. And the in humans and everything to be like, what can we what can we do here? Yeah. Uh, now that they own everyone, I'm assuming if they make another one, everyone will be back on the board.
01:35:00
Speaker
Halberda84 gives five pounds and says, Yahtzee, I recently finished Existentially Challenged and it was bloody brilliant. Are you working on the next book in the series? Chop Chop. What have you done for myself? I tell myself I am. i'm ah I've taken some notes. Gonna start writing a draft any week now. Listen, notes are big. You gotta get in the right headspace and as soon as you do, I'm sure it'll just flow out. They flow out, yeah. I've got loose ideas. I guess I just need to see where they go.
01:35:28
Speaker
Wait, so is it ah is it going to be part of a series or is it just a- Yes, it's going to be the next book in the Deedafile series following it up on Existentially Challenged now that the Galaxy for Food series is done. FrozenTalks231 gives $10 and says, what if none of you remotely enjoyed video games? What would your alternative passion stroke career be? Probably comedy in some form, British comedy, Hitchhiker's Guide ah books, Red Dwarf TV shows.
01:35:58
Speaker
I guess I could just become very good at trivia quizzes about those specific things.
Valve's Environment and Career Speculations
01:36:05
Speaker
ah Be bartender or or hooper. I'd go to parks and just hoop out. I'll get dunk on kids. I tried my at stand-up comedy once. Never again. Got some laughs, but I don't think my nerves could take that every bloody night. Yeah.
01:36:21
Speaker
bit much. Uh, me would probably be what I was training to do before I did this, which is either working in film or a magician, because that's what I did before I did this. Lame. Fuck you.
01:36:38
Speaker
um go to on stream again now think i will Fungus finding his two dollars and says, what if they actually release Half-Life 3 one day? They won't. what's What's their motivation to do so? Sell index VR kits. Every couple months there's like, someone's like, I i looked at the the, I hacked into Steam's API and there's a codename for a game that's going to be revealed in September and it's going to be Half-Life 3. Of course there's a bloody Half-Life 3 build at Valve. There's like 900 unreleased builds for games they've worked on and thrown in the bin. Yeah.
01:37:14
Speaker
They've made like Team Fortress 2 like nine times and threw each one in the bin before they released the actual one. Yeah, they're not doing anything. They're not just taking naps under their desk.
01:37:24
Speaker
Uh, FoxD gives side dollars and says, I'd be less bothered by gamer if it didn't imply a broader connection to nerd culture. I don't like comic-stroke, anime-stroke fandom stuff. I just love games. Aww.
01:37:37
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, there's ah there's always been like associations with nerds. Before, nerds were a pop culture thing. ah In Britain, there was the stereotype of the train spotter or the bird watcher, someone who's weirdly interested in stuff. I don't know. If you're into looking at things from a distance through binoculars, you're a creep. That's just, hey, that's just mine. What if you're an astronomer?
01:38:00
Speaker
shit dog. Look at his telescope strategy up there it star looks like a boob. I got like a secondhand toy microscope the other day from a neighbor doing a garage sale and the kids were really into it.
01:38:16
Speaker
And then I got really into it. I looked at all my old Australian money under the microscope filthy and i and I found mysterious letters. If you look at that, you can only see if you look at it under a microscope, the just the letters SD at the bottom of every coin, just barely visible. indi money Well, then I looked it up.
01:38:36
Speaker
And then it turns out that the current Australian coins were all designed by a guy called Stuart Devlin or something like that. Stuart Denville, some would name my man. You really got the bottom of that mystery. See, that was like you were living the work of the mystery. See, we should pat you on the head. You did a very good job. That was interesting. Yeah. But then I like did some more reading up and said, coin collectors are especially interested in Australian coins that don't have the initials SD on them because they're much more valuable. So I was like, oh, shit. Oh, fuck's sake. This is worthless, and then you threw your money away. Yeah.
01:39:05
Speaker
Just threw it at at one of the kids.
01:39:11
Speaker
Well, Magnum White gives $5 and says, what if Nintendo actually released Mother 3 outside of Japan? Also, what if Konami's leadership decided not to tank its rep with with regards to various poor decisions?
01:39:23
Speaker
Uh, um, I, uh, I, I genuinely think unless they change the soundtrack, which would then have to change the battle system, uh, they would be sued by various music labels. First bound's already at a point where I'm like, you, you stole so much music from people and did not pay them. And I feel like mother three would, uh, would just be worse. Oh God. As much as I want it. What a killed Nintendo. Uh, Konami's fine. Konami's back. Konami's back. This is officially your 2024, the year of Konami's back.
01:39:53
Speaker
Well, that remains to be seen. I mean, we'll see how Silent Hill 2 does. Yeah, the secret is I can just say things and then deny I said it before, so. We're also a large ways through 2024. You just wait. You have to feel like quite a fool when Gamescom comes around and everyone's like, damn. We're running out of time. Konami, you did it.
01:40:15
Speaker
Sovereign gives 10 euros and says, off topic, I randomly googled Dark Souls 2's director Yui Tanimura earlier today, and the first result was a big image of some guy named Marty Sleever interviewing him. Just thought you needed to know. God damn right, the real Souls champion. I believe we revealed that game. Oh, wow. Got to learn Japan and everything. It was great. What a nerd you are. What a big Dark Souls nerd you are. All we did was talk about Hooping though. We just talked about our top five Hoopers of all time, so it was fine.
01:40:45
Speaker
All right then. SVS Guru 2000 gives five euros and says Yahtzee, if you ever get back into standup comedy, it helps the nerves. If you imagine the audience naked, just don't do it at a primary school gig. Standup gigs at a primary school them but terrible audience. Yeah. Yes. Thank you. You've been a wonderful audience. Well, the advantage of standups in schools is that they can't heckle you until they put their hand up and you accept the heckle. Yeah, true.
01:41:17
Speaker
Right, well, that was the last two projects. I don't think I'll ever try standard comedy again. I just don't like being alone on stage. I like being on panels because it gives me someone to insult. Yeah, I i fucking know. Piece of shit. Wow. Wow.
Podcast Events and Closing Remarks
01:41:35
Speaker
ah Speaking of panels, we'll have a whole crew of packs and including Jack Packard and Jesse Guglena and more on a panel that Sunday. old sunday the the third screen The Sunday, no, Sunday the first, Sunday the first. We have a week. Yes, that's in a few weeks. In a few weeks. I think quite a few, yeah. Okay. When everyone's gone for packs, we won't be there. We could do a crossword puzzle stream.
01:41:58
Speaker
Oh, yeah. one of those yes We need to we need to skip Yahtzee tries one week because that's perfect. All your puzzles. he'll just be a puzzle stream That Yahtzee tries will just be a puzzle stream that week. Yeah, we're gonna skip Yahtzee tries because Jesse's gonna be away. So we won't be editing the edited video. So we're just gonna do a random stream that day. So yeah, we'll, we'll just do New York Times puzzles. Beautiful.
01:42:24
Speaker
I'm looking forward to it already. And what else can we look forward to in the course of the week, would you say? Oh my god, later today. Well, first off, earlier today, we had a great Dungeons of Hinterberg Bite Size review go up from Elise. Later today, ah the hidden gems crew will be back 6 p.m. Central. They'll be jamming through Spark the Electric Jester 2. They did Spark 1. They're going to be doing in Spark 2 this week, and then on to Spark 3 in a few weeks.
01:42:53
Speaker
Uh, and then, uh, then that should be, uh, the normal streams, Yahtzee tries, Firelink on Wednesday, uh, Delvin McBride on Thursday. You got dev heads on Friday. We'll probably throw in some Elvin rings somewhere. Maybe a cheeky little other stream. There's no way to know. Yeah. They're flying by the seat of our pants.
01:43:13
Speaker
Uh, yes. And specifically, if you'd like my stuff, I've got a fully Ramble-O-Matic coming out on Wednesday, which purely coincidentally will also be about Dungeons of Hinterberg. Yeah. We just, everyone's actually latched onto this game in the last few weeks, apparently. And I've also got a semi-Ramble-O-Matic dropping on Thursday, which will be about... something. I feel like I wrote it so long ago. I read it and I was like, this is pretty good.
01:43:42
Speaker
wasn't the own thing It wasn't the card game one. No, that was a one ah it was ah that's the one that's already out. ah but was minute We just have to remember this thing where that we worked on. ah and i go hang on oh man naked far yes yes It's about making friends in video games, making friends out of NPCs and the the process of gamifying such things.
01:44:09
Speaker
So that should be fun. Uh, and then of course I'll be making my usual appearance in a ventress night. Oh no, I won't because the last episode of season one went out and we're skipping that for a week and on before we, before the eating ah beginning of the remastered season two starts going out. So yeah, sorry about that, but there will be a Yahtzee tries edited video on Sunday as well. And, uh, that'll be it for my stuff.
01:44:35
Speaker
Anything else you want to plug? Jimin, what do you got going on over there and in Yorkshire? I don't know where you are. Is Yorkshire a place? Uh, yeah, I got designed of that just came out last week, which was on a topic. Um, I'm kind of like the arts. It was death. Yeah. Death in games and how we can manage it and how that might be making or breaking our games. Um, so yeah, go check that out that one out. And I'm working on a very spicy video for next week, which is why game devs lying to you is good actually.
01:45:06
Speaker
So, you know, Marty, Yorkshire is exact pretty much the exact opposite end of the country that Devon is on. Is Devon also of its own pudding? Devonshire pudding? It's got fudge. It likes fudge. Yeah, we've got a lot of fudge, insider, and Green Hills. You know who else has Green Hills? It's not a fudge hog. Fuck. don Don't bring him into this. Don't make him kiss another a Devonshire one. more mobile But yeah, that's me. pick outigar Oh, and ah don't forget to check the merch store. Oh, yeah. ah shoes We've got new merch that's just come out, including av Adventures Night Plushies. You could get one of every crew member and then reenact your favorite scenes from the show in the privacy of your own home.
01:45:56
Speaker
Yeah, we got you got your pins, your Jedi and Sith pins for your. Oh yes. We've also got ah a fully ramblymatic pin of me as a Jedi or a Sith in to commemorate my night to the old Republic review that went out last week. We got design delve shirt, good blood shirt, pets, Albert, the shovel, different colors. So much. It never stops. It won't stop. Why stop it? Hey, if you guys get designed off shirt, tweet me. I want to see it. Let's go.
01:46:24
Speaker
Yeah, let's start a discord channel of people taking pictures of themselves holding up or wearing second wind merge. I like it. That's fine. There you go. All right. ah Well, I guess that's it from us. Thanks for watching the windbreakers podcast. I hope it gave you food for thought.
01:46:45
Speaker
I would give you food for my tummy ah forgive you food because it's lunch time. Bye everyone. Bye everyone. Bye.