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The Line Between a Game and an Experience | Windbreaker Podcast
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On this week’s episode of Windbreaker, Yahtzee, Frost, and Marty discuss what delineates a game from an experience.
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Transcript
Introduction to Red Dragon Inn and Hosts
00:00:00
Speaker
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Games vs Experiences: The Case of Hellblade 2
00:00:47
Speaker
Hello, welcome to the Windbreakers podcast, I'm Yachtskrozor and I'm joined by Frosted Marty as always. Hello! And this week we're talking about what is the line between a game and an experience masquerading as one, which, as you could probably tell from the thumbnail, came about
00:01:10
Speaker
from having played Hellblade 2 recently. Which is certainly less on the game side of things if you ask me. The whole tone of this podcast by you saying an experience masquerading as one. Already getting off on a bad foot. I thought Yachts would be more of the centralized one for this one. I said let's start cynical and work our way up.
00:01:35
Speaker
No one ever calls good games an experience. They just call them good games. No, quite. So that's as rotten as it's gonna get. Let's work our way up then, shall we? I think it's fair to say that games like Hellblade 2 certainly tend to polarize the audience.
00:01:51
Speaker
A lot of people that say, oh, it's a great experience at its own right. And then there are a lot of other people saying, well, where's the bloody game? Where's the mechanics? I think they agree. Every person who has gone, it's beautiful, looks great, has agreed that the gameplay is lacking. And everyone who said the gameplay sucks will at least give in and go, yes, it's pretty. You know, so if anything, I think we agree. It's just when we come into the experience
00:02:17
Speaker
argument. It's more like, well, what was I expecting, you know? And for me, I wasn't expecting this. When they say more than indie, I wasn't really expecting a movie. Like, why is Hollywood more than indie games? Well, that's the standard argument, isn't it? If you just want to make a movie, why did you make a movie? Why are you going to take attention away from fucking great games that are actually games, like Star Trek Vagabond?
00:02:44
Speaker
I say, I say they can have it.
Player Expectations and Interactivity
00:02:47
Speaker
I'll compare them to other games, but I'll also compare them to movies. So if anything, you kind of by being on both lanes, you think you'd avoid traffic, but you're going to get hit by two trains when it's when it's my turn to get you. I work as a film as a game.
00:03:06
Speaker
Well, for me, this... Shine a light on us, Marty. No, I can't. My light burned out. I was asking for light recommendations. No, I get... It feels like we're in a time loop right now, because I feel like this conversation comes up every few years. And again, it's part of the same conversation, and it makes sense. A lot of the same conversations come up.
00:03:32
Speaker
I remember this conversation coming up when I was a kid. I remember things like Mario Paint and people being like, what is this thing? I remember kids on the playground being like, that's not a game. And me, my response then was, who cares? I'm having fun doing my painting and making my Yoshi noises. And I feel like that is my same response to when people say, this isn't a game. My response is always like,
00:03:58
Speaker
I don't know, maybe we just have a lack of words to put the things, maybe it's like a lack of imagination, but we need to broaden this definition of what a game can be because I feel like confining it to our preconceived notions or confining it to what we consider a game to be in 1995 or 2024, I feel like all we're doing is sort of, we're putting the medium in a box and not allowing it to expand.
00:04:25
Speaker
I know you're arguing from a general position of semantic arguing over what a game actually is, but I think it's flawed to bring up Mario Paint and compare it in this context to Hellblade 2. Why is that? Because Mario Paint is a creativity tool. It is undeniably interactive.
00:04:44
Speaker
Hellblade 2 is very much what I have come to call a ghost train ride sort of experience. Which a lot of single player games are sort of modeled around the theme park thing where you're just constantly pushed along the course of the rail from one encounter to the next and no interactivity is tolerated beyond what is intended by the creators.
00:05:07
Speaker
In contrast to something like Half-Life or Doom, where you are free to go back and forth as much as you like, the Ghost Train ride is just an unavoidable conveyor belt from disconnected encounter to encounter, much more in spirit with, as I say, a theme park ride or just watching a slideshow.
Defining Games and Experiences
00:05:27
Speaker
So there is interactivity though. You're just, I think you're, you're saying that there's not enough interactivity or there's not enough kind of flavors of, of interactivity that you would want to see anything like this. I like this. Marty's on the semantics. Yahtz is on the mechanics of it all. Me, I'm more, again, of the consumer. Cause it's as if I like Taco Bell. I also like actual tacos from food trucks. If you tell me we're going to get Mexican, I'm not expecting Taco Bell. That doesn't make Taco Bell. Like McDonald's burger is a thing. It's not a burger in my mind.
00:05:57
Speaker
Yeah, oh yeah, let's go get... See, actually that goes down to experience because if you say let's get a burger, by default to McDonald's. If anything, it's only...
00:06:07
Speaker
Like if we go to, I don't know, Red Robin, right? The experience only gets better from there. Sure. And so the same thing with this for games. Like, hey, you want to play a game? Yeah, I'd love to play a game. Hellblade is nice, whatever it is, but it wasn't what I wanted when I was thinking game, especially as a sequel to Hellblade 1. I wasn't expecting less of the first game. Sure. My definition of game, as someone with an enthusiasm for the point where narrative and interactivity meet,
00:06:35
Speaker
is that a game is an experience created by two parties, by the input of the player and the output of the developer. And a ghost train ride or a Hellblade II sort of thing just feels like something that is entirely defined by the developer, with a little input from the player's part tolerated beyond their capacity to solve extremely simple challenges.
00:06:58
Speaker
Interesting. Now, it's not an absolute. Yes, there is like a balance of how much the developer has control over the player because there are also walking simulators, as they put it. But even compared to walking simulators, this doesn't weigh in with Stanley Parable and beginners, those kinds of things, you know?
00:07:18
Speaker
Stanley Parable is fundamentally an interactive experience. I mean, it's basically a deconstruction of walking sims and ghost train rides, because the game says, hey, we're going in this direction, you can just choose to go another direction, and it will, like, play off your decisions. Like, what I'm really against here is a game that has no decision making whatsoever. What about Edith Finch or Firewatch? How's that? More linear?
00:07:45
Speaker
Even that, uh, can be defined as more of an interactive experience because there is a degree to which the player decides the order in which they experience things. It's not just being shunted in a direction. So, so like for you, there needs to be a, um, like you said, there's two primary authors. There's the developer and there's the player and the player needs to have some form of authorship over what is happening in the game. Otherwise it's one way communication.
00:08:15
Speaker
And I concede that this is at its very fundament a semantic argument. And I concede that there's nothing written in stone that says my definition has to be the case, and it's really just the definition I've developed over years of experience with the video games I enjoy. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I'm not trying to attack that or anything. No, but I'm just saying that this is the point from which the argument always rises over what a video game is.
00:08:42
Speaker
But my big thing with games like this and games that people consider to be non-games, games that people consider to when you put the capital E word on things with experiences, my
00:08:58
Speaker
What I get from a game, I was talking about this with Jack, I think on a stream a little while ago, is I just want to walk away having felt something. And the form that feeling can come in can be any number of things. It can be the thrill of getting through a tough boss fight in a Souls game. It can be the feeling of mastering a specific puzzle or a platforming challenge. It can be a story that was delivered to me that moved me.
00:09:23
Speaker
It could be a gorgeous world that I existed in and wandered around. It could be a sense of horror or dread, you know, in a horror game. It could be laughing at a comedy. It could be just like, I mean, it's tried at this point, but my whole existing in a world thing, like to me,
00:09:39
Speaker
these walking simulators, these games where even if there's not a lot of input from me, I am getting so much from the audio and visual sensation of being in this place, and it feels different than a movie. If you were to just put it on a screen, either a theater screen or on your TV, I would not get the same as that relationship between me and the character, even if that relationship is as simple as just moving forward without any friction.
00:10:08
Speaker
Interesting.
Game Quality and Expectations
00:10:10
Speaker
This is different point here to the point where you go, was it fun? That's all that mattered. I agree. That's our position here. Like, yeah, it was it was it fun, was it not? That's all that you're focused on. But I generally do weigh so much more on just expectations like Lorelei. A lot of people calling it one of the greatest puzzle games of the year. That's not the kind of puzzles
00:10:32
Speaker
that I was looking forward to. I'm not detracting anything from that. I'm not going to go, oh, that's an absolute lie. But they're math puzzles, brain teases. I expected more puzzling in the form of Animal Well. That, to me, is the greatest puzzle game of the year. Lorelai was a maths workbook put in front of me, stylized. I mean, the first hour or two of Lorelai is that. It does change quite a bit. And Animal Well, you could say the same thing. Pre-credit Animal Well is very different than post-credit Animal
00:11:01
Speaker
It's still a different level of intuiting.
00:11:05
Speaker
What constitutes a puzzle is a whole semantic argument in itself that we should probably cover at some point. Howblades got puzzles, you want to talk about those? You want to go to this spot over here, look at the thing, click a button, and now go over here? It's solved. Yeah. Yeah, it's the puzzle, it's the kind of puzzle that I tend to denigrate. I mean, spiritually, it's akin to the sort of puzzle we used to have in Quake where the puzzle was press two buttons instead of one to open a door.
00:11:32
Speaker
I can press 4 and it says, for one, you find the other button, and then it will go, secret's completed. And that's what the Hellblade puzzles feel like. It feels like walking around the environment until you find the thing that is like the button, in this case, the place to stand, where the voice in your head will say, yes, this is the place to stand, you dumb twat. Now press the button. Wait, that was Hellblade 1. It's pretty good.
00:11:57
Speaker
The expectations thing is interesting too, because it's hard, it's impossible not to have expectations when going into a thing. Whether it's something that you've been looking forward to for years, or whether it's just something you heard about, a recommendation. When you hear a bunch of people saying, oh my God, Animal Well is amazing, oh my God, Lorelei is amazing. Before you get in, there's already this burden of expectations on you. But to me, expectations are like a supremely
00:12:24
Speaker
I don't know, like a really just person by person thing. Like what one person went into Hellblade 2 expecting is completely different than what you went into, which is completely different than what I went into. So it's hard, and I guess all of this is obviously subjective. All of this is coming from our own opinions.
00:12:42
Speaker
Let me ask you something, Marty. Is there a point where you'd cry foul? Like, if you started a video game and it literally just played a movie for two hours, well... He loves immortality, man. Don't ask him. But immortality is... you are interacting with it. Oh my god, it's happening again. I mean, that is... I just... Yeah. No, no, no. That is a good point. Yeah. I mean, sure, if I hit a button, didn't do anything and the game was over.
00:13:09
Speaker
Okay, so what if, now we've reached a point that you reject something as a game. Let's like scale it back slowly.
Interactive Experiences vs Traditional Media
00:13:19
Speaker
What if every 10 minutes, like the screen came up saying press button to continue, would that still be a game? That's a visual novel, isn't it? The screen dimmed a little bit. What, so every time Netflix goes there, are you still awake? Is that a game? Would you accept that as a game and defend it in a podcast such as this one?
00:13:39
Speaker
But my thing is I'm almost less interested in defending something as a game and more interested in how did it make me feel as a thing. Whatever form it comes in doesn't matter to me. It's like when you go to a theme park, like a Disney World.
00:13:55
Speaker
everything exists in the park. The park conforms around its concessions, around its restaurants, around its stores, around its lines. There are rides that you just sit there and the rides happen to you. There are rides you interact with. There are rides that are exciting or scary or telling a story and all of these things can be true and all these things can be a part of the same overall tapestry that is a theme park.
00:14:23
Speaker
Sure. I think we get hung up on the word though. Let's just say like Yahtzee one-to-one extreme. Where is the line? I say let's go to the other extreme. Here's the certainty. Hellblade is a watch and play. That's just what we're gonna call them. It's a watch and play, right?
00:14:40
Speaker
Was it a good one? I think that's more or less where people want to get stuck on. I can't just say with a certainty. No, no, no. Just for this instance, let's just say that it's called a watch and play, right? Just because it has a name now doesn't mean we can't criticize it. And doesn't mean it can't be a bad one either. It's like when people say, oh, it's art. OK, we're talking Mona Lisa. We're talking Jackson Pollock. There's bad art as well. And that's where we, I think that's, again, almost maybe still staying on the cynical part.
00:15:08
Speaker
You'd never say for good games it was an experience because you don't have to. I don't have to use a word to save it. Hellblade to me at its core was disappointing as a game and there is no retraction saying it's an experience doesn't really take away from that.
00:15:26
Speaker
Hellblade's case is that it is clearly trying to be a game at times, because it's got combat, and it's got puzzles. It just throws in combat every now and again, like it just suddenly remembered it's a video game called Hellblade.
00:15:42
Speaker
Not without wishing to spoil too much of my upcoming fully-ramble of attic that's coming out on Wednesday. The problem is, like, if the game had, like, declared itself to be a walking sim with no actual gameplay in it, and you just go through experiences in a sort of vaguely interactive way, I'd probably have a lot less complaints about it. I mean, I love The Beginner's Guide. I've played through it, like, three times, which is very much a walking sim in contrast to Stanley Parable by the same developer.
00:16:10
Speaker
And I appreciate that as a story experience. But it's the parts where Hellblade 2 sort of does its token acknowledgement of being a video game, where I have my arguments with it.
00:16:22
Speaker
I mean, I'm happy for them to live in their little world of visual novels and walking sims. It's fine for people to enjoy. If people are paying money for it, then there's a place for it in the world, clearly. But get off my turf, Hellblade. Get out of my neighborhood, or I'll call the local Crips on you. What did you... Crips?
00:16:46
Speaker
Crips or trips? Crips. He's in San Francisco. He's talking about gang territory. That's one of those gangs they have, isn't it? The Crips and the Bloods? Crips and the Bloods. The big two. Did you feel the same way about Hellblade One? Yes. I went back and went over my old review of Hellblade One and thought, oh, what do you know? Pretty much the same complaints.
00:17:14
Speaker
Trust, you said you liked Hellblade 1 more than Hellblade 2, right? Oh, I love Hellblade 1, I think. And I'm also just saying, I still haven't played Hellblade 2. So I'm not arguing the merits one way or the other. It's like Avatar 2. I think that's my position. Staving it for my deathbed? Yeah. No, I love Hellblade 1, especially because of the, as Yasi says, the interaction between developer and player input. I think it's one of the best in its class for whatever. I still, even Hellblade 1, that's the thing. I didn't, I don't describe it as a game game.
00:17:43
Speaker
Because I don't care. I'm like, you Marty, I loved it. Why do I care what it's called? I rose by any other name. But I also didn't have to defend it. So I still didn't look for a word. Hellblade 2, to be that guy, it's just because it's not that enjoyable. So we're like, oh, it's an experience. It's like that Roger Ebert review. I forgot what movie it was. Where it's like, it's not a good film. It's not good porn. It's not good art.
00:18:06
Speaker
That's all Hellblade 2 is for me. It's not a good film. It's not a good game. I'm not sure what it is. But we're getting caught on the semantics, so to speak. I've often complained about games that try to be too many things and then ends up being a disappointing experience for everyone who wants each of those things individually. So we're...
00:18:32
Speaker
So where were we? Yes, we were defining when a game becomes an experience. So let's move on from Hellblade 2. Let's go to a game that I... let's carry on from what I was saying about The Beginner's Guide. The Beginner's Guide I would call an experience. And quite an interesting one that tells an interesting story. Why even delineate the line between game and experience?
00:18:57
Speaker
Because it's in the fucking title of the podcast, Marty. That's what we're here for. You can't do that to Marty. No, I'm just curious. Like, why not just call it a game? Like, what is your... Like, what's the... I don't know, do we use the term? That is the type of game, is it not? Yeah, when we... Is it experience the type of game? Is that just a genre now? Like, the experiential genre? I mean, if they sell bloody things... For me! Or do you think it's an entirely different medium?
00:19:25
Speaker
It's like the ghost train ride thing and experience is what a theme park offers. The thing on the rail where nothing actually really changes and you're just being sent through something. A game to me implies play and play is interaction. Okay. Yes, or a challenge to one's skills.
00:19:44
Speaker
Whatever the Chipotle equivalent of Mexican food is, that's what games need right now. They need Tex-Mex. This thing that, uh, really, you, you hear it and you go, Oh, okay. That's what I'm getting into with this specific brand of game. Right. I think we just like words. Sure. And I'm running out of things to add shmup to, you know, what is this thing?
00:20:06
Speaker
Well, it's a young medium, and it's a young medium that is built sort of foundationally on the words we use to describe movies. And in movies, we describe them using a story genre, right? Like, this is a horror movie, this is a comedy, this is a romance, that kind of thing. And you can do that with games, but then games have that other layer of
00:20:26
Speaker
Interactivity so you can have a horror game. That is a 2d platform or horror game. That is 3d Crafting thing a horror game. That is a first-person. You can't die kind of thing Yeah, it's when we didn't push back on action adventure that uh, it's really this we started suffering Yeah, I think that trade that trades that trades already passed we can't solve that one I don't like do you is there not a
00:20:56
Speaker
Because I can't help when you say the word experience that it sounds pejorative, but you said you enjoyed the beginner's guide, so you don't mean the word pejoratively when you use it. No. For another example, before your eyes, I would define as an experience that I very much enjoyed. Yeah, that's actually... Give me a key. That's one I had written down. Yeah.
00:21:20
Speaker
Were you trying to play with sunglasses and you couldn't do it? Yeah, and needs a better, a sort of like selling phrase, I guess, the thing that you put up on a billboard. Like, idle games, if they had no actual name, you would only be able to say it's an experience. It's an experience, right? But now it has a name, you say idle game, you know exactly what you're getting for.
00:21:41
Speaker
I think we're running up against, once again, the fundamental problem, the phrase video game is used to describe so many different varied experiences, and yet they're still boxed together in the video game label. I was listening to Ross God's interview on You and Yours, the BBC radio programme this morning, and he specifically mentioned that live service games that eventually die are literally sold alongside single player games that will never die on a shelf.
00:22:11
Speaker
with no indication to the consumer that there's a difference between the two. And it kind of feels like the same thing. You put like a Be All For Your Eyes or Beginner's Guide in a box alongside fucking Spider-Man 2 on the PS5 and no one would bat an eye. But these are all offering fundamentally different things.
00:22:33
Speaker
I need to be word Nazis. Too much, we've gotten too far on the, I don't know what to call it, but I know what it is when I see the old porn defense, right? If we had just found better names, we wouldn't be in this position here, but it takes someone who's good with words, who's also hip with the crowd.
00:22:48
Speaker
And that's also why we, so many people lean on genres that are directly referencing other genres with rogues and souls-like and those kinds of things. Because it is, to me, it is easier to be like, it's a souls-like, at the very least points you in the cardinal direction. And then from there, we can dig into what do I mean by that? Is it 2D? Is it 3D? Is it cartoony? Is it realistic? Is it hard as nails? Does it bend to you?
00:23:13
Speaker
Well, this is an essential part of the culture surrounding an art form because otherwise history just repeats itself. If you can't point to something and say, hey, it's influenced by this, this and this, then society forgets. And then we just go over the same innovations over and over again. Like when L.A. Noir rediscovered adventure games. Yeah.
00:23:33
Speaker
But that's why I tend to be so kind of celebratory towards these games, these experiences that try something completely different even if they completely stumble. And it's because
00:23:49
Speaker
I'm looking at it and saying, someone's going to play this thing and take a kernel of this and then put it into something else. And we're going to see a game that is a more traditional game that does have more traditional mechanics that was inspired by something in, you know, LCD dream emulator or something in fucking in car does mind maze.
Innovation and Influence in Gaming
00:24:09
Speaker
Uh, no, I remember that I was just, I mean, well, as I was just saying, uh,
00:24:14
Speaker
We need to remember the past, because if we don't remember the past, we're doomed to repeat it. I've seen the name Dragon's Lair come up in the chat a lot, and that's something I namedrop in my upcoming review, actually. Hellblade 2 feels like playing Dragon's Lair, the combat especially.
00:24:30
Speaker
It's just pressing the right button when the thing flashes. That's fucking cool. But if people more collectively remembered a dragon's lair, they wouldn't present something like Hellblade 2 as something new and innovative. They'd just say, oh, it's a dragon's lair. That's my thing, where you're like, maybe someone else will pick up on this. What exactly are they picking up on? Because I feel like it's regressed.
00:24:59
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, what's there to... What innovation is there in Hellblade 2 to be taken forward? I mean, there's no... I don't think anyone... I would say sound design is one of the... In Hellblade 1. I think sound design is one of the things that stuck with me. Right.
00:25:14
Speaker
in terms of innovation. Not even in terms of innovation, just in terms of like, oh, you handled this interestingly, especially if you're playing with good headphones or surround sound. You handled the topic like psychosis in an interesting way. Could that have been done in a movie? Absolutely. You could have absolutely done that.
00:25:32
Speaker
But I'm interested to see you take once you've played it. Not in a, cause people will take this as like, Marty can't have an opinion. No, because if anything, I think he's more accurate to the point. I played it. My girlfriend watched. She loves it. Absolutely loved what she saw. I said, it felt so bad. That's one of the most offensive things to put in my hands.
00:25:51
Speaker
Yeah. I rather would have been watching it than having to play it. And a lot of that will come into that combat that everyone goes, oh, it looks so cool and cinematic. And I'm like, if it felt like I played for a little bit and then I yanked it. It's like, here, your turn. No, no, give it back. No, you have to give it back. And it was just really poorly done in that way. But it was a bit in.
00:26:12
Speaker
I've been rewatching old E3 conferences on my personal channel. Because you hate yourself, is that why? He's catching up on his history, he's not going to repeat it. Catching up on my history, doing the repeat of each other. Okay, fair enough. And I was watching 2005, 2006, 2007, so this was sort of the introduction of the 360, the PS3, the Wii, which funnily enough, Xbox always has the best of those conferences, which like, what happened? What happened to our boy?
00:26:40
Speaker
The Xbox, especially 2007, was just like, oh, here's Orange Box and Modern Warfare and Bioshock and Halo 3. Gaming PCs is what they did. I mean, that is pretty awesome. And they're like, Sony's pretty much the only company still playing the console war game. Just with themselves? Well, Nintendo's over there just counting money. Yeah, Nintendo does its own thing, and Sony's like, please, someone oppose us so we can make this a war again.
00:27:07
Speaker
But it was funny seeing Nintendo in that era, their DS Wii era, how many things they brought up that they kept saying aren't traditional games. This was really when they were trying to broaden their horizons to find, to appeal to grandmas and people who don't play games. And so of that era, when you look at a thing like Brain Age or you look at a thing like Wii Fit, where do you view these sort of kind of learning or betterment tools or even
00:27:38
Speaker
I don't know. There's that new game Shishingo that came out. That's a photography game, but where you learn Japanese through photography. Like is Duolingo a game? That's a language I'm up in it. It's certainly gamified. Sure. But this is going back to what I was saying. Like there's
00:27:56
Speaker
It's probably not fair to group them in with games, but we will, because that's just how we've always done it, and these are all offering fundamentally different things. It's gaming's disadvantage when you go against films. I mean, films, there's always a stated intention there. You're going to watch a two-hour story, you're going to interact with characters, there's probably going to have a happy ending or whatever, and it'll be an engaging story and bloody blah.
00:28:22
Speaker
There's a film, there's porno, there's short films. But you always know you're going to be experiencing a non-interactive emotional experience. But video games, that's just one tiny facet of video games. There's also, as we say, the simulations, the educational games, the live services that are just grinding up shooting enemies over and over again. These are all
00:28:49
Speaker
on a baseline level fundamentally different to story-based artistic media. It's interesting because I think again it's like dealing with an unruly customer though that just shows up to this
00:29:02
Speaker
establishment and it's like I want a game. Instead, we should be saying I want to game, but how much so to speak. It's the degree of the game because some days I want nothing but raw gameplay. Give me a nice roguelike. I can keep going over and over again. If you have any line of dialogue, I will probably uninstall because I don't want to read right now. I don't want to hear anything about your narrative. In other days, Ace Attorney's on that. I'm reading through here. That's what I'm doing for
00:29:29
Speaker
Some days you just want gaming to be just some sort of amorphous mass. You can stick your head in for a few minutes to pass the time. What do you want is the fucking Metaverse from Ready Player One or whatever it was called? Oh, got it. From Mark Zuckerberg.
00:29:44
Speaker
Yeah, just something stick your head in for half an hour and just like piss about for a while because you're bored. There you go. Yeah, sometimes you just want like that online bar, so to speak. And if anything, it's our job as the people who are at the funnel, at the stream of all the gaming, to sort of redirect it to the people who want it. We are kind of like consumer's guides still. Maybe not in the technical aspect anymore, but we're still like, hey, this is what you're into. This is what this is.
00:30:11
Speaker
Not because I do or don't like things that are this thing, but it's because it's the closest words that we have. You tried, yes. Recursive, almost caught on. I think the problem with sprawlr, you went too far out on the ledge. He calls them recursive sprawlrs, right? Like me when I'm on the bed and I've had too many. Well, recursive describes one sort of thing and sprawlr describes specifically the Metroidvania style layout of the Dark Souls. Sure.
00:30:42
Speaker
Oh no, then we got to Metroidvania. That's two games in one. Oh no, it's happening again. I think we should go to Superjets. There's one last game on. Okay. Indica. Do you do Indica in the same vein as the Hellblade or do you think it is doing something different? It's certainly Hellblade adjacent. Whatever the one genre is, it's the same thing. It's just better. Yeah. That's it.
00:31:13
Speaker
It's better for not having an attempt at core combat, certainly. It's certainly a lot clearer on its identity. Could you better think of that combat experience? I think the fact that it keeps changing what it is as you're going through it sort of is enough indication that you shouldn't really rely on anything as a core mechanic in that game. In my mind, when you said indication, I spelled it indica.
00:31:42
Speaker
Indicated with a K. Yeah, there enough. Immortal combat. Yeah, that is like in the opening few minutes, I was like, how many, after you have to fill that water bucket up like five times, I was like, is this gonna be a thing we have to do often? I love that. And it may be off at the end of it, which I liked, and you never have to do it again. That was fun to watch Yachts as he's like going through the bucketing and it's like, oh, what's gonna be the twist or anything? I was like, nothing, you're just gonna get disappointed.
00:32:08
Speaker
you've experienced disappointment. It is an experience and it was a good one. Well, there you go. I also like when the game kept saying none of these points matter. And I was like, but do they? How long were you on the level up? Oh my God. Way too long. Yeah, that was way too long. That was certainly an experience that brought out emotions.
00:32:35
Speaker
Do you think that sort of brought out the emotion of wanting to stop watching a mentally disabled woman getting the shit beaten out of her? Do you think the lead up to those two games had
00:32:50
Speaker
had something to do with them. Do you think, like, Hellblade is a game that keeps being... I mean, I know you don't watch all these press conferences and stuff, Yahtzee, but, like, this is a game that Microsoft has shown in case that there's conferences, and it was at Summer Game Fest, and the game awards, and, like, constantly, you know, one of those things that was in our face for years and years, whereas Indica kind of just popped up. Like, I think it might have been in Steam Next Fest last time, but it kind of just popped up out of nowhere, and then people were like, oh, this game's pretty cool, check it out. Like, I feel like it had the same baggage as a thing like Hellblade.
00:33:19
Speaker
I think the implication when something is pushed, as you describe, by its company like that is that they're offering a broad experience. And that's the implication. They're saying, hey, this is something that everyone could enjoy. Whereas in some cases like that, they might just be thinking, let's hope enough of these copies will be sold before word of mouth gets around. Yeah.
00:33:42
Speaker
Ah. Cool. You want to go to Super Chats? Okay. Yes. Let's get to Super Chats. I hope some of you put money on my side, where I just already put better words. Just three different jars, like a coffee shop. Three different jars. Cross jar is we need better words, languages, things. Well, yes, more or less. That's pretty much what the very first super chat I just saw was. Thought takes. Thought takes. Remember for four months in the green gang says, who cares what it isn't. Let's talk about what it is. Ooh, philosophies, mantics, et cetera. Hits Bongrip.
00:34:12
Speaker
I want to find someone that I can get away from the experience conversation and get straight into the story conversation. Triadzi, I imagine you finally made it past the weird forest. What the fuck was that, man? I know. Like, I was like, I stopped playing at that point. I was like, OK, we're just going to get the shit beaten out of us again.
00:34:29
Speaker
But then I just went through it. We just sort of went to the forest and then pissed about and then went out again. Pissed about. Your insanity is a new form of sanity, but what's his name? Thor Jr. is like the most stable Norseman in the world. Little Thor. Little baby Thor. Like what a weird story just all around. Yeah, I finished the game now and like I feel like it's really sort of anti-climatic at the end.
00:34:55
Speaker
And then you get to play the game again, but with a different narrator. And I was like, I kind of don't want to do that. No. And it also sort of like conflicts with the first one where you're like, is this all in her head? This could be happening to an old woman with dementia in the modern age, you know? Well, that's part of the reason. Is like, are we all in on it?
00:35:22
Speaker
Yeah, that's part of the reason why I liked Hellblade 1 more. I thought there was a lot much clearer ambiguity, if that's not an oxymoron. That is a great word, but I like that. It was clear ambiguity. It was much more ambiguous as to whether this was all in Zenua's head or not. But in the second game, there's all these other characters saying, hey, this isn't in your head, because we're all watching it as well. It's anime as hell, Marty. It is Black Clover, where the thing holding you back is a superpower here.
00:35:52
Speaker
It's exciting. Yeah. I'm going to play. I got some problems. I got sick and then the power went out and then I was out of town and then a week past that I am now on to new games like tiny Terry's turbo team. See, that's, oh my God. Yeah. You have to play it on Wednesday. Yeah. I'll try it out on Wednesday. I think. Hell yeah. I don't even know. I think three of those words are also really quick. Uh, Dr. Theo gave $2 in the old chat before the old chat died and said, uh, what is a tech demo or an experience?
00:36:22
Speaker
It's kind of like... I was thinking it was super liminal, right? Just kind of do this one thing and then we'll add a little story to it. Yeah. Well, there was that tech demos that without the story. Did either of you futz with that Matrix thing a few years ago that came out for PS5? The Matrix, it was like an Unreal 5 Matrix experience.
00:36:45
Speaker
I think that's literally, might've been what they called it. I think those things were fine. Like, I would not say that was a game, but it was, oh no, I'm becoming what I hate. But it is a thing I enjoyed doing. It's a thing I enjoyed doing, and I think I highly recommend it because it made me feel something. I like it. In the end, games are toys, and there's different kinds of toys, you know? Well, it's funny you should say that, because first day...
00:37:12
Speaker
FoxD in his $5 super chat says the word game is too broad and needs to be segmented Will Wright used the phrase software toy to describe things like Mario Paint and SimCity.
00:37:29
Speaker
So a software toy would be like Sonai Mario Paint and a game would be something that actually has like a progression path and an ending. Is that what we're defining here? That's just a progression toy, isn't it? I mean, we used to call them skitter boxes. Yeah. What about, uh,
00:37:46
Speaker
There's things like Journey or Abzu where there's no fail state. There is a path you ultimately need to go on in order to continue doing things, but there's really no puzzles. There's no fail state. But I feel like people aren't arguing
00:38:02
Speaker
I don't know if it's POV or what, but people don't really argue that Journey's not a game, whereas people, when Gone Home came out, and those are around the same time, where this isn't a game. And I don't know, maybe it's the point of view, people saw the first person and you associate first person with, give me a gun and a few things. I think it all just comes down to expectations, like I keep saying. Like I said, Hellblade II has combat, presents itself as a game, Gone Home,
00:38:30
Speaker
I think, like many people, when I first started it, I thought, oh, this must be some kind of survival horror game where we explore a house that's deserted and eventually find a monster. And then when we find it isn't that, and our expectations are confounded, that's where a certain amount of mixed feelings can emerge.
00:38:48
Speaker
But anyway, Alex Armstrong gives side dollars and says, this topic feels like the never ending question. What is art? To which I say when a game makes you feel an emotion taken to a 10, it's an experience. But the thing I kick in the balls is art. Yes. That's a fantastic. A film makes you feel an emotion. This is why we need to figure out why we differentiate between games and the films.
00:39:11
Speaker
I think, see, the art thing is good. Very much with Marty, very much with that of like, it's a thing, it's an experience, it made me feel a thing. But games are a part tech, and it's that tech part that demands sort of utilitarian words. What am I doing with the blasted thing, you know? That's where we're kind of stuck on here. Like a lawnmower, you know what the thing does. I'm gaming. How much game are we talking?
00:39:39
Speaker
The fuck outta here, I'm gaming. I'm gaming. Yo why, I'm gaming.
00:39:46
Speaker
Uh, the buck to hear their dunkel height gives five euros and says, let's date this episode. I'm mentioning this is the first episode one starting 10 minutes late. And if not, let's date this by me being wrong and stupid. Now you're ever gonna let us hear the end of it. The buck to hear the dunkel height. Listen, it was no one's fault. It was restream's fault. We were all on time. We pulled the trigger. Restream did a goofy. I had to pay Nick was out buying dog food. So I had to fix everything. And I'm not as quick on the draw on the back end as Nick. Oh, man, the internet's a
00:40:15
Speaker
fucking house of cards, isn't it? There's probably like, it's actually a bunch of tubes, I believe. Yeah. It's sort of like three or four things that if they went down, everything would just be fucked and no, and no one thinks about it because it's too depressing and. Yeah. Yeah. One intern just like tripping over the cable. It's out a shark in the meridian. Yeah. You know, they just let those like the cables just hang out in trenches. Yeah. You still got to bite that, right? You got to think.
00:40:44
Speaker
like those giant Japanese spider crabs. Yup. Yup. Anyway, uh, wait, what are these giant Japanese spider crabs? I don't want to, I'm not even, I'm going to Google it. Did you, did you play, did you play another crab's treasure, Matty? I did.
00:40:59
Speaker
Oh, long legs. Towards the end, the thing with the telephone on its head. That's like that's Japanese. That's a giant Japanese spider. Yes, it's a crabby long legs. These guys are fucked. I don't like them at all. Oh, yes. Well, yeah, crabby long legs, that one. Oh, happy long legs. If you want to see something that will freak you the fuck out. Look at pictures of deep sea marine life. Eric, get out of there. You didn't put up a warning. The spider phobia warning.
00:41:26
Speaker
I mean, it's no more disquieting than a Half-Life 2 Strider, I'd have said. Yeah, but this one's real. That's also disquieting. Yeah, exactly. No, it doesn't. It lives on the bottom of the sea in a place you'd never go. That's where my internet are. That's where I get my pornos from. What if I'm getting my pornos one day and he pops through? Well, he might. Like a snake coming out the toilet for you after you saw Anaconda.
00:41:54
Speaker
Verbuchterherdedunkelheit gives another two euros and says, oops, forgot to proofread. Yeah, I'm stupid. I didn't even notice that. Yeah, well, we all knew that. Oh, Verbuchter, I think you're great. I think you speak great German. Adulro gives two euros and says, would you guys recommend Starstunk Vegemite? Meaning, of course, Starstruck Vagabond, my game, what I put out. What are you looking for? I think he'll want to take your game and give it a silly name. Definitely play my game. Give it as many silly names as you want, as long as you buy the fucking thing.
00:42:22
Speaker
Buy a second copy and give it a second to land in. Name them both. Did you ever make an experience?
00:42:40
Speaker
The core gameplay loop guy? No, I'm just wondering. I'm familiar with some of your games. I'm not familiar with some early ones. Closest one is that idle game he made. Oh yeah, that was fun. I once had an idea of a concept game that was like a visual novel where you're given a short scene and then you're given two choices and then every choice you make branches the entire story and like completely recontextualizes it.
00:43:14
Speaker
What's that? Like a twine, like a twine story. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like every scene, just like it starts off with very little context. Like you're in a room, you're in a hospital waiting room and then you get one choice and whatever you choose changes, whether it's a abandoned hospital or if it's a functioning hospital that goes into two different, completely different threads of stories. Every choice you make completely recontextualizing things, but yeah, it would have taken too much writing. So I couldn't be asked.
00:43:31
Speaker
but it was too much for pain in the ass.
00:43:42
Speaker
And that would get rid of your dreaded endingtron. Is that what you call it? Yeah. Yeah. Just a completely different story, depending on what decision you make. Did you like choosing adventure books as a kid? Oh yeah. Fighting fantasies. I was all over that shit. That explains so much. Goosebumps. Keeping your finger in the last page, just in case you're about to walk into a horrible death. Every game should have an undo button.
00:44:10
Speaker
Listen, I just made one mistake. Let me undo. Well, they do. Or is it whatever it was called? That new, the Sokoban that just come out. Oh, I like that you can undo. Sun and sky. Yeah. So right. You can just undo the whole room, undo a single one. Well, they all have restore buttons, don't they? They all have load yang functions. Yeah, but this is like one step back. Sometimes you just went one step too far. I liked that when Bridsoper has had the time, did it? There you go.
00:44:37
Speaker
Uh, PixelGrip is ten dollars, says first time catching this live in a long while, so showing my support for all you guys do, and also love the adorable toffee cam. Give him all the love and pets. Aw, thank you PixelGrip. I think he most just wants a walk right now. Hm? Don't we all?
00:44:59
Speaker
Wait, can I get that? Honestly, that. Cause I asked that question and I was like, does the exclusivity thing work on PC players? I know it works on console players.
00:45:10
Speaker
But does it work on PC? I mean, I think the best example of know it doesn't is people a week ago getting super excited that the Kingdom Hearts games were coming to Steam and it's like they've been on Epic for several years. Yeah. Yeah. That's my thing is if like if if PC gamers can wait out them coming to another box on the same PC, then no, I absolutely wait two years for, you know, got a war Ragnarok or whatever I got.
00:45:36
Speaker
Hades won on Epic because it was an early access, it was exclusive, and I wanted it so bad. And I regret that. That still weighs me down. I bought it, I'm getting it on Steam again and again. I'm not doing it again. My library. So is Sony CEO just pissed off that people aren't buying PlayStations and all the PlayD exclusives? What's his biggest plan?
00:46:00
Speaker
I just think what they're saying of their plan is if a game is multiplayer, it's probably going to come day and day to PC, which part is why Helldiver's success was obviously attributed to that. But if a game is single player, they'll be like, oh, we'll kind of do staggered releases. And the hardcore fans will get it this year, and PC fans can wait a year and a half or two years.
00:46:19
Speaker
Like, I knew that was his game plan. I just didn't think he'd be surprised by it. I think these people, like, I think it's a... I think each little ecosystem is a very different world. And I don't think a lot of people understand the different worlds. Like I said, Sony is pretty much the only company still trying to play console wars. Yeah. Xbox. Xbox is basically fully PC integrated now and Nintendo, as always, is just amusing itself in the corner of the room, just playing with its belly button.
00:46:49
Speaker
Yeah, I'm glad that was PG. I finally get into that point where it's like, you know, they're practically just little PCs. You got to know your competition. Oh well. Anyway, Pixel Grip gives $10. There's also also, I don't know why, but the first game I thought of when I read this topic is Shadow of the Colossus, which is on my top five favorite games. Thoughts on that game in terms of this topic? It's a game. Piss off.
00:47:12
Speaker
I will push back at what, Frost, you were saying we only use experience when it's a thing that we're like, ooh, we don't want to call this a game. But like, I think a thing like that, like, I don't know. No, what? I said we only use the word experience when the game sucks.
00:47:27
Speaker
Well, I don't think that's true. Like, I think you would say like, Oh my God, it's out of classes. Incredible experience. That's sort of, that's sort of illustrates the fact that something can be an experience and the game. Cause I agree. I mean, if the word experience fits anything that of the classes certainly fits it. Yeah. But I would never, I guess, not a game. No, no, no. It's an experience, not a game, but I would say the emotions I had made it feel like an experience to me. It is absolutely still a game. Okay.
00:47:54
Speaker
It is a game, but it's also a capital E experience that nothing else can offer, really. Right. I would say Animal Well felt like those moments, I'm like, ooh, this is something special to me. Well, that's the thing. It's like great games. They always feel like experiences to me. So if all you're left with is like, oh, it's just an experience because it wasn't that good. Roll that trailer back. Did you see that 9.7?
00:48:20
Speaker
That was me. That was you. I fought for a 10. I couldn't give it a 10. Why not? You had to like, it was one of those to give a 10, you had to like defend your life. And I'm really bad at that. I ultimately just like, I don't fucking care. Give it a nine seven. I just want to get out of this meeting. Remember when we all used to be, remember when we all used to be much more culturally important?
00:48:41
Speaker
Man, now we're just old and no one cares, except for Frost. Yeah, I was like, what's this? Our stocks are going down. I'm going up. Okay. Yeah. Okay. You're a rising star, asshole. RoboKnobTheStop gives 50 euros. Deep red, Super Chat, no less. And says, a game has meaningful interactions that give you some kind of reward. Either gameplay or emotional ones. EG putting a hat on Joel in The Last of Us 2 is the latter. If the interactions are divorced from both, it stops being a game. So I hate Hellblade 2.
00:49:11
Speaker
But you hate, you hate Hellblade 2 as a gay, it's a difference to be like Hellblade 2 is not the thing I wanted, so I hate it. Versus Hellblade 2 is this thing. I experience this thing and I hate this thing. You know what I mean? Like, hate it for what it is. Don't hate it for what it is.
00:49:29
Speaker
You can't just say, like, bad games aren't games. I completely agree with that. Because that's like saying, like, oh, I don't make mistakes. It was almost like, oh, the devil made me do all the wrong I've ever done in my life. You have to have some responsibility. You have to accept that some games are just shit. I don't think that's what detracts it from it. And that's why I also just don't care. And for the record, I hate Hellblade 2 for exactly what it was and not what it wasn't. Exactly.
00:49:57
Speaker
Whatever you're gonna be calling it in the end, I will come back, I will state it, and then I will say it still sucked as a win. I think that's another for the Frostjar. Getting a lot of experience in word don't-knows here. Did you? What were you expecting?
00:50:23
Speaker
Going into Hellblade 2, were you expecting, like deep- I wasn't expecting to ask for a Big Mac, and it was more lettuce, and more bun, and less meat. If this was the first Hellblade ever,
00:50:36
Speaker
I don't think as many people would be as mad. I don't think we'd even be having this conversation. Sure. But it made the big mistake of coming up after the first one and the first one being so damn good. So I do think expectations play into it. I don't think maybe into us three, because I feel like we're capable of separating ourselves a bit more. But I do think that the public that doesn't like it, it's almost just
00:51:02
Speaker
Like in my review, I kind of split it where I said as a game on its own, eh, I don't care for it. Compared to Hellblade 1, which I loved, yeah, it was awful. Okay. I mean, I thought the story in Hellblade 2 kind of stuck that didn't make sense as well. But we're walking so much and they're talking to me, there's no character development for how much you're forcing these characters onto me. I don't get it.
00:51:26
Speaker
Yeah, and also it has that weirdly fetishistic, beating up the strong female protagonist thing that a weirdly large amount of games that focus on a female-centered narrative tend to have. But we beat up a man. And that would make a really great semi-ramble addict in the future.
00:51:42
Speaker
Possibly, if I could find a good thrust to get me through it. There was a thing I was hesitating with. I think it's because it's so narrative heavy that it's hard to really dig into the parts that I don't like about it. And it's my respect for not wanting to spoil it that stops me from really digging in that knife as to why I don't like whatever the hell you want to call it.
00:52:07
Speaker
Set aside a time. We'll set a timer for like two months. I want a spoiler full review. You could just, you could just go at it. We just have one episode where we just, this is full spoilers. We're just gonna, we're just gonna really.
00:52:19
Speaker
It's just spoilers, no conversation, yeah. Yeah, like God of War Ragnar, my issues with it, like I'd have to spoil, you know? I mean, what would, I mean, we're sort of talking about a riff tracks here. We just like play the whole game in front of us and take the piss out of it as it goes. I mean, I'd probably enjoy it. I'd do that for Hellblade, for free. Yeah, I'd do that for, I'd do that for Hellblade too, although I might confuse things if we add to the fucking voices in Senua's head. Yeah, they had two voices already. We'll just take those out when I was in.
00:52:50
Speaker
We'll mod the game, we'll remove the voice in your head characters and we'll just mod our own commentary track in there instead. It already felt like a DVD commentary.
00:52:58
Speaker
Yeah. Hey, Senua, you suck. It's like, what's the fucking case one of these days? That's the degree of it. Because in the first one, it was like well-choreographed madness. Like, again, it was this weird order chaos that they were bouncing. In the second one, it was like, oh, girl, you see that skull over there? That's going to be you if you don't get out of here. Like, that's just what it felt like, like a really rough movie watching you. Oh, that, if the other voice would then repeat the same sentence but in a slightly ethereal way. Yeah. It's like, that skull's going to be you. Going to be you. It's going to be you.
00:53:28
Speaker
They need to see, they need them to disagree more. No, no, no, that's not true. You're going to be fine. You're going to be fine. That skull's not going to be you. That's another person's skull. Just keep going. That is not the fucking Deadpool thing. Like they do it in the Deadpool comics and they did it in Deadpool, the game as well. Though he's got like two sort of competing voices in his head that are narrating his actions. Almost like two angels.
00:53:48
Speaker
or an angel and a devil, I guess, not two angels. That would be just having a good judgment. Also, really quick. One real angel and a Chris angel. And a Chris, a mind freak. Really quick, Tungsten. Sorry. Thank you so much for gifting money on Kofi. No message, but thank you, Tungsten. There you go.
00:54:07
Speaker
Uh... Rubbin' off the snob then gives us another five euros and says, and adding to that, Hellblade II, even as a movie, was poorly written. God, I hated it so much. Yeah. White. Rubbin' off the snob. We were just saying all that. Uh, Eric Whitecart. Oh, hello, Eric. Gives 50 arses and says, Netflix interactives and those DVD extras before would be an interactive movie or an interactive game. Some have more gameplay than visual novels. Yeah, what about, like, did you ever do Bandersnatch? The, uh...
00:54:33
Speaker
No, it's just fucking Dragon's Lair again, isn't it? Yes, you ever do those old Disney films with the hidden mickeys on the DVD? That sounds great. Those are fun. Anyway, FoxD gives $10 and says not to bang the same drum beat again, but focusing on the art excludes the entire simulation platform gaming adjacent hobby. Are truck sim or iRacing not games by Yahtzee's own definition of a game?
00:54:57
Speaker
Wow, this is going back to saying the game is too broad a term. As I said, like, again, like, stimulations like you're describing would still be sold on the same shelf alongside Uncharted and Overwatch and Wii Fit, when these are all fundamentally offering different experiences, and that's a problem.
00:55:17
Speaker
I love this because it's sort of like, really, where's the line between a virtual walking museum of the Coliseum and Assassin's Creed 2, you know? Where is the game? Oh, yeah. You can stab people.
00:55:33
Speaker
When when I was when I was a kid, I played a lot of my first person multiplayer games were like couch co-op like and 64 like Golden Eye or Hexen or Perfect Dark or anything like that. And there'd be sometimes when I didn't have my friends over and before bots were a thing where I would just go and do a multiplayer game and just walk around. And I didn't have anyone to shoot. There was nothing to shoot. There was nothing that could hurt me. I was wandering around.
00:56:00
Speaker
Have you seen that concept horror game that's based around the concept of playing a multiplayer game when no one else is in the server? Ooh, no, I like that though. I like that part. Yeah, it's a cool idea. I forget what it's called. It's something like No Players on Server, I think it's called. Ooh, that sounds good. I bet the twist is gonna be there's a player on the server. I think that's very much the case, yes. Or something like, there's a ghost in the server or some shit.
00:56:24
Speaker
Yeah. I don't know. I really like... Sounds like just growing up in the Midwest. That was exactly growing up in the Midwest. But I think that's where my real infatuation reverence with the sort of, give me a space to just wander. And then I found out about games like LSD emulator and now you have the Cosmo D games or even... You played pools the other...
00:56:47
Speaker
the other week, right? I thought that was a cool just, this isn't a thing I want to spend 10 hours in. But this is a thing that for like half an hour, I liked existing there. And I found it really fucking interesting. And it gave me weird thoughts and emotions, which sounds like you want urban exploration and drugs without the consequences.
00:57:07
Speaker
I mean, those are I do love our experience. Yeah. Yeah. And I do. And drugs are pretty cool as well. So yeah. The big two. Uh, Alex Armstrong is title list and says, would you get the exact same experience replaying a game you love over and over like Silent Hill two, or is it only good the first time like the return of the opening?
00:57:26
Speaker
Well I've played Timehill 2 like 50 times because obviously after the first time you know the twist in the plot, but after that I just really love being immersed in that atmosphere, I suppose. The experience of going through the plot points again with the knowledge of what they all mean in the background, looking out for all the interesting imagery and shit, which only ever did in contrast, it's not really an atmosphere game, it's more
00:57:50
Speaker
bureaucratic filling in the boxes in your insurance form. And, uh, it's not quite as fun to immerse yourself in the experience. I would say Macintosh. I feel like I can go back to those games every few years. I feel like I'll, because I played over it in five years ago or whatever, four years ago, and I feel like I can go back and I'll just forget shit. Same without our wilds. Yeah. I feel like I'd need to wait a few more years before I've forgotten more about and pretend and forgotten enough of the puzzle solutions to for it to be a challenge again. Yeah.
00:58:21
Speaker
Alex Armstrong gives $2 and says, thoughts about MMORPG and city builder experiences? Not my cup of tea, but again, the completely different experience offered to the other examples mentioned previously. And I feel like there's two, there's two different kinds of city builders. I mean, maybe that's why you use the word experiences, but there's city builders where there's like goals and resources and management and you can fail or you could do better depending on your choices. And then there are city builders, there was that game like Townscraper, I think, that are more of
00:58:50
Speaker
almost like art pieces to where you don't have, there's no resources. There's no failure. It's just make this cool building, make this cool city, shape the landscape, do whatever you want. And at the end you have a nice little thing to look at and there's nothing to do. And so yeah, I totally get where we do agree. Yeah. And I guess that's the word cozy is being attached to sort of like lack of consequences, lack of tension. Yeah. Yeah. So low stakes, low stakes. Yeah.
00:59:21
Speaker
Uh, Robonob the snob gives 10 euros and says since you brought up Indica, the bucket part was meaningful. It ties to the story. Grabbing the rosary, same. The points ties to the ending. Can't say the same about the actions I took in Hellblade 2. I'm getting a feeling you don't like Hellblade.
00:59:39
Speaker
I see this. That seems to have come across, yes. And I'm sure he and I are very much in agreement. It had cool moments. The first giant, that felt very Hellblade one. No, I'm with you there. The fucking giant fights were fucking spectacular. But you know, spectacle was all it really was. Yeah. And then the little cave thing. Yeah, yeah. It had moments. It really did. There's some strong imagery.
01:00:08
Speaker
Yes. Certainly. Oh. That's about all you could say for it. Also, it's not very long. The most of my two, like, pros for Hellblade 2.
01:00:19
Speaker
Tsunami Dusho gives $20 and says, nothing, but we'll take those $20. Thank you very much. Thank you. Christian Law gives $99 and says, I consider what remains of Edith Finch and Firewatch the best examples of experiences that still contain entertaining gameplay. Thoughts on those? I think I've said before, and I think Jack has said something similar. Firewatch is a lot more fun if you turn off the map marker that shows you exactly where you are.
01:00:45
Speaker
Because it's quite possible to orient yourself based on landmarks and then it becomes a sort of deduction game to a certain extent. And makes it a lot more fun for me. But by default, they leave on the map marker and then you play through the game and didn't realise you turn it off and don't get the game at its best in my view.
01:01:05
Speaker
Yeah, the world design, the art design, the horizon design in that game is pretty spectacular in terms of exactly what Yahtzee just said, of being able to orient yourself if you just pay attention. You know, in the same way that Breath of the Wild has very specific horizons to guide your eye to get you intrigued of what's going to be over that hill. And in Firewatch, you lose that if you're just staring at the map and being like, well, I'm just going to follow exactly where to go.
01:01:33
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's such a fucking bummer to me that that team cut I mean good for them getting bought by valve make a shit ton of money But just kind of got absorbed into the we'll see you once a decade machine. Yeah, yeah They just like to piss about and pay themselves lots of money Yeah, and they did like they they were leads that's uncertain elements of the half-life Alex But I feel like in another world if they were still indie by now We would have been on their fourth game fifth game out
01:02:01
Speaker
Yeah, Valve is like the Elysian Fields of indie gaming. It's like if you make the best indie games, you get to go to this paradise realm where you just piss about working on concept games forever, but no one ever actually sees inside the walls and nothing ever comes out again.
01:02:20
Speaker
Anyway, Blistered Soul gives £2 and says, how do you define button that ruins everything? Well, it was, in concept, a sort of spoof take on a clicker game or an idle game. So a satire. Yeah, a satire of an idle game was my intention there. That answers your question, Blistered Soul. Geldor Yiddish gives $5.
01:02:46
Speaker
Yeah. Look at what Eric's got in the air. Yeah, look at that. I'm not sure what that's for. I don't know how you did it. I don't have a green screen. This is impressive. I know. I know. It's impressive. I think it's an AI thing. It's impressive that they can isolate things from backgrounds a lot more efficiently these days. No, Eric, using AI. How dare you? Taking someone's full-time job away. Always gets the fingers wrong.
01:03:06
Speaker
If you get a, if you get a, if you got like a new iPhone and you open up one of your pictures and you like hold on your face and like drag away, it like uses AI to sort of isolate your face from the background and it does it really well. Whoa. Yeah. Like Vtubers, they use phones. They're not using like fancy cameras. Like phone technology is crazy. Anyway, off we go.
01:03:28
Speaker
Anywho, Gelden Jettich gives side orders, it says Jesse Shell's The Art of Game Design defines game design as experience crafting, but also that there's no periodic table of game elements. Yeah. Well, there you go. Experience. And then Gelden Jettich adds to that, saying not to misrepresent Shell, he also says the game is not the experience, it enables the experience, but it's not the experience. Page 11.
01:03:53
Speaker
Yeah, it's like going to a thing I was working on where I was saying every game tells two stories. It's the one it tells and then the one you feel. And that's sort of like, I guess, where we're getting conflicted on the whole experience thing where people who felt moved by the graphics and the music, what they mean, they want to feel validated. I'm not taking that away from them. It's just like just two different conversations. I mean, for me, what's interesting about video games is that they use challenge.
01:04:20
Speaker
to evoke emotions like satisfaction and relief and in some cases like to give you a greater emotional attachment to certain things and that's something that no other medium can really explore. So it's a shame we'll just get distracted with just trying to do the same thing films do. Yeah.
01:04:42
Speaker
It's not like it's taking away from something else. It's not like we only get 100 games a year and one of those slots was filled up by something that wanted to be a movie. Well, it kind of is taken away. It's taken away like the air out of the room, like publicity. It's taken away the time it took to work on that could have been spent being worked on an actual game. It is a game. I hope it is a game.
01:05:05
Speaker
It might be a bad game, but it is a game. Or if they wanted to make a movie, they could have gone to Hollywood too. They almost feel resentful of themselves and the player.
01:05:13
Speaker
Yeah, it's like I say, some people say, why are you bothered by optional content? You could always just not play it. And my usual response to that is, the fact that it's there means that something else isn't. Sure, sure. That's my objection. Yeah. No one has to justify the things they make. I just don't have to like it. That's all I see it as. Well, quite. Absolutely.
01:05:35
Speaker
Also really quick, Tungsten came back on Ko-Fi with another demo. Thank you so much, Tungsten. Oops, I marked the message as private. Here's another five bucks for my question. What are y'all's thoughts on games without words, such as Hyper Light Drifter? You might have known a slight something else, like a year or two ago in that period. I don't think we did know in communities. No, slightly back in the day before you. Oh, slightly. Three for us.
01:05:57
Speaker
I very much enjoy a game that tells a story without words. Like the first example for that I can think of would be Out of This World, also known as Another World in the European regions. And just recently I was playing Slaco.
01:06:10
Speaker
which doesn't really have much in the way of live storytelling. There's a lot of audio logs and text logs and stuff to give you the background of the story. But you're never really told what you're doing or why you're doing it. You're just going along with your main character's unspoken objectives. And I found I kind of appreciated that as a game mechanic, as a storytelling mechanic.
01:06:33
Speaker
Like, you just show Rock up at this facility, and then you get an objective saying, plant explosives at the facility, and then you just have to infer why the main character wants to blow this facility up. And honestly, I was kind of appreciating that. Yeah, a few weeks ago when I rewatched Mad Max Fury Road before Furiosa, I just continually gobsmacked how spartan that movie's screenplay is.
01:06:56
Speaker
like there's just yeah yeah and like no backstory it's just like fucking throw you in there and like you'll get it and and i don't know it feels like a trust in the viewer that i really appreciate yeah uh the protolictor gives 10 dollars and says where on your scales to something like her story land
01:07:14
Speaker
No. This is an area I think me and Marty rub up against each other a lot. I ain't entirely frost because he was hating on immortality. Like in a hot way. Sam Barlow's shit has never really worked for me. I mean, I know like, you know, it's very critically acclaimed. I just can't get over the fact that
01:07:33
Speaker
There's no real, like, gameplay, traditional gameplay element to it. I prefer something like Not for Broadcast, in which there is a literal game mechanic attached to watching the videos. It at least gives me something to do. Don't feed the monkeys. As soon as you started talking about that, just torrential downpour and thunder and lightning and darkness happened outside my house, so I feel like my mood is just impacting the weather.
01:07:57
Speaker
No, I do agree, but I don't think that's what he's going for, right? If we're talking about, like, intention, I don't think he's going for... No, I get that. I get you're supposed to, like, make up the story inside your own head, like you're reading the book or something, but... I just can't meet him on this. Sorry. Yeah. No, no, no, it's... I need the game to pat me on the head and tell me I'm a good boy for figuring it out.
01:08:19
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, man.
Merging Movies and Games
01:08:22
Speaker
Yeah, her story. It's funny of the three her stories, the one that I felt like her story was like an interesting proof of concept. And then telling lies and especially immortality just really fucking spoke to me. And I think part of it is like I feel like
01:08:38
Speaker
tell her immortality and then even like Kojima stuff I feel like is directly I am at the center of the Venn diagram of the two things I love most which are movies and and video games like merging in a really interesting way by someone who feels similarly I always think is is really exciting and I always kind of get mad when people with Kojima are like all he does is make movies he just wants to make movies because I'm like he's also his games are some of the most playful games
01:09:04
Speaker
Like, even the games that have, like, fucking 90-minute cutscenes have some of the most interesting, weird, out-there systems and mechanics. So, yeah. I prefer... I want all the storytelling medias to play to their strengths. And I'm very much in the Yahtzee category of, video games do this thing that others can't. So whenever they sort of abscond that and just try to do the movie thing or the book thing, I'm like, ehh. Ehh. Ehh. Rubs me weird. Ehh.
01:09:34
Speaker
Will Cooling gives £2 and says, has Yachts watched Red Letter Media's video on the death of cinemas? Yes, I did. Doesn't really affect my life much. Last movie he watched was Team Fortress 2. Yes. MS is Blue. It's good. It's on YouTube.
01:09:52
Speaker
What was the consensus? Movie theaters are dying? Pretty much, yeah. It's because you can't smoke in them anymore. Let me light up a little Siggy. Speaking of experience, that's the thing right now. I think cinema needs to lean into the experience of it all. Otherwise, it's one I can enjoy at my TV for a much cheaper price.
01:10:14
Speaker
You want smell-o-vision? You want the thing with the rumbly seats? I'm okay with you. I saw Top Gun Maverick in 4D, and it was jostling my prostate. It was just the most intense experience. It was great. It seems an awful lot of work to go to for something that doesn't really fundamentally change the cinema-going experience. I'm glad I did it once. I am never going to do it again. It was so distracting to the actual movie.
01:10:40
Speaker
There you go. I'll settle for Barbenheimer, you know, just events, experiences. Feels like it did the same thing that motion controls of video games do, just sort of kills my immersion, because I'm just focusing on what I, the person playing the game is doing, rather than what I, the person inside the game is doing. That's just low self-esteem, you're self-conscious about looking weird. Just give in.
01:11:02
Speaker
And yes Sean Harriman, I'm so excited to do the sphere slash orb in Vegas. I don't care what's showing on there. I want to go there. I'll go see fucking Grateful Dead. I don't care about Grateful Dead. Just put me in the orb. I'll fucking watch a David Attenborough documentary or something. You imagine? Yeah. Fucking frog. 10 stories high. Starstruck vagabond on the orb. Oh man. They would like the pixels. They're trying to kill you.
01:11:29
Speaker
Uh, FoxD gives $5 and says, if OutRun could build 15 different racing levels to get five different endings, we can make a proper branching path narrative adventure game. It's not quite the same thing though, is it? Well, it's lazy, but also it's, uh, it's difficult to justify the expense of making 15 different story threads when the player's only going to see one.
01:11:51
Speaker
It's for me. Even I have tried to prototype something on paper, but really, you get to a point where you're like, I'm making 15 games and still just won. So, yeah. Did you play Slay the Princess, either of you? I did, yeah. What did you think about that?
01:12:09
Speaker
Uh, pretty cool. Pretty fun. Neat. Pretty interesting. Yeah. Haven't really given them much thought since I finished it, but yeah. It was your own adventure thing. The big thing is just the, um, the uncertainty. Yeah. Yeah. Nice writing. They sort of suppose that, hi, it's, you thought this was a standard rescue princess narrative, but it ain't, but it does, you know, it's a limit to how much you can elaborate on that as well.
01:12:38
Speaker
Uh, Alex Armstrong gives $2, says Bart Mollot, Mad Jack, per Yatsy's thumbs up. GG. Yes, we could have games that feel like just sticking your head in a big amorphous ball of action for about 10 minutes. That's literally just walk into a room and shoot a guy over and over again, the game. Mm-hmm.
01:12:57
Speaker
But it's got nice presentation, very reminiscent of a certain genre of anime when everything in the 80s, when everyone had really weirdly proportioned tits and green hair. Green mullets.
01:13:14
Speaker
So is Molot Magak's like old bite-sized levels? It's a room by room roguelike where every level is literally 30 seconds long. You literally die if you don't kill anything for 10 seconds.
01:13:36
Speaker
Yeah. Does it really? It's just a constant push forward. Kind of like that. Oh, I'm never gonna remember what the name of this game was. Speed. Oh, talking about a game. Where you just like have to push down a corridor the whole time and shoot things as they come up. And if you ever stop, you've pretty much fucked up. Hmm. Super right? Uh, no, I dunno. Something.
01:14:02
Speaker
Squirtle Squad 420, November 4 month in ad-free podcast says, what is the opposite
Gameplay vs Ephemeral Experiences
01:14:06
Speaker
end of this debate? Something that's all game and no experience? Tetris, maybe? I think? And that pong and Tetris effect gets that experience in. The other example for me would be popping bubble wrap. That's like all cathartic experience and no context. This guy. But you love opening biscuit cans. No context, no challenge, but it's undeniably fun to pop bubble wrap.
01:14:32
Speaker
Is that just like a fidget spinner? A little bit? Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. J Nobody gives $10 says if a game is little to no replay value because you've already experienced all the twists and turns it offers, then it's an experience. You went somewhere with that. I don't know whose jar that goes in. Yeah. No.
01:14:55
Speaker
Ash Fin gives $10 and his experiences feels more ephemeral to me than game. A game is something you might be able to come back to later or replay to still get some value out of it. Experiences might only happen the first time. Yeah, I think I'm with you on that, Ash Fin. As I say, it's like a theme park ride. Especially life experiences. You don't think of experiences in life as a thing you can revisit whenever you want by opening up and...
01:15:17
Speaker
programmer, you know putting a disc in a thing like you think of experiences as like vacations or Holidays like as a kid, you know, I mean like you don't think of it as oh I could just Go into the sky diving. Yeah, exactly. I've been done trust
01:15:33
Speaker
I went tandem skydiving once. They had to pair me up with someone who was really skinny because I'm so huge. I was about to say, did you get a tall enough instructor or were you just looking like he was your baby? Yeah, I had this really tall skinny guy that I assume they keep around for people like me. And I've also been scuba diving, which was a lot more fun.
01:15:56
Speaker
Out of all the diving. Did you see the internet cable down there? Was that in Australia? Yeah, did you see the internet cable? Did you see any of those Japanese spider crabs? No, I did it on honeymoon in Hawaii. I didn't see a giant spider crab. I saw a sea turtle, though. And a couple of sea cucumbers. Aww. And various fishies. FoxD, you saw what it says. A periodic table of gaming elements would make for a great update to that classic Tom Lehrer song. Someone needs to make that.
01:16:26
Speaker
Maybe that could be my next project. Are we still getting new elements?
01:16:33
Speaker
What would, what would crate be an element for the period of gaming or one crates, uh, explosive red barrel, uh, of health bar. Oh, I like this a lot. I like this idea. Then you could define games based on chemical formulas. Yeah. Ooh. I like that. That might be a much more scientific way. It'd be much more scientific than fucking action adventure. Wouldn't it?
01:17:01
Speaker
That's good. That's good. That's good. We got a slow summer coming up. We got some ideas in the pocket. Something to think about. Chef Rola gives $2 and says you wouldn't make a movie that's 80% reading.
01:17:16
Speaker
Ah, but what about subtitled foreign films, chef. Good on you. What about Star Wars right at the start when you ran out? Cause you lied to me. It's a book. Yeah. If you, if you faint in the first 30 seconds of Star Wars, that's all reading. I think the rule is if you start with an opening text crawl and you're not Star Wars, then you fucked up. 8% reading. Interesting. Hmm.
01:17:45
Speaker
Alex Aftron gives two dollars and then says, thoughts on Suda51, Swery and Kojima experiences. Oh no, are we gonna start calling all games experiences? I think they're all games. I don't think any of those are like... Yeah, those are all games. Yeah, those guys are... Even Killer7. Killer7 is definitely a game that's both a game and an experience, if you ask me.
01:18:12
Speaker
Yeah, I mean it's not like super mechanically rich. It's deeper than you might think. There's like unlockable upgrades that the game doesn't tell you about. Yeah, and choose who you want to upgrade and use for puzzles. But I feel like the real things that blur the line are more in the indie space. I feel like in the AAA world,
01:18:36
Speaker
Everything is pretty clear-cut game, even if it's not a good game, even if it's a Hellblade. Yeah, Triple A could never. Yeah, that's the thing. That would burn down Sony, Nintendo, Xbox if they released a non-game experience game. I mean, it didn't use to be like that. I mean, Killer7 was released as like a mainstream GameCube PS2 release.
01:19:01
Speaker
There was a big deal when after Katamari they allowed Keita Takahashi to make Nobi Nobi Boy. That was like a big front page of the PS3 kind of game. Now that was definitely an experience without being a game. That was an experience that I did not enjoy.
01:19:17
Speaker
That's where my line is of like, what the fuck is this thing? What are we doing? What was his next, what was his next thing he did? I think I reviewed it. That's the one. I reviewed it once. Yeah. Very weird game. Also, you know what? I'm glad you're swimming for the fences. But man do I like Katamari. What if we do more of those games?
01:19:37
Speaker
I think I once said in my review of what Katamari feels like, you know, sort of once in a lifetime cosmic event in which that creator and the concept of video games intersected before moving on never to meet again. Yeah. I thought you were going to say they died in a car crash. They got rolled up by, you know, right there.
01:20:00
Speaker
Well that's all the superchats we had. What a good episode. What fun we had. What a contentious debate. We've settled nothing. Well that's the best kind of debate. I'm not great at disagree weenies. Now we can leave the comments to get mad about it while we get on with our lives.
01:20:22
Speaker
Oh, one more super chat just came in. Camjaininja with $5 said, Narcosis is an experience with great storytelling that absolutely couldn't work as a game or film. If you're going to make an experience, then commit. I think you're a whole ass into it. Absolutely. Oh, I remember Narcosis. It's a little spook, a little spook him up. A little first person spoke him up. Put your whole ass in it and then jiggle it about and maybe do a little tummy squeaker to really put the signature on. It's a tummy squeaker.
01:20:51
Speaker
Yeah. What? Like, I want them when they say, hey, can you make a movie about this game? They take the biographical route like Tetris. That's the kind of games I'm into. Because Hellblade, let's make a movie about Hellblade. Easy. Easy. It's already almost done. Yeah, you did it. Yeah, I know. Fucking brand movies.
Upcoming Projects and Events
01:21:14
Speaker
All right, well, thanks for listening to yet another Windbreakers podcast starring me, Yahtzee, Him, Frost, and Him, Marty, and Him Toffee. Yeah, the dog. What else could you look forward to this week? Well, you could always look forward to my Fully Ramblivatic episode on Hellblade 2, which will be coming out on Wednesday.
01:21:38
Speaker
And on the same day will be my Yahtzee Tri-Stream where I will play two new things. And then on Thursday I've got a semi-ramblimatic dropping my bi-weekly video essay series on tangential game-related topics. Hope you like that too. And if you're still around when Saturday comes around and haven't drunk yourself to death or anything, the first episode of the remastered Adventure is Nigh
01:22:04
Speaker
The remastered pilot coming out this Saturday. Holy shit. Happening. We're back. We're so back. We are so back. We're so back. Yeah, that's me. What's everyone else doing? Oh, and there's a bonus Yahtzee stream tomorrow. Oh, I forgot. Yes. I will be joining Nick to stream a couple of sponsored things that we're streaming tomorrow morning. That'll be tomorrow at noon, so this time. In this very time slot, yes. We'll be joining you too as well. The contractual obligation stream.
01:22:37
Speaker
Uh, can we say what games we're streaming on that? Uh, sure. I'm opening it up. I'm opening it up because I couldn't remember the names. I had to ask for the art. The operator and Linkito. One is called the operator. One is called Linkito. Linkito is the Mexican Zelda. Only one game popped up there. I don't know why. One of the other games was up there.
01:23:03
Speaker
I was about to say, wasn't that the alternative title for No One Lives Forever? But no, that was actually called The Operative. No one lives forever. Oh, that's a fun fact. I didn't know that. Yeah, alternate title. But that was a thing. You guys want to know E3 2006 and 2007 big game was heavenly sword by the Hellblade. So there you go. Full circle.
01:23:25
Speaker
I was one of my very first zero punctuations was on the subject. Yeah. We were in that era when we were rewatching it. Everyone was like, I remember reality writing about this. You did a demo. Was it? Yeah. Did a review of a demo. Yeah. I was still finding my feet. So for my very first episode, I reviewed the demo of heavenly sword. Oh, there you go. That was the darkness. So that was pretty escapist. That was my original fully ramblymatic.
01:23:56
Speaker
What else we got coming up this week? We're here on the Cold Take front. Go watch the sequel to the future of gaming according to PlayStation. Now, the future of gaming according to Xbox. Not sure if I'm going to do the Nintendo thing. I'll see how I feel after watching Godzilla minus one as that just came out on Netflix. I'm excited. I think the future of gaming according to Nintendo is just gaming again.
01:24:21
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I put that video in the end credits and if that doesn't suffice, we'll see. But that's pretty funny. I've got another fish that's kind of in my eye line right now. I'm gonna hand that to Marty right as soon as we're done here. Marty, what else we got going on?
01:24:38
Speaker
A cult later today, the Hingeums crew will be back playing Terror of Hemosaurus, which is like a rampage-like. So that'll be at the normal 6 p.m. central time. And then starting on Thursday, we're gonna be doing live watch-along streams to the Summer Game Fest shenanigans.
01:24:57
Speaker
Thursday will be the Gorilla Collective, which is a bunch of cool indie games. Friday will be a biggie with Summer Game Fest Live and Devolver Digital and Day of the Devs. We'll have some indie ones on Sunday. We'll have Xbox on Saturday, Xbox on Sunday, and then Ubisoft on Monday. So we'll have a full schedule of that, but it shouldn't, it might impact some of the regular streams, but just you should be getting more streams than usual. So we'll let you know the exact timings of those soon.
01:25:26
Speaker
Fun. Lovely. And just before we go, one last super chat for Pixelgrit. Give us five dollars. It says, when is the fully ramble-battic of Starstruck Vagabond? Never. I did cheekily do a segment on it in this week's Yachty Tries edited video, but anything more would be just a little too masturbatory, even for my tastes, I fear. Oh. Have you played Starstruck Vagabond? It's on Steam right now. Goodbye. You're good. Bye, goodbye, goodbye. What are you asking? Bye. Bye.
01:25:56
Speaker
Bye. Bye. Bye then.