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S2 Ep114: Weird Genres
77 Plays5 years ago
How did we get here, and who is buying this crap? Find out with Dave and Jake in this week's episode!
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Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
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Transcript
Introduction
00:00:27
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake. I'm joined by my co-host as always, Dave. How's it going, Dave? Ah, hmm. Um, okay-ish. Yeah.
00:00:41
Speaker
I'm filled with a sense of wanderlust and also filled with food, a sense of food. Hmm. This would be conflicting though. Cause usually when I'm, or I would think they'd be conflicting cause I'm full of food wandering about seems uncomfortable. I guess it depends on how filled with food you weigh.
00:01:01
Speaker
Oh, not physically wandering, just mentally. Oh, mentally. I just mean like the past day or two, I felt a little more optimistic and creative. And while I haven't really done much with that, it's a nicer feeling than just
00:01:18
Speaker
Have you ever stared at a wall and been like, this is okay. I will continue to do this until I follow. Yeah.
The Impact of Travel on Perspective
00:01:29
Speaker
But you mentioned wanderlust, um, which I've been, this was actually a trigger phrase I've been waiting years for you to say. And, uh, I was reading about, uh, differences in perspective that people and people that travel versus don't travel. And, um, I kind of got to experience that a little bit, a couple of years back when I went to Poland.
00:01:48
Speaker
I kind of understood that in a moment. Like I'm very insular. I live in my house, but it was really weird to step out of that comfort space and see what the world's kind of like. Um, I mean, yeah, definitely is a little bit weird, but it's kind of cool at the same time. So even if I go to visit people out of state or the very few times I go out of the country, you're like, Oh,
00:02:16
Speaker
You're me. These people are me. Nobody's wildly different. Some of the circumstances might be slightly different, culture might be slightly different, but they're still like, I fucking hate my job. I like smoking pot and playing video games and hanging out with my people, right?
00:02:33
Speaker
They appreciate good food, etc. They have their own taste in music, like it's people are people. And it's cool to get outside of your bubble to see that, whether it's just local community, state, whatever the hell.
Virtual Reality Experiences and Effects
00:02:49
Speaker
So anyways, I've been playing VR recently. And we talked about it a little bit while back, but it's fun.
00:02:59
Speaker
And that's it. Just buy a VR. There you go. I make some money. Use my referral code. I assume you're still enjoying it. You've not regretted the purchase yet.
00:03:12
Speaker
I have not. I got a bunch of motion sickness things, like little wristbands that put pressure on your wrist. And there's a lot of BS marketing around it. You're like, ah, healing, whatever nonsense. Well, all it does is it stimulates your nerves and your wrists.
00:03:33
Speaker
so that your body keeps track of where your hands are at all time and it doesn't lose them. That's it. It's not magic. It's not crystals. I thought you were like had crystals around your neck. You were just like popping tongues. You're like, I got this. I did get like, I don't know if it's drama mean. I think it's something else, but like herbal patches, basically you can just like apply that also inhibit motion sickness. And those seem to help a little bit or a lot of bit actually.
00:04:01
Speaker
Hmm the combination of both But I'm getting used to it I'm trying to like wean myself on to into the virtual space before I like sacrifice my body entirely and live in the internet
00:04:18
Speaker
I gotta say it's still, from my few experiences with it, super dope. You can quote me on that. My main experience I loved was playing Tilt Brush, which is a 3D painting. And it is mind blowing. Because one, you don't realize how far the technology has actually progressed. You're like, well, is it going to be like some fucking MS paint? And then you're fucking around with it. You're like, wow, this is literally beautiful. I had a...
00:04:47
Speaker
Not a sense of ennui. It's just a term people like to throw around. I know I do. Yeah, same. But I think it was just like childlike wonder. It was just really beautiful and peaceful. I just like wow. I just felt like a wow and then quiet.
00:05:10
Speaker
I think that a lot of people describe that friendly verse like get into VR. It's kind of like it's not like it's another sense, but it's another space.
00:05:20
Speaker
When you, when you, when your mind actually accepts it, you're like, all right, we are for the moment here in this virtual space. And I can see the night sky and interact with all this stuff. It's like going to the movies when you're a kid. Cause like initially you're like, Oh, we'll watch something on like these three channels. I have to click through. But when you go to a movie,
Games and Exercise Motivation
00:05:40
Speaker
it's such a larger than life experience where you're so focused on the screen, everything else around you is kind of darked out. And unless you really have to pee or you really want some popcorn, you don't,
00:05:50
Speaker
you
00:05:51
Speaker
miss that yeah but then as you get older you're like these chairs could be better or will they still deliver me alcohol press this button yeah it's also nice because i i don't full admission i don't really exercise um ever uh and uh playing beat saber has helped me work up a sweat and it's pretty addictive so i'm getting some minor exercise in now
00:06:20
Speaker
in a way that I don't hate because that's the problem I had is anytime I'd go to exercise or something, I can't exercise for the purpose of exercising. I find that really boring and not that engaging.
00:06:30
Speaker
But now I'm incidentally getting an exercise, doing something I really enjoy. I still think you might like, I know your wife would like, but I think you might like Ring Fit Adventure for the Wii. The Wii. I keep saying that. The Switch, the Nintendo Switch. It has motion control, so it's the Wii. That's where my mind caps out, it's like motion? Oh yeah, Kinect, whatever.
00:06:56
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of interesting how that genre has taken off. I think that that's probably one of the weirder genres that we'll talk about this episode. I just want to, editor, please put in like a choral and triumphant theme because that was the best segue Jake has ever done. Let's round of applause. Accidental. I'll take it back.
00:07:23
Speaker
No. So you mean like the fitness genres or things that kind of like make you sweat? Yeah, it's kind of interesting. I guess it's directly what I need pretty much to exercise. But I mean, it relied on having a medium that was engaging enough to motivate exercise in the first place, right? Yeah.
00:07:47
Speaker
I think that's really just relegated right now to anything that has motion controls. Because otherwise, I've never left clicked that hard to burn calories, I would say. I mean, if you've seen some of my Dota games, there's a lot of micro. I had a lot of mindless clicking just moving one foot in front of myself, but... Gen main over here.
00:08:11
Speaker
They really do a good job of gamifying it. So in the case of Ring Fit Adventure, obviously it's made to be cute and exciting as far as being visually stimulating. Like, oh, this is fun. I'm having fun. There are like sound effects to go with it.
00:08:30
Speaker
But also the exercises you do, um, just like doing like simple squats. And then like, when you release, you deal damage to an enemy that you're facing. Right. And it feels good. Cause I'm like, yeah, fuck you guy. Cause I'm suffering to deal damage to them. It just feels good. And there's like a warm up and a wind down. Cool down. Cool down. Yeah.
00:09:00
Speaker
I definitely have done that a little bit with Beat Saber. We started off on a song I know a little bit better, a little bit less. There's this sort of Celtic dance song thing where you have to
00:09:13
Speaker
Bob to the wheat to Bob to the left and the right to avoid laser walls. And so you have to be more actively I think you could just tilt your head, but I moved my whole body. I find it more engaging. That's called growing up playing Mario Kart. I would do the exact same thing. So more power to you. But yeah, I mean, you mentioned the like doing squats to deal damage to them and stuff like that. I think
00:09:39
Speaker
It's kind of an ingenious game design idea to be able to pull in literally the high people get from exercising and being like, that's part of our core loop. That's one of the reasons people are going to come back to this game is literally for the exercise portion. And we'll just get some free points because of that.
00:10:02
Speaker
Um, cause I don't think exercise games have ever been, or until recently been re like reviewed as like, this is an awesome game. You won't even realize you're exercising. This is a must play. Even if you're sitting down and you emulate all the exercise behavior.
00:10:21
Speaker
I don't know. These are like two recent examples I can think of. I can't think of more sadly. I'd have really been like, Oh yeah, I can get behind it and I enjoy it. Yeah. It's like Wii Fit Resort is probably actually think I missed everything on Wii for that. I didn't play it, but I know that that's where it was just like, this is a fitness game. And people were like, Hmm. But it sold pretty well. I think it was like amazingly successful.
00:10:49
Speaker
also i'd be remiss not to mention fucking ddr though yeah every time i do that i'm like we are not in shape that's that's my litmus test right there i'm like can you dance for two minutes i'm like no i need to go back to the gym yeah i definitely when i'm playing beat saber i'm like
00:11:09
Speaker
Man, I'm sweating, starting to sweat a lot, got the headset on, got my bandana up because my hair is like approaching elven, maiden tier length. And it's like, oh man, this is like, this is a workout for me. And then I think about people who actually have to move their feet constantly for one of these things. I'm like,
00:11:29
Speaker
I, uh, I'm a novice. You can't do that in exercise, right? You have to compare yourself to where you were, not where everyone else is. Oh, 100%. I do, but I do. It just, it feels good to literally burn through those and then you've completed it. You're like, yeah.
00:11:50
Speaker
And even if I do nothing else in the day that is physically active, I did a little bit of weight lifting this morning. And by a little bit, I took a 10 pound weight and I did 10 reps on either arm and I felt good about it. And I'm going to feel good about it until...
00:12:11
Speaker
I don't know. I've recently had trouble doing a lot of activity because my body just shuts down. He's like, Hey, fuck you guys. And then the next day I have like neck or shoulder pain. It's just, it's such a bullshit. So I'm trying to like ease it back in and trick it, but it feels good to accomplish those goals. And if a game is going to trick me into doing it, awesome.
00:12:36
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's like not for just the purpose of just playing games, but it's enough of an excuse to exercise that you can get in there a little bit. I think if I would have gone back 10 years and I had on this list of weird genres, it's like exercise games. I'd be like, these are pointless. They're destroying the
Game Genres and Definitions
00:12:55
Speaker
industry. It's casual. It's ruining this. Like what are people even doing? And I'm like, no, it makes sense. It makes sense. Doesn't have to all be about games.
00:13:07
Speaker
But this episode does Yeah, you can make an argument. I mean some of these some of these might not be games though Do you consider visual novels actually games? All right, so there's always gonna be a debate on this but I feel like if you debate that they are games You can go fuck yourself So just to be clear what I'm talking about it Some of the games like
00:13:31
Speaker
I think I probably bought or somebody bought for me. There's like 15 to 20 Sakura games on Steam.
00:13:38
Speaker
All of those girls talking to each other and you left click through dialogue. Maybe you have some choices. They don't fucking mean anything. And there's no actual gameplay. It's literally just a visual novel. So I would argue that those are not actually games, but they're still like a big, quote unquote playable genre.
00:14:03
Speaker
So I think they are trash, personally. Except the KFC one for the dating sim, obviously. Like we recovered that one for our dating sim episode. I think they're trash. It's just not for me. It's not engaging enough.
00:14:22
Speaker
I think like I've, so I haven't played a lot of visual novels, played a lot of, experienced a lot of visual novels in my time on this earth, but each one that I think was pretty engaging could have been equally as engaging in the form of a book and probably more consumable for me. I'm not a huge fan of like clicking through dialogue or tapping through dialogue. I'd rather just read
00:14:51
Speaker
And if the story is good, which is usually the reason people like visual novels, I think, then like, why not just make it a story, right? Like, yeah, I don't know. I've never seen like a visual novel in like the graphics. That's what really pushes this one through the top. This visual novel, it's competing with crisis right now. Oh my God. No one's going to say that.
00:15:21
Speaker
Yeah, it just doesn't seem to be as well suited to the medium. But if you like them, sure. I mean, there's clearly a demand for them because they're all over steam right now. It's like, imagine having an audio book, but you're like clicking through each sentence. You're like, uh-huh. Yep. And then? Oh, OK. Nice.
00:15:46
Speaker
So how many, I mentioned there's a lot of visual novels that are here on Steam. I see we have another bullet point here and I was thinking I was going to even put this on here, but I did consider putting it on here, but you put it on here. How many of the visual novels on Steam do you think exist just because they have NSFW content? And that's it. Like all of them. So I'm not going to say
00:16:13
Speaker
I mean, obviously everybody can appreciate anime titties. They might not be like, oh, that's my fucking jam. But they're like, okay, I see the appeal. But again, I don't like having sexual stuff in something for the sake of sexual stuff. Okay.
00:16:30
Speaker
Like I'd rather like, if I'm looking for sexual stuff, porn's out there, right? And that's its own space. Cool. But just to put in a game like, oh, this is the girl with big tits. That's the character. And I'm like, oh, what does she have to say about the situation? And they make her like some dumb bimbo. I'm like, you're writing shit. Tifa's a developed character in Final Fantasy, Dave. I don't know what she's talking about. Yeah, she's totally developed. Wow. I mean, that was a free joke.
00:17:01
Speaker
I mean, I actually think that she has better personality now. Oh yeah. But I mean, it's fine to have attractive characters in games for sure. But if they're like solely sexualized and it's just like quiet, random Japanese cute phrases, or yeah, quiet from MGS5.
00:17:21
Speaker
Yeah, I wasn't telling you to be quiet. I should clarify to the listener. Dave, shut up. Here's fucking Jake with the silencer old voice lines. All right. Silence. No, I get that. I guess it's clearly a pretty big genre because what Steam had, they had a standing policy to not have NSFW content on their platform for a long time. They just straight up didn't allow it.
00:17:50
Speaker
um if it was primarily adult oriented and then like a while back i don't know if it was a year ago or something they're like hey we're just gonna full full 180 that throw whatever you want on here that's not actually illegal and then people did and it continues to to pop up occasionally as like a top seller or something like that um
00:18:15
Speaker
The reason I'd file this under kind of a weird genre and maybe some of the animosity I would have had to perhaps exercise games in the past I could put on these games instead is they always look bad. Oh, yeah. They always look like not games or very, like you mentioned, kind of single minded or something like that. And I get that that's OK.
00:18:39
Speaker
There's nothing intrinsically wrong with that, but it's clearly a genre that hasn't had the renaissance of this is the point where we actually become video games and you'll play these because they're good games as far as I understand.
00:18:53
Speaker
No, I entirely agree. A lot of those things are kind of low budget, simple. Somebody's like, oh, I want to make a simple game and maybe just be like a simple platform or a simple shoot them up or something. They're like, but this needs anime girls with big tits. Um, and it just kind of gets put in there and they're just kind of
00:19:14
Speaker
Simple, I guess. It just excels. That's literally what it boils down to. And they use it to cover actually making a good game. At least again, according to what top sellers on Steam look like. So yeah, that was interesting. It's worth talking about it, I guess, though. I think everyone who actively is on Steam has probably noticed
00:19:39
Speaker
one of these games show up in my library. Yeah. Please stop looking at my library, by the way. To be fair, again, based off the coming off the last episode, not entirely your fault. We keep gifting you those games. I will say I think all of the.
00:19:56
Speaker
I'm going to broadly say NSFW tag games that I have on Steam are from friends who thought it would be funny. Now, to be fair, it was. And to be fair, because they were gifts, I was obligated to play them a little bit. Some of which were streamed for friends, others of which I don't want to be banned from certain discords and I refuse to do.
00:20:19
Speaker
But does that really explain all of the hours you've spent on the games beyond a little bit? Hey man, sometimes you just alt-tab and you go to run some errands for the weekend. Right. Actually, you of all people have a background that could justify this. I've been building up my alibi for years. Literally years. For the uninitiated, Dave has like, how many millennia?
00:20:45
Speaker
3,000 years on Finding of Isaac at this point. I think running it on multiple PCs, you got like a server farm aggregated. Yeah, it's just historically, there are a lot of times I would like play it pretty actively, but also if I wasn't playing it, I wouldn't close it out. And I'd be like, oh, people are on Dota? Let me hop on Dota. It's still running. So I'd be like, hey, how many days been playing this for the entire week? Holy shit.
00:21:14
Speaker
it's like when i get an invite from dave and i checked the friends list to see what list he's like what game he's playing it's like dave is playing honey pop i'm like i don't think i can accept this i don't think that's how any of this jake come join crossplay let's let's seduce this anime babe oh man
00:21:34
Speaker
But that was its own. Another weird one, which has still a surprising amount of things, even since the olden days of like CD-ROM are typing games. That's true. This is probably the first one that's like, it's not the first weird one. We've covered some weird ones. This is the one where I'm like, I don't know why it kind of exists.
00:21:58
Speaker
I think at least in middle school, these types of things were popular to teach you how to use a computer in the library. Yeah. Hey, here's how you get your words per minute up because somebody's going to give a shit about that on a resume in the future. So we were taught. That is not true unless you may be on a very specific job.
00:22:20
Speaker
But Typing of the Dead is one where you're essentially going through a zombie-infested city, and then to combat zombies coming out of you, kind of like a rail shooter, you would have to type words successfully. Yeah, I was going to say it's like a light gun game. Yeah. They're coming at you. Rail shooter is the actual genre, though. So good accuracy. Oh, son, I know my arcade history. That's actually the one phrase I know.
00:22:50
Speaker
Yeah, I was looking at this typing of the dead overkill, which is on Steam because I was like, it's like a fairly recent game. I know there's other typing games that have also been coming out. I can't remember the name of it. I saw it like E3 trailer or something. Bookworm Deluxe. Yeah. But typing of that overkill came out.
00:23:10
Speaker
Seven years ago 2013 so it's actually not that recent. I'm just also not that recent Yeah, I don't know it's an interesting genre this is the kind of game I kind of would have expected to see on the communal computer at games like at a school or whatever back in the day or maybe a library and
00:23:32
Speaker
It fits that thing if you want to like gamify teaching or like, hey, here's Mavis Beacon's XYZ. Yeah. It makes sense in those contexts. But the fact that they're making like, hey, this is available on Steam. If you want to like play it, if you're like, what? I don't, I don't get that as much. I'm going to actually just buy me some time here. I want to see how much time people spend on this.
00:23:57
Speaker
We got, like, 11 hours. Here's a person with 60 hours. One of the comments. 60 hours typing in this rail shooter zombie game. Past the point, you just have to, like, graduate to fill up for debt, right? I'm glad I bought you that time, Jake. Yeah.
00:24:20
Speaker
I'm sorry. The page loaded fast. Yeah. It seems like if I wanted that theme in a game of like zombie horde, I wouldn't jump to typing. I jumped to guns to shoot the zombies or a beat them up like lollipop chainsaw or dead rising or a million other games in that space. I wonder if there's been an entry in this genre where it's just like,
00:24:48
Speaker
The plot is you need to fill out a book by typing and it's literally just like a word processor.
00:24:56
Speaker
What if there's all an elaborate Mad Libs? Oh, that'd also be good. You're actually just feeding into the Mad Libs supercomputer. You're just posting directly to Twitter. That's all it is. Oh, no. Oh, man. Why do they keep giving me these racial slurs? Yeah, that's that's that is deservedly on this list, I think.
00:25:26
Speaker
Yeah, you did put point and click on here. Which is interesting. I guess at this point it is weird. You think at this point and click. I'm just queuing up my dumb jokes. But yeah, it was again talking about King's quest for CD-ROM stuff briefly. It's more of a throwback. It seemed like
00:25:49
Speaker
a limitation at the time where it's like, hey, people can point and click and we'll make an adventure game out of it. Right. Because people have to use the mouse. Yeah. Yeah. And that was like the main interface and that made sense. So it made sense to have it in that space. But now
00:26:06
Speaker
The only time I really see that is the occasional Tim Shafer game. Right. Cause he really liked that. He worked on monkey's Island. Um, he had a recent one a couple of years ago that I literally always forget the name of Shafer quest. No, the other one, but yeah, they're very rare these days.
00:26:31
Speaker
Yeah, I don't think, I mean, like part of it's probably engagement. The average game is just, it has so much engagement right now. You can move around in a 3D space. You can have more complicated control schemes. If you're using a controller or something, maybe you've got like haptic feedback, you got like vibrations or glowing lights. So you're doing all this stuff. Just clicking with the mouse feels
00:27:00
Speaker
It feels like we've made strides to use the control scheme in a lot of games to draw people in. Even like traditional PC control scheme used to be like much more basic. And now we're like WASD because it makes sense for three ways of movement. And then you move around with the mouse and it kind of pulls you in a little bit more. Just dragging things around on a flat screen is the antithesis of all of that.
00:27:28
Speaker
I even remember the early days where they're like, hey, to move around, you're going to use the arrow keys. You can still use the mouse. You have to use the arrow keys. So you either had to have a big fucking desk or your hands were bunched up because you couldn't rebind controls. Yeah.
00:27:42
Speaker
I remember watching like a documentary or something at one point, I think it was for like Quake and someone was like, hey, this this gamer who's, you know, and playing quite competitively has like rebounded his control. So he'll actually use like another part of the keyboard. And people are like, that doesn't make any sense. Or like when mouse look came out as like an optional thing. They're like, no, no one's going to want to look with the mouse. That's what it makes sense. Got to use the arrow keys.
00:28:11
Speaker
But are you crazy? And they just destroyed everybody and they're like, oh. Oh, is that faster and more intuitive? That's weird. Yeah, that's still like a fairly small, I wouldn't say, I guess I would say dwindling. I'm not seeing them as much these days. That's some kind of a niche. How do you feel about simulators?
Simulator Games and Their Appeal
00:28:36
Speaker
Simulators? Yeah, I added these to the list because
00:28:41
Speaker
While not all simulators are weird, there are weird simulators. And maybe it's a cultural thing. There's two that stand out to me immediately, which was a truck driving simulator on Steam and has a bajillion DLC. And then Eurotrain Simulator 2011 or whatever it was, which also has a billion DLC, more than The Sims for EA, which is crazy.
00:29:09
Speaker
What's just thousands of dollars of DLC. And the reason I put these in the weird list was, um, I don't get it. Like I could get racing simulators like forza or whatever. I get arcade racing way more, but like truck driving.
00:29:33
Speaker
Really? Doesn't really get your goat, doesn't get you going. I think the goat has a good chance to make it across the road in this case. If it's a racing simulator, the goat might not make it. You might get the goat.
00:29:49
Speaker
I get everybody has their, this might be my peaceful thing or like doing it from afar. So I was looking at some other ones in the space of like, oh, we have these things where you go on dirt bikes. You try and balance or you fucking go on a skateboard.
00:30:05
Speaker
Everybody knows about Tony Hawk and it's a pretty beloved franchise. Um, but like personally, yeah, I don't get necessarily going on a truck and driving it for miles or on a tractor trailer and taking care of a farm, but in the same way might find that peaceful, like a, what is that farming game? I'm going to say Sim farm. It's not correct, but Stardew Valley is probably the one. Yeah.
00:30:37
Speaker
Cause like, uh, and I will say, I don't consider all simulators like this weird, most of the games that have something simulator in the title, like, uh, or tycoon, like roller coaster tycoon, or like, again, some farm, some genetics, whatever it was, um, same earth. Those were interesting cause they like introduced you to.
00:31:00
Speaker
like different ideas or it was a business, excuse me, a business simulator in some way, which I fully understand. It's close to spreadsheets. I love it. But yeah, something you could just do in real life and people would pay you for it because it's work. It's like harder for me to understand. Yeah, I don't want to necessarily
00:31:21
Speaker
emulate things that I would not derive enjoyment from. Yeah. But I guess those people do. Yes, I have heard of the I remember a while back, I heard of someone who drove like truck for a living and then in the recreation time, they played truck driving simulator. I'm like, I guess I mean, if it's your passion, but like also, do you have any other hobbies? I don't think I can be relegated to like, this is the one thing I do in life.
00:31:51
Speaker
Like I need to have other outlets to try, I guess. Yeah, a little diversity, a little spice, sometimes literally spice, right? It must flow. I do want to put in a disclaimer. I have no room to judge anyone because I've spent a significant portion of my younger years mining in Yvonne line, which is the most boring thing that anyone has ever created or done.
00:32:17
Speaker
So I'm with you. I'm with you. Person who spent $3,000 on truck driver simulator. I think everybody has a game. They're like, I like to just be in here and do nothing. Like for me, that's in Minecraft. It's fun to just explore and left click and mind shit. It's surprisingly cathartic. But hey, it's their own. Yeah.
00:32:43
Speaker
There's something I want to reclassify that I put on this list. I put it on the list as auto battlers, but I want to just reclassify it to also include idle games. Actually, maybe count them differently because they are different, right? I would say they are different. Did you play auto chess?
00:33:06
Speaker
I mean, I played the Dota one. Yeah, I played it a good way. Not a whole lot, but at least I played it for like a week or two. And I see the initial enjoyment because it's like Dota themed. It's in that space. But you're essentially just getting units, placing them on a field. And then when the battle happens, you have no control over it. They do what they are scripted to do.
00:33:32
Speaker
and shit just happens and you either win or you lose. So it feels weird to quote unquote play a game but have that much freedom removed. Just kind of letting it happen. Another game that I felt that way with, did we ever talk about
00:33:52
Speaker
Oh, I love bringing up a topic. Forgetting the name of the game. All right. Please hold. Do you remember forgetting things? I was just going to mention for auto battle is I haven't played them. So this is me just rejecting other people's ideas and fun past times without giving them a fair shake. But, you know, it's our podcast. That's what we're here to do. But it kind of just exploded.
00:34:19
Speaker
Which is what threw me off. Like, immediately. People were making clones. Valve made their dedicated version. I'm like...
00:34:29
Speaker
There's something about this I'm missing. It has crack injected somewhere. I think it falls under the I like stuff in this space. Again, the reason I was initially drawn to it is I play a lot of Dota. So I like to see those characters. So I think it's having something you love in that space, but it's a lot more laid back. Maybe you don't want to commit to a 50 minute game of Dota.
00:34:55
Speaker
Maybe you want to just play a couple rounds of this, which will take like 15 minutes tops, right? Right. So it's much more casual and laid back in that regard, but you still might kind of scratch that dota itch. Gotcha. That's my thought anyway. Counterpoint. Why did artifact fail so hard then? You know, right? Because it sucks. Yeah, probably. I haven't actually played it. I did. The game I was thinking of is Domina.
00:35:24
Speaker
Okay. So it's part management because you have to essentially train up gladiators and do other things like purchase gladiators or slaves to train them in the gladiators, win fights, negotiate treaties between different groups and manage your resources and your gladiators and win fights. But the combats by default are
00:35:51
Speaker
your guy will go out and, or guys will try and kill the other people and it's scripted. But there is an option where you can essentially mind control one of your gladiators and play as them, which seems like a cool option. But for the most part, the game is designed as how are you managing your resources to be able to win fights and progress each week?
00:36:16
Speaker
I find that kind of cool though. I like management style things where it's like make some choices, see what happens. Yeah. I will say I didn't really care so much about the gameplay overall, but holy fuck that soundtrack. I link it to people all the time. Yeah. It's so good. So, so good. This is actually a really good segue, though, to the one that I didn't put on here. Slash tried to combine, which was idle games.
00:36:46
Speaker
Um, I guess the most traditional of these would probably be cookie clicker, which I know are fan fan base. That's, that's too strong. It's too strong a term people who know about us, put some time into cookie clicker. Um,
00:37:05
Speaker
This is the weird genre that I do get, I guess. What do you get about it? It feels good to be able to step away and come back and see progress, I think is one of the big things. And then most of them are designed with some sort of feedback loop where you're constantly making some progress. And as long as you don't think about the fact that ultimately it leads nowhere,
00:37:31
Speaker
Someday your save will just go away and it will all be wasted time, but I mean that's also life then It's it's like it's it can be fun to engage there Bro, I have not been saving in life. I'll tell you that If I were to die, I would not respond The other one I want to mention is actually it's old it's like a freaking old browser game, but it's called progress quest and literally all it is is
00:38:02
Speaker
You design a character and then they run out, they kill things, they return to town, sell monster parts or whatever, buy gear, spells and upgrades, and run out and do it again. And it's all text-based slash, like, loading bars. And that's the full thing. It's the ultimate idle game. But I think consensus is that they want some player interaction now.
00:38:30
Speaker
I mean, that's how I would feel. I mean, I've definitely played some cookie clicker in my time, but I feel like with those idle games, I can only put so much time into it before it becomes out of my options of things I can do. It becomes very low on the list because I want something more interactive. Like you said, more engaging. Yeah. There's mostly in the say.
00:38:54
Speaker
I think that's basically it. I get where they're coming from from a certain perspective and psychologically it hits some of those want to see numbers go up, neurons. But I don't think it really justifies itself when it starts costing money or transitioning into like the mobile space. Yeah, mobile games can always be
00:39:17
Speaker
I want to say sketchy, but like the relatively simple, like nice feedback loops, like Angry Birds, right? They put in these microtransactions where it's like, Hey, wouldn't it be nice if you had this, uh, super death bird option to just help you beat the level or what's the bejeweled equivalent these days? Yeah. I know you can buy retries or whatever powerups, probably I assume. Yeah. And for everything in that space, they're relatively,
00:39:48
Speaker
Again, simple, but they have certain things where it's like, hey, you can only do so many things in a day. So it kind of encourages you to keep checking back.
00:39:58
Speaker
Fucking Animal Crossing. Yeah, those have been around for a while, though. Do you remember, like, Game Wars? Yep. Like Facebook games. We only had so many actions per day. This episode is sponsored by Shadow Raid Legends. Man, I wish. Also, a disclaimer. Not actually, in case there's ever a legal dispute. Yes, but if you would like to give us tens of thousands of dollars... Mostly our game's good. I don't give a shit. Yeah, we'll say anybody's name to pay us money. We don't have standards.
00:40:28
Speaker
Have you listened to our podcast?
Critique of Gaming Industry Practices
00:40:32
Speaker
This podcast brought to you by another podcast. Right. Their podcast is better than ours and ours sucks. Thank you. I really want to write in and actually sponsor us our NSFW games on Steam more than anyone else. Just the tag. Yeah. This has been brought to you by the NSFW tag on Steam. Oh my gosh, it'd be great.
00:40:58
Speaker
I can't even remember what we were talking about. Now I'm thinking about that ad revenue we're getting. You could take all of the vitriol I've had for any thing on this list, past or present part of this list that we haven't talked about yet and just pile it all on mobile games because I think they're the death of the industry.
00:41:17
Speaker
or at least the threat of death of the industry. We might have averted it a little bit because some good AAA games are still like coming out, but there is a significant push for a long time to get everybody who is making like AAA great playable experiences developing
00:41:39
Speaker
freaking Farmville for the phone or whatever, just so you can nickel and dime people to death. And I hate it so much.
00:41:50
Speaker
I don't like generic bite size content. I get though, from like an advertising space, it's fucking a genius because a lot of people who want to play those games are people who did not grow up with games in the same way that we did. So usually a generation or two up, like, Oh, this is something I can play while taking a poop.
00:42:10
Speaker
It's mildly entertaining. Again, you get like that numbers going up feedback. Yep. Um, but a lot of times you can just sink more time into it because if you're getting some enjoyment from it and it's simple enough to just kind of like pick up from your phone and you can beep, boop, boop. And then you've spent like two or three hours. Yeah.
00:42:31
Speaker
We talk about feedback loops sometimes or mechanics loops. Yeah, sometimes not every episode. I bring it up as much as possible. It is my own personal mechanical loop is mentioning mechanical loops. But mobile games usually have very short loops where it's just investment payoff, investment payoff.
00:42:48
Speaker
and then lead up a little bit of a curve until you need to pay to get the full payoff after your investment, time investment or whatever. I don't know. It's pretty much evil. Yeah, I'm not going to disagree. When I was
00:43:13
Speaker
getting ready for, let's blanket say, some medical prep the evening before a procedure. I didn't have much to do besides sit down, and I didn't have, I think I just had Smash on the Switch, so I played through a lot of adventure. I was like, man, fuck, what's on the store that I could get for free just like past the time? And there was like a little Kirby mobile game.
00:43:39
Speaker
where there's a couple of Kirby fighters and you can passively get really shitty upgrades or you can spend money to kind of actually go and get actual upgrades and fight other bosses. But again, it's taking the Kirby space and franchise compartmentalizing in this like very small little box, you know, being like, Hey, you like Kirby, right? Yeah. And then it's just, you play for 30 seconds. It's like, do you want to play next level or buy next 10 levels? You're like,
00:44:07
Speaker
I will buy next 10 levels. At least that's how it's designed. For the listeners, Dave gestured, like waving Kirby in front of the, uh, in front of the camera. Oh, is my video not recording? That's my bad. Sorry, Dave. Sorry for the past 100-ish episodes that, uh, I've not been recording video. It could have been money. I wasn't sure if you were waving money or, but I choose to interpret it as waving Kirby in front of it. It was dangling. Yeah. The Kirby franchise, like you like this, don't you? Come here.
00:44:35
Speaker
You want to save Kirby, right? You don't want him to die. We'll do terrible. Thanks to Kirby. Yeah. Man, if people just wanted wanted to hear me rant for a while and bring up mobile games, I guess. Freaking money. Money is a problem. It is. You know who really love money, though? He really loves money. Oh, my God. I freaking got him.
00:45:01
Speaker
No, no, go ahead, say it. Oh, I should complete that. Yeah. Pirates. A list I put on here. So this is kind of weird, I guess, because I don't think it exists for the most part. See if thieves does. But as far as I'm concerned, it's not really indicative of the old pirate management style games.
00:45:25
Speaker
Sid Meier's Pirates is El Classico, but basically like buy and sell goods, attack other ships, upgrade your ship, maybe get a fleet. All of this stuff that like really doesn't exist in modern games since I guess Assassin's Creed Black Flag maybe?
00:45:45
Speaker
So was this like a kind of light sim? Like what era of gaming was this when this came out? This would definitely be a sim. So the original Sid Meier's Pirates came out at the day that I know by heart and do not have to look up of definitely 2004. Ah yes, 2004. I was thinking that number exactly.
00:46:13
Speaker
So this is probably like an older PC game, you know? Yeah. And the original apparently came out in 1987. It was published by Microprose. So. Promised. One of those. Yeah, for the Commodore 64. It's been around for a while, but there was a new version, which is the date I really talked about on Steam. New and that 17 years old or whatever, but
00:46:44
Speaker
I don't know. I had fun with these games growing up. There was some maybe kind of like ripoffs of Sid Meier's Pirates. I think one of them is called Tortuga and other things like that. But again, it's kind of in the sim space. They've largely fallen off, though. I've ever played a Pirates game. I haven't? Not at all.
00:47:12
Speaker
I know obviously there is Pirates of the Caribbean and they probably have games off of the movies. Yeah. I'm sure there are lots of other things in that space. Probably Lego did as well. I feel like for any type of loose theme that you've seen in a movie, there's probably a game space for it.
00:47:31
Speaker
I was like, oh, castles and knights. Tons of medieval shit. Oh, classic. Give me civil war warfare. Tons of that shit. You got Dark Souls from a deal. Yeah, I think for this, you'd have to you have to categorize it in that management space. Otherwise, it shouldn't be on this list because it's a it's kind of like a theme, I guess. I feel like for every
00:47:55
Speaker
Almost every conceivable thing, there seems to be a little weird niche genre for it. That's true. There are a lot of them I wouldn't conceive as, oh, this would be fun to play, or I want to play this theme in kind of this space. Right. Speaking of space, I'm just kidding. You said the thing. Intentionally. Oh, nice. Nice. You heard it for that one then. I have a space on the list.
00:48:25
Speaker
And I don't think space is a weird genre. Have you played any real space games, space exploration, trading, anything like that? No Man's Sky, anything. Just those six degrees of freedom games we were talking about last week. Right. It's about Descent 10. I don't like space. I don't know why. But somebody has like, oh, this TV show or movie is about space.
00:48:52
Speaker
Yeah, it just it doesn't really do it for me as much. I mean, if it's space itself, I can see how that wouldn't be as interesting, but the things in space that that is where fantasy takes off black holes and spaceships and space stations and space planets.
00:49:14
Speaker
I mean, I like the concept of like this vast unexplored area and you can do lots of creative things with that in that space because it is so unexplored and there's a lot of sci-fi writing regarding it with some theories and ideas that kind of influenced the loose lore and culture. Yeah.
00:49:41
Speaker
But it seems like a lot of it is just either way too empty. Yeah. Or overly complicated.
00:49:52
Speaker
That is true. I think if you're building up like a fantasy world or a new world space, basically, like doing world building in space, a lot of times you feel like you have to fill out everything. Like, oh no, we need races and we need all these interactions. We got to go full Star Trek, right? We got to do everything.
00:50:13
Speaker
But honestly, I just want people to make good games in the space genre, be those space traitors or space fighters or anything like that. Please just make some good games because I just really need good space games. And so many that are out there are so bad. Yeah, that's a desperate plea. It's a harder niche to sate, I guess.
00:50:40
Speaker
Cause again, it seems to have the polar extremes of somebody wanting to include every possible thing that it could, or it just being flying a ship around and there's nothing there. Yeah. People want it though. Like the fact people have dumped hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe millions at this point into stuff like Eve. Yeah. Well, Eve does have the ability to buy money and stuff like that. But, um,
00:51:09
Speaker
Crap, what's that one that Star Citizen? Star Citizen is what I was trying to reference. That's the one that never got released correct. The Kickstarter? It has not been released. And every time the people who defend that game were like, no, it's definitely coming out. We're going to be seeing a playable thing like end of the year going to be released next year. And it's been.
00:51:31
Speaker
I don't know. I don't know if I was born when that game was first envisioned and it's still not done. So do you think they're actually working on it or do you think it's a scam? I mean, both. They're working on it. They're paying developers. Chris Evans, I think, is the the head of it. And I'm sure he's making tons of money off of it. But it's not in this lifetime type of thing.
00:52:01
Speaker
It might be released someday, but there's no way it could live up to the hype that it's generated. And it's also in a constant development thing where it's like, oh, this is no longer features, not any good enough. We need to revise this. And because if it takes you forever to release a game, you're going to be stuck in development hell because you need to go back and make improvements to things that were already done. So I have no faith in that game whatsoever.
00:52:27
Speaker
It's like, it's like, um, subscribing to a Patreon where they have no incentive to finish the product that they're working on. Like, or it's like a Kickstarter type thing. It was literally Kickstarter, but where there's no incentive to finish it because there's so much rabid fan base that they're guaranteed to cover their salaries every year. I don't know.
00:52:54
Speaker
Yeah, sometimes if it comes out because of all that hype and when it started development versus when it actually gets finished, you'll have things like, was it Serious Sam? Not Serious Sam. You're talking, oh, you're thinking like Duke Nukem or something? Duke Nukem, was it 3D? Yeah. Well, 3D came out and then Duke Nukem forever. That was it. Yeah, development hell.
00:53:24
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And that's why Half-Life 3 will never be a thing. Because you put way too much on the pedestal to say like, oh, it's going to be our savior of gaming technology. And then it's fucking not. Yeah. I think
00:53:44
Speaker
We already had our Kickstarter episode, but just a brief revisit of that thought. I think one thing that maybe hurts some parts of the industry a little bit is the idea that people are OK paying so much money for a game that has not yet come out, where previously you had to prove yourself.
00:54:04
Speaker
Like your game had to make it to shelves before people could buy it. And now people are willing to throw money at it before that guarantee is true. And sometimes great games still come out like Hades, right? Like, but that's not always the case. Sometimes having that gate that a game had to go gold ensured a lot of trash and never made it through the gate. Open the gate. Open the gate a little bit.
00:54:35
Speaker
Seem green light basically. Yeah, it's an early act. We already talked about that stuff, you know where it feels. Is there anything else that stood out as particularly weird on this list? One more to send people off with happy thoughts of
00:55:04
Speaker
whatever we talk about. I feel like anytime a game tries to make it, anything that is made as a game that shouldn't be made as a game, such as like Christian games, roughly you could probably say that Christian is kind of a theme and they're like, um, do you know what we can get people on our side with? A video game. And then it really doesn't turn out so hot.
00:55:33
Speaker
Was it Jontron that did an episode on religious games or was it just one particular one? It was just the racing game, the biblical racing or whatever.
00:55:43
Speaker
Zoo race is the one. Yeah. Where it was a biblical themed, but garbage. It's like very B rated garbage. And it's probably fun to like dick around and make fun of with friends. Yeah. But it didn't really have any place there. Yeah. There's kind of like, uh, Christian message as a game. Oh, go check it out. I think it's just,
00:56:12
Speaker
It's going to sound aggressive to say it this way, but it's a corruption of intent for game making because a lot of times, like, so I played like Saints of Virtue back in the day and they're like, hey, Doom is a game. Quake is a game. Let's make like a Doom clone or a Quake clone. And we're just going to like wrap it around this core Christian message. And because of that, they weren't like focusing on gameplay mechanics as much.
00:56:39
Speaker
They were just like, we need a shell to like draw these kids in. And then we're just going to slap them with the Bible. All right. Like we're going to find a way to just get that Bible into their brain. And that'll be our success rather than just making a good game. Yeah. Same with Christian music. Step up your fucking game, Christian Rock. And movies. Step it up left behind. And yeah, it just
00:57:09
Speaker
Yeah, their intent is not like, oh, this will make money and people will enjoy this. It's like, we want to get out this message. What can we package it into? And then I feel like it kind of fails in both directions a little bit. That's my perspective. Maybe they've had some real successes as far as their community. I don't know.
00:57:27
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. It definitely, I mean, parents who would never let their kids play other types of games may still like may let them play religious games. So in some ways, maybe it's maybe it's brought kids into gaming more than it's brought kids into like the church. I don't know. Let's have a poll. Have you been more swayed towards Christianity or video games in the comments below?
00:57:53
Speaker
Well, spoilers. I have podcasts about games. I mean, we've considered having an episode on religion because you and I talk about it a good deal here and there amongst like politics and other things. Yeah, at least two hours before every episode we have our Bible study, so.
00:58:14
Speaker
Are you an atheist? Yes. Are you an atheist? Yes. Are you still an atheist? Yes. It just goes back and forth. And then we're like, all right, let's record. Amen. Ah, yes, the classic prayer before and after each episode. Please bless this episode. Please, just any sponsors, Raid Shadow Legends, NSFW Games, anything. No, we're doing all right, I think.
00:58:44
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I guess that's a pretty good list. Yeah. We'll have more of an actual topic in the following weeks. This was a topic. Don't short yourself. I came up with this week's idea. I'm sorry. Yeah. Don't laugh yourself.
00:59:09
Speaker
Yeah, more good stuff coming in the upcoming weeks. As always, please feel free to shoot us an email at soapstonepodcast at gmail.com. If you want to give any suggestions, comments, or feedback in private,
00:59:24
Speaker
But if you want to do it in public, feel free to share your prideful comments on facebook.com slash soapstone podcast. Yeah. We're still on Facebook for some reason. Yeah. No ethics here. It's a social media platform because I'm too lazy to start using other ones. As always, we'll see you in the next one. Have a good night.
01:00:25
Speaker
you