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S2 Ep154: VGBD - Hidden Role/Asymmetrical
73 Plays5 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they act like they act like they belong here 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 and Hosts
00:00:01
Speaker
So,
00:00:40
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake.
Post-Vaccine Humor
00:00:44
Speaker
I'm joined by my co-host, as always, Dave. How's it going today, Dave? It's going good. How are you? I'm doing pretty swell.
00:00:54
Speaker
Are you swollen? Are you swollen? I am neither of those things, actually. Thankfully, post vaccine, no excess swelling. I don't think swelling is usually a side effect anyways, but I don't have that. But I'm also not particularly athletic. So I wouldn't say I'm swollen either.
Podcast Recording Environment
00:01:13
Speaker
But hey, I mean, vaccines are pretty good.
00:01:15
Speaker
Yeah. It's, uh, I've got what, like two, two weeks beyond here and then like straight up inoculated against death. Yeah. And it's just podcasting in person all the time. Hmm. Yeah. Dave's going to move it and put them in the closet. It's like, I never want to travel to your place again. We'll do it outside like that podcast podcast, but outside. Is that a thing?
00:01:44
Speaker
Yeah, it's a YouTube series. I'm sure they have like just an audio version as well, but yeah, they'll have stuff and then people who walk by, they'll give them a dollar to be on the podcast. That's actually funny. It's a great novel idea. Yeah.
00:02:03
Speaker
I was just, as soon as you mentioned podcasts outside, I was thinking like background audio because we're going to be approaching like summer. You're going to have like birds, things like that. I think it would be interesting kind of novel because like.
00:02:18
Speaker
Part of the defining aspect, I think, of good audio design in podcasts is often that there is no background audio or very little. So I turned off my fan prior to this because I was a little concerned about audio. We have these condenser mics. We're in these enclosed spaces. We're trying to isolate it to make it sound as close to NPR as we can. And outside is the opposite of that. You can't have sound padding
00:02:46
Speaker
in nature, really, to the same extent. You're going to get birds and cars and...
New Podcast Ideas and Humor
00:02:51
Speaker
Well, I'm guessing that you would just kind of dampen everything so that the kind of direct audio input would take priority. Yeah. But I feel like overall you're kind of shooting down my other podcast idea, which is podcasts, but it's actually a Jewish delicatessen.
00:03:07
Speaker
Ah, okay. And there's just like lots of customers, lots of people sitting down and eating, catching up. Again, probably Jews. But you also hear like the people working in the background, you hear the clang in the dishes and it's just a very social and loud environment. Just like constant background Yiddish going on. You're just like, that would be good. I like the deep cut.
00:03:29
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, I'm trying, I'm like, all right, I have to have jokes, right? But I like... You killed a Christ! Whoa, that's a little much for the podcast. One job, not killing the Messiah. I wonder what the theological implications of that would have
Theological Implications in Jokes
00:03:49
Speaker
been.
00:03:49
Speaker
given that like, you know, in Christianity, Jesus needed to die for people's sins. If people are just like, why would we kill you? Like, no, you seem like a pretty nice guy. You're just like, it's almost like, you know, like, safe scumming, taking this back to video games. You know, did you just? No, I'm following with you. Oh, OK. I thought you said no. I was like, do I have to describe safe scumming? It's just like that.
00:04:18
Speaker
You come over to an NPC you don't like and you're like, you know what, quick save. Then you just murder them outright and then you reload. It's the opposite of that, where you accidentally don't get killed, don't have something terrible happen, and you're like, wait, I was supposed to save mankind. Huh. I think it's good, though, that
00:04:46
Speaker
I had a brief tangent of religion, but I'm going to turn it into a more laid back joke. It's good that Jesus died because otherwise Simon's story arc in Lord of the Flies would have been much less interesting.
Podcast Planning and Notes
00:05:02
Speaker
Oh, yeah. The allegories would have been way weaker throughout history. What's Simon? He's hanging on the other side of the island. I'm kind of doing his own shit, just woodworking on palm trees.
00:05:14
Speaker
The lion from the lion, the witch and the wardrobe would have just been an allegory for a lion. Significantly less. I'm imagining like, uh, I don't quote the old text to me. I was there when his written history phrase to the MGM. Oh man. Uh, I, we should explore this more. So, uh, Jesus didn't, didn't die as a part of that lore.
00:05:43
Speaker
That's the next episode, I guess. We've got like video games, video games, news about video games, occasionally a personal topic, and then just bam. The alt history religion. It'd be so good. Oh, man. That's that's what our listeners really want, I think. You're going to be as old as Methuselah. The infant death guy? No, let's not. Oh, man.
00:06:11
Speaker
What are we talking about today, by the way? I clinically just never check notes and don't plan with you. So that's
Among Us Game Strategies
00:06:18
Speaker
fair. I know you're lying because you actually wrote like 90 percent of the notes, but that's OK for the sake of maintaining verisimilitude. It's a fun word. Hidden role games and asymmetrical gameplay. So an example of this would be like if you're just running around on Earth as some guy and then there was a savior,
00:06:39
Speaker
who's like having a very different experience, that's asymmetrical gameplay. You're playing different roles in the story.
00:06:46
Speaker
I was wondering where it was going and I'm still wondering where it's going. That's it. It fell right into the Marianas trench. I feel like anybody's gut reaction for what are those is going to be pretty simple examples like Among Us, where in the case of more of a, well, I guess it fits for both. Hidden role being if you're an imposter, other people don't know, but also the asymmetrical pieces are you have abilities and things you can do that other people can't.
00:07:18
Speaker
It would be way less interesting if the crew mates in Among Us could sneak up on the imposter and just like snap his neck. I think that if you could just randomly kill people in Among Us, it would get really, the rounds would get really short, really fast. 95% of rounds into the cafeteria for some reason.
00:07:39
Speaker
I, I like how your brain went there and my brain went to, oh, so the imposters can only still do like tasks. Like it was me. I was doing tasks all along. They're like, ah, that was good. He was freaking doing his job. So with Among Us, I know we played with people quite a while back and we haven't really touched it since. Yeah. What all do you remember about it? Everything.
00:08:08
Speaker
Okay. So I would be surprised if most of our listeners don't have like a top level understanding of Among Us at this point, just because it was so absolutely popular. It was really the launch of the resurgence of asymmetrical games, I think.
00:08:28
Speaker
and very, very, very popular and social media streamers, everything like that. And it's part of the nature of that is its pickup and play short round mode. You load in, you got crewmates, which are people trying to accomplish tasks to win the game. You have impostors, a variable number of them. You have some game settings you can change and the impostors want to kill all the crewmates. And that's the
00:08:57
Speaker
That's the setup for it, right? Like everything spreads out from that. I think the simplicity really helps it. Yeah, it's a nice, easy to get into type thing. Obviously much harder to master being a good imposter.
Comparing Hidden Role Games
00:09:14
Speaker
Yeah. Because usually like if you start out with a group of people who haven't played for the first time, they're like, what's this button do? And then they kill somebody in cold blood.
00:09:22
Speaker
And then the third party has to say, um, Dave killed that person. And I'm like, what are you talking about? I don't know what I'm doing. This guy's trying to frame me. And then we eject Steve because he blamed me and nobody knows how to coordinate. Yeah. Um, but like the survivor's goal is to kind of work together, get tasks done, but also rule out the imposters from killing them off, which is usually by who has good alibi. Who do I trust?
00:09:51
Speaker
And there's different back and forth for like, Oh, I'm going to marinate and lie longer. I'm going to gain their trust. Yeah. The, the emergency meetings are really some of the focal point. I think like where the core like payoff for a lot of the game comes into play. It's like, um, you can call meetings after a certain amount of time has passed. Um, but it does show everyone who called the meeting.
00:10:19
Speaker
Um, or you can call a meeting if you find a corpse. Um, I think at any point, right? So in the last, I think, uh, you can shut down comms as a sabotage for imposters. Well, I think some people be able to report bodies, but you can't call emergency meetings. One of the two.
00:10:42
Speaker
Right. Yeah, the imposter has like a couple or multiple imposters have a couple different sabotage modes, lock down doors, disable oxygen, which forces people to complete a few tasks or complete tasks at the same time. And really, the the goal is that like one of these meetings
00:11:08
Speaker
I guess we describe this from both sides perspectives. As a crewmate, when one of these emergency meetings comes out, you're trying to ascertain who's actually telling the truth. Who's showing guilt? Who was in that part of the ship? No, we were all on the opposite side of the ship. Two people went to this location. One of them is dead. We kind of know what's going on. Yeah, that's the worst. You have to try and blame somebody who is like, everyone has an alibi for it. Shit.
00:11:37
Speaker
do the deduction. Do you have a preference of either side of it, at least for Among Us? I think I like Crewmate more than Imposter. And part of it's just like, it's very difficult for me to, I guess that's probably a non-standard answer, but Imposter is the more active role where you have to fabricate a reality.
00:12:03
Speaker
which is fun in a way, right? You're trying to make a believable story about how you're not the murderer or when you are the murderer. Yeah. Or maybe if you're playing advanced mode, you're trying to help cover for the other imposter, which if you do that wrong, you guys like lose instantly, right? Um, but that being said, I kind of like the deduction on the crewmate side a little bit. Um,
00:12:34
Speaker
And I play overly aggressively, I think as the impostor at times. So I'm just like, ah, crap. I just made like a rookie mistake. Yeah. It's, it's definitely easier when you have more people on your side, but if I'm a crewmate and then I get killed by an impostor, I'm like, manify the power to kill people though. And then I'm the impostor. I'm like, what do I do? And I panic.
00:12:59
Speaker
Yeah, there's there's a reason like in public games if you're not playing with friends a lot of times people leave right after they're killed. They're just like out rather than floating around as a corpse or a ghost. You can still complete your tasks and you really should because it's basically the only thing you can do besides talk to ghosts. Yeah. But there's so much like
00:13:22
Speaker
I realize not everything
Discomfort with Deception in Games
00:13:23
Speaker
relates to Dota, but I actually compare this game in some ways to Dota, and the core loop is so integral to the fun of it that
00:13:37
Speaker
The rest of it sort of doesn't matter, right? Like it has cosmetics, it doesn't really matter. It's just these emergency meetings, trying to cover your tracks, creating plausible deniability. Like there's little that's more satisfying than diverting suspicion as the imposter.
00:13:57
Speaker
Like you're part of the end group as the imposter and people believe that, you know, you're also trying to seek out the imposter that you'll, you are, um, you have an alibi for most of the, the mission. It's like that core, I think is really what makes, what carries the game completely. Right. Like it could be a text based game walking around and asking art and.
00:14:28
Speaker
It might not have taken off. It might not have been discovered like this, but the core would have still been there. I agree with some of what you're saying, but I'm still a big squint on the Dota comparison. I guess just because of the loop is the thing that carries it, right? Dota heroes could come and go. There could be 28 heroes or whatever if there really needed to be. But the game would still be fun because
00:14:58
Speaker
the addictive get into a match, pick your items, make your lanes. Like there's so many decisions or like ways it can play out within the game that the core loop carries it is what I'm trying to say. Well, I think that's kind of true. Just blanket for like instance based gaming. You're spinning up like a session of something, right?
00:15:26
Speaker
Yeah, I suppose like really any good game has a core loop. So saying Donut specifically there is not a great comparison. That's kind of where I was coming from. Yeah. But to your credit, like another example was something like Koo, which again, we used to play more so back in the day, but I haven't seen a physical body in years. Do you remember Koo? Yeah, yeah. I'm not a huge fan of Koo, but I remember it. Oh, OK. We'll get into that in a sec.
00:15:55
Speaker
But again, for any possible uninitiated people, Q is a popular card game where everyone is dealt two cards and each card has a role. And there's, I think, five or six different roles you can be where each different role has a different ability. But because of all the cards are faced down, when it goes from person to person, that person gets to choose an action to do. And they can choose an action for a role that they have or they can lie.
00:16:24
Speaker
So it's up to other people to kind of determine when somebody's lying. And if you call somebody out and they're telling the truth, you lose one of your roles and you're down to a player card versus two, et cetera, et cetera. So really it's trying to accrue money to pay and kill people, which is like a global action and to try and like bullshit your way through or maybe bait people into trying to call you out.
00:16:53
Speaker
Yeah, this is the condensed comparing this with Among Us, which is funny because one of them is a card game and the other one is literally a video game, but the concepts are similar. Who is concentrated?
00:17:07
Speaker
B.S., like more than anything else, it's you trying to either convince people of the truth or a lie, but getting them to believe the opposite, which is like a portion and the most engaging portion of Among Us, right, is like the person to person interaction.
00:17:28
Speaker
And I think that's likely going to be true for most of the hidden role games. How do we determine who has the hidden role? Yeah. And that is the core thing that attracts people to these types of games. And that's what I was trying to get at with the core loop comparison, is this aspect of interacting with people, trying to get one over on them, convincing them of something is
00:17:56
Speaker
uh, basically the, the, the core, the foundation, this entire genre is built on. So you said you didn't like it before. Is there a specific reason? I think it's just like the same reason. It's the exact same reason that like, I prefer not to play imposter, I guess, but like it wearies me to continually try to deceive people. Oh, like that does it. If I succeed, I kind of feel bad.
00:18:27
Speaker
So like there's one time I remember a particular game of Among Us where like I absolutely convinced my wife that I was not the imposter. Oh, and then like ended up killing her at the end. And I was just like, Oh, I just feel so bad. And like people were like, Oh my gosh, like cutthroat, you know, and like kind of like jokingly feel bad, but also like, Oh, I didn't need to, you know,
00:18:55
Speaker
If I'm in a position where I don't have to try to lie to people, I feel better about it, I guess. I get that. What is the core of this series of games? This entire episode is about this concept in some ways.
00:19:11
Speaker
I think for me, because for me, it's just games with friends. I don't have anybody where if, for some reason, I offended them, we'd be fine three days later for the next game we play. Maybe it's different for interpersonal relationships like that.
00:19:28
Speaker
But I enjoy very much pulling the wool over somebody's eyes. Right. Like a common fun play in coup is if you pretend to have an assassin because it only takes three coins to assassinate somebody.
00:19:44
Speaker
And you can stop assassination if you have the Contessa card. Yes. So let's say I'm going to assassinate you. You don't have a Contessa. You can A, say you have the Contessa and try and bluff. And then I have to try and call your bluff. Or you can be like, nah, he probably does have an assassin. I'm going to let it go through. Or you could challenge even that I have an assassin. But anyway, the whole reason with the risk is, let's say I do have an assassin. You called bullshit somewhere along the way.
00:20:13
Speaker
My initial action still goes through where you lose a card, but then because you were wrong about calling me out, you lose another card. So it's immediately somebody's out of the game in one single play. You only have two cards, right? Yeah, it's very much like a power move. And it's really easy for me to slide three coins and be like, I'm assassinating. Like, you have an assassin? Like, yeah, that's why I'm assassinating. And I keep a straight enough face to be like, I'm taking at least one of your cards.
00:20:41
Speaker
And you have the lower risk in that situation, right? Because if you were lying about having the assassin, you lose one card at most. Whereas the other player, if they go all in on the lie, they could be out of the game. Yeah. And like, that's fun to do.
00:20:57
Speaker
Yeah. It's very much a – it does still change from game session to game session outside of one or two common things where I'm the captain now is very much a common trend where people will be like, you can't steal from me. I'm the captain. I'm going to steal from you. And also everybody's the Duke. Yes, everybody's the Duke. Constantly Duke. At least round one, every single person at the table is the Duke.
00:21:23
Speaker
And then later it's like, how many cars have he claimed that you are? The key is to start with lies and then approach the truth. I do think that is a good strat just because very early on, you don't want to risk losing something you don't have enough information to go off of. So you don't want to call somebody out early. So if you're going to lie, it's pretty safe early.
00:21:44
Speaker
But also like later on, you can't be like, but three turns ago, you said you were this. It's like, well, that was three turns ago. Right. Right. I was lying. Obviously. Make a judgment call on the current turn action. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's really interesting. I think like.
00:22:03
Speaker
If I were to compare these two games, I prefer Among Us to this because it has the spatial component and more of people doing things and deduction.
Social Strategies in Among Us
00:22:11
Speaker
It's kind of like the game of Clue, in a way, the deduction part of it. You're just breaking down where people were when the murder occurred. Clue doesn't actually have gameplay mechanics like that, right? It's actually just checking off. This is true. This is not true. This is true. This is not true.
00:22:29
Speaker
Um, and among us, you're actually like, no, I did see you like go to shields. I'm pretty sure you entered that room. And then, uh, you, when I entered the room, you went there. So I think you've entered something like that, right? Yeah. But like that spatial, if you're saying that you need to have other people believe you. Yeah.
00:22:52
Speaker
Like that's, I feel the hardest thing. Cause usually if I play as a crewmate, I'm very gung ho. Like I'm getting my tasks done. I'm calling out all of these bad people for their bad actions. I'll be like, it was them. Here's the information. Why? And then someone be like, no, that, that was Dave who did that.
00:23:13
Speaker
And then they're like, yeah, probably Wednesday if we did that. And like, there was a night where I was playing with some people from another discord, and it was a lot of that where just nobody would believe me.
00:23:23
Speaker
So I got very salty, and I said like, hey, if you kill our friend Griffin, I'm not gonna report it. Flat out. Like, if I'm the impostor, if I'm not the impostor, I don't give a fuck if Griffin dies. Or anybody else, I'm not reporting this, right? Nobody will listen to me anyway. So we get into the next game. I come across a body, and like another person right next to it,
00:23:47
Speaker
And I just looked at them for like three seconds. And then I just leave. And then I was like doing a task over somebody's body. I wasn't even talking in voice. But weirdly enough, like when it came, like somebody reported the body next to me being the only other person there. They said, yeah, I don't think it was Dave. He sounds super pissed in the last conversation. You've developed like a third role. Exactly. The passive crew. The passive aggressive asshole who's like just doing his own thing now.
00:24:17
Speaker
That's kind of funny. I think these systems, you touched on this a little bit earlier, and I think this is gonna be core throughout the game. The more the social component, the more susceptible there is. There's more susceptibility to griefing, in a way, or boxing a player in. And really, these games are intended that when you start a new round, you start it from the clean slate.
00:24:44
Speaker
You're not just like, that guy was an a-hole, so I'm just going to go out of my way to kill him or accuse him or something like that. Like you need to let those grudges go if you're going to like play the game for the maximum enjoyment of everyone involved. And without that, it can lead to destructive gameplay behavior.
00:25:02
Speaker
But there is certain things where, yes, it should be clean slate every time. But in the same way, like when we play Smash, I know a little bit about your play style and habits. Yeah, roll into stage. Yeah, always. Just doing that tech chase grab. Gotcha. I will roll until I'm in center stage. I'll have a moment of pause where I don't know what to do. Roll to center stage. You do three spot dodges, and then you charge an up smash for what feels like 20 seconds. Sometimes it works.
00:25:36
Speaker
But like, if we're playing games with people, like you tried to pick up, oh, like this is kind of how they play what they would do. And I feel like that's a nice evolution to it. It's like, let's say, again, you're starting out with Among Us for the first time ever, no one's ever played and you're playing on a Thursday night at 6pm.
00:25:56
Speaker
Obviously, everyone's going to be fresh, but then they're going to develop certain habits. Maybe somebody always will go and double back. Maybe you have somebody who likes to check cameras all the time. Right. And it's like taking those pieces. AJ. Yeah. It's taking those pieces of information and then using that in the future going forward. Because if I know AJ is not an imposter and I'm an imposter,
00:26:19
Speaker
I might try and go kill him on a cams first because I know he's going to be checking certain spots, right? So I like the evolution of those things, which again, more so in Among Us than Koot really has the option to. It's almost kind of like, you know, those games where
00:26:37
Speaker
I guess this actually, I don't have any examples on our list to talk about for asymmetrical gameplay, not hidden role, but like where you're like crewing a ship. There's a game, I can't remember the name of it, where you're all in like a submarine and you're like exploring the depths of the sea and there's like these monstrosities you have to fight back and your ship can have like leaks and all of that. But you have different roles. You might have like a
Exploring Hidden Role Games
00:27:02
Speaker
ship stock there. You might have like a gunner, a captain, all of that.
00:27:07
Speaker
And Among Us can kind of reach a minor stage of that where you're like, behaviorally, I expect that this person is always going to rush to complete their task first. This person is going to play defensively first. Here's the guy that's going to follow other people around. And that meta layer of knowledge comes into it as well.
00:27:28
Speaker
I realize we're harping on Among Us a little bit, and you started to get off to talk about other things. And then I just lassoed the discussion and brought it back to Among Us, hog-tied it, and put it on the rails. But a lot of these games spread out from these concepts. So I don't know. They're interesting. Are there any hidden role games? Let's keep it as, are there any hidden role games where you like being a hidden role? Ooh, OK.
00:27:58
Speaker
Hmm. I have a follow up if your answer is no. I think the answer is yes. So either this is also not on the list or no, no, it's not a hidden role. That's asymmetrical only. I was going to say for reference, the hidden, but that's not a hidden role. Deceit is one that I played a bit with a hidden role. Um,
00:28:25
Speaker
And it's been a long time so I don't want to go into an extreme amount of detail, but everyone are like patients basically escaping from an experimental facility. And you can gather like weapons and supplies and gear.
00:28:41
Speaker
And there's a phase change where the lights go out. And when the lights go out, the hidden roles, the monsters basically can communicate with each other through voice chat where the survivors can't. And they can just straight up murder the survivors very rapidly.
00:29:03
Speaker
they also physically mutate. So you can't tell what their character model was when the lights were on. So if you have an encounter with a monster, but you don't see them, like if you have an encounter with a monster at nighttime and they run off, they could come back when the lights come back on as the person and you wouldn't know who they were when they were a monster. So usually the survivors try to group up
00:29:28
Speaker
Um, they might try to like, they have to like flip switches to get the lights back on. Um, but there's, I remember there's some incentive to like split up a little bit. Um, but it can get very brutal, right? So the monsters are just like prep, try to like spread contention among the survivors, get them not to trust each other. Lights go off and we murder everyone. Right. Um, and that's cool. Like I like the flip.
00:29:59
Speaker
uh, which is kind of not present in Among Us as much where it's like. Once you're outed, you're fully outed pretty much. Exactly. Right. And you could be seen and not have it be over in that because people have to deduce that you were the monster, even if you didn't look like your character model at the time. I never played Deceit. I remember hearing about it like two years ago, the one time you guys played. Yeah. But I saw a video, I think from
00:30:30
Speaker
Mandalore gaming. There was something called like Space Station 13. Oh yeah, yeah. Is that what I'm thinking of? Well, Seth and Mandalore both did that one, yeah. Okay. Sorry, I'm not thinking of the top down view. I'm thinking of, it's essentially like a 3D Among Us. Yes. Yeah, yeah. But you could be a hidden alien, but it has like
00:30:54
Speaker
tech trees you can build up for your character, for what type of imposter you want to be. And there was different levels and layout. It seemed really interesting for a more immersive version of that. Right. It was like a shooter. Yeah. Unfortunately, I'm going to look it up. Oh, yeah. But to follow up on that,
00:31:20
Speaker
Did you like specifically the hidden role aspect? Because you had to like toggle back on to be like, no, I am good guy. Or is it more so the asymmetrical gameplay point of like, I'm the one with the power, it's just when I choose to wield it. Yeah, I think it's
00:31:38
Speaker
I think it's because it doesn't require you to constantly... Among Us is stressful because you have to constantly be trying to cover your tracks. Did someone see me? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And this, it helps. But when the lights go out and you know that the survivors aren't all together, you can just play it like a shooter. Play it like an action game. And they can do the same. They can try to shoot you. They can try to take you out.
00:32:08
Speaker
Well, when it's an action game, you don't have to worry about it as much. Yeah. I wish I had tried some of those for just like a little bit more context, because like the one you touched on. What was it, The Hidden, which is like, yeah, Half-Life 2-esque shooter. Yeah, I think it's like Source 1 or something like that, maybe Source 2. But from what I remember of that, like The Hidden is literally an invisible character.
00:32:38
Speaker
They have melee options to kill people. I forget if they could do anything else. I think they like their, their fast, um, high damage. They had more mobility. I think they had some powers or something like that. Cause I remember like the hunter jump. Yeah. Cause they could definitely get up in the vents and then like jump down on people. Yeah. Cause the, um, I'm sorry, go ahead. I said, but as a survivor is used.
00:33:07
Speaker
kind of grouping up together and your goal is just to hunt down the hidden. It's like you can't really stay kind of grouped up together. You can even have multiple hidden, I believe, if your party is big enough. Yeah. Depending on how balanced you want it to be. But like they have like paintball guns to try and mark the person. But really, they're just trying to look for like a shimmer or like a noise, anything. Yeah. Meanwhile, like the the hidden is trying to like pick them off.
00:33:36
Speaker
And again, I was shit at both of these, but for some reason it was, that was a good example of it was very fun to play both sides equally to me. Cause I felt, uh, unskilled at both portions, but each time I'm like, okay, I'm going to try and do my best at this specific role, whether it was hunting the hidden or hunting humans.
Multiplayer Game Dynamics
00:33:57
Speaker
Yeah. I think like.
00:33:59
Speaker
You touched on it a little bit, but this is the combat portion that I sort of liked from Deceit. Like the hidden is just combat. It's not hidden role necessarily, right? Like there's an aberration that looks like there's a dark templar on all fours and he's coming for you. Basically, it's like what the hidden is.
00:34:23
Speaker
But when you have that component, you don't have to worry about the deceit as much. You don't have to worry about the subterfuge to the same extent. You can just play it like an action game. And you take a break from the social manipulation that is so core to the hidden role games.
00:34:42
Speaker
Yeah, it's more so with that. I remember fucking with people because like we'd all be in voice together. Like you knew who the person was. It was marked as like Dave is playing as the hidden this round. Yeah. So you do things like.
00:34:59
Speaker
And just like do like little quiet whispers and stuff to try and fuck with them. Or like you do in-game voice. But yeah, it's very much more action, combat, and like skill base in that regard versus the manipulation skill. Yeah, exactly. I think it's fun. It helps give you a little break.
00:35:23
Speaker
Jake's usually doing social manipulation all the time. He likes to kill people. Right. Well, you got to break it up a little bit. Variety is the spice of life.
00:35:33
Speaker
Yeah, I think so. We've talked about it a little bit, these like monster type games. There's another one I wanted to mention on this list, which I have some feelings about, which was the Evolve. I knew Evolve was coming. Evolve was going to happen. Yeah. So like Evolve is a I think it was three player, maybe four player versus monster.
00:35:59
Speaker
Um, I also couldn't find the name of the game. My mandala was talking about, I like started looking through it, couldn't find it, but Evolve is, um,
00:36:08
Speaker
You play as a trapper, a medic, and a heavy. I'm trying to think if there is another role versus just a large Cthulhu-esque monster in some way. But one of them is basically inspired by Godzilla. The other one is inspired by a Lovecraft-like Cthulhu thing.
00:36:32
Speaker
And they added some more monsters to it. But the gameplay is the monster starts first while the group, the hunters, are flying in. And the monster can go off and consume local wildlife to gain essence and then evolve, kind of like the Hakka, basically.
00:36:55
Speaker
Yeah, sounds like a first-person Tohaka experience. It's just a very large Tohaka. And the monster grows more physically dangerous as it evolves, gains new powers, or improves its existing powers like flame breath or rock throw or pounce or whatever.
00:37:18
Speaker
And the hunters need to follow its tracks, chase it down, try to trap it in a large energy bubble, and then kill it. And if the monster kills the hunters, then it wins. And if the hunters kill the monster, then they win. And the complication is the monster's continually getting stronger, so it wants to not be found in the early stages of the game.
00:37:48
Speaker
But at stage three, which is like the last form of evolution, the monster gets a new objective, which is like destroy a like military base or a containment field or something like that nearby. And if it does that, then the monster wins. That's a like secondary way for the monster to win that's only available in the end game. So it flips the tables and the hunters have to try to defend in that case.
00:38:17
Speaker
Okay, that makes sense. I think the reason it probably switches is it's like as monster evade death. But at some point, I got to say the monster is very maneuverable. They need to kind of make the game and so the monster needs to kind of go to a location and complete an objective, whether it's I'm ready to hunt down the humans or go to that base you're talking about. Exactly.
00:38:42
Speaker
So again, I'm going to ask you what your preference is. Did you enjoy being the monster more or enjoy being one of the humans? And if so, which role? Because this is going to tie into another game that I feel like spawned this game.
00:38:56
Speaker
Right. So I'm actually fine with either of these because the game did a really good job of adding diversity. In the monster case, you're the big bad monster. You're going to have a fun time unless you get absolutely stomped by a very coordinated group of humans. And in the hunter's case, there was different heroes for each role. So there was a medic who had better healing abilities, but there was another medic
00:39:26
Speaker
I can remember his name is Lazarus because he had the ability to revive people that died. And he sacrificed a lot to get that as far as utility. And so you could kind of pick different specialists in this role and on your own,
00:39:44
Speaker
you couldn't like stand up against the monster at all. But like a tech could shield somebody else so that if they were getting wailed on by the monster, like they took very little damage or none while they were being shielded. And so they're all kind of like they're like flies kind of buzzing around the monster trying to do their roles to take it out. And it was fun in both cases.
The Failure of Evolve
00:40:08
Speaker
So again, I didn't really play this. I feel like you guys picked it up for a week. And like, should I pick it up? And you're like, let's see. And then like the next week, you're like, we stopped playing. Yeah, I didn't really. I don't even think I had anybody else with this. And this is the reason that I have emotions about this is because I feel like this game should have done a lot better. But it just kind of was difficult to get everybody into it. And it was one of the early games that was like a full 60 gigs before people had large hard drives.
00:40:37
Speaker
And now it's like a lot of games are really big, but this was one of the first and it cost money at launch. It went free to play eventually called Evolve Stage 2. But that's good that they refunded all the money to people who spent the money. Well, it was they they needed to get the community, but unfortunately, it just never really got picked up to a large extent.
00:41:05
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's always hard to do online co-op stuff like that where you need to be a little bit more coordinated and then find people. Yeah. Because it makes more sense to be like, oh, we're going to go a squad of me and my three buds. And then the fifth who will be the monster, we don't need to know, obviously. Right. And some people did that. And if you were coordinated like that, like
00:41:30
Speaker
you would need to be really good as a monster to deal with an actual coordinated squad, especially in the early game where the monster is weak. With the exception of one monster, the Cthulhu-esque one, which there's clips of it on YouTube, it was like so strong at launch that it would just, rather than getting any biomass at all,
00:41:50
Speaker
it would wait right outside the drop zone just for the hunters to drop and then immediately kill them with a bunch of ranged attacks. It had no reason to go out and become stronger because if you got them on the drop, you could kill them. And it was disgusting. That seems a little bit broken. Yes, it was 100% broken. Very much not the way the game was designed. Is the monster random or is it selected?
00:42:19
Speaker
You can pick what monster you want to be. You queue as monster, and if you get monster, you can choose what monster to play from the ones that you had unlocked. Yeah, then everyone would choose the one that's broken at launch. It was like a ranged one that was like a flyer and could call down lightning and did a bunch of scary stuff. Yeah, it sounds like an asshole. It was kind of a pain.
00:42:46
Speaker
Then there's, I don't know, they were so cool. They had variety in the monsters. They had like the Godzilla guy. They had that one I just mentioned. They had another one that was like a ghost sort of Spectre thing that could make like an apparition of itself to try to like distract the players while it cloaked and like went off somewhere else. Hey, hey guys, not now. Guys, guys, I'm gonna show you this cool YouTube video. Right.
00:43:10
Speaker
Jokes on you, I have immunity against watching YouTube videos that I'm like. Plays 30 seconds of ads. See, this is why I didn't want to watch it. To interrupt briefly, what I was going to tangent off of with this is Left 4 Dead. You remember that big asymmetrical gameplay? Oh yeah. I've heard of that one, yeah.
00:43:33
Speaker
Because this sounds like obviously there were the special infected for versus, but at some point for some mission, somebody could become a tank. And that was always the fun thing to be because you had a fuck ton of health. You could go slap multiple survivors with like one Reinhardt left click, or you could chuck rocks at people. And it was like super powerful. You just had to not be caught on fire, thankfully, hopefully.
00:43:58
Speaker
So it's like a very fun thing to do. But it was kind of random when it would happen. And if you would be the tank, right? Yeah. So I feel like they kind of went off of that idea with Evolve of, hey, it is fun to be like a really big crazy monster versus just a special zombie. Oh, yeah. So they actually kind of fleshed out that idea.
00:44:20
Speaker
I'm going to interject. We should talk about Left 4 Dead a little bit more. I think we've had a dedicated episode on it, but we should mention the asymmetrical components at least. But the reason there's a little bit of justification for Evolve starting where it did and coming off of that Left 4 Dead concept is because the developer for Left 4 Dead was Turtle Rock Studio. The developer for Left 4 Dead 1 was Turtle Rock Studio.
00:44:46
Speaker
Was the developer for Evolve also Turtle Rock Studio? Oh yeah. Isn't that, is that what I announced? Oh, that's what I thought you said Left 4 Dead twice. Oh, I might've. That's actually funny in that case. I'll need to check that in the end to see if I'm crazy and like, and that thing you've already said. Yeah, but it was the same, it was the same company. So they just kind of expanded the idea of just tank gameplay. Yeah, it's.
00:45:15
Speaker
Again, I wish I had more experience with it because I very much did more of the Left 4 Dead side of it, where I mean, everyone's played a first person shooter. So Left 4 Dead's not wildly different in that regard. But when it's like, hey, versus you can be a special infected, I'm like, oh, my God, I get to finally play the assholes who are like killing me throughout the campaign. Oh, I can coordinate with a buddy who's a charger and I'll be a spitter and we'll take down a survivor and we'll use that survivor as bait to get other survivors.
00:45:46
Speaker
And it was fun to do this. I have a very special unique ability and then trying to coordinate versus playing Pew Pew McGee. Oh, yeah. I think like because so like Left 4 Dead had asymmetrical gameplay that was like maybe not roughly even the humans were tankier than the specials. The humans always had the advantage. Yeah, because that was the design, right?
00:46:13
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. But it was fun to just be on the flip side. And maybe you can separate the humans. Because if the humans weren't coordinated, and if you can kind of get one alone, they were fucked. Because there were lots of things you could do to just incapacitate somebody. If you're jumped by a hunter and nobody else is around, OK, you're down.
00:46:37
Speaker
nobody can really stop that. And then other zombies would kind of like kick you to death, right? Right. So it was fun just trying to work around the limits of they have guns and they're going to want to try and protect each other. Right. Line of sight. This guy's broken off from the rest. Yeah, I like that. It's the combat focused asymmetrical gameplay. And then you have the tank for like climax moments, basically. Music kicks in.
00:47:12
Speaker
Someone calls up her voice line that they hear a tank and everything gets really crazy. Like, man, I wish it all did well. I looked it up to see when it closed and it was shut down for PC in 2018. So I was thinking about it. I was like, no, I'm talking about it. Like maybe I could get a group, you know, four people, five people together. No, you can't.
00:47:39
Speaker
It's harder to find the groups of people for that. Even in Left 4 Dead, you can play that one still. If you weren't super coordinated, regardless of which team you're on, you just get kicked. Because the community is people who have been diehard playing it since it was a thing. And anybody who's not a part of that group is just like, yeah, go fuck yourself, noob.
Asymmetrical Gameplay Comparisons
00:48:06
Speaker
So it's harder to just hop in something randomly on your own.
00:48:09
Speaker
They become competitive, right? Which I think like any game where you can compete inevitably at some point becomes competitive to a certain extent, depending on the group you're playing with. And if they're casuals. Yeah, it's, it feels good to stomp if you're winning and with friends. It always feels good to win unless like they pose no challenge at all. Right.
00:48:40
Speaker
We're tangencing a little bit. Pose a challenge is the takeaway from this episode. Try harder. Do your best. How did you feel about some of these other asymmetrical games on the list, like Crawl? Crawl's an interesting one. I didn't play Crawl. I really liked the trailer for it. But it's because the reviews on Steam didn't look super great when it came out. And also, you started this, I think. There was this phase where
00:49:10
Speaker
Um, you were picking up like couch co-op games and then like, I was like, man, this is such a good idea. And when I, like, I bought some like Xbox controllers, I got like a bunch of wireless Xbox controllers and steam link and stuff like that. I was like, I am ready for asymmetrical game or not asymmetrical couch co-op gameplay or couch games.
00:49:31
Speaker
Never invited anyone over. Those are there gathering dust. But Crawl is a game that fits into that space. You have, I think, up to four people playing as ghosts that can possess monsters and traps to attack the player who's going through a roguelike dungeon to escape with the special perk, basically, that if you kill the player, if you get the last hit,
00:49:58
Speaker
on the player that you possess them, you use your own gear to progress and can begin progressing as the hero trying to escape. Yeah, so like you can start out as I'm the guy and then you get killed and now you're like, fuck, I got to try and beat the guy again. Yeah, I want to be the guy. Exactly.
00:50:25
Speaker
Yeah, like you can see where the ghosts are going on screen. But it's just. I mean, we only played it for, I think, a couple of hours, like myself, Mike and Annie. And it's a fun idea. It just didn't really take off too much. Didn't hold. Yeah. Maybe if we had more people who were on board and very gung ho about it, it would have gone further.
00:50:52
Speaker
But it was just very fast paced and dynamic because we didn't play enough to be like, oh, we know what this does and that does. Right. It's always like trying out of things of what can I possess a chair? Maybe I'll trip over and break and break his knees. But it was cool because it was like it could always shift. Yeah, it wasn't. It's this team versus this team. Right.
00:51:20
Speaker
Because you're only cooperating until one of you becomes the guy, and then it's a free for all, or it's you versus everyone else again. Yeah, it's the work together until we don't have to anymore. Yeah. Which is an aspect we really haven't discussed, an asymmetrical gameplay, but a rotating antagonist.
00:51:46
Speaker
Which is kind of like a, I guess like King of the Hill sort of mode. We can't play it for months, but yeah, go ahead. Right. Like even, I think, I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, but like Halo had modes like this where, um, there'd be like a super item or a weapon that if one person had it, they were the target for everyone else who was trying to obtain that weapon or item. I didn't play a lot of Halo, but I think that was the thing.
00:52:15
Speaker
I know for Juggernaut, whoever the Juggernaut was had an overshield. And I don't remember if they had to have an oddball or if they were just beefier and better overall. Right. I think you just kind of toggle what the options were. Gotcha. But it was very much a, here's the stronger person to kill. If you kill that person, you become that person. Yeah. It's like you want to coordinate together. But if you become the Juggernaut,
00:52:44
Speaker
just after your shields are broken, you're next to like two other guys, you're going to get shotgun in the face. So like having a sniper or being far away from somebody or having a rocket launcher. Because you're still coordinating, but you're kind of banking on if I get this, I want to continue to stay as this. Exactly. I actually have like a similar one I actually do know about.
00:53:08
Speaker
that's not on this list and no one will have played this game. If you have played this game, reach out to me and I'll give you brownie points. But a 2D shooter called Soldat, which was like free and I played it like 15 years ago or something.
00:53:23
Speaker
Um, or it's basically literally just the platformer, but it's the shooter had captured the flag, had a bunch of different modes. One of them was a Rambo where there was a bow you could find and it like gave you a ton of health. Um, it was like a rapid fire instant kill bow. And whoever had Rambo's bow, uh, was versus everyone else on the map. And if you could kill him, he would drop the bow. You could run, pick it up and become Rambo with a bunch of health. And it's fun. I like, I like those notes. So.
00:53:54
Speaker
It's like a rotating objective. Like I said, rotating antagonist. Yeah, it's it adds for more diverse gameplay modes versus just I'm going to kill the people who don't look like me. Yeah. A.K.A war simulation. I mean, historically, I mean, yeah, you're right. You're right. But yeah, it's unfortunate.
00:54:25
Speaker
Yeah, there's a few other on the list I wanted to mention at least. Natural Selection 2 played briefly. I think AJ might have also played this one because I remember talking about it at one point. Basically like Marines versus
00:54:39
Speaker
This is like a team shooter, but with asymmetrical teams. One of them is like the alien team. The other team is Marines. There's like a commander for both sides trying to like manage people, where expansions go and building structures, capturing resources. And it was really cool. The concept for it's like awesome. It's just the type of game that required too much. Like you talked about how
00:55:05
Speaker
the community for some of these games can become competitive, develop their strats. And if you're not on the same footing, it's hard to get into. Yeah. This is the like of all the games we've discussed. This falls into that the most because if like you jump in a game and you accidentally take like commander's seat, people are going to rip into you if you have no idea what you're doing. Right. Like you have to already know how to play the game before you launch the game in a way, if you're actually going to see a chance.
00:55:33
Speaker
Seven dollars an hour with like a master's degree. Mm hmm. Yeah, exactly. Right. Damn. But you also you I see you put we were here. Here. Is this asymmetrical?
00:55:51
Speaker
Yeah. So I think we talked about it once. It definitely wasn't a full episode worthy because it's a fairly short game and there are multiple, which we haven't really checked out. I think we just checked out the first one. Right. But it was a free one. Right. Like here's the sampler. Cheap. Yeah. Yeah. But in every situation we were in, Jake and I were separated. Usually we kind of have to relay information to the other person who had to solve the puzzle.
00:56:21
Speaker
So there's like a lot of communicating that had to go on to be like, I'm describing what I'm seeing over here. What are you seeing over there? And trying to figure it out that way. This is kind of similar to keep talking and nobody explodes.
00:56:37
Speaker
where one person has the game manual and is explaining the rules of what they know, but everyone else doesn't see the game manual, has to kind of retain that in memory and work together to be like, I need to work on this thing. Okay, we need to work on this thing. Yeah. Just kind of like that imbalance of directions and following directions.
00:57:00
Speaker
Right. Someone else has the GPS in the car. We call that person the passenger. They hold sandwiches. They balance cups between their legs. And they tell me where the fuck I'm going. Shout out to the passengers in life.
00:57:17
Speaker
Yeah, I think this is an interesting one, because as I was reading this, I was like, is this game really asymmetrical? But you're right, I think. Because one person has information that the other person doesn't, this is a cooperative puzzle-solving-type genre where you're letting someone else guide you remotely. And I find these fun.
00:57:45
Speaker
Those types of games, they're just fun. It forces you to be engaged and to pay attention to what people are saying, which podcast listeners, I think, are really capable at and do a pretty good job there. If you'd like to award Jake Brownie points, you can do so on my Patreon. But no, I really like these. And I think this does fall under the category of asymmetrical.
00:58:17
Speaker
There's several more games in the series. I'd be interested in kind of continuing to play through those. It reminds me, this is such a tonal shift, but just having like one person kind of in control by the other person is very much less. Of the Modern Warfare 2, more people will probably be familiar with this. I think it's Modern Warfare 2, AC 130 co-op mission.
00:58:46
Speaker
Which I assume you played, I hope, because if not, we got to install the game. If I did, it would have been a long time ago. A lot of my Xbox days would have been throughout college. So I remember just doing a lot of multiplayer. But it could have come up, but I don't recall specifically.
00:59:08
Speaker
So I think it was Modern Warfare 2. It might have been Cod 4, but there's a spec ops mode, where for the most part, you were two people on the ground with weapons working together. If either of you died, you'd lose. Trying to clear out an objective, cover each other, get through it. That was fine. They were all fun.
00:59:25
Speaker
And they continued this mode, I think, through the series. But in particular, there was a mission where one person was on the ground trying to extract from an area, and another person was in Overwatch in AC130, using either a white-hot or black-hot vision to track this guy on the ground and clear out tons of super dangerous enemies that were trying to kill him from all directions.
00:59:55
Speaker
And guess which of those two roles in this asymmetric scenario was more fun? The Gunner had a lot of fun with it. But I totally recommend this to people who like co-op gameplay segments, because even though it's like this tiny little segment, it's such a power trip to be in the AC130, which was the point, right?
01:00:19
Speaker
I feel like a lot of the asymmetric things are kind of for the power trip. Like if you look at things like dead by daylight.
01:00:27
Speaker
you get to be the big bad monster, and you get to kind of customize your play style. But again, you're working against a group of people. So sometimes it'll be balanced that way where it's a one versus many situation. But it's fun to kind of switch between the two. Like a more dynamic rotating one would be like Titanfall, right? Oh, yeah. Because you're like, hey, I'm in the big mech, but I'm slow. But if I land a hit on somebody, they're probably dead.
01:00:56
Speaker
Or you could be like super fast and you have a lot more options for mobility and incapacitating a giant mech who maybe doesn't even see you because you're small.
01:01:08
Speaker
running around like a pilot or as a pilot. Maybe you steal their mech. I don't know. I don't think you can do that in Titanfall. That would be funny, though. Because the Titans are in a haywire, too. If you grab the Banshee, you kick them out, and then you shoot them. Yeah. Asymmetrical gameplay. One guy's in a vehicle, the other guy's not. It checks out. The implications for Titanfall are kind of funny because,
01:01:35
Speaker
the pilot, the Titan is an AI. So if you like jacked it, it's just like, what do you, what do you do? I think you literally can't even interface. I think their suits are like linked to the Titan. So you can't, but yeah, you just die. You explode into the cockpit. Oh man.
01:01:54
Speaker
I guess random shout out, but, uh, if you listened to this the day it came out, there's like one or two more days of free Titanfall weekend. So have fun. I guess it's like a 80 gigabyte install. So go fast. Tomorrow you can play for two hours. It's going through like May 3rd or something, but, um, yeah.
01:02:17
Speaker
So I think we've covered a lot. Yeah. Diverse experiences. Where do you fall on this overall? It sounds like you definitely prefer being the overpowered. I think like, yeah, it depends on the social aspect and whether I have to be deceptive or not about the playing the monster or not.
01:02:38
Speaker
I'm actually perfectly fine being the part of the squad, I think, significantly more. Because traditionally, people want to be the imposter. They want to be the monster. A lot of people are queuing into that role. I'm fine. I'm fine not. Where do you land on that?
01:02:53
Speaker
Uh, I definitely like being the overpowered, but if it's a solo overpowered, uh, that gets, it gets to me really quickly. Cause I'm like, I feel so alone and it traces me out because I have to combat multiple people. Um.
01:03:09
Speaker
Why are my friends ganging up on me? Yeah, I'd rather be like let's going up on him guys.
Reflections on Game Strategies
01:03:15
Speaker
Uh-huh. But also I do like to switch to the underpowered or the coordinated team effort just so I can be like, okay, if I was them, these are the strats I would use. So next time I am the big bad asshole, I'll be like, they're gonna try and group up here.
01:03:30
Speaker
bam, something. I like the evolving meta game in between those types of sessions. You're developing strats, learning how people play to then use it against them. It's true.
01:03:47
Speaker
That's probably why these games, I was going to say, that's a shame because the server shut down in 2018. But that was just a callback joke. I think these games are going to stick around. I mean, it was obviously the genre explosion with Among Us and some other games kind of in that space.
01:04:05
Speaker
um this sort of part of this would be the pandemic right people were stuck inside we needed to interact with each other we needed to reach out and touch someone and stab them through the back but um that's you know i think it's going to continue beyond that because uh they're good pick up and play sort of games and it keeps people social and hopefully we can get some of the games on this list until the next land party come on guys gotta play more than just golf
01:04:34
Speaker
I never play golf though.
Closing Remarks and Feedback
01:04:36
Speaker
I always play golf. I think most people play golf. That's asymmetrical games. Any takeaway for asymmetrical life advice? If parts of your body are not evenly sized with the other parts of your body, that's okay. That'll be your own asymmetrical game plan, you know? Yeah.
01:05:03
Speaker
We're all going through life in our own asymmetrical way. So keep on keeping on. If you would like to keep on with, uh, sending us feedback on the podcast or ideas for future episodes, you're like, that, uh, last episode interfered with my inner symmetry. You can send that feedback into us at our Gmail at soapstonepodcastatgmail.com. Or you could join the discussion on Facebook where Dave will read your comments and tell me about them.
01:05:32
Speaker
Facebook.com slash soapstone podcast and As always we'll see you in the next one. Have a good time of day