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The State of Modern Games Coverage
6.5k Plays11 months ago
On this week’s episode of Windbreaker, Yahtzee, Frost, and Marty discuss the state of modern games coverage, including the recent drama surrounding the blurry lines between professional critics, YouTubers, and influencers.
From the team behind The Escapist, we're excited to introduce you to our new employee-owned and fully independent outlet, Second Wind.
Consider supporting us on Patreon for as little as $1/month at patreon.com/SecondWindGroup
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Transcript
Introduction and New Shirt Designs
00:00:00
Speaker
Bare midriff, exposed shoulders, wind blowing across your nips. Cover yourself up if you want to. With second wind shirts. For a reason we can't legally discuss, our artists have had a little free time. So they've come up with brand new designs for our brand new channel and mostly new shows. Fully ramblimatic, design delve, coal take, and the second wind itself. It's some kind of bird.
00:00:26
Speaker
Act fast because some of these designs are only available for a limited time. We've partnered with Shark Robot to make the shopping experience as easy as possible. Because let's be honest, life is hard sometimes. One day you're happy and working, and the next day you're called into a meeting and HR is there and you're just fun. Head to sharkrobot.com slash second dash wind or click on the link in the description to check out all of our shirts today. And I think there's a desk pad too. That's fun.
Meet the Team and Podcast Format
00:01:14
Speaker
Second Windbreakers Podcast, as in the second episode or the second wind?
00:01:19
Speaker
This is a double, double winding. Well, stop trying to confuse people. They're already confused because this isn't on the live channel. And Sebastian Ruiz is here as well. I am here for New Game Plus of the Wind Podcast. Yes, there you go. And we are we have a producer now. Eric, Eric, thank you so much for being our producer. Eric is the eye in the sky. So everyone, everyone loved Eric. Don't cause no trouble. Oh, he'll get you.
00:01:48
Speaker
Just to clarify things for the all the wonderful new listeners we've gotten since we started Second Wind, the usual podcast routine is that we'll talk about the topic for the first half, and then we'll read out superchats after that. So don't feel like we're ignoring you. If you send superchats, we don't read it out. We're saving them all for later. So just bear that in
Modern Video Game Coverage and Influencers
00:02:10
Speaker
mind. But speaking of topics, what we talked about this week, Marty,
00:02:13
Speaker
I am very excited. This was a topic suggested by Frost. State of modern game coverage, sort of piggybacking off a recent internet kerfluffle that had to do with an indie game that came out called Spirit Tea.
00:02:29
Speaker
which is sort of a melding of the vibes of a spirited away Miyazaki movie combined with a Stardew Valley-esque system. It's not that game that was important, but it was a conversation around the idea of influencers and paying YouTubers for coverage versus expecting review coverage for free. So we're kind of going to use that to talk about the current state of video game coverage. Because there's a lot of meat on those bones.
00:02:54
Speaker
Yes, there was that event. There was also another little event in which a corporate owner of a major gaming website fired its editor in chief, and a bunch of people left to start their own company. And what that means for what audiences actually want from their game reviews these days.
00:03:14
Speaker
Oh, another company. What? Yeah, funny that. That's crazy. I mean, also the news, news, the sporting broke that like, read pop is thinking of getting rid of all of its gaming sites, including Eurogamer and part of digital foundry and VGC. So all sorts of not VGC, digital foundry too. Yeah, they're, they're part owners of digital founder. So there's just a lot of, there's just media landscapes, a very strange place. So, um, yeah, just sort of chatting about, um, um, all that in the reviews context.
00:03:42
Speaker
I think it's true, something I've heard someone say recently is that there's not going to be any new gaming journalism sites in the old sense. No one's going to start one of those now. Because all the stuff like Eurogamer, like GameSpot, all of that, that's all like the old school way of games journalism. And you know, the old Doug Stanhope line, if it didn't exist, would you invent it?
00:04:09
Speaker
I mean, I might. Maybe it's time to go back into it.
Journeys in Gaming Journalism
00:04:13
Speaker
But I say before we get too deep, there's three dudes here with three different backgrounds in the same space, in the same podcast. Always start off with like how we got into this space. We'll start off with you. You got to see with your 16 years. How did you get into what? How'd you become a professional, so to speak?
00:04:30
Speaker
How'd I become a professional game correspondent? Well, the first step was by playing video games my whole life and having a lot of opinions on them. I wrote like a personal blog that occasionally had game reviews for quite a few years, tried to update it as often as possible.
00:04:50
Speaker
I actually got into print magazine journalism in my early 20s when I wrote a couple of features for Australia's Hyper magazine. But I also dabbled with doing some freelance stuff for certain websites for a while.
00:05:07
Speaker
And then I put out a little video review that I called a fully ramblymatic review on YouTube, which went viral. And then the escapist came along and offered me a contract to do zero punctuation every week for 16 years. So that's how I started. And I'd say the important ingredient was having played a hell of a lot of video games and wanting to write about them even when it wasn't actually my job at the time.
00:05:31
Speaker
There you go. So you're saying the way in for you was to just do the thing. Just really experience out the background. It's surprised how often it comes down to that. It's like, if I hear people talking about saying, hey, I've decided to make a living writing novels, now all I have to do is write a novel, I would say to them that you automatically have the wrong attitude there, mate. Yeah.
00:05:52
Speaker
That's the sort of thing you have to love doing so that love can sustain you through the period when you won't be making any money from it, which will probably extend to the end of your life statistically. If you
Critics vs. Influencers: Ethics and Transparency
00:06:05
Speaker
love it when like
00:06:07
Speaker
There's no reason to outside of whatever it is. That's just the best time to get going. Marty, you have been part of a major outlet. Yeah. I started when I was in college, I was the
00:06:24
Speaker
the arts and entertainment editor for school newspaper, and that's when I published my first video game reviews and movie reviews and everything. After college, I moved to San Francisco and wanted to work in some sort of magazine or website, not necessarily video games, but something in sort of media and entertainment.
00:06:41
Speaker
Several years of failed job interviews and then finally kind of stumbling into an entry-level position at a site that no longer exists called oneup.com where I started writing guides because if there's one person who's very good at video games and should tell you how to complete them, it's me. One of my first guides was Dark Souls.
00:07:03
Speaker
when Dark Souls launched at the end of 2011 and it turns out it was very scary and I was very bad at writing the guides but everyone's like you have interesting thoughts on the game itself and then I transitioned over into just the editorial team. OneUp was purchased by IGN and I became an editor at IGN and worked there for five or six years and then ended up here so
00:07:26
Speaker
Yeah, it's ultimately I think I have more experience in the kind of quote-unquote traditional gaming space which a lot of times you're gonna hear me kind of go to bat for the bigger sites because I think a lot of times a lot of misinformation gets thrown around about them and I can give some first-hand experience for those.
00:07:43
Speaker
Yeah, it's fun. It's funny you mentioned your IGN review because I think there was a video of someone doing Dark Souls, but using the IGN guides and how terrible was Yeah, I think I think it was a wiki. It could have been re-edited several times over who knows?
00:07:58
Speaker
How about you? I'm in the in-between here because it does chalk it up to a lot of sort of like your life experience can lend itself to your success. My way here was probably the most untraditional unorthodox manner in that I was just kind of wandering around hitchhiking, kind of homeless. Then I was stuck in Jersey because COVID hit with the big lockdowns and I was like, well, I need to make money quick here soon.
00:08:22
Speaker
And I figured I always liked editing, but let's make some videos. Let's make some YouTube stuff. So I grew to a 25,000 follower Twitch stream. My YouTube grew to like 50K and that was only three months. So I did take that traditional path of content creator. And I got to that point where I was like, I want to do video game stuff, but I'm so sick of just doing this same video game. And so that's when I started shopping around.
00:08:44
Speaker
And I was like, okay, I've never done actual reviews before, so I'm gonna go ahead and just try a couple of like reviews. So while I still have that like huge love for making videos and that kind of content, I did almost have to almost compromise in a way for money, so to speak.
00:08:59
Speaker
And because I couldn't, my stream would just die if I was just like, I'm a variety streamer now. But it's like, no, you can do variety at these review outlets. And as mentioned before, the nice thing about working for a company compared to working for yourself is you know where your paycheck's coming from. And that's what I wanted to get to here. Nothing separates us from content creators and influencers as far as starting.
00:09:22
Speaker
Just do the thing, right? But what in our times now has really gotten us, like, what separates us from, not us versus them, so to speak, but I would even say my old content creator self from my now critic sense. Yahtzee, you mentioned once that you didn't finish the darkness.
00:09:43
Speaker
You hold yourself to different standards now over time, so what are these standards? What is this environment lending itself to that does sort of separate us from just non-critics, non-reviewers, I suppose? Well, what is it that separates us from all the influencers who are just personalities and aren't necessarily
00:10:05
Speaker
I suppose, yeah, I'll bring an example. So like when I was a content creator, there's no code of ethics I had to follow. I could completely skip out on that or just be unaware.
00:10:16
Speaker
Right. So I could also get stuck in my own bubble because the only people I'm talking to are myself and the fans, so to speak, whereas at the escapist at here, I'm talking with people who have different opinions from my own. So like that's the sort of stuff that he's offered in a more traditional space compared to, say, a content creator and an influencer.
00:10:39
Speaker
I suppose that I guess it is ultimately down to actually knowing what you're talking about versus just having a nice personality and a nice sounding voice. Great that you're the full package, by the way. Because I guess
00:11:00
Speaker
Well, let's get back to the original like a drama around all this, which was Spirit Tea, which is a title I kind of hate. Never end the first word of the title with the first letter of the second word in the title. Oh, it's a literal title that you hate.
00:11:19
Speaker
I mean, is it? No, I gotcha. Is it spirit tea or spirit tea? These are the sort of things that annoy me. Because the drama there was that the publisher of the game was getting kind of butthurt that nobody was streaming it. And, you know, I suppose it's that's a question of fairness, because
00:11:45
Speaker
You know, the world of influences is a world where like someone like PewDiePie or whoever's popular now, Mr. Beast or whoever, can just pick a random game and on their whims, ensure the success of that game. And it's nothing to do with like the individual merit of the game, it's just whatever appeal to that specific influencer in that moment.
00:12:05
Speaker
And it can be frustrating, I suppose, if you're a video game publisher, trying your hardest on games that whose developers work very hard on to get the eyeballs they want, and then being denied it because of the precocious whims of a select elite few.
00:12:20
Speaker
That seems to be the world of influence marketing. This was the publisher No More Robots, Mike Rose, the head of that company, who published games like Hypnospace Outlaw and Yes, Your Grace and Descenders, which are three games I really like. He's really open and transparent about business and the economics of what they publish and deals they make with Game Pass and things like that. His Twitter threads have been super fascinating.
00:12:46
Speaker
And this thread was talking about how after a week or whatever it was a few weeks Spirit tea had made back its money had recouped its cost It was a single a solo developer. So all these good things but then saying However, if you go to YouTube, there's not a lot of YouTube coverage and in fact He said there is no YouTube coverage was kind of sucked because there's no
00:13:03
Speaker
Smaller youtubers were doing coverage. So that was one thing where like I completely disagreed with him but he said he they reached out to Several youtubers that might like a game like this and their response was
Honesty and Bias in Reviews
00:13:15
Speaker
all well We need to get paid for this in order for us to cover your game We did we need to accept payment for it
00:13:20
Speaker
And he comes from a background of, it wasn't that long ago, when the entire internet was on fire because of ethics and games journalism. And the idea that the separation of church and state and the idea of going to a place like IGN or Gamespot and being like, well, we're not going to cover the game unless you pay us for it, would
00:13:40
Speaker
seem like blasphemy, like that would be absolutely legitimately unheard of. Whereas now these, these influencers, these creators, these people who've developed like a cult of personality around them, that is how they make their living. And there's nothing wrong with that. But I think the problem comes when the audience has a hard time discerning what is a review
00:14:04
Speaker
versus what is a piece of coverage that isn't a review versus what is criticism versus what is sponsored content which is ostensibly creative advertising. Well, there's a lot here. Yeah, that's a little shit that needs to get shaked out in like the early days of a new form of media, ideally by law.
00:14:24
Speaker
Yeah. Saying things like you have to say if this is paid content. Yeah, hashtag ad and all that all that stuff. A lot of people don't though. Well, you got to wait for people to actually try to test their limits before you can start legislating this stuff. Yeah, you need precedent in a court of law.
00:14:44
Speaker
But it really does seem like there's been a sort of upending of things in that it used to be the case that the publishers were in the privileged position, and the journalists would have to come to them and said, Oh, please, can we have your games? Oh, please, oh, please, we would love to cover them.
00:14:57
Speaker
But now it's like there's a million billion games to sell on people trying to sell their games. And it's the media who are in the privileged position, saying, we're the ones that control the audience. And the publishers have to come to us saying, oh, please, oh, please, play our games for us all to see. Oh, please, we'll be ever so good. That's what's weird to me, though, because they're in this sense of having all the power and having no power. If you are so powerful that you have all this sway over audiences,
00:15:22
Speaker
Why do you need a bit of money from the publisher? You know what I mean? Where ideally YouTube is the one footing the bill, right? That was like part of the discussion, part of the drama that came up is that he saw Mike Rowe. Was it Rose? Not Rose. There it is. That he's kind of like shitting on the smaller coverage.
00:15:40
Speaker
But the ones stepping in that are sort of being insulted are the ones saying, oh, that's my livelihood that you're ruining here. Whereas coming from that background as someone who went from homeless to content creator, you don't commit to YouTube when you can't pay your bills.
00:15:54
Speaker
Yeah, that that's just a weird stance to bring up like my rent. Because of my rent, I should be getting sponsors. I should be getting paid. No, you shouldn't be YouTubing. You shouldn't be relying on that for your income, basically, so to speak. But people do make an income from it. And I think if I mean, as a creative, I'm very invested in people being paid money for their work.
00:16:18
Speaker
So, you know, I sort of understand a big YouTuber saying, hey, I need to be paid to do this thing on your game. Because otherwise, if they don't ask to be paid, that's sort of cheapening the entire industry of YouTube content creation. So you got to charge money, you got to charge money, because then it has value. If you don't charge money, then it has no value. That's just economics.
00:16:47
Speaker
That's fair. Well, and that's like their biggest commodity is their time. If you are a solo creator or you're a creator and you have whatever an editor or two, um, I am is ultimately, and this game came out in the busiest season of the year. This came came out surrounding Yahtzee was just saying, I wish more people were talking about Talos principle too. And I just think it came out at a really shitty time when not only are a lot of games coming out over the past month or two, but people are trying to clean up games they miss from earlier in the year. So it's, it's,
00:17:16
Speaker
Small things slip through the cracks, and I understand. If a creator is like, I can either spend my time doing Spirit Tea, or SEGA is coming to me and saying, we'll give you X thousands of dollars to play Persona 5 Tactica, or the new Like a Dragon Gaiden game. I don't know, financially it makes more sense to do that other one.
00:17:37
Speaker
I guess. Gosh, remember when that used to be about just giving exposure to things you liked? Because you liked them. Which is fine if you could pay your bills at the end of a month. Oh, the march of progress.
00:17:53
Speaker
Yeah. I also think the problem is, again, I said it earlier, but that everyone calling everything a review. The number of times I've heard people say, oh, that extra punctuation review. And it's like, well, that's not a review. Or, oh, that cold take review. Well, that's not a, that wasn't a review. That was like a topic discussion or that review. And I'm like, that was a fucking podcast. I don't know how you thought that was a review, but like, Hey, the video essay. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Um, yeah. I don't know.
00:18:22
Speaker
Sorry, Frost, go ahead. I was thinking, but then as I was pushing through to that review and when they pay, the other thing that was being brought up was like the unbiased nature of a review. Can any review be biased? It's art, it's not a poster. No media can be unbiased. Even the most unbiased news source in the world still has to pick and choose what stories they put out, and that reflects bias.
00:18:53
Speaker
So you're never not going to be biased in the media. I mean, no, I mean, unbiased, a perfectly unbiased game review channel would review every single game that comes out. And ain't nobody got the time for that. Imagine what that would look like. Yeah, it would be literally the only channel on YouTube.
00:19:09
Speaker
Also, an unbiased review would just be a bullet point list of features. It would say the game takes an average of 30 hours to beat, the game has this many graphics, and it has this many sounds. That's an unbiased review. The idea that someone would want to come to a review and not hear the history and the background of the person reviewing it through the lens of that thing is baffling to me. What do you want?
00:19:36
Speaker
Like that is staggering to me that like there are a million different people who talk about games on the internet and the fact that you would get mad at one for like for projecting part of themselves on the art is it's either you could take this art form seriously and that's how art is critiqued or we cannot take it seriously and it's a product and we review it like in consumer report review of a refrigerator.
00:19:59
Speaker
Oh, I'd buy more games that way. That is the big question now of it's, even after the cold take or even after the fact, it's just like, will I enjoy this game? There's this fear that I might not purchase something that I will enjoy. And that's what's sort of run on this whole thing there.
00:20:17
Speaker
I mean, all that talk of wanting like an objective unbiased review, that feels like people expecting the old world of reviewing. People expecting the old magazine reviews, or like N-spot reviews, and that sort of thing. People just wanting like a review score that can support their previous opinions.
00:20:37
Speaker
But I think that all might be like getting shed as we move into the current age of the reviewer where the reviewer is just random influencers who are just who and it's all personality driven rather than objective coverage driven. So I think it's a I think it's an unspoken agreement between the audience and the personality driven influencer that they
Traditional Media vs. Influencers
00:21:02
Speaker
they are going to get all their content through the lens of that personality.
00:21:06
Speaker
I think most viewers understand that. I mean, we've done sponsored streams before. Frost and I, we've streamed games before that. And we've been very honest that we were streaming a sponsored game. Like we played two demos back to back and this was being sponsored by the publisher and we were being very honest about that. And at the same time, we were talking about the game.
00:21:28
Speaker
through the lens of our experiences and saying these things are really neat in the game. And granted, at the same time, you do, if you're being paid for something like that, you do pull your punches. Because I'm not gonna go in and shit all over a thing I'm being paid to cover. Or you lean into it even more to try and make up for it.
00:21:45
Speaker
Yeah, you take the internet historian route. Yeah, where it's just like, oh, you paid and I'm not sure if I am pulling back. I'm going to lay into it a little bit more just to make sure. And now you've just gone by us both ways. And then you don't get paid again, but I can think.
00:22:00
Speaker
There's a lot of publishers that have considered asking to pay me for their punctuation review of their game on the expectation that there's no such thing as bad publicity. Sure, especially a smaller game that you might not cover. Yeah, I was gonna ask about that. Because Josh Strifehays, if you don't know, he's the big like MMORPG specialist.
00:22:20
Speaker
And he always does the worst game series, whatever. And I'll be an online paid for their video, where I tell you, you don't have to change anything, we just want to pay for it. And he's like, okay, you did get a bit of shit for that. Because you trust that he's not going to change any of his views in any way. Do you think this is something reasonable? Say someone with an established style, 16 years, if they go, hey, we don't care what you say, we just want to pay for it.
00:22:47
Speaker
Well, it's at least some kind of filter. I mean, the alternative is just you can't review everything, so we just review everything on a whim. Just being exposed to something just because the creator paid you to cover it is as good a way as any, then just stumbling into it or playing it on a whim.
00:23:09
Speaker
I mean, as long as that relationship is all made clear upfront and the dude made it clear that he wasn't going to hold back his opinions. And that's where the weird boundary between like, I don't know, Josh Streifhase doesn't have like a code of ethics, doesn't write for the New York Times, you know, I assume didn't go to journalism school or anything like that. So does a person like that have to be held to the same? Like, isn't it ultimately like,
00:23:36
Speaker
in the eye of the beholder to view how they feel about that? Well, the only mechanism that can act against that is the audience no longer watching. Sure, yeah. It's like a purely libertarian society. Hope you're all enjoying it, because this is how it would work in reality.
00:23:52
Speaker
And the thing that the thing that I always get pissed at, I have no I like I there's there's YouTubers and video essayists and just influencers that I genuinely enjoy. But I hate this myth of the honest review and of the less we've built up. We've built up a sort of an us versus them, which is everywhere in society. It's in it's in sports. It's in politics. It's in fucking Marvel and DC. But they've built up this idea that
00:24:22
Speaker
traditional games media is corrupt and you're coming to me because I tell it like it is but also I'm being paid to play this game and it's like that's fine but don't try to weaponize that bullshit like it's it's yeah
00:24:36
Speaker
Comes from I think that's more my background you two didn't go this route you almost do have this sort of chip On your shoulder. It's it's a view I would say is more common for content creators that haven't been proper reviewers Whereas you wouldn't expect it from a reviewer who hasn't been a content creator so to speak in that way I still I don't know how to get rid of them, but I also figured it'd be a growing Scenario for myself my you have honest reviews
00:25:03
Speaker
See, I did. I did have two honest reviews, non-critic-ass, head-ass reviews that I can't delete and I'll just leave them there for all to see. Where it does come from this angle of like us versus them, they don't know what they're talking about. And even though I figured I was being incredibly unbiased, looking back I was so, so biased.
00:25:25
Speaker
Well, speaking as someone, speaking as someone who's occasionally taken the position that they try to be a bit more honest than a sort of a corporate funded standard Gamespot style review sort of thing, I do think it's true that something like a Gamespot can be held back a bit by certain obligations.
00:25:52
Speaker
I do think it's true. You got that look on your face. We're getting in there again. We've argued about this before. I do think there is a certain amount of restraint in that sort of environment, if only because people won't use really bad language and abortion jokes.
00:26:16
Speaker
And that is, I will say that was frowned upon under corporate leadership. Correct. Yeah. So honesty for some people is just being unfiltered, I suppose. Sure. Right. Yeah. So you think this honest, you had to have one less abortion joke.
00:26:37
Speaker
Yeah, I think a dishonest review is just, there is like a sense that in the gaming media, which was very sort of bubbled up to the surface during the whole Gamergate thing, before that all went to shit, is that gaming media does feel like, at least like in the mainstream sectors, has a closer relationship to publishers than it does to its audience.
00:27:03
Speaker
And I think that as it almost does go back to that time, it was Sterling who was last week left Escape because they were saying you can't go all out on yourself because we still need that work relationship. Yes. So while no one's getting paid for reviews by big corporate publishers, there is a certain amount of pressure on those outlets by big corporate publishers.
00:27:26
Speaker
But that pressure is not felt by the critics. In my time at IGN, that pressure was never felt by the critics because there were several layers of protection. And my reviews editor at the time was Dan Stapleton, who's still a reviews editor at IGN, who is fucking thrown into the fire because of his Starfield review a few months ago. So he gave it a seven or something, which is just, on that scale, it's calling the game good. And so I think people who hated Starfield were mad at him for giving it a seven, and people who loved Starfield
00:27:54
Speaker
better than forgiving it as seven. But he, more than anyone I've ever worked with, was a shield of bullshit in an incredible way. So again, I have my own personal biases on this because I spent so much time at IGN with these people. And so I will always go to bat for them. But I understand where you're coming from when it's like,
00:28:15
Speaker
You know, oh, so you're reviewing the new Call of Duty, but also Activision paid to have the entire website skinned in Call of Duty stuff. But those are completely separate entities. Right. Right. But I'm talking about audience perception. The audience perceives like there's more of a corporate influence. And that is because of the YouTubers who talk about that like honest game review and be like, don't go to them for it. Come to me for it.
00:28:41
Speaker
Just that, but I will say even when I wasn't involved in the space and talking to other people who aren't involved in the space, that's where I try to think of it from the audience perspective. It doesn't matter if this is my first zero-punctuation and I see Yahtzee was paid for it, but he's changed nothing, but he was paid for it. My mind, now I, as a viewer of the review, is biased to think he's biased. That's the problem I'm dealing with here.
00:29:07
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Is that an uneducated viewer? Is that what that for? Well, the way I care is like reality, the reality of the matter, reality doesn't matter. It is all about perception. If the vast majority of your audience is uneducated to the ways of how games criticism goes, and they should be because not everyone is a reviewer, then it's just the perception we have to deal with. So that's what's causing like the stickiness in the spirit tea situation.
00:29:33
Speaker
Because the influencer reviewers have created this perception that they're purely personality driven, that they're purely acting on their own whims and as such being more honest.
00:29:50
Speaker
And then it comes out that they actually are charging money from the game creators to cover their games. Some people have this sort of little mental record skip when they hear that. When they already have the perception of the YouTuber being the quote unquote more honest.
00:30:06
Speaker
outlet. And that's where the whole debate has been sparked, I suppose. Although I'm personally on the side of the influences on this, you know, because, you know, I'm an honest internet reviewer. Are you? I saw what your original video looked like, Alan Wake.
00:30:32
Speaker
Yes, you know last bit near the end there I'm see I'm of the matter where it's like public perception is the important thing there But then the other thing is I don't think there can be an honest review well coverage
00:30:49
Speaker
I'm all for. If you're just like, hey, I was paid to carve, you are now marketing, you're not reviews, you're now a billboard. And Wonderbot, who is a big indie influencer, content creator, whatever you want to call it, he says that's what we are. We are billboards. And maybe it feels scummy to some, but that's just what we are. Truth of the matter is when we get paid, we are not reviewing anything anymore. We are just covering it.
00:31:12
Speaker
We are in a problem. The problem is that definition of review. People lump all that in. People lump like a drunk tweet and be like, look at that review. I was making a joke. I didn't mean it. Right. So ultimately, it comes down to transparency. And ultimately, the only way that can be assured is through legislation of the as yet wild lawless days of frontier new media. Yeah.
00:31:39
Speaker
I don't think you can be 100% understood, but you can do your best to be clear at all times. So clear that anyone else, if they get the wrong idea, someone else can go, you're stupid. So like me, maybe this is too much. If it's paid and sponsored, I want it. So if you scrub at any point in a video, it says add, you know, it's like an overlay, like the whole time. And I want like, I want clarity. That's all I can ask for.
00:32:05
Speaker
Yeah, I suppose when you get right down to it, just be as clear as possible is probably the best advice because even without some kind of body legislating in that, the audience response and the hate mobs in the comments are a pretty strong motivation to be as clear as possible in the first place. What a...
00:32:31
Speaker
What do you guys look for in reviews? Not your own reviews, but if you consume written reviews, if you even do consume written reviews, video reviews, that kind of thing. Because for me, it is...
00:32:44
Speaker
Before I have played a game all I want is someone to shine a spotlight on something I might have not known about like if I know I'm gonna play Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth I don't need to read a single review before I go in like I know I'm gonna play this I love it when reviews or coverage or streams or even if it's sponsored streams shine a light on something I didn't know existed shine a light on
00:33:05
Speaker
small games like Island Song or American Arcadia, which we were talking about earlier, or in Stars and Time, a really great new little time loop indie game. And then when I know that thing exists, I will be like, okay, I will play this. And then after I consume things, I love devouring coverage. Like when I finished a game, every time I finished a Silent Hill game on my streams, I would be like, I want to consume as much as I can about Silent Hill 1 to see what everyone thought of it.
00:33:32
Speaker
thought of it back then, thinks of it now, same thing with Silent Hill 2. But I don't, I don't know, like, I don't use reviews to sort of dictate what I buy and what I spend my time on. I don't know. Do you guys? No, well, I tend not to go to reviews and recommendations just because I'm going to be looking into every single game anyway, because that's my job.
00:33:57
Speaker
Usually I rely on recommendations from you guys or direct things in the comments. For people who I might have an expectation, know at least a bit about me and understand the sort of things I would really like and be interested in.
Passion and Personal Backgrounds in Reviews
00:34:13
Speaker
As for what I look for when I'm consuming YouTube review content, I like deep dives and analyses into things I'm already familiar with. I want to listen to something like Design Doc or Game Maker's Toolkit or something like
00:34:34
Speaker
white light going into in-depth explanations of the stories of well-known games. But actually, the other thing I really like is something like Ross God's Game Dungeon. Because every game he's done on that I have never heard of. And it doesn't necessarily recommend the games, but it's just interesting to see what he picks. Because you can tell he's not picking games based on what would feed the algorithm.
00:35:02
Speaker
Yeah, I like that. I like finding people who give a lot of time and energy towards games I didn't know existed in like the 360 era, like some real janky like I want so if someone's like I spent an hour. I have an hour video essay on wet. Like, yes.
00:35:19
Speaker
I will watch this because I did not realize there was an hour of things to say about WET, but I would love to see that. Yeah, there's folks like Thor High Heels, who's a YouTuber that I love, who does that kind of stuff. Even the developers of WET don't want to talk about WET for very long. No, not for a full hour. That's WET. I was at a game convention once, and a developer came up saying, hey, I worked on WET. We all hated working on it, and we loved your video. Oh, poor WET.
00:35:46
Speaker
Um, there is also that interesting, uh, I guess that also goes into, it feels like when a game, people are always wondering, why do games get critical real appraisals five, 10 years later? And I feel like it's because when a game comes out, everyone jumps in to give their opinion.
00:36:02
Speaker
And you get a lot of people who might not even want to play that kind of game. That might not be their bag. And so you get a big flood of opinions. And then five to 10 years later, the only people who are still thinking or talking about this game are the people who like really gelled with it or sought it out. And so you end up getting the more like, not that it's like a better opinion or not, but just like a more like, yeah, yeah. And like curated to people who like this. This was absolutely in their wheelhouse.
00:36:29
Speaker
See, that's the thing. I really enjoy writing about games I'm passionate about, whether I really, really like them or really, really hate them. Yeah. And when you're consuming coverage of someone who's playing something just because they were paid to, you automatically know they don't have passion for it.
00:36:44
Speaker
That's the problem. That's what I look for in a review. Knob gags by a cynical Brit speaking a mile a minute or a Midwestern lad waxing poetic about nostalgia. I just want that passion because I am a gamer. I want games that make me feel and if they don't feel anything more so than it's just a book report, I don't care. I also like dissenting opinions.
00:37:08
Speaker
Because usually I can see like, okay, they didn't like it because of this. Well, I do enjoy that kind of stuff. So it'll probably be fine for me. That's how that's how I am with, with like skill up very, very technical lab lovey stuff. But a lot of the times the things that he, we feel the same thing. He just enjoys something I don't or vice versa. And I'm like, this is this is a great track record that we've established here. So passion being number one, and then to just I would say,
00:37:34
Speaker
almost transparency so to speak I guess I want someone who understands themselves because if they can say I like games that are la la la la and because they're this fast this felt really slow and then I go okay gauge myself off of that instead of someone that just goes game is slow game is fast I was like compared to what
00:37:51
Speaker
because it's all relative. So I need somebody who can establish themselves. If anything, the more narcissistic, the better. Because if the sun revolves around them, then I can just establish like a frame of reference from
Community Engagement and Gaming Preferences
00:38:02
Speaker
that point. So passion and yeah, I guess narcissism, that's the other thing.
00:38:07
Speaker
Well, we've figured it out. Passion, transparency, and narcissism. There you go. I think that transparency is interesting, too, because I'm going to be fascinated when, first off, I need the Bloober team updates on Silent Hill, too. You know it just makes me depressed. No, there is like a hostage situation going on.
00:38:27
Speaker
Bloober Team released one of those, like, we're sorry, uh, images on Twitter where they were like, everything's going great. We would love to tell you about it, but we can't because Konami is the one who will tell you about it. And they're like, I'm like, why don't we, what are we doing here? Are they like trying to be like Konami, please let us talk or being like, Hey, when this shits the bed, everyone blamed Konami. Remember that terrible Silent Hill Ascension game? Um, so that's, that's fascinating. But
00:38:53
Speaker
With Silent Hill 2, I'm going to be fascinated, Yahtzee, to hear your take on it, knowing your background. And for us, if that is really your first foray into Silent Hill, I'm going to be fascinated to hear that too. So I want to hear what, like, games are weird things. Like, I want to know what tears the kingdom is like for someone who has a head injury and plays every Zelda game like me or someone who's never played a Zelda game. I think that's fascinating. Yeah, someone super like me or super unlike me. Exactly, exactly. Yeah.
00:39:20
Speaker
We really... Did we solve it? Did we solve the internet? Yeah, we solved it. Well done, everyone. Good job, team. I can't believe we did it. Yeah, let's go to superchats. Remember chat, all your superchats in these episodes, the red in the back portion of the episode, and we got some goodies here. We have some goodies for you. We still have. Starting with Dale Mallows, who gave $5 to say, good day, gents.
00:39:45
Speaker
Here are you fun words for the week. Malarkey, Flippity Jibbit, and Fartlic. Love you guys. I do have that word, Flippity Jibbit. That can't be real. I got red squiggly lines underneath it. I think it's... As I understand it, it's a fairly archaic sort of roaring 20s era word for a sort of loose woman. I thought it was your wishy-washy. Your Flippity Jibbit.
00:40:16
Speaker
Yeah, someone who's a little bit of, you know, little bit kooky. Also, we have Kraschnikoff in the tip jar. Welcome back, Kraschnikoff. Welcome back indeed. Hang on a second. My chat's rolling up. Okay.
00:40:35
Speaker
Uh, Hjorth87 gives a 50 Danish chrono. It says, anyone on the team play strategy games? Civilization, Crusader Kings 3 and Rimworld are my comfort games that I play while listening to an audiobook with my wife.
00:40:47
Speaker
Now, its strategy is sort of a hard game to define. The game awards certainly seem to have difficulty with it. There are some games that you'd call strategy like FTL or XCOM that I really like. I think most games they call strategy, especially real time strategy I have no time for at all. I get very easily overwhelmed.
00:41:08
Speaker
Do they tend to mean like grand strategy, Forex and that kind of stuff? That's the thing is it's such a broad, like it runs from Forex to Marvel's Midnight Kissers. Like strategy is that entire spectrum, which is a lot of games. Do we have anyone who hits any of those? I tend to not. That's like my weaker and I'm still trying to do a couple of strategy crunches and whatnot.
00:41:34
Speaker
I'll play a tactics game if it is. I'm like a dog who you need to feed a pill and wrap it in like cheese or peanut butter. So I'm playing Persona 5 tactical right now. If they didn't have my Persona pals in there, I would never touch this game, but it has my Persona pals. And so I do like playing it. Well, it's just Mario and Rabbids with Persona wallpaper on it, isn't it? And I would not play Mario and Rabbids unless my Mario pals were there. If that was just Rabbids.
00:41:58
Speaker
They're bringing up Civilization, Rimworld, and CK3. That's a very specific kind that they're asking. I try. I really do. I try Rimworld. Definitely games exist that just aren't for you. I haven't cracked that code yet. I know Nick dabbles in some strategy, but Nick is kind of a jack of all trades when it comes to genres. To be a hardcore fan of strategy games, you kind of need that to be your full-time job.
00:42:23
Speaker
See, I'm fine with turn based strategy because it means I can have some time to really, really think about it like in XCOM and Mario and Rabbids. It's just real time because I when I'm getting when I'm having to deal with like five different parts of the battlefield at once and the enemy are all encroaching without stopping. I can't keep up with it. I get overwhelmed. I want to focus on one person's problems. Yeah, probably why I liked American Arcadia, actually.
00:42:49
Speaker
Mm hmm. It's a game about one person's problems. What's the best game about one person's problems? Which sign nil to that is absolutely about one person's problems. You got that one in the chamber. There you go. But I always liked about it, you know, they start off with the sort of slightly lame, grand cult wants to take over the world plot in the first game. And the second one is just some twat. Just some twat is personal issues. And his wife.
00:43:20
Speaker
Well, bucket list gives $2. Does any thoughts on bringing back let's play with Gabe? Oh, for fuck's sake. We really do just need to have a big old banner at the top of the page. No way. No, last week getting money in which get lucky paying for it. You take this maybe if we had a certain amount over. No, we won't tell you what that amount is. Because that's not true. Oh, yeah, transparency.
00:43:45
Speaker
forgot that we're not lying. Sorry, not lying anymore. Timbo exclamation mark is $10 says in this discourse, I always bring up Mike Rowe, no relation to the micro we were talking about earlier, I think. And don't follow your passion. Blessed few can make it work. But there's no faster way to hate the thing you love than depending on it for a livelihood.
00:44:06
Speaker
Well, I'm not sure I agree with that. I mean, I think, I'm sure, when I'm having to play, you know, the new Avatar game, I'll probably, that'll probably feel like work. But every now and again, I play new games that remind me why I like games so much, like Obra Dinn, American Arcadia, Talos Principle 2, Shut Off About Sonic Frontiers, or I'll slap you one.
00:44:34
Speaker
Oh no. Or you could work construction or something like that. That really makes you miss gaming, working in a warehouse.
00:44:43
Speaker
has Frost since, when did you join a recap over at the Escape? Like a year ago, six months ago? Like Darren? Yeah, when did you start like regularly? Six months ago, something like that. Did you notice the way that your brain was different watching things once it had to be incorporated into work?
00:45:07
Speaker
than beforehand because it's hard for me to play or watch anything without thinking of, how can I turn this into something for work? And that sucks, which is why I love sports so much because I could just get extremely high and just fucking disassociate and be like, hell yeah, the men are hitting each other on the football field and I don't have to talk about this at all.
Balancing Passion and Monetization in Content Creation
00:45:30
Speaker
Probably not because I told you that before where I was just I go in with that I don't care attitude because I generally don't and I've also been fortunate enough to where I make a series that's about whatever I think and whatever I care about so I don't have to look about like oh this how do I turn this how do I turn that into a bit of money right? That's life as a millennial
00:45:55
Speaker
Yeah, that'll do you. But, uh, no, I kept away from that. And my, in my advice for content creators, you can do what you want to do. You can do what makes money, or you can be fortunate enough to do the thing that you want to do that happens to give you money. That's why I'm not sure how your views of that go Yahtzee you've been doing this for 16 years. Very fortunate to have had such longevity for it.
00:46:18
Speaker
Well, I think not having too many editorial obligations helps. I still ultimately just play whatever I want to play each week and then write reviews about it. Yeah, there is the idea of if you have to choose between two games and one is more popular and you think it'll get more views. Is that something that's
00:46:40
Speaker
Like even if it's not as fun to play, now playing the latest and most well-known games is part of, you know, the, the lifestyle of gaming. It gets you like clued into the zeitgeist and that's part of the lifestyle I love. Even if the individual game, isn't that good? Yeah. It's being part of the conversation. Hmm. I don't want to talk to those people.
00:47:08
Speaker
Well, hold your nose, because you know, you're in the media now. Good. Max s gives five euros says Hey, oh, thanks. Yahtzee your Chazoh mythos games pull of crafty and stories on the map for me. Now I enjoy them a lot with PNP call of Cthulhu. Cheers pen and paper as he means that. Well, you know, we're all just passing our influences forward aren't we? There you go.
00:47:32
Speaker
I mean, you could always just read Lovecraft's original stories that influenced me and various other people who influenced me. I think the main influence behind my horror adventure games was shit like Eternal Darkness on the GameCube. That was a good one. What a game. Is that the one that messes with your volume and all that? Yeah, that's the one. I like those, yeah. Feel free to gaslight me in those.
00:47:55
Speaker
It's one of the first games to explore the concept of the insanity effect in the Lovecraftian video game. Especially in ways that sort of mess with the player and their perception of the game. So they'd have the thing where the volume would go down and there'd be a little volume slider on the screen and you think you were sitting on the remote or would pretend to be deleting the save games for a second. Can't do that now because like I haven't seen that volume slider in decades. Doesn't age well.
00:48:25
Speaker
And then Wesley Thomas, with five green dollars, comes in and says, hey, speaking of the Chisholm Ithos games, would Second Wind do a long play stream of them, or would that seem too self-congratulatory? I always find it a little bit painful to go back over my old works in detail. Like, I did it once, my old YouTube channel, we called it the Ego Review, and that was a bit of a painful experience, even then.
00:48:49
Speaker
Also, how many, um, how many of your games do you think would be like, quote unquote, good for streaming? Cause there are certain games, like if something's real text heavy, that's not necessarily good for streaming unless you're settling in for a lot of reading. You get the greatest commentary. Yeah. Most of, most of, most of them were text heavy, like adventure game point and click stuff. So yeah. I mean, uh, I did, I would like make a roguelike called the consuming shadow, which would probably be the best quote unquote streamable game.
00:49:17
Speaker
Until your next game, Starstruck Vagabond coming next year.
00:49:40
Speaker
Smeysk audio gives $5 and says, just wanted to say that I'm thankful this Thanksgiving to have y'all here. Thanks so much to all y'all. Thank you, Smeysk. Thank you, Smeysk. Brett Fountain gives $4.99 and says, thanks for the background noise while I work. Oh, well, that was slightly damning with fine praise, Brett Fountain. Did you know Brett Fountain created the fountain pen?
00:50:02
Speaker
Here's some background noise. Yeah, that's his first super chat and paid for. That's incredible. And praise. I think it's available on this channel for like a week. Yeah. Warrior 4356 gives $4.99. It says I thinking saying unbiased reviewed just means without sponsors having editorial influence. Well, no, that's not what
00:50:32
Speaker
It'd be in like a technical sense, but that's not what the commenters mean when they say they want objective reviews. That is the street. That is the street lingo for it. Yeah, but we know it's not. It is. Keep your politics out of my game. That's a billboard. Keep your lokeness out of my game. When most of the unbiased reviews, they mean reviews that agree with me. Also, fill my ass up in the tip jar.
00:51:01
Speaker
Just film that ass up with the tip jar. Thanks for filling my tip jar up as well as my ass. Thank you for filling our asses up. John Connor gives five Canadian and says, will the shorthand for the new series be FR and SR rather than EP and ZP? Or is the phonetics not as good? I don't think the phonetics are as good. Personally, I call them internally, I would call them fully RAM and semi RAM. That's good.
00:51:29
Speaker
I think that's got a bit more of a ring to it. Redeemed himself, him. FoxD gives five US dollars, says, here's five unencumbered dollars. Say whatever you want, because it's worked so far. Thank you, you big child molester. No, don't say that. Whatever you want. There's a degree. He said, say whatever I want. YouTube is policing us. No.
00:51:55
Speaker
Oh, no. No, we need this money. All right. Fox D isn't a child molester. As long as we know. Oh, no. Oh, no. No, extended club X gives $5. It says I would love to take this podcast more seriously, but it doesn't say 100% honest in the title. That's our fault. Yeah, it does imply that we break wind, which is honest, in a sense. No,
00:52:25
Speaker
Still none of us wearing a windbreaker, even though we claim this is real clothing. Nick, get out to Shark Robot. Get a windbreaker made. Not real. No such thing. Windbreakers are real. Well, my dressing gown could probably break wind if she gave it a chance. I know Toffee certainly does. Ah, oh, fartin' dog. Little stinky stinky dog. Incredible.
00:52:50
Speaker
Darwin's Dummy gives $10. While I get Jart's point that paying just to expose your game to a critic may feel an innocent living, it does provide an opportunity for buyers to triple-A big bucks that dominate the public consciousness. Well, they already kinda do, Darwin's Dummy. They've already got, um, all the marketing on their side. They're the ones able to put posters on the sides of buses.
00:53:12
Speaker
Also, it is a... You know, at least if an indie game can pay for coverage, that somewhat levels the playing field. It is also a... It is not just covering big games because they are paid to cover big games. It is big games generally drawing big traffic because people are interested in them. And if that's how you keep the lights on, like, that's why everyone reviews Baldur's Gate and Zelda and Starfield and like...
00:53:42
Speaker
It's kind of a two-way street there. I remember people was asking, like, I.J., why did you do so much Destiny 2 coverage? And it's like, because at the time, you kept clicking on it. And so it's like supply and demand. If people stop clicking on stuff, then there's a good chance you'll get less coverage of it. But if people are still extremely excited about something and clicking into it, even if it's a hate click, hate click's a click.
00:54:05
Speaker
There you go. Blame the audience, not the author. Another theme that comes up in American Arcadia, incidentally. I'm gonna put the link to American Arcadia because a lot of people are like, what the fuck is this game? You're talking about it. Yeah, let me let me clarify that because
00:54:21
Speaker
I don't think it's a mind-blowing game, American Arcadia. It's a sort of, like, run to the right cinematic platform when you're sort of Little Nightmares vein, where if you do anything other than what the game wants to happen next for the story, then you get instantly failed and have to go back to the save. But I'm on record with my fellow correspondents that it's probably the best ending for a game I've seen in a long time.
00:54:49
Speaker
which I'm very excited about. And you said it's relatively short. God knows. Yeah, it's a fun story, a fun self contained story and it ends as perfectly as you could want such a thing. Perfect. So that's my recommendation.
Audience Expectations and Honest Reviews
00:55:05
Speaker
Maybe I'll talk about it more in a semiramblematic in the future sometime. Semiram. I've like gone to YouTube, I listened to the end credits music for American Arcadia like three times this morning.
00:55:17
Speaker
There you go. It's stuck in my head. So is that an unbiased review? No, probably not. Maybe I just like that kind of music. SVS guru 2000 gives 10 euros and says whatever I see honest review, I expect some trashing of the game movie show as the other extreme of the perceived mainstream media shills. So I don't watch those by default.
00:55:41
Speaker
See, I brought this up over, it was during Thanksgiving that these people were doing that. They could have been eating turkey with their family, but they were fighting on the internet instead. Where I saw these honest reviews, are there dishonest reviews? You can have a series where you play the first 10 minutes of a game and then you review the entirety of the game. Or you just say, here's my dishonest review and then make up like five minutes of complete bullshit about a game that's in your head.
00:56:07
Speaker
There you go. See, that would be nice. And someone even brought up where it's just like, that would just be saying whatever the highest bidder pays you to say. I was like, okay, I think I could monetize this. I'm okay with honest reviews, but there's no dishonest reviews. See? Yeah. That's not bad. That's not the point. Doran Grossman Naples gives $5. Says throwback to when Microsoft refused to pay VG Dunkey for a sponsored video because he didn't like the game. Well, that's showing your whole ass, isn't it?
00:56:36
Speaker
Well, I mean, okay, so I don't know the story of this. Was this a, like, they agreed to the sponsorship, they signed a contract, he created a video, and because it was negative, they refused to pay him? Or was it a, hey, we would like to pay you to play our game, however you need to be positive about it? And he said no, and then they said, no, we're not gonna do this. Because in that case, that's just how business works.
00:56:57
Speaker
However, if he'd already made the video and there was like a tacit agreement and without sort of those stipulations, then that's shitty. I don't actually know. Well, I guess we'll never know and all we can do is speculate. We'll ask him. Did you know Dunkey also lives in Wisconsin? Yes. What's everyone doing in Wisconsin these days? Nothing. They're buying uncooked pizzas at Papa Murphy's. Have you seen that yet? They have establishments that sell you raw pizzas.
00:57:25
Speaker
This man had a dream to be a pizzaiolo, and he didn't have an oven, but he wasn't gonna let that hold him back.
00:57:31
Speaker
Wait, how's that different to just buying a frozen pizza? Because it's a handmade artisanal frozen pizza. They make the frozen pizza in front of you and then you go home and bake it in your oven. Well, even so, I'm pretty sure I can get those are the Whole Foods. They're sort of like shrink wraps in the grab and go cabinet. The funny thing is it's cheaper than like a cooked pizza, but it's more expensive than just a regular frozen pizza and does not taste better than a regular frozen pizza. No, it doesn't. I hear selling raw pizzas is crazy.
00:58:01
Speaker
Wisconsin's great. What a great state. What a great state. Top 50. I'm just a little thrown by Frost's reaction, though. I don't think there's anything weird or mysterious about selling someone an uncooked pizza as they can cook it at home. I mean, most shops will sell you uncooked food for you to cook at home. No, it's not a shop. It's like going to McDonald's and they're like, here, have the patty, cook it at home.
00:58:24
Speaker
I've been to pizza places where they'll sell you like half cooked pizzas so you can finish the cook. You can finish the baking in your home oven and then you can it tastes more fresh when you eat it. What's going on here? It should be cheaper or they should pay me for it. Like what is happening? We're justifying this behavior. I can't have it.
00:58:41
Speaker
I mean, how is it different to like, they send you food and it's a bit cold when you arrive. So you stick it in the microwave for a bit. That's like your kick starting a pizza. You're, you're, you're paying for the possibility that it will be a good pizza afterwards. Yeah. So this is Strand type pizza. This is what this is the future Hideo Kojima warned us about. Guys, do you realize we're a week away from possibly seeing more Hideo Kojima in LA at the game awards? Oh my God. I'm very excited.
00:59:07
Speaker
I hope he wears cool glasses. Who knows what to expect. Anyway, lots of super jets to continue getting through. I'm sorry. Batman's bottom B gives 499 British pounds says have you had problems getting review codes being a brand new outlet? Love love the content. Well, you have to ask Nick and Marty. We haven't had problems. We haven't really got to that.
00:59:31
Speaker
Which is nice because we're pretty much at the end of the year. So that is definitely that is a big goal for January and February and God knows I want a Persona 3 reload code and I want a Final Fantasy 7 rebirth code and let me tell you guys those reviews
00:59:48
Speaker
There's gonna be some bias in those reviews. Oh, boy, there's gonna be some bias in those reviews. Oh, dear, oh, dear. See, again, just to me, it's just clarity. If you're like, I'm the biggest Nintendo show, I'm like, all right, this is fine. As long as I know. Exactly. Yeah. And we've got plenty of publicity. So presumably the publishers know that we're not nobodies. Mm hmm. I'm not too worried about it. And we got a lot of momentum. We got some sort of a second wind behind us. Oh, what do you know? It's almost like that's why we picked the name.
01:00:19
Speaker
A vulgar display of gaming gives 10 Australian dollars. There's no real message. Just said I'd donate when superchads are back, so putting my money where my mouth is. Thank you for the vulgar display of gaming. None of his word. Zaratha gives five Brazilian rial and says, one day the windbreaker jokes will go old and stop. Until then, I'll enjoy the stream with a nice bowl of beans and spinach toot. Oh my God. I love, I love a toot is very nice. That was a very pleasant toot. Thank you. Yeah.
01:00:45
Speaker
Also, Hunter Roge gifted five members or five memberships out to the second one audience, including Alexander Tyreale, Jon Snow, Grunger, and Lady Luminous. So thank you, Hunter. And congrats to the rest of you for joining the Green Gang for this month. Well, shit in my camel's mouth. Oh, my God. And Uncle Director, Ultra Director Jester is in the tip jar. Welcome. And Chris S is in the tip jar. Welcome.
01:01:07
Speaker
Oh, this is about your camel. Well, I just wanted to sit in something's mouth. And I guess that was what sprung to mind. Reminded me of this nativity scene I seen. Well, I was trying to think of an animal that started with Cher, but none sprung to mind instantly. Skunk. That doesn't start with Cher. Skunk. Sit in my shopkeeper's mouth. There you go.
01:01:37
Speaker
Uh, Matt Faulkner gives for Nathan and US says Yahtzee, there are so many talented voices on second wind. Have you thought about turning one of your books into an audio drama using those voices? No, done, done. If we were doing that, I could probably just get audible on the phone and you know, produce it through them, because they're really into my audio books.
01:02:02
Speaker
I'm there like already booked the studio for my recording sessions for the next one. So that will be this upcoming weekend and the following one sorted. That's exciting. Let Marty have a read. I'm gonna go in for two full time sessions on Saturday and Sunday so my voice might be a bit croaky next week.
Nostalgia and Personal Gaming Experiences
01:02:26
Speaker
Lovely stay hydrated.
01:02:29
Speaker
Well, I got my own methods. drink tea, eat apple slices and fresh professional grade singers throat spray every now and again. Yeah, I was expecting like, something the way you were saying really ominous. Yes, I murder small children and drink their blood. That is my secret. I knew it was a bit battery. Yeah.
01:02:57
Speaker
Well, not too much blood at once, because blood's an emetic. That's how they caught John George Haig. The creator of the Haig?
01:03:07
Speaker
No, George Haig, the acid bath murderer. He was trying to get off on an insanity plea, so he tried to tell the police that he drank the blood of his victims. And he'd never mentioned throwing up. But the doctors said, no, blood makes you throw up. If he drank that much blood, he'd throw up. So that's how they realised he was just faking it. The insanity plea. I could just add an iron stomach, poor guy. Still, George Haig.
01:03:32
Speaker
Dio dunga gives 199 us does wanted to tell Marty, I've been using HBD for years. Happy birthday. Yeah. Do you know about this? Or do you only know about this from us talking about it?
01:03:43
Speaker
I only know from you talking about it that HBD is short for Happy Birthday. I wouldn't have guessed that. I thought that was a very common thing and I said I want to start doing anniversary streams like we did last week for the Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time that's just called HBD and everyone said that's not real and it sounds like sexually transmitted disease. I don't know where we're at then. I keep reading it as Hentful Business District. To me it's having big dick, like big dick energy.
01:04:12
Speaker
Yeah, because birthday is one word. It is. It is. It doesn't make sense. I like having big dick though. Anyway, on that note, Opus 4 gives 50 Danish kroner and says some money for the tips jar. Love you stuff. It's a lot of Scandinavian viewers, don't worry. It must be must be primetime over there. That's the Mads Mikkelsen.
01:04:35
Speaker
Yeah. Mappy 1964 gives $5 and says, Yahtzee, thank you for introducing me to the word ephemeral. A simple word with quite a lot of deep meaning. Yes, it's a fun word, that isn't it? Ephemeral. I'm not like when you, when you almost do like a word of the day in a ZP. I remember elegiac from Cuphead. Oh, yes. That's another one I'm fond of. What's elegiac? I don't even know what that means. It means having the qualities of an elegy or having a slightly sort of moribund tone to it.
01:05:05
Speaker
See, when I was... Cuphead, the whole retro animation style always reminds me of death for some reason. Probably because everyone who developed old style cartoons like that are all dead for a very long time. Yeah, that'd do it. Like, you can't watch that and not go, this is made by dead people. I see dead people's work. It's weird that we're getting close to that point in the gaming industry where
01:05:32
Speaker
the creators of early favorite games are going to start dying at a very frequent pace. Like in the same way that if you watch movies and everything, um, you know, the Oscars doing in memoriam every year, uh, to tell the, uh, you know, uh, significant figures in entertainment who died, like we're getting to a point that's going to start happening in games. That's going to be happy now.
01:05:51
Speaker
Have you seen the new Mickey Mouse animation style? I was at Disneyland fairly recently, and there's a new ride on there called Mickey Mouse's Runaway Railroad. Which, you know, it's a, you know, it's a ride for kids, but I thought I was really impressed by it because it's got really interesting integrated animation technology. But there's this whole new like Mickey Mouse animation style that it uses that's sort of like halfway between Steven Universe and really old classic, very early, like Steamboat Willie style animation.
01:06:21
Speaker
Did you play that Disney Illusion Island game? Was it the same sort of animation style that you used? I think there's a Disney Plus cartoon series that kind of uses that animation. I think it's cool. Yeah. It has flavor to it. It's interesting how reminiscent it is of the really old sort of spaghetti arms, classic animation style. It was interesting that in that whole era, it wasn't generally accepted that animation was for kids.
01:06:49
Speaker
That sort of became more prevalent. And after Disney did their series of animation classics, it became more a thing that animation was for kids. And once it started feeding into the theme park and everything, and it became a... Yeah. At what point did they start finally going, okay, this is more kid-friendly? Because even like, younger Disney, Snow White, Cinderella...
01:07:12
Speaker
Yeah. I think a big part of it was like kids Saturday morning cartoons as well. Sure. In like the, from like the sixties onwards. Yeah. Cause like the Flintstones was always like an animated sitcom. It had like a laugh track and everything. Yeah. And it was about mid, it was about middle-aged people. Yeah. Domestic violence, all that stuff. Not wearing pants, they work. But anyway, moving on.
01:07:39
Speaker
Laura lights video archive gives one eight to nine us says hey, have you ever thought of doing a retrospect on Eve online or paid much attention to press around even guard? Love you guys salute. No, I have not. I have spares nary a brain cell for Eve online, since my original review of it. Frankly. However, we did a we did a large big, big old documentary on Eve online, back at the escapist that you can check out.
01:08:07
Speaker
both the game and the fan fest trying to get thumbs up. Rhythm Hawk gives 989 us is regarding the mainstream outlets the perception that they are less honest for me comes with the inconsistent standards they use to review go to example is called invisible, not invisible infinite warfare with IGN scoring it nine out of 10 thoughts. Let's do a quick thing right here. Hold on. On a scale of one to 1010 being the highest sea of stars. What do you rate it Marty?
01:08:38
Speaker
Yahtzee. Don't make me do this. Do it quick. Philosophically. I don't care about philosophical. All right, seven and a half. Right. And mine would be a five. You see how inconsistent that was. And we all have different backgrounds. But that's just how IGN goes about it. It's different human beings. Different human beings review these games.
01:08:59
Speaker
I did the same thing. I reviewed a couple of Assassin's Creed games and I yelled at because I said this was my favorite one in years. And then they were like, but your score is lower than the last one. There is an inherent inconsistency with scores. Yeah. Because, you know, not every game can be summarized from a one to 10 scale.
01:09:17
Speaker
You know, not even like an eight out of 10. Is that a game punching above its weight or is that a game that should have been great and went to shit, you know? It's just different. Scores just suck. That's simple. Also, you hear that last week we had we had you and Stefan who both weren't crazy about Alan Wake 2. Meanwhile, you got Alan Wake 2 getting nominated for awards up the wazoo because a lot of people are crazy for it. So different strokes, different folks. And whatnot. Well, there you go.
01:09:46
Speaker
I only said seven and a half because that's like the milk toast score that doesn't mean anything. Yeah. And I said five because I'm not an RPG guy, but I was forced a JRPG guy, but I forced myself to give a score. You see, I was forced. You forced yourself. You know, I wouldn't force you guys to do something I wouldn't do. There you go. That's kind of you. No.
01:10:08
Speaker
having tofis impatient for his walk. Warlord for warrior 4356 warriors got three hours in it by the way warrior 4356 gives 499 us and says overlooked indie game I love heat signature part of the defenestration trilogy with gunpoint might be worth a look for its design.
01:10:28
Speaker
And it's the third game in the defenestration trilogy. That was Tom Francis's games, right? Yeah, he was a former game critic who became a developer. Yeah, I think I started heat signature. I don't think I put any more time into it. His gun his first game was gunpoint, I think. Yeah, his first game is gunpoint. Yeah. So I'm not sure what this the third defenestration game is. Super Mario wonder. People get thrown through windows in that a lot. Right. There's no way to know.
01:10:58
Speaker
To defenestrate, do you have to be thrown or can you just jump? No, you can self-defenestrate. That's a different word. Okay. I mean, the literal, I mean, the word literally is just means to put through a window or to exit through a window because finestra is Latin for window. To unwindow yourself. To unwindow yourself?
01:11:29
Speaker
Loki's Wager gives $10 and says, would you ever consider doing some short stories set in the Jacques Mercurian universe that aren't about the main cast? I love the world building so much. I just want to see more of it. Well, to be honest with you, I'm not really big on short stories as an art form. I've never really liked writing them. I don't really like reading them. I'm more interested in like novels, really. I like the long form experience. But you know, feel free to write fanfiction.
01:11:54
Speaker
I remember reading some erotic Jacques Mercurian fan fiction ones, I wonder whether that's still around. Still waiting on the next chapter, him. Yeah. I mean, it was the, like,
01:12:11
Speaker
the predictable relationship between the main male character, the main female character. It was nothing particularly spicy, but it was there. A screen of clarity. I once accidentally read fan fiction for Harry Potter thinking it was like a missing book. clarity. If you take nothing else away from you, you don't have to be understood. You just have to be as clear as possible.
01:12:37
Speaker
I was always thrown by just how prevalent erotic fanfiction was because I remember when I first got onto the internet, and I was just like a dumb kid, and I'm thinking, Oh, I really like Red Dwarf. I'm going to look up fanfiction of Red Dwarf so I could read stories about my favorite characters. And like 90% of them were erotic and that. But that was a coming of age moment, I fear. Yeah, mate. I'm the man he is today.
01:13:05
Speaker
vulgar display of gaming gives 10 Australian dollars and says actually just remembered I do have a question will there be a stream for the game awards big fan of the award stroke showcase dreams vulgar this is gonna be a world premiere right now there will be and I don't think that's a world premiere because I think I've said it before yes we're gonna be doing our traditional live pre watch along post show shenanigans to the game awards next Thursday December 7th we'll probably starting that on this channel the big channel
01:13:33
Speaker
the main channel because it is an event stream probably around 5 p.m central that day because i believe the award show starts at six or so so tune in for more details but yeah we'll be doing our traditional spoofs and goofs and seeing what Geof Kili has in store for us maybe a little Hideo Kojima just slipping in there who knows you're gonna do bingo oh i forgot about bingo yeah we'll do some bingo yeah Geof Kili
01:13:58
Speaker
That sounds like you're insulting him. Gee off, Kaylee. Absolutely. It's a perfectly valid alternative spelling of Jeff. Is that not where it came from? No, it's not the alternative link. Isn't that the original?
01:14:18
Speaker
I think so, yeah, like there's like historical figures called like Jeffrey of Monmouth, spelled G-E-O-F-F, but it was always pronounced Jeff. It's weird.
01:14:32
Speaker
Um, you have to remember, like, until Middle English, there was no consistency for spelling. You just wrote down how you thought it was spelled based on how it sounded. We should go back. Where's your jazz? Man, I was born in the wrong century. Apparently. Uh, Magnum White gives $5 and says, I also feel that a certain amount of background is important for criticism might be a terrible car critic, since I don't really have a point of reference. Ah, but what about the fresh perspective?
01:14:59
Speaker
There's a lot of that nowadays. I think as long as, again, we keep talking about transparency, as long as the audience knows where you're coming from. Like if I went into something, someone's like, I don't know how to drive, but here's my car review. I think that'd be pretty funny. Like I know what I'm getting into. After how many car reviews are you now a car guy?
01:15:25
Speaker
Was it that Michael Jordan 10,000 hours thing? You have to do 10,000 hours of car reviews to become an expert in something? Yeah, I suppose, sure. Yeah. I agree with the background, but more so again, the clarity of it.
01:15:39
Speaker
Oh, sorry. Chris Gaines 2000 gears $5 and says Yahtzee speaks truth as is his want. This donation brought to you by a successful monetization of my life profit off of me profiting off of me. Thank you very much Chris Gaines 2000. Want is the archaic word meaning tendency. So when somebody took a bite out of your want on? Yeah, just left you with the want.
01:16:04
Speaker
It's very useful to know if you're playing Scrabble and you wanted to spell want with an A, but you didn't have an A. Yeah, and then people get really mad and then you look real smart by telling them, look it up. Yeah. Yeah.
01:16:16
Speaker
I am a painfully smug Scrabble player, I'll have you know. I always make sure to take a picture when I use all my tiles and get the 50 point bonus. I think you and I should have a go because I know your style. Ooh, look at him flexing his vocabulary. Meanwhile, I'm like two letters. I just blocked you on the triple word.
01:16:39
Speaker
I trust me, I understand the high level Scrabble play. I used to kick ass in words in a Babyl Royale, but nobody played any of that. Bring it back. We should work with friends. We should organize a community Babyl Royale night. I'll just murder all comers.
01:16:59
Speaker
of hubba. Diego Lomac, welcome to the Green Gang. Han, welcome to the Green Gang.
Community Fun and Game Streaming
01:17:04
Speaker
Bjango, welcome to the Green Gang. And Shala the Prinny, welcome to the Green Gang. Welcome, everyone. Derrady gives 10 US dollars says I've seen some streamers who do a good job with text heavy games by reading the text like they're telling a story kind of gives it more of an immersive feel to it while watching the gameplay. Well, to each their own Zerrady, I've never liked that sort of stream. I always prefer the sort of commentary stroke analysis approach.
01:17:26
Speaker
Oh, but like for text narrative heavy games. I just don't watch streams of text heavy. I mean, if I see what goes on in a text heavy narrative game, I'll just play the text heavy narrative game. There you go. Yeah, I've done I do the voices and not duck upon. What's that? Dangan Romper? Yeah, I do all the different voices until I run out of voice.
01:17:51
Speaker
I play, I streamed the first five hours of Final Fantasy 7 last night. I got out of Midgar and I did voices for everyone. It was great. Also, Tifa says the R word in that game. And let me tell you, I was not a fan of that. I was like, Tifa, what are you doing? What? She said Rochester. She did, Rochester, New York. Yeah. Who did she call in Rochester?
01:18:13
Speaker
There was one of the run-up to stairs. She was exhausted. She had a momentary lapse. It was 97. It was a learning experience. She called the stairs. Whatever you're going to say, just go on to the next one. Just fucking pay your dog and read the next one. Okay. Sorry I brought it up. Unbiased review. Go. Go to the next one. Go to the next one.
01:18:36
Speaker
Willpower gives $5 and says people complaining about bugs in Starfield need to try Daggerfall on a PC at the time. Ah, well, standards were lower. Well, not just that. I've also never cared about that. Like, well, this game was worse. That doesn't change my feelings about the game I'm playing, you know? Yeah.
01:18:55
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that is a good strategy to play a shit game before a less shit game. The discrepancies between them is like, whoa, what a great game. Yeah. You'll feel better. But then in terms of like the Olympics of suffering, and I'm like, well, just because this thing is worse doesn't mean my thing isn't bad. It's an entire genre based on this feeling. That is true. If you exclusively play things that are really good, you're gonna have a very depressing life. Yep, that's how I feel. Yeah.
01:19:22
Speaker
If you like the critic in Ratatouille being really emaciated looking. If I'm not in heaven, I don't swallow. I feel more like Remy. Yeah. Who's Hatter you wonder?
01:19:37
Speaker
The real DJ gives $5, says, hi guys, have you heard about Knuckle Sandwich? It's a quirky RPG that takes inspiration from Wario Ware and Mario and Luigi, not to Amore, you? I have heard about it, just, I believe it just came out, um, last week.
01:19:53
Speaker
I don't know anything about it. I didn't know the WarioWare part of it, though. That sounds nice. See, I assume they're referencing, like, the fact that all the attacks in Mario & Luigi are minigame-based. But I feel like the Mario & Luigi games got a little bit too minigame-centric.
01:20:08
Speaker
I mean, I preferred it when it was just, you know, the Super Mario RPG thing. Press the button with the right timing to do a bit of extra damage or take a bit less health from attacks. Yeah, yeah. But by the end, like the last Mario Luigi game, you got to do these elaborate quick time event cutscenes. Mash the button to make a train go along a roller coaster track. What? A half for five minutes. Oh, Jesus. Is that a common thing in RPGs? I quite liked and see of stars where you're like deflecting things because I could get that thing to like 100 bounces.
01:20:38
Speaker
There's not a common thing in RPGs. That's why people liked it so much in Sea of Stars is because it called back two games like the Mario RPG series.
01:20:46
Speaker
Was it Mario RPG that pioneered pressing a button with good timing to do extra damage, stroke, take less damage? I think Legend of Dragoon came out first, didn't it? No, Mario RPG came out first. Mario RPG was a Super Nintendo game. Dragoon was a PS1 game, so. Hot damn. Yeah, that might be the first. I did that with all my RPGs back in the day. I did that with a Chrono Trigger and Earthbound, and whenever I'd get a critical hit, I'd be like, that's because my timing was right, even though that was not a mechanic in those games. That was just me being dumb. Oh.
01:21:14
Speaker
Well, anyway, Fox D comes, who I referred to as a child molester earlier, you'll remember, gives $2 and says, Yeah, it's a magnificent mad man. No kids diddled. Great. Although we only have his word for that. What about extended club mix? What do we have to say? What is extended club mix?
01:21:33
Speaker
Extended Club Vex gives $10 to say, I think of honest reviews the same way as I do when a mechanic has a sign that says most reliable or a pizza place is best in the city. Hyperbole meant to attract attention or, you know, a lie. My favorite is the closing down, you know, like mattress shops. Yeah, it's been several years. Yeah, you're not closing down. Like these mechanics who say most reliable, they should they should use spurious rigor to their advantage.
01:22:03
Speaker
they should say something like second most reliable place in town. Because the whole point of spurious rigor is that it's unlike saying you're the most reliable in town, it implies there's been some thought about it. Yeah. Like the way it's usually used to say in adverts, they'll say our product has been proven to kill 99% of germs. And they never say kill all germs or kill 100% of germs. Right. As we're saying 99% implies there's been some rigorous study.
01:22:30
Speaker
That's good, yeah, so with like honest-ish reviews, they would do better than just honest reviews. Mostly honest reviews. Second most honest reviews on the internet according to what review magazine? Two truths and a lie review. Whitticism gives five dollars and says, for what it's worth, I think you're all upfront with
Genuine Opinions and Influencer Skepticism
01:22:52
Speaker
your opinions. If they get filtered due to dollars, they still come out genuine. Good podcast today.
01:22:58
Speaker
Thank you. And every Monday, with hisism, there will be good podcasts. Sometimes with guests, perhaps. Sudip, welcome to the tip jar as well, Sudip. Oh, look who it is, it's Vojtek. The bear. Back in slightly something else days, where Vojtek taught us about Vojtek the bear and how to pronounce his name. It's incredible.
01:23:21
Speaker
Who gives $5 and says nothing to add, just happy to start the week with the new podcast. Thank you, Wojtek. Or is it Wojtek? Is that Polish? Is it Welsh? It's Polish. Wojtek was a bear who was liberated from a zoo in World War II and fought alongside the army and smoked cigarettes and helped them carry ammunition and became a general. And I think a lot of those facts are wrong, but like the gist of it is correct. That's like Winnie the Pooh. Yeah, if Winnie the Pooh killed Nazis.
01:23:54
Speaker
What was Paddington doing before he left Darkest Peru? Aiding like the local gorillas, perhaps. He was like four. Yeah, that's pretty old for a bear. Like a four year old bear could fuck you up. Paddington would have been a Sandinista.
01:24:10
Speaker
Oh, look, it's fill my ass up with 200 krona. Oh my god, Phil, who says I always had a skeptical look on influences. It seems a lot of them seem to want to be an extension of publishers marketing saying whatever will get them early access, while official outlets fear the blacklisting. Well, you know, if anyone is like really enthusiastic for their new gamer chair on stream, probably saved discount their opinions.
01:24:37
Speaker
I do not have a gamer chair, so I feel, I feel, I feel, uh, saved. You're not thinking what I was thinking. Okay. I just, um, thinking back to Ninja and when he like, uh, when he was like riding high, doing Fortnite streaming and showed off his special streaming room, which was like covered in neon blue LEDs and he had a special gamer chair and everything. And like, you know, cut price Starship enterprise.
01:25:06
Speaker
I don't know. He was decked out him. I mean, if you want to be in marketing, there's nothing wrong with that. Sure. As long as you're transparent. People want to pay me to wear their logos on my streams. That sounds great. Deck me out like a NASCAR. Welcome to show up Sundays. We're brought to you by Sean Connery.
01:25:35
Speaker
But Django gives 20 US dollars and says I used to work at Papa Murphy's a long time ago for a few years and I will tell you the pizzas are actually really good. Depends upon the store of course but the pizza was always good frost is a fake pizza van. Oh my god a fake pizza boy. I'm not a fan of fake pizza. I've had the finest of pizzas. Have you ever been to the pizza region of Italy?
01:25:57
Speaker
No, I haven't. You're right. It's all just sparkling paisons. Sudip gives 80 Indian rupees and says what are your thoughts on starfield? Well, I could tell you a pretty good way you could find out. Sudip is you could go and watch the zero punctuation on it. You know, which and you know, that's not our IP anymore. But it's doesn't change the fact that it's still my thoughts.
01:26:20
Speaker
That's what I like about you. Look at that. He's not redoing him. He's just like, I said it. It's staying. I want to think about Starfield again. That too. Yeah. Dale's all still up there. It's all water under the bridge as far as I'm concerned. It's not like we're now saying that I never did zero punctuations for the escapist. You've been dead for 16 years. I only put like three hours into Starfield and I came to the conclusion I come to in every Bethesda game, which is these games aren't for me.
01:26:49
Speaker
Yeah, mine was weird. I put that down to just the bugs or something. They were very like, come on, come on, play with us. Because it was those few like three rangers at the start. It's like, oh, I get out of here. But they're sitting right behind a pile of red barrels. Yeah, I could I saved right there because I couldn't resist shooting them for being such a cunt. Magnus the Red, you watch my Spider-Man 2 zero punctuation if you want. I don't care.
01:27:16
Speaker
It's the only way you're gonna find out my opinions on Spider-Man 2.
01:27:39
Speaker
Anyway, humane shield gears for 99 US has always loved that the one time Yahtzee went to E3 was the events last year. Marty, I've now taken on the task of spreading HPD to everyone I meet. Sounds like a disease. Yeah, you killed E3. How do you feel about that? What if GDC never exists anymore because of you?
01:28:01
Speaker
Um, you're welcome. Wait, the game developer conference? Yeah, he went to it last year. Oh, that one's fun. E3 is the one I could do without. Yeah, fair enough. Hairy bum disease. There you go. That's what age. That's that's what you're spreading when you're spreading HIV. God, it's all mighty. Miss Michael. Welcome to the tip jar. Thank you so much, Miss Michael.
01:28:26
Speaker
Uh, Acerat gives $5, says, should scores or reviews be redone as games change with constant updates?
Challenges in Game Review Scoring
01:28:33
Speaker
No, that's psychotic. Some do that, like with Destiny, they talk about the patches and they, who is they, shadow reviewers. Your job, these days, your job would never be done. See, that's the point of, that's why you do seek out content creators who only play one live service game. That's where I think they actually like Trump outlets.
01:28:53
Speaker
is that all I do is play Path of Exile. All I do is play Destiny. Well, at that point, you're asking the opinion of a McDonald's burger from that dude who's eaten a Big Mac every year since the 60s. That's fair. Do I want that guy's opinion on McDonald's? I love him. Or the guy who was like, I saw Captain Marvel 154 times in theaters. I'm like, I probably don't need your opinion on that movie. That is John Gorsky. He dripped too hard. He smoked too rough. They're going to kill him.
01:29:24
Speaker
Uh, Olhanup gives five British pounds and says, ever had a smell become strongly associated with a game. For me, the smell of wet paint is Fallout 3. I first played it in a freshly decorated room. Mmm. I don't think I've got any of those. I sometimes associate certain podcasts with certain games because I was listening to them while playing. Had a game. Yeah, mine's music. Like, uh, Ninja Gaiden and Black Eyed Peas. That horrible mix, but it's there. Not a smell. Can't say a smell.
01:29:55
Speaker
Yeah, not spelled. No, no, definitely the stuff I've had on the background or anything food wise. I remember for some reason, the weekend I got Mario RPG as a kid, when I got the game on the way home, we went to Dairy Queen and got Blizzards. And so I associate Mario RPG with Blizzards. And even when I was playing the remake recently, I was like, you know what I could go for right now? The Blizzard. Because those are great. They put them upside down and they don't fall off.
01:30:23
Speaker
That's very cute. That's what I need for gaming. With the Blizzard test. Can you dump a game upside down and have it not fall out of the cup? Is that important? Did it not fall out of the cup? No, it's just the selling thing. Do you know what a Dairy Queen Blizzard is?
01:30:38
Speaker
Not off the top of my head, but you know, I think there's a lot of things that don't fall out of the cup. It's like an ice cream concrete mixer. And the whole thing is like, we can put it upside down and that's how sticky it is in the cup. Like a McFlurry. Here's the thing though about ice cream, if it doesn't melt, it's low quality. Not even quality, man. Yeah, if it doesn't melt, it's from space.
01:31:07
Speaker
We gotta kill it. We gotta find another way to kill it. You can get, like, astronaut ice cream, can't you? There's just, like, freeze-dried pellets of ice cream that, uh, remain solid. Oh, there's only little dots. Dippin' dots. That I see in the future. No, I'm talking about, you know, when you used to go to, like, the observatory and they'd sell you astronaut food. Oh, yeah, like the dry ice cream.
01:31:30
Speaker
You two pretending that going to an observatory is a normal thing. Yeah, as you do, as you do. I went to like a couple times as a kid. I don't feel trapped or something. When I was a kid, I went to Goonhilly Observatory. There's like a whole science museum. It's nice. You talk about Goonhill? What's going on on Goonhill? Goonhilly. It's the name of an observatory in the UK. Oh, forget it. Fucking great. Real quick tangent. Dippin Dots reminded me of the former, it was Trump's
01:31:58
Speaker
press secretary or something, Sean Spicer. I'm putting this link in here because Sean Spicer, that dude was a dipshit. He had a years-long feud with Dippin Dots on Twitter. And when he became press secretary, everyone was like, what the fuck is the deal with this dude? And why is he always going at war with Dippin Dots? And I found it very funny. He has such tweets as Dippin Dots are not the ice cream of the future. And I think I've said this before, but they are not the ice cream of the future. He was very angry about it. It was great.
01:32:26
Speaker
ice cream with the past even goes dance on their grave when they fired files for bankruptcy i don't know uh stanton ballard gives five dollars says i like the way famitsu scores their reviews i wish a few more outlets would iterate on that format love you guys keep up the awesome work i don't know how spammits who scores their reviews or people review the game
01:32:51
Speaker
It's like how EGM used to do it, although four people review the game and then they give you each one has a score out of 10 and then the total is out of 40. The problem with that is how do you like you can't have four people in an outlet reviewing the same game like that would
01:33:05
Speaker
ruin productivity. You need four people to be reviewing four different games. That would be insane. What if they don't like you two? That would still just leave you with a number out of 40, which doesn't mean anything out of context. Also, those numbers are usually relatively close to each other. You never have someone giving it a 10 and someone giving it a two in Famitsu. Yeah.
01:33:28
Speaker
I just don't want to scale where we don't use half the numbers because anything less than five means you're probably fucked up. Like it's not a game even. Well, that's the problem is like to be like a one or a two out of 10, you have to be like, unfunctional. And most people just aren't going to review a game that is like, or like, that'd be like just going on Steam and being like, Hey, this one guy made a thing that's broken. Let's make fun of it. You don't need to do that. One out of 10 game is malware. Yeah.
01:33:55
Speaker
A link to the party gives for 99 and says re review revisits. Love it when games don't hit right the first time but keep me curious. Some of those have ended up being my faves. Yeah, I love that. That said, I still can't be asked to play cyberpunk again.
01:34:11
Speaker
I'm glad I held out for that. That's how I kind of, I don't know, I've rarely hit a game where I go, oh, now I get it, like I just finished Hollow Knight proper. And I go, I respect you the older I get, but I like your less and I'm looking forward to your sequels. Wow. Blue McD's nuts gives five US dollars says any of you have a colossal fuck up moment that a charming apology followed? What was the mistake? And what did you do to sort of write it?
01:34:38
Speaker
Oh, I do have one of these. I once had a gag in zero punctuation. Let's let's I don't know. I'm very scared where we're going right now. Well, I just said something that was interpreted to be transphobic. Okay. Okay. All right. Carry on. Yeah.
01:35:03
Speaker
And once that was made clear to me, and I went over the comments, I realized, hey, you're probably right. That was probably a bad way to phrase that. So I read it the video with a slightly different phrasing. That's great. That's great. If we as people aren't allowed to grow, then what's the point? Yeah, like who was it that made that video but kept saying escapist wrong. So they redid the whole video. Yeah, I believe. Yes. Good on him.
01:35:32
Speaker
learning from his mistakes. What about you, Marty? Colossal fuck up moment with a charming apology? You haven't released any apology, JPEGs? I've never done one of those. I'm going to release mine and just blame it all on Konami. Yeah, I don't. I don't make mistakes. And if you find it, I will find you. Yeah. No, I apologize. I just tend to, I think the secret to an apology is to be genuine.
01:35:54
Speaker
Sure. I've always skirted the line between somebody and nobody. A lot of my mistakes fall into nobody, so I don't have to make an apology. Usually. Well, there you go. There we go. It's true, Lampy. I did anger the Sonic fans. And then look at me. I became a Sonic fan myself. So there you go.
01:36:16
Speaker
Lampe gives five British pounds, says, so I presume we'll be ending with Suica game as his tradition. Or you could put Suica in that fourth slot during the podcast. Suica in the fourth slot isn't a bad idea. That's funny. Guys, Suica is so good. I don't know what Suica is. It is fruit.
01:36:34
Speaker
Yeah, it's that fruit dropping game that's kind of like Tetris, but with with roly poly physics and then also the threes thing of one to touch each other. They combine to make something bigger. It's wonderful. It's it's it's it's great puzzle game of the year. Well, anyway.
01:36:55
Speaker
Tower gives $5 and says, would you say 2023 was a good year for games? Trash Taste said it sucked, and they got put over hot coals for it. What do you guys think? I think it was a good year for being a games journalist, because we had some very high highs and some very low lows, both of which are at least interesting to talk about.
Reflecting on 2023 Gaming Trends
01:37:16
Speaker
I think we had we had Baldur's Gate 3, but on the other hand, we had Forspoken and Golem and Redfall and all the rest.
01:37:25
Speaker
But I don't think it was just high highs. It was an incredible amount of high highs. I think it was several generation-defining games. And I think people are going to look back on this year as like 2020, 2017, 2007 as one of the all-time greats, personally.
01:37:44
Speaker
And all the big developers are going to be looking on stuff for another five or six years now, because that's how it works. Yeah, so I'm with the gutter, if you will, I'll be with the Trash Taste Fellows. When I think great game, great video game years, I think in back in like the early 2010s and whatnot, stuff like that.
01:38:05
Speaker
I feel like it's just been so bad the last couple of years that this one, just relatively speaking, is a great year. But just because my ex abused me, and this one says, please, I don't think they are the nicest and, you know, worthy of a saintly hood. Good year, but not like, oh, I'll remember this forever. It's more so if I remember that there was a pandemic beforehand. Yeah, I remember this year.
01:38:29
Speaker
Well, I just think there's a lot of years where at the end of the year of run up, I'm just going today, there was a lot of mundane and crap not worth talking about came out this year. And this year, I feel like there was actually some interesting stuff. Yeah, top five bottom five and bland five are gonna be pretty easy to fill up these this year.
01:38:49
Speaker
Yeah, as far as news stuff though, it's been all over. It's been something worth watching. I think we'll look back on this year as what happened. Oh, I think it's been awful for the industry. Yeah, layoffs and global bursting. Yeah, we're right at the heart of that, weren't we? Yeah, exactly. That happened this year.
01:39:13
Speaker
Yeah, I think the one the one knock again, you know, I'm still incredibly enthusiastic about this year I think the one knock against it is so many of those big games at the top are the third fourth tenth sixteenth games in their given franchises, which is Not great. I think it'd be great to have some some huge splashy new games and not just in these but I
01:39:35
Speaker
Slow and steady. Well, still waiting on Avatar. This is gonna be it. This is gonna be it. Oh god, I have to play that too now, don't I? This is gonna be it. Yeah, we all do. We all gotta put in our time. We all float down here in Pandora. You know what I mean? That's what's changed now that we're independent. You gotta get your takes.
01:39:56
Speaker
Raziel gives 10 Polish zloty and says, late today, here's some dosh to make up for it. Thanks, Raziel. And then Fungus Finder comes in with $5 and says, Yahtzee, this is the last step in my experiment. Likely, likely, likely, likely. Likely, likely, likely, likely. Thank you for your participation.
01:40:14
Speaker
Yeah, he didn't see and it was in the discord. He said it was actually after we left fungus finder confessed in the old escapist discord and said I've been Messaging the chats with the word likely and I feel like Yahtzee's been losing his accent on it Yeah, I think my accent sort of shifted along the course of all the likelies there. Yeah, yeah
01:40:37
Speaker
Let me try that again. Likely, likely, likely, likely. Likely, likely, likely, likely. Oh my God. You got to lose it as you go. Yeah. I wasn't even trying to put that on. That's just what happened. Incredible. It's like the more times I say it, the more my brain just sort of clicks back into my original accent. You remember who you are. Yeah, sort of corrects its mistake over time.
01:41:03
Speaker
Dio dunker gave us for 99 us says fun facts dipping dots makes its money from its freezer technology, not the actual ice cream. It's absolutely a fun fact. Yeah, and now like kids roll the ice cream. You guys seen that is like cold plates. Cold plate for cold take. Did you know? Did you know soft serve ice cream was invented by Margaret Thatcher?
01:41:26
Speaker
The Margaret Thatcher. The Iron Lady? Well, to clarify, she was a food scientist before she was a politician, and she was part of the team that developed soft-serve ice cream.
Fun Facts and Surprising Histories
01:41:37
Speaker
Wow. I took all the credit for it. She's in gastronomy, how do you know? No. It's really ironic for British people, because she was famously the prime minister who ended free milk for schools. Yeah. They called her Margaret Thatcher milk snatcher. That's such a good burnout. Oh, that's so good.
01:41:56
Speaker
Such a good bird. And Ronald McReagan, welcome to the Green Gang. I feel like that was very fitting. That was very timely. Welcome back, Mr. President. Mr. McPresident.
01:42:11
Speaker
Tophie, why do you look guilty? Tophie's like, it's been an hour, 45 minutes. He was sort of wandered off and was hiding behind the couch a few minutes. And now he probably did a secret poo. So I'm worried. I'm worried I'm gonna find a secret poo as soon as we're done. Oh, illegal poker game back then. You're gonna find a little spooky on the floor.
01:42:32
Speaker
Well, anyway, SVS Guru 2010 Euros says instead of having a singular score, they should give sub-scores to different aspects of the game, like gameplay, story, graphics, bugginess, and what weights they give each. Yeah, people have tried that, SVS Guru 2000. You can always insist on, like, an average at the end.
01:42:46
Speaker
Yeah, I was working on something like that just to humor people. So like on roguelikes, you would crack out the replayability rubric, because that's kind of like a big thing for it, whereas you probably don't care for other genres. But in the end, it's all just numbers and averages. And it's, it's hard.
01:43:04
Speaker
Lydia Hollow-Morg is 5 Australian and says, yes, have you ever played the Jak and Daxter games? If so, what did you think? If not, would you ever play them for a retro review? Actually, no, I never played the Jak and Daxter games. That era was sort of a blind spot for me. At the time I was... I only had a GameCube, I think. I really like, especially Jak and Daxter 1. The entire island was one
01:43:27
Speaker
single location. And so you'd go from like buy home to buy home without like mega loading screens or whatever. And one of the first examples of being able to like, look to the top of mountain and be like, Oh, I'm going to be going there. At some point. I know Jack too, is one of the classic examples of the stupid edgy early 2000s sequel. Yep. The GTAification. Yes. Yeah. Jack one's great.
01:43:55
Speaker
And Phil Myesop gives 50 Norwegian kroner to say you should always criticize what you love the hardest what I but what I'd the harshest criticism you can give your favorite what is the hardest you can give your favorite game. Sion Hill 2's inventory puzzles are really stupid. They say because of the times or they're just stupid. They're just sort of rather silly Lee implemented.
01:44:21
Speaker
like that whole business with using the wax doll to put a horseshoe on a trapdoor handle so that you can open the trapdoor.
01:44:30
Speaker
That was great. I was able to get through it easily because you brought it up like a week before I got there in my replay. So that was nice. Uh, Banjo Kazooie might be my favorite game of all time, but it, uh, before the final boss, you have to go through a quiz and despite loving quizzes, it is the worst. Like, I don't know what the fuck was going on at rare that they implemented. It is the most like frustrating quiz where it asks you questions of like, here's a zoomed in pic of a, of a wall. What level was this? Or here's a noise. What animal made this noise? And I was like, I don't remember any of these questions and it's very punishing real pain in the ass.
01:45:00
Speaker
There was me thinking the quizzes in Yooka-Laylee were just because they ran out of money. Nope, that was an ode to their earlier games and I think everyone hated them. Amazing. There you go. I'd throw in not a single game, but the genre. I love roguelikes. I hate how lacking of transparency they are. And that's because the old games came with masks and someone was like, oh, the old ones didn't have all this information. So why should I? No, they did. They just didn't survive.
01:45:30
Speaker
Uh, John the Gin gives 59 Norwegian kronas. Has happy new thing. Best of luck going forward. Seems you've had a pretty good start. I just got a PSVR too. Do any of you have any game recommendations?
01:45:42
Speaker
Well, I might recommend getting an Oculus Quest instead. No! They already got one. I'm trying to see if Sushi Ben is on PSVR. I haven't played it because I don't have VR. Oh yes, Sushi Ben. Get Sushi Ben. It looks like you live inside a cool anime. I'm putting a link to it. I've heard like all the porn games. Yeah, but it's less corny. Okay.
01:46:05
Speaker
I've seen a lot of buzz around that new Assassin's Creed VR game. People are saying it's actually really good. Yeah, yeah. I haven't tried it myself. Yeah, I know the Rezzy games that they read in VR were good. Always super hot and beat Saber, if you can. Yeah. There you go. And it's insane to me that Half-Life Alyx isn't on PSVR 2 yet. Well, it's Valve, them and their PC, Master Race and all that.
01:46:35
Speaker
SVS Guru 2000 gives five euros says Ah yes, soft serve ice cream the art of getting people to pay more for literal air. I got bad news for you if you like sodas as you go. You're so tricked. That's what makes it good. Yes, area and things. Yes, aerating.
01:46:53
Speaker
I mean, when I was a kid, I used to get like those pots of chocolate and moose from the supermarket. Sometimes I just like stir it up with my spoon to make it like non aerated anymore. I don't know why the fuck I did that. Because you ended up with like one third as much chocolate. What was this man's doing? Bang for buck. Get that air out of there. You got to get those those moose tannins out there like a nice glass of wine. Lovely.
01:47:17
Speaker
Oh, well, I guess we're at the end of the superchats there. Hey, we did it. No more superchats, please. We've stopped. We did it. Camden Ninja in the chat says soda has carbon dioxide, Yahtzee. That shit's valuable. You breathe that out, Camden Ninja. It can't be that valuable. Comes out your mouth. Oh, and the Zaratha comes in with two R dollars and says waiting on Marty's unbiased squeaky game review.
01:47:44
Speaker
Uh, I think, I think it's wonderful and I'm very bad at it and I'm never going to get better and I'm fine with that.
01:47:51
Speaker
Well, thanks for listening to the Windbreakers podcast. We've got original content coming for you every day this week, I think.
Upcoming Content and Podcast Conclusion
01:48:02
Speaker
Holy smokes. If you like my stuff, I've got a fully ramblimatic on Wednesday. And I will be streaming some games for Yarti Try's Wednesday afternoon, and we'll have the edited version of that, hopefully branded by then, up on Saturday. Also incorporating the games I was streaming last week, I think.
01:48:22
Speaker
Excellent. Frost, you got a new seat take, don't you? Oh, yeah. Big old cold take. You need to go hit that some more. No spoilers. This thing's large. It's not even fully written, and it's already twice as big. I'm excited. I just got done editing like 2,500 words that Darren wrote about Doctor Who, and let me tell you, I'm ready. Oh, no. I'm at 3K, and I feel like I'm going to be sus.
01:48:49
Speaker
Sounds girthy. It is girthy, but girth. Speaking of Darren though, tomorrow, the debut of The Backdrop, Darren's new video entertainment video essay show. And it's not about professional wrestling. It is not about professional wrestling. And let me tell you guys, The Backdrop, beautiful branding.
01:49:10
Speaker
by our own Java tomorrow. Is that backdrop a wrestling move? Because it kind of sounds like it should be. I don't think just a backdrop. I think there's backdrop modifiers, like a DDT backdrop, Power Bomb backdrop, Stone Cold Stunner backdrop. It's like the names of items in Diablo. Yeah, exactly. That's the suffix system prefixes. Exactly. Exactly.
01:49:40
Speaker
Tuning for that. Yeah, we got all sorts of goods Oh and then later today if we have a stream which may or may not be with frost But Nick will definitely be playing with someone else death must die 3 p.m. Central
01:49:52
Speaker
Well, we're on the Second League Live channel. It's neat-ish. It's like, what was it? Those new bullet heaven games, but it tries to do the Hades thing. That, I cannot be unbiased. Let me tell you, I'm addicted to that genre because even if I'm not having a good time, I can't stop playing. So like that, that's a different review in itself. Yeah.
01:50:13
Speaker
And, uh, is that all we got to plug right now? I think for the moment, yeah. Make sure you're subscribed over to the live stream channel. Make sure you subscribe over here. We had so much. Remember, second wind is entirely creator owned and independently funded. Check out our Patreon if you'd like to get behind and support what we're doing here. Uh, birthday designed off. Yes. Everything's coming out. Everything's coming up Millhouse.
01:50:42
Speaker
A couple more superjets came in while we were plugging. Let's quickly rattle them off. SPS Guru 2000 gives five euros to say at least the CO2 is dissolved in the liquid under pressure and only comes out later. That was science. I don't know what that is. That is pure science. Welcome to the Green Gang, Rich Theobald. Lydia Holomor gives five eight dollars and says just saw the announcement of the backdrop. So excited. I loved the in the frame videos and was disappointed they didn't continue. Can't wait. They are absolutely continuing. Don't you worry.
01:51:09
Speaker
And then Camden India gives $2 to say soda gives me a second wind. And then he's button
01:51:17
Speaker
What I don't know what a slash button means, but that was good. Was that supposed to be like a patoonch? A second button? What? No, I think that might have been like, I think Comgent might have thought like a thing was popping up, like an emoji or something was going to pop up. Yeah. Cool. Well, anyway, that will be it from us today, then. I got to walk this very impatient dog and see if he's left me a little present in the office. See you all later, then. Thank you so much for producing, Eric. You did great. We did wonderful. I'm proud of all of you. Thanks, Eric.
01:52:01
Speaker
you